On both sides of the road-he’d turned from 421 to the Volunteer Parkway-even more booths had been set up, so that the strip appeared to be a vast bazaar. There wasn’t hardly anything NASCAR you couldn’t buy, except possibly body parts or DNA samples, and every merchant seemed to be doing land-rush business, all of it cash. Smoke hung in the air from the barbecue grills, and even the tee-totaling Baptists were selling water bottles to raise money for their prayers.
Bob found it hard not to feel the joy these folks felt, and he connected with it. His daughter was all right. She’d come back. She was okay, she was going to be fine. He again felt rich in daughters and possibilities and wished he could just enjoy it a little.
But there was the worm. Someone had tried to kill her, might try again. They’d tried to kill him; they’d kill anyone who got in the way, even if that person didn’t realize they’d gotten in the way. Mark 2:11. “I say, arise from your pallet and go to your house.” Crippled man, arise, you are cured. I give you your life back. That fellow would feel some joy too; the sensation leaking into his legs, the strength burgeoning, the psychological burden of self-loathing, of imperfection, of isolation, all of that gone. Rejoin the world, son. Welcome back to the land of the whole. That’s how he felt when the word came that Nikki was awake-he’d risen from his bed, able to go to his home again.
What could it mean? What could it mean? The thing weighed like an ingot on his brain, so much so that he hardly noticed that the traffic had thinned and-glory be!-that he could accelerate, stoplight to stoplight, because he was now inside the destination. It was the lanes on the other side of the median that were so impossibly jammed up.
He sped through downtown Bristol, found the right cross street, looked for the Kmart that was his tipoff, managed a left, and wound through the little, hidden neighborhood and up a hill into the complex that ultimately yielded her apartment.
He parked next to a red Eldorado-wow, don’t someone have extravagant taste in transporation!-and stopped to look around, see if there was a chance anyone had stayed with him through the endless hours of traffic. Nope. Funny, though, he had a strange feeling of being watched. He had good instincts for such. Kept him alive more than once.
He looked again, saw nothing. A parking lot longer than it was wide, on each side of it low four-story brick buildings, typical American apartments, lots of balconies. Down the way some kids played, but no one new pulled into the lot. He looked for activity in the cars, for any sight of activity on the balconies and no, no, there was nothing.
Gunman’s paranoia. Going a little nuts in my old age. Mankiller’s anxiety. All the boys I put down are coming after me. Happens to the best of them.
Satisfied no sign existed of threat, he climbed the stairs, opened the door to her apartment, and stepped in.
As he did, a man stood up from her sofa.
Hands flew to guns.
The weapons came out, fingers on triggers, slack going out, killing time was here. But then-
“Nick Memphis, for Christ’s sake.”
“Hello, Bob. You sure took your time getting here. Didn’t think you’d ever make it.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Vern, dammit, I can’t do this alone, git over here. I might miss something. I have to pee.”
That was Ernie sitting in the dining room chair at the drawn sliding doors, peering at the building across the street through a sliver of open curtain.
But Vern didn’t answer.
Instead, he asked the young Vietnamese girl in the bedroom, “So, what’s your name?” while the grandmother looked on with angry eyes. She clearly did not think his attentions were appropriate, and the way he kept looking over to her and grinning with his big white teeth got on her nerves. But then she had never understood these strange white people anyway. What was wrong with them? They were so stupid about so many things.
“What difference does it make?” asked the girl.
“Well, if it don’t make no difference, might as well tell me as not. I’m guessing Susan. You look like a Susan.”
“I do not. I look like a Hannah. Hannah Ng. Pronounced ‘ning.’”
“Hannah Ng, my name is Vern Pye. This ain’t the way I’d have arranged it, but I sure do think highly of you. You’re about as cute as they come. I’d like to hang out with you.”
“You’re trying to date me? My mother doesn’t even let me date boys my own age. Plus, you smell like a smoker. You must smoke eight packs a day.”
“I ain’t that much older’n you. Only two packs, and I’ll be quitting real soon.”
“About sixty years, it looks like to me. And you smell like eight packs. Ugh.”
“You’re what, fifteen?”
“Fourteen.”
“Well, I am forty-four. That makes me only thirty years older. And I have the constitution of a much younger fellow.”
“You’re really delusional. Really, you’re sick.”
“You are so cute. I like your ears. Your ears are so tiny. You’re like a little doll. Anybody ever tell you how cute you are? We could have some fun together, you bet. You’d git some cool new clothes out of it. We’d go to the mall, git Hannah Ng any damn thing she wanted. New jeans, new T’s, new tank tops, new hoodies, new sneaks. We’ll have a hell of a swell time, sweetie, Vern promises.”
The child shivered.
“This is getting creepy.”
“If you didn’t fight against it, it wouldn’t seem so hard, honey.”
“Vern, goddamnit, get over here,” yelled Ernie.
“Now don’t you worry about a thing. Vern’s got some work to do, then we’ll talk some more.”
Vern left, went to the living room, and pulled a chair up to spell Ernie so he could go pee.
“’Bout time. What you been doing?”
“Just talking to the kid.”
“Vern, we got a damn job. You stay away from her while we work, you hear. The Old Man’d be plenty ticked if he knowed you’se been mooning on that damn kid when you’se supposed to be man hunting.”
“When it comes, it comes. Sometimes you don’t get a second shot. You got to take it. Things is swell here.”
“I’m going to piss.”
Vern sat dreamy-eyed and disconnected at the window. He didn’t see the cars across the parking lot or the building they fronted, or the steps up to the doors. He saw himself and Hannah Ng in the bathroom, he saw his easy way with her, how he’d have his way, how good it would feel. He told himself she’d like it too. The more he thought about it, the better it seemed.
Ernie came back.
“Goddamn, Vern, there he is!”
Vern snapped out of the hot and sleazy place his brain was in, and reentered the known world. There indeed, not twenty-five yards away, was the tall, older man named Swagger who was their quarry. He’d parked, now he got out and peered about carefully, making certain he was unfollowed and unnoticed.
“See, he’s a careful one.”
“Yeah, he is. He ain’t no pushover.”
“But he’ll go down hard, like any man.”
The man then went to the stairwell, climbed past second- and third-floor landings, and on the fourth, took out a key, opened the door to an apartment, and stepped in.
“Now we really got to watch. Vern, you can’t-”
“I know, I know.”
“Better call the Old Man.”