Skunk Hunt (65 page)

"Are we still being followed?" Uncle Vern
asked Marvin, swerving off-topic and unexpectedly confirming his
nephew‘s concern.

"Don't know," said his nephew. "Those
headlights disappeared about ten minutes ago. Maybe they went off a
cliff."

"To your sheer delight, I'm sure. Now,
Mute...I don't want you to take me for a fool. I knew Skunk put no
credence in honor among thieves. He might suddenly go off script
and use his gun against me. But I had a strong sense that...he
liked me. And don't forget, he had to trust me as much as I trusted
him. I could have set a trap with the police."

"And he would have spilled the beans on your
operation."

"Think again. We're talking about the
Richmond Police—the Richmond Police—confronting two armed men in a
jewelry store."

"Gotcha." I suddenly thought of the second
man who had fatally run into a brick wall that momentous day. How
much trust had he harbored in that little mind of his? But I had
not given Winny enough credit. I had assumed he was on the dim side
because he had allowed Skunk to make him his factotum. But let's
face it, he had successfully hidden the fact that he had moved out
of Oregon Hill, a neighborhood notorious for its nosiness. I
assumed he must have sold his house, then rented a room (a common
enough transaction on the Hill for the cash-strapped) to keep up
residential appearances. It was Winny, not Skunk, who lived the
good life in the West End. Skunk was too high profile to attempt
that kind of deception. And had Winny shared my mother's bed as
well as her roof? She had looked awfully pleased with herself in
that picture Todd had shown me. At least, her chin had looked
pleased. Winny was looking more and more like a genius of
manipulation, with the exception of the aforementioned momentous
day.

What I heard next confirmed what I had pretty
much guessed. Uncle Vern, who was to send Marvin off on some
typically useless errand while the Ice Boutique was being robbed,
had his plan drastically amended when some idiot in a four-wheel
drive slid into his car, leaving clueless Marvin and my two daddies
to their fate—God's rules for punctuation for wicked intentions
always plants the period halfway through the sentence.

"You were all slobbery over me getting shot,"
Marvin said lowly.

"Yes, I was. Otherwise, I wouldn't have
confessed all to you, allowing you to blackmail me into this
scheme."

"Hey, cut the shit!" Marvin shouted,
genuinely outraged. "It wasn't me who started this."

"A large part of it was—"

"And besides, I was shot!"

"Yes, yes."

"
Shot
!"

Uncle Vern waited a moment for the wave
of indignation to pass. "I am making amends, as you can see.
Comprende
? Have I told you how
annoying all your electronic games have been to me?"

"Many times."

"And where did they get us? We could have
approached Mute, explained the situation in plain and simple turns,
and been on our way to West Virginia weeks ago, without prolonging
the risk. Mute getting kidnapped, the Congreve brothers nearly
killing us, those two sad sacks in Mute's bedroom—it could have all
been avoided."

Marvin's silence signaled a momentary sulk.
"Well anyway, it's not like this all isn't for you, too. It's not
like I plan to keep all of the jewelry, right?"

Something about his tone piqued Uncle Vern,
who glanced at him nervously in his rear view mirror. "Right..."
Then he pushed himself back a little in the driver's seat and
smirked. "Right."

Ooo-boy. Something was wrong here. I mean,
wronger than it already was. I was feeling a bit nauseous from the
curvy descent down the mountains that divided the strict blue-law
counties of Virginia from the rowdy moon-sucking yahoos of the
west. Add in the possibility that tomorrow might not be another
day, at least for me, and there was real potential for a toss.
Chucking up a morally righteous stomach-full on Uncle Vern might be
the only weapon at my disposal."

"You didn't finish your sentence," I
said.

"What sentence?"

"I'm talking to Marvin. What he said about
him not being the one starting all of this."

"Bartow," Uncle Vern announced. And indeed it
was, unless the small sign we passed was just one more lie planted
by my elusive reality. We paused at a three-way intersection. To
the left, the road led to that hotbed of scientists at Green Banks
searching for extracurricular life beyond the current permitted
limits. To the right, at a much shorter distance, lay our
destination. We crossed a short bridge and immediately found
ourselves within the outskirts, suburbs and town center of Bartow.
I thought it said something for the local council that they could
wrap all three in one, a purity of concision sorely lacking among
the boggled planners of urban sprawl. Bartow was also sorely
lacking a population, but that suited our purpose, so I didn't
cavil. At this time of the morning, Richmond too was barely sucking
on life support.

We passed the Starlight Motel and discovered
if we wanted to spend the daylight hours counting our loot, it
wouldn't be there. A For Sale sign nearly as decrepit as the
building itself dangled with useless promise. It was an ideal
location for visitors to the observatory. Had stargazing gone out
of fashion? The motel's fate had been written in the stars.

To the right a monolithic darkness blacked
out a square of stars. It was not quite time for the cockcrow, but
even in this poor light I could see the screen's decayed trusswork.
Like the motel, the drive-in had not been used in years.

"When did you say the Bildass robbery took
place?" I asked.

"Why do you want to know?"

"My father told me to take in a movie and
sack out at the Starlight when I came to get the million."

"He was pulling your leg," Uncle Vern
asserted. "The Bildass job was only two years ago."

I wouldn't put it beyond Skunk to do a little
leg-pulling, but this bordered on unnecessary malevolence. He knew
I was unfamiliar with my grandfather's old stomping ground. That I
might come sneaking up here one night (you don't disinter stolen
cash—or, now, jewelry—during the day), and that misinformation
about what I would find in Bartow might shatter what little courage
I could screw. Up. But there was no denying the half-seen
evidence.

Uncle Vern pulled off at an abandoned gas
station across from the drive-in. Yvonne stopped behind him.
Through her van's windshield I could read something from the "what
the —" category on her lips. I wondered what she had expected from
a West Virginia fleapit.

"No GSM," Marvin complained, checking his
cell phone signal. "This is a total dead zone."

"Must be the mountains," I said.

"Or they block cell phones this close to
Green Banks," Uncle Vern theorized. "The signals might interfere
with their radio telescopes."

"Or maybe it's because you can't call from an
armpit," said Todd, opening his eyes and looking at our
surroundings. I could tell right away he had been faking sleep. I
know how I look when I've been feigning a nap, and he definitely
had that cagy 'I haven't heard a thing' expression. He said, with a
yawn, "This isn't a flight to quality."

"How do you know?" I demanded. "You can
barely see anything out the window."

"When you tell me I'm downtown and I can't
see anything, it's an armpit. Even George Washington had a candle.
Was it through your grandmother or grandfather that you're
descended from a monkey?"

A quote from the famous Thomas Huxley/Samuel
Wilberforce evolution debate. We read the same books, recalled the
same iconic moments in cultural history. It made me itch all over.
But he couldn't really be denying our joint venture in the womb.
The evidence was as plain as his face.

"We can't call out and no one can call in,"
Marvin's plaint continued. He was one of the new breed who grew all
namby when unplugged from the social network.

"You were expecting a call?" I asked him.

"In case of an emergency…we might have
to…"

"Call the cops?"

When he didn't answer I wondered if he was
indeed expecting a call. I caught Uncle Vern's eye and saw the same
question. A call from whom?

We got out of the van and stretched
nervously, half expecting a pack of pit bulls to come leaping out
of the dark.

"Anyone got a flashlight?" Jeremy said
querulously as he emerged from Yvonne's van and joined us.

"We don't want to draw attention to
ourselves," Uncle Vern said.

"Right, Sherlock. Then how are you planning
to get from here to there without us breaking our necks?"

"You didn't leave Yvonne in the van with her
keys, did you?" I fretted.

He held up her keys.

Marvin stumbled out, wincing from his
barely-healed wound and cramped muscles. He squinted nervously up
the road and the hunkering shadows of megasauric mountains,
unconvinced we had not been followed. I saw no headlights, but that
could be deceptive. The U.S. Army might own the night, but you
could count your biddy they rented shares.

Yvonne looked redder than usual in the flow
from Uncle Vern's taillights. Frowning her way out of the driver's
seat, she grunted her limbs this way and that, popping gaps in her
apparel like a sub springing leaks after a close burst. Damage
control consisted of stretching her shirt down and pants up, an
extensive effort that made me exhausted just watching. Michael
looked on dourly from the back seat before saying something to Mom
and getting out. He gave Yvonne a look filled with accusatory
disgust. He was blaming her for botching the best laid plan.

Mom emerged slowly, almost wonderingly. It
dawned on me that, if you were going to waste a childhood, you
could find no better place. I didn't know where Mom had grown up. I
was sure that if we had had a scrap album, the opening pages would
have been blank. Skunk had never discussed his more distant past,
and I was sure Mom was just as reluctant to dredge up memories of
coon dogs and moonshine. Of course, these might be the conceits of
a citified hick who couldn't imagine life without a local library
and a continuous supply of cheese doodles.

I went over to her.

"You grew up here, didn't you?"

"Yes," she said, a little sourly, a little
dreamily. But what little magic there was in the moment was
dispersed when she added: "When the sun comes up, you'll see what a
shithole it is."

One of the consistencies between the Oregon
Hill of the past and the Oregon Hill of today was the fuckabulary,
but Mom had never mined the cheap lode of trash talk. I guess she
was trying to set an example for me, Doubletalk and Sweet Tooth.
And it worked—for me, at least. I rarely ventured beyond tepid
'hell's and 'damn's. I decided that the good life in the West End
had loosened her inhibitions. Todd must have benefited from a real
home education.

None of us was inclined to wait for sunrise
to confirm Mom's assessment of her childhood home. I started to
tell Jeremy we needed to get the lead out, then it dawned on me it
wasn't Jeremy I was talking to. He was holding his sore jaw, where
Jeremy had punched him.

"What's your name again?" I asked dourly,
reluctant to assign him a marginal human existence, let alone a
McPherson identity.

"Michael Schwinn."

"Schwinn. That's the name of the family who
raised you?"

"What do you think?"

"Did they do a good job of it? Raising
you?"

"I'm a private detective, aren't I? They even
paid for some of my online courses with the Global School of
Investigation."

"They funded your dick degree?"

I should have known better. If I had learned
anything over the past few days, it was that twins are the barrier
reef of existence. Get too close and your hull gets smashed. The
tame geek Michael had portrayed when he conned us at Starbucks was
identical to Jeremy in everything but name. And yes, Jeremy too
would have peed his pants when the sniper winged a close one on
Route 6. These two could handle their antagonists face to face, but
foes hidden and distant made them dizzy with fear.

Michael's fist zeroed in on my left shoulder
and with uncanny accuracy struck the very spot Jeremy always chose
to show his wit. I felt like a scientific experiment used to prove
pigeons from generation to generation always knew where to roost.
Through my howl I heard Todd sniggering. Boy, would he get
his….

Uncle Vern pulled a shovel from out of
the van. Where it had been hidden was anyone's guess, but I was
sorry there weren't two. Having spent so much of my life at the
bottom of the pecking order, I didn't need to be Bertrand Russell
to logic out who would get stuck with it. And wasn't that old prick
the author of a famous paper on the meaning of 'the'. 'The old
prick', 'the author', 'the famous paper'. How meaningless is
that
?

I chose that moment, as the pain in my arm
subsided, to dwell on the fact that I had not shown due sorrow over
the deaths of Carl Ksnip and Dog….

"Okay," I said. "Let's get going. Anybody got
a flashlight?"

Bowing to the inevitable, Uncle Vern pulled
out two megaton flashlights that produced thermonuclear bursts when
he tested them. I wondered if his hidden chest of tricks included
an ever-useful Uzi. I would use it in a heartbeat against the
pitbull bloodhounds howling at us from somewhere up the road.

I noticed he did not bring out the gun I had
used against the Congreves. No more bullets?

Uncle Vern killed the van lights and switched
off his engine. He spent an uneasy moment deciding who would get
the second flashlight. I would have thought Marvin would be his
first choice, but in a situation like this light could be a weapon,
and he wasn't so sure of his nephew. He finally handed the second
flashlight to my mother. It turned out not to be the best choice,
and not only because I would have preferred to have it myself.