“Well, Delmont, I am going to see. Because you’re taking me.”
“I am?”
And Boyd cut him out of the chair, looking not at all happy about it. About as unhappy, in fact, as Delmont was pleased to get his Charger keys back.
Eleven
The moon crawled above the horizon, huge, full and blood-red, what we called a Hunter’s Moon back in Ohio. With Delmont at the muscle-car wheel, we were heading southwest on US 50 through rolling countryside, with idyllic rural Middle America gliding by, from forested ridges and well-tilled valleys to antebellum brick mansions and fenced modern farmhouses. Along the way, the moon floated higher, its face now a glowing Halloween orange.
I was the navigator, reading typewritten directions off a small piece of paper to the driver. Traffic was light. Delmont had switched the radio on to a country station and I looked for rock and failed, nothing but more steel guitar and nasal singing, and lots of Sunday fire-and-brimstone preachers who wanted you to send them money. I switched the radio off.
On stretches we’d talk, snippets of conversation initiated by the blond, square-jawed lumberjack behind the wheel. Before we left him behind, Boyd had bandaged his hunky former captor, who now really did look like he’d cut himself shaving. The paucity of cars sharing the concrete strip made for a dream-like ride.
Delmont flashed a vaguely nasty grin over at me. “You know, a car like this is a weapon all by itself.”
“That right.”
“Oh yeah. You can run people down with it. Go fast enough, hit ’em just right, they go flyin’.”
“That a fact.”
His eyebrows flicked up and down. “Really, that gun you got there don’t stack up at all to the weapon I got control of.”
“I’m not pointing it at you, Delmont.” The nine mil in my right hand was draped across my lap.
“I know, I know you’re not. I’m just sayin’ — what if I was to swerve and just crash into a telephone pole or some other car, or maybe... in of these little towns? Just punch the pedal and slam into a building or somethin’?”
“What if you did, Delmont?”
“Well, my point is, I’m at the wheel of a car that weighs, oh shit, I don’t know... four-thousand pounds?”
“You’re probably guessing a little high, but yeah, right. And?”
“And all you’ve got is that gun. That little ol’ gun.”
With the extension of the noise suppressor, it didn’t look all that little. But compared to the car it was.
“So you’re saying,” I said, “that you have the more dangerous weapon. Of the two.”
“That’s what I’m sayin’. I could wreck this here car with you in it, and then where would you be? And if you was to shoot me, ’cause you saw I was steerin’ toward somethin’? Well, we’d just crash anyway and you’d be up shit crick.”
“What order do you want me to take those in, Delmont?”
“Huh? Any order, I guess.”
“Okay. If you crash the car with me in it, you’re also in it. So what happens to me probably happens to you.”
He was frowning. “Like getting killed.”
“Like getting killed. Or maimed or fucked-up, and should one or both of us survive to wake up in a hospital, guess who would be there?”
“...Family?”
“Cops. Or possibly somebody else who handles contracts for your middleman, Fred — to take you out. So the cops can’t ask you about him.”
“Fred wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you sure?”
He clearly wasn’t.
I said, “Now let’s say you start speeding up and I sense you plan to crash into something on purpose, side of a bridge, a harvester poking along, whatever. And I shoot you. You are dead. I am alive. I can reach over and steer and maybe even get my foot over there to the gas and brake pedals — tricky in these bucket seats, I admit — but most likely I could guide the car to safety. Why, Delmont? Were you thinking of doing any of those things?”
He was frowning. Like a kid taking a time out in a corner. He shook his head.
“Just makin’ conversation,” he said.
Suddenly the moon was brilliant silver-white. The rolling landscape became as sharply focused as a prize-winning photograph.
After a while he asked, “What branch was you in?”
“Did I say I served?”
“I can tell. Can’t you usually tell?”
“Yeah. Marines.”
A big grin blossomed. “Me, too! Man, I shoulda known. Hardass like you. You ain’t so big, you know physically, but you got that attitude. Semper fi, mac!”
“Semper fi,” I said.
“I got USMC tattoos all up and down my arms and my back, too. You got any?”
“No.”
“Where was you? I mean, Nam, of course. But where?”
“Hill 55, south of Da Nang.”
“Weren’t that a sniper platoon?”
“Yeah.”
“You know where I was?”
“No.”
“Hill 51. Firebase Ross. We was practically neighbors.”
“Practically.” I was referring to the typed directions. “That’s the turn — that gravel road past the mill pond.”
He didn’t slow enough to suit me, whipping onto the thing. But I didn’t say anything. Nobody likes a backseat driver.
“So,” he said, finally slowing down, the ride bumpy and crunchy, harvested fields on either side of us, the Hunter’s Moon brighter than the Charger’s headlights. “You got somebody like Fred?”
“I do.”
“You always work in pairs like that?”
“Almost.”
“Makes for less money, don’t it?”
“Yeah. Half the money.” Usually.
“What we’re doin’ here tonight, Jack — pickin’ up the payment before the job is done... does that seem odd to you?”
“No. Why. Does it to you?”
“No. Just thought maybe it did to you. Different folks work different ways. Way we do it, Fred guarantees the client reimbursement if the hit don’t go down or the hitter gets hit or some shit.”
“My Fred does the same.”
“Hangin’ around after the job to pick up the paycheck, well, hell, that just don’t cut it.”
“No it don’t.”
“Listen, uh... I’m sorry about knockin’ around your little Jew friend.”
“That’s all right. If we’d been as sharp as you, we’d have handled you pretty much the same.”
He frowned over at me, confused. “What do you mean, if you was as sharp as me?”
“You noticed us, Delmont. We didn’t notice you. You were one up on us.”
He grinned, feeling good about himself, apparently not factoring in that I had the gun. “Yeah, well I guess that’s right. Got a lot in common, you and me. Marines. And in the same business and such. Might’ve been buddies in other circumstances.”
“Might have,” I allowed. “But we’re partners now, and that’s friendly.”
The fields had fallen away and we had trees on either side of us, mostly bare of leaves with an occasional evergreen making its smug presence known. The moon was so big, it looked unreal. You couldn’t get away with it in a movie.
He chuckled. “I got to say, sittin’ on the sidelines and collectin’ my pay for doin’ diddly squat? That don’t suck. That don’t suck at all. That gun you got there?”
“What about it?”
“Browning, right? Nine mil? I never seen a silencer that long.”
“Does the job.”
“I never found one works for shit. It sure ain’t like on TV.”
“This one is.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just makes a little hiccup.” I sat forward. “I think we’re here.”
Up ahead on the right, starting at the foot of a hill, half a dozen cars were parked on the right, straddling the road and its shoulder, leaving only narrow passage. The vehicles ranged from a Chevy pick-up to a familiar white Lincoln. Delmont went on by and up and over. On the downslope another half dozen or so more parked cars hogged the road, again in a mix that suggested owners from the highest and lowest strata of what passed for civilization around here.