Shadow Watch

Ricci stood there looking at him, hands balled into fists. The warden he’d pinned in the door squirmed a little, and Ricci kicked him in the back of the shin with his heel. A string of curses gushed from inside the cab.

Ricci seemed to pay no attention to them. Nor were any of the men yet paying attention to the Chevrolet that had eased to a halt some ten yards down the road.

“I already explained how it has to work,” Ricci told the deputy. “I get to keep my product, your boy Cobbs gets to pull his ass out of the air. Otherwise we can all stick around here from now till Saint Swithen’s Day.”

The deputy wiped his mouth, glanced at the red-flecked saliva on his hand, and spat again.

“You got balls,” he said, glaring. “Givin’ me orders, expectin’ me to believe some concoction about—”

“The catch is legit, Phipps.”

“Says you. As Cobbs tells it, you ’n’ your crackpot tender were way out past your zone.”

“We can talk about Dex later. You and Cobbs saw my license.”

“But I didn’t see where your boat was, or where you was divin‘, or where you come up, and besides, that’s all his area of respons’bility.” Phipps poked his chin out at the pickup. “You let Cobbs be ’n’ leave us the totes without any more carryin’ on, maybe I let you slide for assaultin’ an officer.”

“Two officers! Don’t you let the wicked fuck forget about me, Phipps!” Cobbs shouted from inside the cab. His head was still wedged beneath the steering wheel. “Don’t you goddamn let him—”

Ricci kicked Cobbs with the heel of his boot again and his sentence ended in a yelp of pain.

Phipps released a heavy sigh.

“Two officers,” he said.

“Two crooked officers.”

Phipps frowned indignantly.

“That’s it, no more crap from you,” he said, dropping his hand to his holster and bringing out his side arm, a.45 Colt automatic.

In the Chevy, Megan turned to Nimec.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “Looks like trouble.”

He nodded and reached for his door handle.

“Sit tight,” he said.

“Pete, you sure it’s wise to—”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

And then shouldered open the door, exited the car, and walked toward the pickup over the narrow country road.

That was when Sheriff’s Deputy Phipps seemed to take notice of him — belatedly and for the first time. He cast a quick glance at Nimec, then past him at the parked Chevy, keeping the pistol trained on Ricci… who had also partially turned in Nimec’s direction.

“You blind, mister?” Phipps said. One eye on him, the other on Ricci. “Or did you just happen to miss what’s going on here?”

Nimec shrugged.

“Tourist,” he said. “We’ve been waiting awhile.”

The deputy said nothing. He looked at the Chevy again, this time suspiciously checking out its front tag.

“It’s a rental,” Nimec said. Stalling, trying to cook up some kind of plan that would extricate Ricci, not to mention himself, from the situation.

Whatever the hell the situation was.

“Wife and I are headed for Stonington,” he said. “Figured I’d ask when we might be able to pass.”

Phipps stared at him, vexed and confused.

“You see,” Nimec said, “we’ve got reservations at an inn that they’ll only hold for another half hour. And being that we just drove all the way up from Portland on Route 1—”

“Which is what you’re gonna have to swing back around onto,” Phipps interrupted. “Right this minute.”

Nimec shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t do that.”

Phipps looked incredulous. “What did you say?”

“Can’t do that,” Nimec repeated, knowing he’d really stepped into it now. “There aren’t any other inns open. Being that this is the off-season.”

Phipps flushed. Though he was still pointing his gun at Ricci, his attention had turned fully to Nimec.

“Another fuckin’ flatlander, why the fuck we let them people into the fuckin’ state of Maine?” Cobb screamed from inside the truck, his voice only slightly muffled. “You better arrest the whole queer bunch of them, Phipps, ’cause my back’s gonna snap like a twig I stay stooped over like this!”

Phipps eyed Nimec with a kind of hostile exasperation, unconsciously wagging his head, looking uncertain about what to do next.

An instant later Ricci made the decision for him. Taking advantage of Phipps’s distraction, he suddenly stepped away from the door of the pickup, caught hold of his outstretched gun hand at the wrist, and bent it sharply backward, simultaneously turning sideways and snatching the pistol with his free hand.

Phipps released a cry of pain and surprise as the pistol was torn from his grasp. He was still gaping in disbelief when Ricci’s leg snapped forward and up in a powerful front kick, the ball of his foot striking him in the broad, chunky stretch of his stomach. The air whoofing out of him, he stumbled backward and landed hard on his bottom, his legs wishboned in front of him.

Cobbs, meanwhile, had pulled his head out of the pickup’s open door and come charging at Ricci from behind. But before he had gotten more than a couple of feet, Ricci spun in a smooth circle on his left leg, his right leg swinging parallel to the ground and thrusting out at the knee, catching Cobbs in the groin with a roundhouse kick. He flew back against the side of the car and doubled over, groaning, his hands between his thighs.

Ricci ejected the Colt’s magazine and tossed it into the spindling roadside brush, then shoved the gun into his vest pocket. Nodding at him, Nimec rushed over to Cobb and took his pistol from its holster. Its clip joined the one that was already in the bushes.

Ricci knelt over Phipps and patted down the bottom of his trouser legs.

“Nothing there to say peekaboo?” he said.

Phipps glared and shook his head.

“Okay,” Ricci told him, stepping back. “Here’s how it goes. We’re all driving off, me with my catch, you two without your guns, our friendly tourist with his nice wife and rental car. You forget about this thing, maybe I don’t report the little scam you and Cobbs tried running on me to Fish and Game or the attorney general’s office down in Augusta. You really behave yourselves, maybe I won’t tell anybody in town how I kicked both your asses and disarmed you barehanded. In two seconds flat.”

Phipps continued glaring at him in baleful silence for another moment, then slowly nodded.

“Good,” Ricci said. “Stay right where you are until I’m gone. Ground needs thawing anyway.”

Phipps snorted, hawked over his shoulder, and looked back up at him. “How the hell am I supposed to explain losing my gun?”

Ricci shrugged.

“Your problem,” he said.

Behind them, Cobbs was still leaning against the pickup, moaning and clutching himself. Ricci turned, strode over to him, grabbed his shoulder, and shoved him roughly away from the truck. Cobbs tripped and fell on his side, drawing his knees toward his chest.

Ricci looked at Nimec, then moved up close to him.

“Poor bastard should’ve kept his hands off my ignition keys,” he said in a voice too low for the others to hear. “Welcome to Vacationland, Pete. Better get back in your car and follow along behind me. I’ll explain everything once we’re at my place.”

* * *

They had come in from the rugged plateau country of Chapada dos Guimaraes, a convoy of four dusty jeeps bumping along the unpaved track in the deepening dusk, traversing the seventy kilometers to their destination with