Crime Machine (31 page)

Still holding his breath, he got down beside Henry, ignoring the black hole in his forehead, the dark congealed mass beneath him, and felt in his pocket. He pulled out a penknife and a few coins and put them in his own pocket.

Henry was lying on his left side. Lloyd managed to search his jacket pocket before his lungs gave out. He breathed in through his mouth, but even so, the gases of decomposition made his stomach convulse and he vomited on the floor. He kept on retching well after there was nothing left in his stomach to expel.

He managed to roll Henry over so he could get at his other pockets. Chewing gum, a plumber’s business card—absolutely nothing he could apply to his present situation.

He got to his feet and retched again. The phone on the kitchen counter looked intact, but when he lifted the receiver, there was no dial tone. Snowshoes would have afforded him a few options, but Henry’s snowshoes were gone from their usual hook by the door.

Lloyd looked out the window, across the clearing and into the dark woods. Nothing moved. No sound beyond the hum of Henry’s fridge.

He opened the door and closed it behind him and set off at a run. One of Papa’s gang had ploughed a path along the former logging track that led to the highway. He hoped Jack had gone to town and not just a curve or two up the road. His troublesome joints would not get him through snowy woods.

Lloyd had been blessed with good health most of his life, but he had never gone in for serious exercise. His lungs threatened to quit on him altogether after a couple of hundred yards and he slowed to a fast walk. Pain had already invaded his ankles and calves and gave no sign of retreat. He kept moving.

If he got to the highway, he could flag somebody down. Old man on the side of the road, someone would realize he was in trouble. Someone would stop.

He heard the Range Rover before he saw it. The suspension squeaked every time it went over a bump.

Lloyd plunged into the snow on his right and allowed himself to fall. He toppled forward, got up and did it again, throwing himself into the snow, twisting hip and knee in the process. Cold seared his wrists, ankles, neck. He sat up and scooped snow over his legs. He lay back down and heaped snow over his midsection to hide the vivid red and blue of his parka.

The Rover rounded the curve, its rattles and squeaks louder. Lloyd lay still. The gearshift was yanked and ground into reverse. The engine revved a couple of times. The truck came into the snow until the plough blade smacked into Lloyd’s feet.

The engine revved again.

Lloyd staggered to his feet, brushing snow from his face and hair. Snow melted around his neck and ran in icy rivulets down his back and chest.

The driver was the mean-looking one with the three-day stubble and squared-off moustache. Jack. He rolled down the window. A gun emerged, then his face.

“Move.”

“No.”

“I said move.”

“I’m not going to.”

Jack tapped the door panel with his automatic. “You look ridiculous. Old man in the snow, trying to act tough.”

“Just shoot me and get it over with.”

“Nossir.”

“Go on, why don’t you. You shot Henry. You’re going to kill me too.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at him. “Not on your say-so.”

“No, it’ll be when that insane man you call Papa tells you to.”

“That’s right.”

“You do everything he says.”

Jack tapped the truck with his gun again.

Lloyd waded through the snow toward the passenger side. When he got to the door, he tried to run. Jack reversed and cut him off with the Rover. The passenger-side window rolled down.

“Back to the house, old man.”

“Let me go. Tell that man I got away while you were out hunting.”

“Nossir. You’re mistaking me for some kind of Third World customs official—some pathetic, no doubt Negroid flunky can’t wait to violate his own integrity for two bits and a pair of Ray-Bans. But at this moment I am the keeper of life and death, and I will not be corrupted by you. You’re suggesting I be derelict in my duty and then tell lies about it. I never lie.”

“As if that’s something to be proud of, when you go around killing people.”

“Some people need killing.”

“Well, shoot me here, why don’t you. I don’t want to be chained up day and night, terrified about when it’s going to come.”

“It’ll come when it comes. Stop trying to control it.”

“Is this how you want to live your life? Hiding out? Running from the law?”

“Appears so. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it.”

Lloyd started around the front of the truck, but it lurched forward, cutting him off.

“Understand something, Lloyd. If you force me to shoot you, it’s not gonna be in the heart or the head or anywhere quick and convenient. I’ll place a round somewhere it’ll hurt bad, and you’ll have to sit there watching yourself exsanguinate. Blood and pus everywhere. Now you march up that road ahead of this here truck before I put one in your bowels.”

—

The far side of Black Lake. Papa and Nikki moving through thick woods. They each carried a rifle and wore light down jackets of a white and brown wavy pattern. When motionless, they were almost invisible. On their feet, gaiters, boots, snowshoes.

Papa led the way off-trail. He knew without being told where Nikki and Lemur had set the leghold trap. At the top of a small rise, he beckoned and she joined him, awkward on her snowshoes. He had been right about the light jacket: with the fleece top she was wearing underneath, Nikki was as warm as if she were indoors. Papa had taken her shopping in Manhattan, the best shopping trip of her life.

But now, having come so near to the place where they had set the trap, she was thinking about Lemur. The newscast had spoken of him as if he
were just a common criminal. They didn’t even know his name, and it bothered Nikki that they dismissed this brave and friendly young man as if he were just some loser who got what he deserved.

She asked Papa about it. He didn’t tolerate questions in the normal course of events, but he was in teaching mode now, and it was like being gathered into his strong arms.

“Lemur knew the risks,” he told her. “He came into this organization knowing full well what lay ahead. You get killed, that’s just part of the life. That’s what keeps your heart pumping, and the blood pounding through your veins. You want an ordinary life? Don’t join the family. You fear danger? Don’t join the family. You want to work in an office? Punch the clock? Draw a regular salary? Don’t join the family. Is that what you want? You want to be ordinary?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m your Papa, not your ‘sir.’”

“I don’t want to be ordinary. Neither did Lemur. Do you really think Jack killed him?”

“Jack would never have come back if he had. He knows I’d know.”

“You think it was just some psycho?”

“I have my theories, but let me worry about that. Later on, if it’s the correct move tactically, you may be called into play. How are your boots holding up? Are your feet okay?”

“They’re really warm.”

“Hands?”

She was wearing thin gloves under large mittens. Her hands had never been warmer. “They’re almost hot.”

“All right. Which way is Algonquin Bay?”

She took off her mitten and held a compass in her right hand. The needle found north and she pointed in the opposite direction.

“Good. And Toronto?”

She pointed again.

“Good. How about the airfield? You remember from the map?”

She pointed west.

“And the railhead?”

A couple of degrees east of due south.

“Bus station?”

Same.

“Good.”

“How come you know this area so well?” Nikki said. “Is that just from the map?”

“I used to work in the fur industry. Business brought me up here more than once. Now get out your knife and cut me down a lot of pine boughs. Shake the snow off them and spread them here.” He indicated a hollow just below a fallen log.

For the next twenty minutes, Nikki hacked off pine boughs, shook them out and laid them on top of the snow. Papa collected boughs as well, spreading them fussily in the hollow. When there was a thick bed of them, he told her to stop.

He knelt on the boughs and sighted along his rifle over the top of the fallen log. Nikki got down beside him. Papa spoke to her in a low voice, as if they might be overheard. “The boughs are important,” he said. “You’re warm in your layers, right? Well, doesn’t matter how warm you might be, if you lie against a surface with a temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, it’s going to leach the warmth right out of your bones. You’ll be shivering in no time. The boughs keep you insulated.”

“They’re kind of soft, too. How did you learn all this stuff—was it from the army?”

“Some. But you know, it’s really through families that knowledge and traditions get passed down. My father taught me a lot before he died, and now I’m teaching you. Okay, get into position.”

Nikki copied Papa’s pose, sighting with her smaller rifle over the log. Both of them wore white woollen caps pulled low. The silence was so thorough that Nikki felt it press in upon her, an urgency around her rib cage.

“It’s so quiet,” she said.

“Way I like it.”

“I can hear my own breathing.” And that was all she could hear, unless you counted the rustle of her jacket, the barely audible click of her trigger as she adjusted her grip. Her right hand, wearing only the glove now, was beginning to get cold.

They stayed that way for maybe fifteen minutes.

“How do you know we’ll see anything?”

Papa pointed off to the right.

“What?”

“Tracks.”

Nikki squinted in the direction he had pointed. Faint V-shaped marks, not even fresh. “Wow. I didn’t even notice them.”

“Rabbit. You can tell by the V shape and the close grouping. Front paws go down, back paws come forward and hit the ground either side. The short drag mark is the tail.”

“Papa, I don’t think I can kill a rabbit. They’re too cute.”

“I’m teaching you survival, Nikki, not aesthetics. You want to go back to working the streets, that door is always open.”

“I don’t. But I don’t want to kill any rabbit, either.”

“You eat chicken, don’t you? Turkey? Pork? Beef? You wear leather belts and shoes. You drink milk. All of those things involve pain and suffering for animals. You don’t mind it because you don’t see it. You may think you love animals and that’s why you don’t want to kill one, but the fact is, you are responsible for the deaths of a hundred or so animals a year, and that’s just from eating, that’s not counting shoes and gloves. You’re just squeamish because you’re not used to taking responsibility for what you eat.”

It wasn’t a subject Nikki had given a lot of thought to. All she knew was, it didn’t feel right to be waiting for a rabbit in order to kill it. Anxiety stirred in her belly. She needed to pee, and she didn’t fancy doing it in the snow, but she didn’t want to irritate Papa by mentioning it.

Papa shushed her, although she hadn’t said anything. He nodded slightly, the smallest incline of his chin toward the trail. A grey rabbit rose on his back legs, sniffing the air, pink nose twitching with the thoroughness of a connoisseur’s. He was maybe twenty yards away, slightly below them.

“We’re downwind,” Papa said, barely audible. “He won’t smell us. You have him in your sights?”

“Uh-huh.” He was cute, this bunny, but Nikki felt that consideration leaving her as tangibly as someone slipping out of a room. The mechanics of getting his torso between the V of her sights, setting the bead on him, pressed other thoughts from her mind.

“You’re too loose,” Papa said. “Pull the stock into your shoulder. Hard. You want the recoil to pass through you, not kick you.”

She did as he said. The rabbit made three hops and stopped once more to sniff the air. Nikki was on him. Her heart was beating hard, insistent.

“Any time,” Papa whispered. “No point waiting.”

“I can’t.”

“If you can eat chicken, you can kill a rabbit.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t doesn’t cut it. Can’t doesn’t contribute to the common good. Can’t doesn’t feed your brother. Can’t is for weaklings and hypocrites. Take responsibility for your life. You’re flesh and blood, and you live on flesh and blood.”

“I’m gonna feel like shit if I shoot him.”

“Do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it.”

She squeezed the trigger, and then everything happened at once: the recoil shoving her shoulder back, the slam of sound in her eardrums, and the rabbit, lifted off his feet and flung sideways, red spray hitting snow.

“And that’s dinner,” Papa said.

He turned and looked at her, but Nikki stayed motionless, still sighting down the barrel as feeling returned to her shoulder.

“He’s still moving.” She could hear the panic in her voice, the higher pitch and the approach of tears.

“Go and finish him off.”

Nikki was on her feet, kicking at snow, looking for a rock, a large stick, anything. Everything was hidden under snow. The rabbit was struggling to get up, but he was hit in the shoulder and his forepaws wouldn’t work.

“Oh, Jesus,” Nikki said. “I can’t find anything. There’s nothing here.”

“Shoot him again. Get close and give him one in the head. And don’t shoot your foot.”

Nikki climbed over the log. It was difficult in snowshoes, and she nearly twisted her ankle. She went down the slope and the rabbit struggled harder. His whole left forepaw was slick with blood and there was a red bloom on the snow around him.

Nikki sighted down the barrel. The rabbit’s black, glistening eye looked at her wildly, and even though she was only thirteen, Nikki recognized the universal cry of nature for more life. She took aim, but before she
could pull the trigger, the rabbit laid his head back down on the snow and whatever it was that had made him a living creature and not a rock or a stick or a stone left the small body. The black, glistening eye went dull, and ceased halfway in its final effort to close.

O
N
T
HURSDAY
, C
ARDINAL AND
Delorme flew to Toronto and drove a rental car to the morgue. The pathologist had no surprises for them. Irv Mendelsohn died as a result of the bullet wound to the head. The chest wound would have killed him by itself had the cranial devastation not done the job first.