Cold Rain (31 page)

‘We need to set some ground rules here, Molly,’ he said. ‘First off, this is just payback for the other night.

Nobody needs to get killed. All we’re going to do is give Dave here a little sex show. Nothing you haven’t done before. If you don’t want to cooperate,’ Buddy pushed the gun toward my ear, ‘then we go to plan B.

Up to you really.’

At just that moment someone knocked at the back door.

Buddy swore. Roger looked frightened.

‘I’ll see who it is,’ Buddy said, and walked out of our living room. Then he stopped. ‘And if either of them starts to move, shoot Dave’s nuts off.’

Roger smiled. ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’

I said softly so that Molly could hear, ‘Wade.’

That was when she cried.

I SAW MY OLD MAN work some amazing deals, but the only time he ever worked pure magic was one night at the fairgrounds.

We’d taken the cars down to this field with all the other dealers, and people had a chance to look at everything all in the same place. We’d been working the thing for three days, and I’d taken a Z in trade from a girl named Debbie, Connie Q. in
Jinx
. The Q. was for Quick. Debbie was my first, which made me one of a large fraternity.

In a small town like DeKalb it doesn’t take much to get a reputation, of course, but Deb was way past that. Deb was a legend. There wasn’t a man in the greater metro area under forty, maybe a straight man breathing, who didn’t know her car on sight. It had been a nice car once, but like Deb it was beginning to show some wear.

I had a little trouble closing her on a new Mustang because she was buying with cash and she didn’t have enough. It looked like I was going to lose the deal when Milt took the T.O. I’m not sure, but I think Milt might be the only manager in history of the cars to pull a customer out of the closing booth and insist on a second demo drive when the only issue was price.

They came back a couple of hours later, the purchase order signed, and Milt gave me a full commission, instead of splitting it. He slapped me on the back and told me that was the kind of guy he was. When his people needed help, he was there for them.

The next day I saw some kid looking at that Z, and walked over and started talking to him. The way he was looking at that car you would have thought it was Deb herself. Milt had jacked the price up a couple thousand above the recommended retail on a mint condition piece, because, he said, it was the most famous car in DeKalb. Truth was he needed to get back everything he’d given away on the Mustang. We’d had lookers all day, but when they heard the price they started looking elsewhere. I figured this kid was there like the rest of them, a bit of nostalgia and then he would move on. But he was just a little different. I noticed it the minute he looked up at me with a gullible smile and said, ‘I got my first blow job in a car like this!’

‘You sure it wasn’t this exact same car?’ I asked him.

For a moment, the kid stared at me in disbelief, then he looked at the car again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It was a long time ago.’

We talked a little more, and I found out he was planning on getting married. The fiancée was looking at a used sport utility vehicle at another dealership, but the car was for him, and he wanted a sports car.

I worked him without much enthusiasm, and he bounced in and out three different times. He wanted that car about as much as he wanted one more summer evening with Deb, but when his fiancée came by for a look it was all over. She wasn’t letting him buy that car on a dare!

All the same he came back one last time, the fiancée sitting in their car with her arms crossed. It was the last hour of a three-day sale, and the kid just wanted to look at the Z one more time.

Sometimes you have to wear people down. A good manager knows that, and he’s patient, but sometimes people need a new face before they can make a decision. I saw Larry the Liar in the bullpen. Milt was pacing and kicking tires and smoking. Larry had his eye on the fiancée. The only thing she needed was to feel good.

Milt was too smart to send the wrong salesperson in, though. There wasn’t any lie on earth going to make that girl feel good about buying Deb’s Z.

That left Tubs. Milt told me later he didn’t think there was a chance in hell to make the sale, but he had to give it a shot before he turned the lights off and we all went home.

I made the T.O. by introducing Tubs as my dad.

Tubs was worn down from three days of it. I think he had sold six or seven cars every day, and he looked like it. He was running on empty. Tubs could turn on a pretty good smile when he bothered, but at ten o’clock at night with the last customer at the fairgrounds getting ready to make his getaway, Tubs didn’t shake hands, and his smile was about as friendly as a piece of rusty barbwire.

‘You going to buy this car or look at it, son?’ That was all he said. Not even a pleased-to-meet-you.

The kid pulled his eyes off his last memory of freedom and tipped his head toward the fiancée. ‘She don’t like it.’

Tubs shook his head in disgust and turned away. ‘If a man’s wife doesn’t like a car, he better not like it either!’

Tubs actually got a couple of steps away before the kid said, ‘She ain’t my wife.’ Tubs stopped and looked at him as if he hadn’t heard right. ‘She’s my fiancée,’ the kid explained.

‘
Fiancée
?’ Tubs sounded surprised.

The kid nodded his head in perfect misery. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re not
married
to that woman?’ Tubs stepped in closer to the kid.

The kid grinned. ‘No, sir. Not yet.’

Now he got inside the kid’s space, lowering his voice as if passing a great truth along: ‘Let me tell you something, son. I don’t want you to quote me on this, Lord help me if you do, but if you let a woman push you around
before
you marry her, you ain’t got a chance in hell
after
!’

That kid gave Tubs a hard look, but it wasn’t half as hard as Tubs’s glare. I thought the kid might pop him, but what he did was, he said, ‘To hell with it.

I’m buying the son of a bitch!’

Milt asked Tubs later that night over a beer that Tubs never touched how he got that kid to go full pop on a beat-to-hell Z. ‘That one,’ Tubs answered with a sly grin, ‘was my Be a Man Close, because you either are or you aren’t.’

THE FIRST BLAST OF THE SHOTGUN sounded from within the house, taking me back to the present.

I looked up at Roger Beery. He was distracted by the sound but it wasn’t possible to come out of my chair.

He had his finger on the trigger, and the weapon was pointed between Molly and me. I was ten feet away. Molly’s position, seated in a deep chair like my own, put her nearly fifteen feet from Roger. There was no possibility of fighting him and no chance for any of us, Roger included, once Buddy returned.

I searched my failing imagination for a way to distract Roger, but what I needed was a miracle, Tubs-style.

Not his Gun in the Face Close, either. I didn’t care to feel righteous in my grave. I needed to make Roger Beery understand that they had come out to the farm that evening together, but Buddy planned on going home alone. It was that simple, if only I could make him see it.

How would Tubs have handled it? I considered the matter for a moment, my thoughts interrupted by the second blast from the four-ten just outside the house.

Wade had somehow managed to elude Buddy’s first shot. I wasn’t so confident he had escaped the second.

I gave myself forty-five-to-sixty seconds. Tubs had closed that kid in about twenty. The difference was the young man was primed to make a choice. I glanced at Roger, who was staring at Molly. Roger had his mind on something else altogether.

‘You understand Buddy is going to kill you here tonight?’

I said this with a degree of calm and insight one uses when stating the obvious.

Roger’s sneer had a certain amusement about it.

‘Why would he do that, Dave?’

‘That’s easy,’ I said, handing him my car salesman’s grin. ‘He marries your widow, and the two of them live happily ever after with
your
money.’

‘You don’t know anything. Do you know that? You don’t have a clue!’

‘You’re a very intelligent young man, Roger.’

‘I’m a genius, Dave! And you’re a moron.’ He rocked his head back toward the TV, where the picture showed Molly straddling Buddy on the couch. ‘You didn’t have a clue, did you?’

‘Tell me something,’ I said. ‘When you watch that, is it Molly or Buddy that you want?’

Two muffled shots came from close to the barn.

There was enough time between them for the first to be a takedown, the second to finish it. Wade had gotten as far as the barn. That bought us another full minute.

I glanced toward Molly. She still had tears in her eyes, but she knew I was working Roger. Her muscles had the look of coiled steel.

‘I guess you read my novel a little better than I thought.’

‘Buddy read it?’

‘Every word.’

‘He wanted to know how to work you.’

‘You don’t know what’s going on, Dave. You don’t understand anything.’

‘I know we’re looking at a triple homicide inside the house tonight. Only question is who’s man enough to walk away, you or Buddy.’

‘Nobody’s going to get killed. Buddy told you what were going to do.’

‘Tonight is about Buddy and Denise tying up loose ends, Roger. As long as you’re around, they’ve got a prison sentence hanging over their heads. As soon as they kill you, they can move on. If you don’t see that, I don’t give you more than two or three minutes to live.’

I heard the kitchen door open.

‘You’ve got the twelve-gauge,’ I told him. ‘As long as you’re holding it, he won’t try anything. But you can kiss your ass goodbye the minute you put that gun down.’

Buddy called from the hallway. ‘Son of a bitch got away!’

Roger looked at me uncertainly.

‘To him, you’re just another sucker he can take advantage of. But you can turn the tables on him…and even keep Denise. The beauty is no cop in the world is going to look at you for this. They’ll think Buddy was out here alone. You walk out clean, just like he will if you give him the chance.’

Buddy came into the room. ‘What was he talking about, Roger?’

Before Roger could answer, I said, ‘I was telling your friend here how easy it was to kick your ass the other night.’

Buddy laughed. ‘Plenty easy when you’re holding a gun!’

‘You’re the expert on that.’

Buddy walked toward Molly, and nodded toward the TV screen. ‘You remember what night that was, Molly?’

‘The night you killed our dogs,’ I said.

‘I didn’t touch your dogs, Dave. That was Roger.

Roger hates dogs.’

On screen, Molly laughed as she rocked her hips over Buddy while his hands squeezed her breasts.

‘What do you think Roger? You want some of that sweet pussy or a little professional head?’

Roger’s eyes darted from Buddy to me. ‘I’m ready for a blow job.’

‘You heard the man, Molly! Get down on your knees and show us how a pretty little pregnant girl makes her living on the streets.’

Molly slid out of the chair and knelt in front of Roger. ‘Just don’t hurt us,’ she said.

‘You’ve got my word on that,’ Buddy answered. ‘You cooperate and we all walk away good friends. Course, if you go to the sheriff or Dave comes after one of us, Lucy gets her own copy and we put another one on the internet for all your friends. That fair enough to keep the two of you honest?’

‘Let’s just get it over with.’

Buddy laughed. ‘Damn, woman! This isn’t your husband. Show some enthusiasm.’

‘You know what?’ Roger said as he stepped away from Molly and faced me, ‘I think I’d rather have Dave do it.’

Buddy laughed. ‘There you go!’ Buddy pointed his gun at my head. ‘You heard the man, Dave!’

With Buddy’s four-ten close to my ear, I could see Roger lifting the twelve-gauge, the barrelling coming up level on Buddy. Buddy saw it too, but he couldn’t respond in time. Roger’s shot hit him in the chest. I felt the percussion of the blast, the blood splattering across my hair and cheek. The birdshot from Buddy’s weapon hit our ceiling as he fell, showering me with plaster.

Molly came off her knees the moment Roger’s gun discharged. Only a step away, she got hold of Roger’s gun and struggled to hang on while Roger whipped the gun about, trying to throw her free. I got to them before Roger could turn the gun in my direction, and cracked his jaw with a right hook that felt better and purer than any punch I’d ever thrown.

Molly came away with the gun and rolled to a sitting position in time to see Buddy crawling up over the back of the chair I had been sitting in. His gun was already aiming in our direction when she pulled the trigger and blew his face away.

I GOT TO MY FEET AND WENT to Buddy. I checked his carotid artery for a pulse. He was still alive, but not for long. His legs twitched. His face was blackened, ruined. One eye had been ripped out. The other was open, blood pooling in it.

Picking up the four-ten, I aimed it at Roger as Molly searched him for a weapon. When she had finished I told her to call the sheriff’s department.

I heard her on the phone. Two people shot, she said into the phone. She gave directions to the farm. She answered several questions with a yes or no. Roger tried to talk once, but I ordered him to shut up. He stared at me, his breathing ragged, his eyes wet. He thought I had lied to him, and now, because of it, he was going to jail.

I told Molly to hang up. She looked at me, frowning. Police agencies, I knew, liked to keep people on the line during an emergency. ‘Hang up,’ I said.

This time, she did. ‘Flash the lights just like last time.’

She walked over to the light switch, three times off, three on. She didn’t understand but she knew I was up to something. Our phone rang, but I told Molly not to answer.

I looked at Roger. ‘You came in two cars?’

He shook his head. ‘I drove us out.’

I smiled at him. ‘Buddy needed a ride home, Roger.

He couldn’t very well drive your car away if he wanted the police to think you were out here by yourself.’