Brodie’s lips thinned, his body tensed. He thought: Oh fuck yes he’s blown out, I should have known it yesterday, I should have killed him yesterday; we waited too long.
Loxner saw the change in Brodie’s face and jerked his head around. Color drained out of his cheeks. He struggled to his feet, sweat once more breaking out on him, mouth opening as if he were going to speak, closing, opening again, closing again-all like a huge fish caught on an invisible line.
There was a long moment of silence, heavy and menacing. Snow fluttered across the threshold behind Kubion, like a sifting of white flour; chill, biting air rushing into the room robbed it of warmth, made the flames in the fireplace dance and gutter.
“We’re going down to the lake,” Kubion said finally. “Got a little something I want you to see.”
Brodie forced his voice to remain even. “What’s that, Earl?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
“All right-sure. But what’s the gun for? There’s no need for throwing down on us.”
“Isn’t there? Well we’ll see about that.”
Loxner began thickly, “Look, look now-”
“Shut up, you gutless prick!” Kubion said with sudden viciousness. “I don’t want any arguments, get over here and get your coats on, we’re going now right now.”
Brodie got up immediately and walked with careful strides to the closet; sweating heavily, not looking at Kubion, Loxner followed. They donned coats and gloves, and when they were ready, Kubion gestured outside and trailed them at a measured distance around to where the car waited, engine running and headlights burning, in front of the garage. He said there, “Vic, you take the wheel. Duff, you sit in front with him.” He waited until they had complied and then opened the right rear door and slid into the back seat. “Go. I’ll tell you where.”
Brodie drove down to Mule Deer Lake Road and turned right and went along the eastern lakeshore. The taut silence was broken only by Loxner’s asthmatic breathing. They passed the Taggart cabin and several other winter-abandoned structures; then Kubion said, “That house there on the left — pull up in front.”
The house-a two-story frame with green shutters-was set back from the road, inside a diamond-pattern, split-log fence. It was shrouded in darkness. Brodie stopped the car where he had been told, and the three of them got out, Kubion hanging back slightly. They stood at the open front gate.
“Go up there and look inside, both of you,” Kubion said. “The door’s not locked, and the light switch is on the left.”
They stopped through the gate opening and made their way slowly along the ice-slick front path; Kubion again followed at a distance. Brodie climbed the porch steps first, stopped at the door, and Loxner said, “I don’t want to do it, I don’t want no part of what’s in there.
…”
Not listening to him, Brodie spun the knob and pushed the door inward. There was nothing immediate to see except darkness. He reached inside and felt along the wall and found the switch and snapped it upward; light spilled into the room, forcing the night back into crouching corner shadows.
Loxner said, “Oh Christ! ”
There were seven people in the room-two men, three women, a boy of nine or ten, and a girl a few years older. All of them were tightly bound hand and foot with heavy-duty clothesline, gagged with torn strips of bedsheeting, lying on the carpeted floor near a tinseled Christmas tree with a nativity scene and several brightly wrapped presents at its cotton-draped base. They were all alive and apparently unharmed. Their eyes blinked against the sudden illumination, wide with terror. Two of the women whimpered; one of the men made a strangulated retching sound.
Cold fury knotted the muscles in Brodie’s stomach, and he had difficulty pulling air into lungs. He slammed the door violently, spun around. Kubion had come up the path and was standing at the foot of the porch steps; he held the. 38 automatic with deceptive looseness.
“It took me about four hours,” he said through his fixed smile. “Duck soup, taking them over, but I had to bring the two from the house down the way to this place and that took a little extra time. Then I shook both houses down. I was just getting ready to start back when I made out this car without lights pulling into the first cabin on the lake, and I went to have a look. You know who it was? The banker, Matt Hughes; he’s been getting a little on the side from that blond bitch in there. So I had to bring her over here, too.”
He stopped speaking, watching them. Brodie said, “What about Hughes?”
“Well, he gave me a little trouble. You don’t have to worry about him anymore, not a bit you don’t.”
“You killed him, is that it?”
“That’s it. I killed him, all right.”
Brodie began to rub the palms of his hands along his trouser legs: a gesture of suppressed rage. Loxner said in a kind of whine, “Why? Why all of this?”
“The two of you made it nice and clear yesterday how you felt about ripping off the valley, and I knew I couldn’t talk you into it, right? But you didn’t know how bad I want this one, I want it like I never wanted any other score, it’s the cat’s nuts. The only thing is, I don’t figure I can make it alone, so I had to force you into it, you see? It’s simple.”
He paused, and his smile became sly. “Those people inside, I did a little talking to them. I told them all about the ripoff, and that’s not all I told them. I told them we were the ones who did the Greenfront job, I told them everything except our names-what do you think of that?”
Loxner had the same look on his face-that of a kid about to cry-that he had had after the security guard shot him at Greenfront. “Crazy cocksucker,” he muttered under his breath, “oh you crazy cock sucker!”
If Kubion heard him, he gave no indication. The smile still sly, he said, “I know what you’re thinking now, both of you, you’re thinking you want to put a bullet in me, maybe you’ve been thinking it ever since yesterday and that’s why I took the guns out of the suitcase in the car if you don’t already know about that and why I watched you like a goddamn hawk every minute I was at the cabin, I did you know. But suppose you could do it, suppose somehow you’re able to jump me, take this gun away, put one in my head? Where would it leave you? These hicks here know who you are but say you had the guts to kill seven people, three women and two kids, say you had the guts, well the rest of the hicks and the cops would figure damned quick who had to’ve done it and you know what kind of heat you’d have then, right? So you let them live and then you cut and run, use one of the snowmobiles to get out of the valley, but that’s the same situation as if we do the job only worse because these Eskimos would be found almost immediately and even if you took the time to bury Hughes’ body and cut the telephone lines and put the second snowmobile out of commission, even if you could do all of that without being hassled, you still wouldn’t have a clear jump. And you wouldn’t have any bread either, that’s the other important thing, you’d have to knock over a place for ready cash, you’d have to shag a car, you’d be taking risks every time you turned around and all with Murder One heat ready to blow you on your asses at any time.”
Kubion paused again and studied them cunningly. Brodie said in a flat, soft voice, “Keep talking, Earl.”
“Okay, you’re getting it now. You do things my way, you help me make the score, and we come out fine just like I told you yesterday. Bread in our pockets and two full days’ jump, time to travel, time and money to get a long way from Hidden Valley before the lid comes off.” Kubion used his left hand to take a roll of currency from his coat pocket. “Listen, you think there’s no money in this place? Nine hicks out of seventy-five and only two of the occupied buildings so far and I’ve already picked up fifteen hundred, two bills from the Eskimos that live in this house and eighty from the ones down the way and a hundred and twenty from Banker Hughes’ wallet, and that blond bitch, she had a thousand in her purse, just sitting there in her purse all nice and crisp in her purse for Christ’s sake. Fifteen hundred already and we haven’t even started.”