Charlie waved for Isaac to follow, then scampered on ahead, a manic figure, some ramshackle wood sprite with no redeeming social qualities. The previous trucks, empty and dark, were pulled barely off the road on both sides, leaving a narrow high-walled alley for Isaac to negotiate.
Chase said, “Why, it’s a major operation.”
It was. In near-darkness two trucks were being unloaded onto two rafts. The swarming lines of men, with their heavy sacks of coffee, looked like agitated ants forced to move their nest. Isaac braked to a stop, cutting the engine, and in the sudden silence he could hear beneath the muted sounds of the loading a disturbed plash of water against the rafts.
Frank strode up from the edge of the unseen lake, looking big and mean and bad-tempered; his boss expression. Lew followed, glancing quickly this way and that, looking for rips in the fabric. Sounding wistful, Chase said, “I could hit them both from here.”
Isaac turned to look at the man, who was gazing through the windshield, smiling faintly. If he lifts the gun, Isaac thought, I’ll stop him. I’ll kill him if I can.
Chase met Isaac’s eyes. Seeming both surprised and amused, he said, “I’m not going to, Otera.” He made that shooing gesture with the gun. “Climb out. I’ll follow you.”
Isaac opened the door and clambered down to the ground. Chase followed through the same opening, so Isaac moved a few steps away. Frank, before coming up to them, was already calling out orders: “Get your men down to the lake, Isaac, let’s finish this, it’s too fucking dark to work.”
“He has a gun,” Isaac said quietly, and stepped farther away to the side as Chase shut the truck door and revealed himself, smiling in the faint light, holding the gun casually but prominently at his side.
Then it got very quiet inside their little circle. Below, on planks over the roiled mud of the shore, the workmen continued to load the rafts. Above, in the narrow corridor between the empty trucks, the men who’d just ridden down from the depot were jumping out onto the ground, demonic in the red glow of the taillights as they stretched their stiff muscles and made quiet conversation together. Here around the lead truck there was silence, with Chase beside the door in his torn trousers and the uniform coat and belt, the pistol gleaming in his hand. Isaac stood away from him to the side, Frank farther away toward the lake, Lew just beyond Frank. Charlie watched in childlike interest at the periphery of the light.
“Surprise,” Chase said.
Frank said, “What’s this all about?”
Lew took a step to his left, but with sudden harshness Chase gestured with the gun, saying, “Don’t go anywhere, friend.”
Frank, already angry, said, “Chase, what are you fucking around at?”
“A little trouble at the office,” Chase told him, his good humor returning. “I had to leave.”
Isaac said. “He killed Bathar.”
Frank stared at Isaac, as though blaming the messenger. “He did what?”
“I hit him with a tire iron,” Chase said, as though it were an unimportant detail. “He might be dead, he might be alive. What difference does it make?”
Speaking to Isaac as though Chase weren’t there, Frank said, “Did you see it?”
“No. Bathar was on watch, up by the crossing. This man wouldn’t let me send anyone for him.”
Frank thought about it, then came to a conclusion. “Okay,” he said, and walked toward Chase.
Chase had been lounging at his ease, shoulder against the shut truck door, but now he stood up straight, flashing the gun again, saying, “Frank, take it easy.”
Slogging forward, workmanlike, Frank said, “How many times can you pop me with that little thing? I’ll still take your fucking head off.” Behind him, Lew had also started forward, moving to Frank’s right. Isaac watched, openmouthed. He wanted to yell, to make them stop, but he couldn’t think what the words would be. And Chase seemed just as astonished. “Frank!” he shouted. “Don’t make me do it!” But Frank just walked forward, at the end reaching out for Chase’s head.
Which was when Chase reversed the gun and tried to use the butt as a club. But Frank held his forearm, twisted the gun out of his hand, and tossed it dismissively to Lew. Then he started hitting.
Chase was big, but Frank was bigger, and he now went at Chase the way he drove the Land-Rover, the way he pushed his employees, the way he did everything in life, wading straight in.
“He’s alive!” Chase cried, arms up to defend himself. “It’s true, it’s true, he’s alive!”
But Frank didn’t hear, or didn’t care, or didn’t believe. His elbows pumped out and back and up and down, his thick head was thrust out, his feet were planted like oak trees, and rather than box his way past Chase’s defensive arms he pounded his way through them, crowding Chase against the side of the truck and hitting his arms and shoulders till they grew too battered and weary to lift anymore, then going to work on the man’s torso instead, pausing once with his big palm against Chase’s chest, saying, “I’m saving your head for dessert,” then pounding his torso some more. The workmen who’d just come down from the depot gathered around to watch and admire.
“Frank,” Lew said. He spoke quietly enough, but something odd in his tone attracted Frank’s attention, and he at once stopped, took a step back, and as Chase sagged down onto the truck’s running board Frank turned and said, “What’s up?”
Lew had come over to stand near Isaac, who saw that he was holding the gun open so Frank could see the cylinder. Isaac saw it, too, as Lew said, “It’s empty, Frank.”
Frank gave an angry bark of laughter, as though saying it didn’t matter, but when he turned back to Chase he no longer seemed so determined to beat him to death. “So, you simple bastard,” he said. “You’ve got nothing in your pecker at all.”
Chase didn’t speak. His breath was short and ragged and loud; he hugged himself as though afraid he might be broken somewhere inside. He stared at the ground at Frank’s feet, waiting for whatever would happen next.
Lew handed the pistol to Isaac and walked forward. While Isaac held the broken-open thing in both hands, not knowing what to do with it, surprised by the weight of it, Lew stopped beside Frank and said, “Chase. Talk to me about Young Mr. Balim.”
“I hit him.” His voice was flat and weary and uninflected.
“Where? With what?”
“Side of the head. Tire iron.”
Isaac walked over to join them, the gun in his palms like a gift. Lew continued his catechism. “Check his pulse afterward?”
“No.”
“Do anything else to him?”
“Searched him.”
“Do you think he’s alive, or do you think he’s dead?”
Chase lifted his weary head, showing a flash of his old arrogance and contempt. “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t care.”
Isaac said, “Why wouldn’t you let me send people to get him?”
“What difference does it make?” Chase, who had suffered the beating in stoic silence, seemed pushed beyond endurance by the interrogation. “You’re all dead, anyway,” he said.
Frank jumped on that. “Who says? What’s going on, Chase?”
But Chase lowered his head, his expression obstinate. Whatever he had meant, it was clear he would not explain any further. Frank glanced toward the lake, then back at Chase. “You got a double cross in mind? That would be your style, wouldn’t it, you son of a bitch. I told Balim about you.”