The Straw Men

Nina and I got cautiously out of the car. Nina's gun looked big and clumsy in her hand.

'That's the way in,' I said, nodding to the building on the right.

They followed me over and gathered either side of the glass doors. Bobby stuck his head out, scoped

the inside. 'Nobody behind reception,' he said.

'We going in?' 'I guess so. After you.' 'Hey — thanks for the opportunity.' I leaned forward, pushed one of the doors gently. No alarm went

off. Nobody shot at me. I opened the door and stepped in cautiously, the others behind.

The lobby area was silent. The background music was absent, and there was no fire in the grate of the river-rock fireplace. The large painting that had been behind the reception desk was gone. The whole

room felt as if it had been mothballed.

'Fuck,' I said. 'They've gone.'

'Bullshit,' Bobby said. 'It's only been an hour. There's no way they had the time to clear out.'

'They had a little longer,' Zandt admitted. 'When we left Wang, it was maybe five or ten minutes

before he shot himself. He could have called a warning through.'

'It's still not long. Not to pack up everything.'

'So maybe they were already on their way,' Nina said. 'You kicked the shit out of their realtor. Could be that was message enough, and that would have given them a couple days. Doesn't matter. We're still going to go look at what's out there.'

She started to stride toward the door at the end, the one that would open out into the inner area of The Halls. She looked filled with a kind of wretched fury, a horror that they could have arrived too late, that the phantom she had chased until it was the only light at the end of her tunnel had danced out of reach again.

We were standing still. She evidently didn't care if we came with her. She had to go out there. She had to see.

She didn't hear the shot.

By the time the sound reached our ears she was already falling, thrown awkwardly sideways to crash into one of the low tables. Her mouth opened to cry out, but nothing came. Zandt ran toward her.

I whirled to see a man in the doorway. McGregor. Bobby instead saw a woman behind the reception desk, and a muscle-bound youth emerging from a recessed doorway behind her, a door camouflaged to blend in with the wood panelling.

All three had guns. All were firing them.

The youth died first. His technique was pure television: gun held out sideways, gangbanger style. Bobby had him down with one shot.

I slipped behind one of the pillars and straight out the other side, getting McGregor first in the thigh, then the chest. I still only narrowly avoided taking one to the face, felt the hum as it spun past my head. I dropped to one knee and scooted behind one corner of the reception, praying the woman hadn't seen me. Reloaded, dropping half the bullets.

Zandt knelt down next to Nina, who lay crumpled, her hand fluttering toward the hole in her chest. It was high up, just under the right clavicle. 'Oh, Nina,' he said, oblivious to the cracks and whines in the air

above him. She coughed, her face caught between surprise and denial.

'Hurts,' she said.

McGregor was still shooting. The woman behind the desk nearly took Bobby out before I took a breath and stood up, emptying half of my gun into her. Only when she'd slewed backward over the muscle man did I realize it was the woman who'd talked me through the fake entry requirements. I still didn't know her name.

Bobby was standing over McGregor, his boot on the cop's wrist. A gun lay on the floor several feet away.

'Where'd they go?' he asked him. 'And how long ago? Tell me everything you know, or darkness falls.'

'Fuck you,' the cop said.

'Suits me,' Bobby shrugged, and shot him dead.

While Bobby checked the other bodies, making sure nobody was going to wake up and start shooting again, I ran over to Nina. Zandt had her hand pressed firmly over the wound in her chest.

'We're out of here,' I said.

'No,' Nina said. Her voice was surprisingly strong. She tried to haul herself upright.

'Nina, you're fucked up. We have to get you to a hospital.'

She grabbed a table leg with one hand. The other one snatched my wrist. 'Be fast. But go and see.'

I hesitated. Tried to look at Zandt for support, but Nina's eyes held me.

Bobby arrived. 'Oh shit, Nina.'

'I'm staying here and you're going in there,' she said, talking only to Zandt. She looked in pain, but not like she was going to faint. 'Please, John. Make them go. All of you. Please see if she's there. You've got to go see. Then we'll go to the hospital. I promise.'

Zandt waited a beat longer, then leaned over, kissed her quickly on the forehead. He stood up. 'I'm doing as she says.'

I started to reload my gun. 'Bobby, you stay here.' He started to protest, but I kept talking. 'Try to stop the bleeding, and take out anyone you see who isn't us. You're more use to her than either of us.'

Bobby squatted down beside the woman. 'Be careful, man.'

Zandt and I walked fast down to the end doors. 'Whatever happens,' I said, 'we stick together. You got that?'

Zandt nodded, and opened the door. Outside was a path. White light from behind illuminated perhaps fifty yards with clarity, and was enough to suggest the hulks of large houses in the middle distance. None of them showed a light.

We started to run.

34

'We should have brought a flashlight.'

'Should've brought a lot of things,' I said. 'Bigger guns, other people, some idea of what we're doing.'

We were standing at the first junction in the path. It looked like the main street of some tiny town where nobody had cars. The grass on either side was neatly trimmed. The pasture within the walls of the mountains, an area of only about ten acres, had been sculpted to provide each house with privacy and a gently rolling landscape. It seemed very unlikely there was enough room for a golf course, which meant that even their favoured realtor — the late Chip — had never been allowed inside. To either side of the path, set well back, were two houses. The path stretched out into the darkness ahead, leading via other forks to more dwellings, which couldn't yet be seen.

'You take the one on the left.'

'Did you listen to what I said? We don't split up.'

'Ward, there's how many houses? Nina's in trouble back there.'

'Getting killed isn't going to help her. You want to look in these places, we're doing it together. Which

first?'

Zandt walked quickly up the path to the right. As we approached the house, I mentally checked off the features I'd seen on the plans. The house looked like it should be in Oak Park, Chicago, the suburb where many of the early mid-period Wright had been built. It was a beautiful house, and I hated the men behind all this for misappropriating Wright's grammar. He had been about life and community, not individuals and death.

Zandt was less taken with the design. 'Where's the fucking door?'

I led him at an angle across the low terrace, to where a courtyard path snaked round to the left of the building under a balcony. A short series of steps delivered us round a corner to a large wooden door. It

was ajar.

'Main entrance?'

I nodded. Took a breath, then pushed the door gently open with my foot. Nothing happened.

I nodded to Zandt once more. He went in first.

A short corridor, a little light filtering down from a stained-glass panel in the ceiling, the illumination

turned green and cold. At the end, another sheet of detailed glass, screening out the next room.

Carefully we manoeuvred around it, revealing a long, low room. More stained glass, and clerestory windows high up. A fireplace over to the left. Bookshelves, and a seating nook. The shelves were empty. The furniture was in place, but there was no rug on the floor.