She couldn't do anything like that. She'd never wanted to hurt anyone in her life. But she wasn't going under. She'd swim for it.
WEATHER AND LUCAS ATE HANDMADE RAVIOLI FROM an Italian market while Lucas told her about the trip to Colfax. Weather said, ''Tell me that last part again.
About the eye-for-an-eye.''
Lucas shrugged. ''We have to take a little care. The guy won't be running around for long, there're too many people looking for him. But everybody involved in the shooting… I've told them to keep an eye out.''
''You think he'd come here, looking for you?'' she asked.
''I don't think so,'' Lucas said. Then he said, ''I don't know. Maybe. He's nuts. We've got to take a little care, that's all.''
''That's why you've got the gun under your chair. A little care.''
Lucas stopped with a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth. ''I'm sorry,'' he said. ''But it's no big deal-and it's just for a little while.''
FIVE
Andy Stadic pushed through the front door, took his gloves off and unbuttoned his overcoat as he walked around the bar and through the double swinging doors into the kitchen. Opening the coat freed up his weapon: not that he'd need it, but he did it by habit.
Stadic was short, bullet-headed, with close-cropped hair and suspicious, slightly bulging eyes. In the kitchen, he nodded to the cook, who was chopping onions into twenty pounds of raw burger, ignored the Chicano dishwasher, turned the corner past the pan rack and pushed through another set of doors.
The back room was cool, lit with overhead fluorescent, furnished with cartons of empty beer bottles, boxes of paper towels and toilet paper, cans of ketchup, sacks of potatoes- the whole room smelled of wet paper and potatoes and onions and a bit of cigar smoke.
Daymon Harp sat in one of two red plastic chairs at a rickety round table, chewing gum, his feet stretched out infront of him, crossed at the ankles. He wore a bomber jacket, faded Levi's and purple cowboy boots with sterling-silver toes.
''What'd you want?'' Stadic asked, standing, hands in his pockets.
''We got a problem.'' Harp uncrossed his legs, put a foot on the second chair, and pushed it across the concrete floor at Stadic.
''I don't want to hear about problems,'' Stadic said.
''Can't be helped,'' Harp said.
''Man, I hate even seeing you,'' Stadic said. ''If the shooflies walked in right now, I'd be all done. I'd be on the onestop train to Stillwater.''
''I couldn't help it. Sit down, goddamnit.''
Stadic turned the chair and straddled it, his arms crossed on the back.
''What?''
''Two guys showed up at my crib last night,'' Harp said. ''Put some guns on me.
They were looking for your name.''
''My name?''
''Yeah. They knew I was working with a cop, but they didn't know your name.''
''Jesus Christ, Harp…''
''They said they'd cut one finger off Jas every ten seconds until I came out with it, and had something to prove it by. They were gonna cut off two fingers just to show that they was tellin' the truth. And after they got all ten fingers, they said, they were gonna cut out her eyes and then cut her throat and then they were gonna start on me.''
''You told them?'' Stadic's voice rose in disbelief.
''Goddamn right I told them,'' Harp said. ''They cut her pointer finger off right there, on a bread board. She was all tied up and gagged and flopping around, and they were like they was killed chickens or something. .. couple of goddamn mean crackers. I been in the joint with these motherfuckersbefore. They got little tears tattooed under their eyes, one for each man they killed, and when you start tattooing them on, you better be able to prove it to the rest of the crazies. This crackhead kid's got three of them and the fucker with the knife got two.''
''You coulda said anything,'' Stadic said.
Harp shook his head. ''They wanted proof. I had a little proof.''
Now Stadic was very quiet. ''What proof?''
''I had some pictures taken.''
''You motherfucker…'' Stadic stood up, kicked the chair aside, his hand moving toward his pistol. Harp held his hands up.
''It was from way back when, when I didn't know you. And I had Jas's motherfuckin' finger laying there like a dead shrimp, all curled up. What the hell was I supposed to do?''
''You coulda tried lying,'' Stadic shouted. His fingers twitched at the gun butt.
''You wasn't there,'' Harp said. ''You don't know.'' Stadic took a breath, as though he'd just topped a hill, turned in place, then said, ''So what'd they want with my name?''
''They need some information from you.''
''Tell me.'' He was nibbling nervously at a thumbnail, ripped off a piece of nail, spit it out, tasted blood. The nail was bleeding, and he sucked at it, the blood salty in his mouth.
''They want personnel files,'' Harp said. ''From the police department.''
LACHAISE HAD SPENT WHOLE DAYS THINKING ABOUT it, daydreaming it, when he was locked up: the requirements of the coming wars. Us against Them. They would need a base. In the countryside, somewhere. There'd be a series oflog cabins linked with storm sewer pipe, six feet underground and more sewer pipe set into the hills as bunkers. Honda generators for each cabin, with internal wells and septic fields.
Weapons: sniper rifles to keep the attackers off, heavy-duty assault rifles for up close. Hidden land mines with remote triggers. Armor-piercing rockets. He'd close his eyes and see the assaults happening, the attackers falling back as they met the sweeping fire from the web…
The attackers were a little less certain; some combination of ATF agents and blacks from the Chicago ghettos, Indians, Mexicans. Though that didn't seem to make a lot of sense, sometimes; so sometimes, they were all ATF agents, dressed in black uniforms and masks…
Daydreams.
THE REALITY WAS A COUPLE OF TRUCKS AND A RUNDOWN house in a near-slum.
LaChaise and Butters drove down to the Cities in Elmore's truck, with Martin trailing behind. They needed two vehicles, they decided, at least for a while.
Butters and Martin caught Elmore in the barn, while Sandy was out riding, and squeezed him for the truck keys.
''Just overnight,'' Butters said, standing too close. '' Martin's got some warrants out on his car, if the cops check- nothing serious, but we gotta have some kind of backup. We won't do nothin' with it.''
''Guys, I tell you, we're moving stuff today…'' Elmore stuttered. Martin and Butters scared Elmore. Martin, Elmore thought, was a freak, a pent-up homosexual hillbilly crazy in love with LaChaise. Butters had the flat eyes of a snapping turtle, and was simply nuts.
Elmore tried to get out of it, but Martin put his hands in Elmore's coat pocket, and when Elmore tried to wrench away, Butters pushed him from the other side.
Martin had the keys and said, ''We'll get them back to you, bud.''
THE HOUSE WAS A SHABBY TWO-STORY CLAPBOARD wreck on a side street in the area called Frogtown. The outside needed paint, the inside needed an exterminator.
Half the basement was wet and the circuit box hanging over the damp concrete floor was a fire marshal's nightmare. Martin had brought in three Army-surplus beds, a dilapidated monkeyshit-yellow couch and two matching chairs, and a dinette set, all from Goodwill, and a brand-new twenty-seven-inch Sony color TV.
''Good place, if we don't burn to death,'' Martin said. The house smelled like wet plaster and fried eggs. ''That wiring down the basement is a marvel.''
''Hey, it's fine,'' LaChaise said, looking around.
No web of sewer pipe, no Honda generators. No land mines.
That evening, Butters sat in one of the broken-down easy chairs, his head back and his eyes closed. Martin sat crosslegged on the floor with his arrows, unscrewing the field points, replacing them with hundred-grain Thunderheads, a can of beer by one foot. He would occasionally look at LaChaise with a stare that was purely sexual.