“What now?” said McKinley, elbowing the lamp away from him as best he could. “Ain’t you done enough?”
Strange drew the Sig from his waistband. He pointed it at McKinley’s face and moved his finger inside the trigger guard. McKinley’s lip trembled as he closed his eyes.
Strange lowered the gun. He turned it and released its magazine, letting it slide out into his palm. He checked to make sure a round had not been chambered.
“Just wanted you to experience what you put that girl through,” said Strange. “That kind of helplessness.”
“Fuck you, man.”
“I’ll just keep this.” Strange stood, the magazine in his hand. “You can have the rest.”
He dropped the body of the.45 onto McKinley’s lap. McKinley was cut, bleeding, and beaten. Worst of all, a piece of his manhood was forever gone. McKinley was past being frightened now. One eye twitched, and a thread of pink spittle dripped from his mouth.
“What makes me so different?” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You out here trying to save Granville Oliver, and at the same time lookin’ to harm me? Shit, him and me, we’re damn near the same man. He ain’t no better or different than me. I worked for him when I was a kid.”
“I know it,” said Strange. He had been thinking the same thing himself, trying to separate it out in his mind.
“So why?”
“Cops, private cops, whatever, they got this saying, when one of y’all kills another one like you: It’s the cost of doing business. What it means is, you got your world you made, and we’re in it, too. And no one outside that world is gonna shed tears when you go. But it’s an unspoken rule that you don’t turn that violent shit on people you got no cause to fuck with.” Strange slipped the magazine into a pocket of his jeans. “You shouldn’t have done what you did to that girl.”
“What, you don’t think Granville’s ever done the same?”
“I don’t know for sure,” said Strange. “But he’s never done it to anyone I knew.”
McKinley looked down at the body of the Sig lying in his lap, then back up at Strange. “Why didn’t you kill me? I’d a killed you.”
“I’m not you,” said Strange. “And anyway, ain’t enough left of you to kill. You’re through.”
“You don’t know nothin’, Strange,” said McKinley, grimacing horribly, showing his bloody teeth. “You the one’s through. One phone call from me is all it’s gonna take. You and everyone you know, all a y’all gonna be under the eye. You gonna lose everything, Strange. Your license, your business, your family. Everything.” McKinley tried to smile. “You the one’s through.”
The fat man’s threats rippled through him. Strange stared at him but said nothing more. He redrew his knife, bent down, and cut the bindings on McKinley’s feet. Then he severed the ropes that held his wrists. McKinley brought his arms around and dropped his hands at his sides.
Strange walked from the house.
MCKINLEY found his cell on the floor. He grunted and got himself up on his feet. He went around the house turning lights on as he dialed Mike Montgomery’s number. But he only got the message service again. He hit “end” and dialed the number for Ulysses Foreman.
“Yeah.”
“McKinley here.”
“What’s goin’ on, dawg?”
“I need you out here to my place on Yuma. Bring that extra magazine for the Sig with you, man. I lost the one you sold me. I’m alone right now; I’m not even strapped.”
“I can get it to you tomorrow. Or you can send someone out here -”
“I wanted it tomorrow I would have called you tomorrow. Now, you gonna damage our business relationship over this?”
“You got no call to take a tone with me.”
“Just bring it, hear? Or maybe your woman would like to bring it out herself.”
McKinley listened to dry air. Foreman’s voice, when it returned, was strangely calm.
“Ain’t no need for you to bring my woman into this, big man.”
“You gonna bring it?”
“Yeah, I’ll come out.”
“And stop by the CVS store for some gauze, and that surgical tape stuff, too. I’ll get you for it later.”
“You have an accident?” Foreman’s tone was almost pleasant.
“Never mind what I had,” said McKinley. “I expect to see you soon.”
McKinley cleaned his chest up over the sink. The cut started to bleed again, and he pressed a rag to it to make it stop. While he held it there, he tried Mike Montgomery again.
“Goddamn you, Monkey,” said McKinley when he got the recording. “Where the fuck you at?”
ULYSSES Foreman got his leather shoulder holsters from out of the closet and put them on. He found his 9mm Colt with the bonded ivory grips, checked the load, and slipped it into the left holster. From the nightstand he withdrew Ashley’s.357 LadySmith revolver holding jacketed rounds. He holstered the LadySmith on the right. He stood in front of the bedroom’s full-length mirror and cross-drew both guns. He holstered the weapons and repeated the action. The revolver was a little light.
Foreman got into a leather jacket. It was warm for any kind of coat, but necessary to wear one in order to conceal the guns. In the basement he found the Sig’s extra magazine and put it into a pocket of his leather. He clipped his cell to his side, got a few cigars out of the humidor, and a cold beer out of the refrigerator, and went outside to the back deck. He lit a cigar, drank off some of his beer, and looked up into the sky. It was a clear night, with most of a moon out and a whole burst of stars.
Foreman phoned Ashley Swann on her cell. She answered on the third ring.
“I’ve been waiting for you to call,” she said.
“Told you I would,” said Foreman. “Wanted to get up with you, ’cause I got to go out and do some business for a while.”
“Everything all right?”
“Fine,” he said, closing his eyes. “Tell me where you’re at.”
“I’m out beside the soybean field. My daddy hasn’t cut the grass yet. It’s tickling my toes, long as it is. It’s wet from the dew.”
Foreman tried to imagine her then. In his mind she had on that pair of salmon-colored pajamas and she was barefoot, holding a glass of chardonnay in one hand, holding a Viceroy with the other. Smiling ’cause she was speaking to her man. Standing under the same moon and stars he was standing under right now. Not beautiful like a model or nothin’ like it, but his. And he was smiling now, too.