Stone Quarry (23 page)

"Yeah, I know. Don't shoot nobody." He tried to grin.

"Right," I said.

He stood in the doorway watching us leave. An unsteady shaft of light from the kerosene lamp pointed over the dust and rubble.

"Mr. S.?" he called after us. I turned. "How's Allie?"

"She's fine," I said. "She's worried about you."

"Tell
her ...
I don't know. Tell her I was asking."

In the car, picking our way down the rocky road, I said to Lydia, "I know he's hard to take."

"I liked him," she said.

"You're kidding."

"No. He reminds me of you."

"Oh, thanks."

"You said this wasn't a game anymore. Did he ever really think it was?"

"He said he did. But no. He didn't."

She steered onto the blacktop. "Where to, boss?"

I let the "boss" go. "Back to my place for my car, then to Antonelli's. You're going to meet our client, and if I'm lucky, Frank Grice will come to me."

"Ancient Chinese wisdom," Lydia said. "That kind of luck you don't need."

Chapter 16

Eve Colgate was at the bar talking quietly with Tony when Lydia and I walked into Antonelli's. The whole place was quiet, almost back to normal.
Sic transit gloria.
Tony poured me a drink, put together a club soda with lemon for Lydia. Eve and Lydia, appraising each other, headed for a back table. As I picked my bourbon off the bar to follow them Tony said, "Smith, I gotta talk to you."

I glanced at Lydia and Eve, found myself thinking how balanced they were, one quick and dark and small, the other tall, pale, still. "In a few minutes?"

"Okay." Tony went back to wiping glasses, his face unreadable.

Eve's clear eyes regarded me steadily as I sat. "How were the milking machines?" I asked her.

"They might do," she said. "Harvey thinks it will work."

"I'm glad." I sipped some bourbon, reminded myself about the beer at the Creekside, put the bourbon down. "Eve, I've told Lydia everything that's happened, and everything else she needs to know. She understands what's important to you, and she'll try as hard as I'm trying to keep your private life private."

Eve turned her eyes to Lydia, said nothing.

"I also understand," Lydia said, "that you don't want me here. I don't blame you. I'll try to make it as easy as

I can." She met Eve's eyes with her own polished obsidian ones.

"I find it difficult," Eve said slowly, "to understand how you"—she indicated both of us—"can do what you do."

"You mean dig out things people buried on purpose, and want to keep buried?" Lydia asked.

"That's exactly right."

"Well," Lydia said, "but someone's doing that to you, right? Or you're afraid they will. Having us on your side just evens the odds."

"Are you always sure you're on the right side?"

"No," Lydia said simply. "Sometimes I make mistakes."

Eve looked at me. "And you?"

"All the time," I said. "Morning, noon, and night. That's why I need Lydia. She's right at least sometimes. Can you two excuse me a minute? I have to talk to Tony."

As I stood, I caught a look passing between Lydia and Eve that seemed to augur well for their getting along, though I had the feeling it didn't do much for me.

I walked to the bar, leaned on it while Tony finished mixing someone's scotch and soda. "What's up?" I asked.

"C'mon outside," he said, wiping his hands on a towel, not looking at me.

We left the warmth of the bar for the damp night chill. This was Tony's call, so I followed him, stopped when he did, waited.

He had trouble starting. We hadn't gone far from the door, and he stood with his back to the building, hands in his pockets, neon glowing over one square shoulder, the pitted tin sign in the air behind him. "I gotta tell you," he said. "I gotta tell you what happened. What I did."

"Okay," I said.

"Last night—" he began, then suddenly stopped as his eyes flicked from mine to something behind me. Fear flashed across his face. I tried to turn, to see what it was, but Tony slammed into me like a wrecking ball. I crashed onto the gravel. Maybe I heard tires squeal, maybe I heard shouts; the only thing I was sure I heard was the whine of bullets cutting the cold air.

I twisted over, yanked my gun from my pocket, emptied it at the tail lights tearing out of the lot. I couldn't tell if I hit anything, but I didn't stop them.

Now there were shouts, running feet, shadows. I turned, saw light from the open door cutting a sharp rectangle on the ground. Tony lay just beyond it, two spreading pools of red merging on his chest.

I ripped off my jacket, tore my shirt off and wadded it up. I leaned hard against the places where Tony's blood welled. A forest of legs surrounded me, too many, too close; and then Lydia's voice: "All right, people! Move back, give them room. Come on, move!" The legs receded. Tony moaned, opened his eyes.

"All right, old buddy," I said, pressing on his chest. My heart was thudding against my own. "Don't move. Don't talk. It'll be all right." In the cold air the blood seeping under my hands was sticky and hot. I called, "Lydia!"

"Right there," she said.

"Get me something to use for a bandage. Call the nearest rescue squad."

"They're in Schoharie," said a calm voice beside me. Eve crouched on the gravel, took Tony's hand. He focused his gaze, with difficulty, on her face.

"Shit!" I said. "It'll take them fifteen minutes to get up here."

"What the hell happened?" A face bent over me; a voice echoed other voices on the edges of my attention.

"Back off!" I spat. The face retreated and the voices became background noise again.

Lydia reappeared clutching a roll of gauze and a pile of clean towels. "They're calling the ambulance," she told me, kneeling.

Tony's eyes closed. His breath scraped through lips tight with pain.

"No time," I said. "I'll take him. Lean here. Hard."

I reached for a folded towel, but Eve took it from me, said calmly, "I'll do this. Get the car."

She began peeling my shirt back from Tony's bloody chest, laying clean cloth, directing Lydia's help with short, quiet words.

I grabbed my jacket off the ground, searched it for my keys as I sprinted across the lot. I backed the car down the lot, pulled as close as I could to the place where Eve and Lydia knelt.

Eve was knotting the ends of the gauze. The dressing on the wounds was neat and tight, better than it would have been if I'd done it. I picked a big guy out of the wide- eyed crowd; he helped me lift Tony, manuever him into the back seat, strap him in as well as we could.

As I climbed out of the car, Eve slipped in. She perched on the seat where Tony lay. Someone pushed through the crowd, passed Eve a blanket. It was Marie, white under the deep shadows of her makeup.

I looked around for Lydia; she was at my side. "Call the state troopers," I told her. "Tell them I'm taking 30 to 145, 145 to 1, to the highway to Cobleskill. Tell them to pick me up wherever they can." She repeated the route back to me. "Good," I said. "When they get here, tell them what happened, but nothing else. Stay here until I call you from the hospital."

"Good luck," she said. There was blood on her cheek, Tony's blood.

As I started the car, I called back to Eve, on the seat beside Tony. "You sure?" I asked.

"Yes."

I wound up the engine, let the clutch up fast. The front tires spat gravel. The car started to slither across the parking lot. I cursed, stopped, closed my eyes. I breathed deeply, forced my shoulders to relax, my fingers to loosen on the wheel, focused the electric current sizzling on my skin into a thin beam I could draw on, in my gut. I started the car again, accelerated quickly and quietly out onto 30.

30 was easy. I knew every inch of it, the bends, the dips, the places where dirt would have washed onto the road from last night's rain. I knew the turns where I could let the steering go light, where there was room to catch it on the far side. It helped that it was dark. I drove the whole road, dipping my headlights at each curve to check for the swell of oncoming light that would warn me I wasn't alone. The rhythm of the road was bad but my rhythm was good, and I snaked through at seventy, faster in short bursts.

When we hit 145 it got harder. More people lived along it, and I knew it less well. There were hidden driveways, there were potholes I wasn't prepared for. I was deep into turns before I knew they were there. Trees grew thickly, close to the road. I had to come down to sixty, which was still too fast for the road, but not fast enough to keep the adrenaline of anger and frustration from pushing through to my fingertips. My hands began to sweat. The steering wheel, sticky with Tony's blood, now became a slimy, slithery thing on which my grip was not sure. I pressed my fingers into the ridges at the back of the wheel to keep my hands from slipping. I wished for my gloves, but I didn't know where they were. At Antonelli's, on a back table, by a half-finished drink, a half-started conversation.

Ahead, from the right, lights swung onto the road. A hulking truck body followed, filled my vision, my world. I didn't slow because I couldn't have stopped. I flicked the wheel left, flew out past him, and eased right. I felt the left front wheel search for the road, then claw its way back onto it. The rear wheel hung in the soft shoulder another second, then followed. We dug up dirt as we thudded back onto the asphalt. Then we were running smoothly, except for the staccato hammering of my heart. Sounds came from behind me, soft words, but I didn't pay attention. I'd lost my focus, thinking about gloves; we were lucky to have made it through that, and you don't get two of those.

My world became a moving, headlight-lit band and the shadows on either side of it. The texture of the road, the car's banked angle, the sound of the engine as we headed into a curve were all I cared about. My breathing became as regular as a metronome. My heart slowed again, and I had no purpose and there was nothing I wanted but to push this car down this road and onto Route 1 as fast as it was willing to go.

And we made it. There were other cars, other headlights, migrant leaves and branches huddled across the road, but we made it through all that, and burst out onto 1 like a sleeper screaming himself awake from a dream.

1 was a good, four-lane road. It was one of the ones the county had widened and straightened, and it gave me room and a clear view. I pushed up to eighty.

As I hit 1 the insistent flash of circling red and white lights appeared in my mirror. A siren howled. I held my speed steady. The lights moved up close behind me. Then he pulled beside me, in front of me, opened a distance between us, kept it even. I flashed my lights, inched up behind him to show I could match his speed. He accelerated.

A mile and a half of that, running straight and fast, the siren clearing the way for us as we lay each well-banked curve smoothly onto the one before. Sometimes we sped by a car cowering in the right lane; most of the time the road was empty, ours.

The state highway was even better, six lanes, and we took the six miles, on and off, in four minutes. The hospital was only two miles away now, a long, long two miles through residential streets whose posted speed was thirty.

The cop ahead of me, with his screaming siren and flashing light, kept us near sixty. I felt as though I'd come down to pleasure-drive speed, Sunday afternoon meandering. I wanted to pass the cop, to drive the way Tony needed me to drive; I wanted to arrive.

A car skidded to a stop as we ran a light; his screeching brakes faded fast into the night behind me. The cop ahead of me signaled and swung right, taking a turn I didn't know. I followed; we zigzagged through night-sleepy streets whose quiet we ripped apart. The cop darted right again, and we were in the hospital lot.

The medics were waiting as I swung under the canopied emergency entrance. They spoke little to each other, nothing to Eve or me, as they lifted Tony from the back of my car onto a gurney, sped him out of sight through glass doors that opened without help.

I watched them vanish, medics like parentheses bent at the ends of Tony's wordless sentence. Suddenly I had no words either, and no ability to move. I stood in the cold, drained and empty, staring at the door because I was facing that way.

A voice said, "Go inside." I turned, uncomprehending. Eve stood close, her hand warm on my bare arm. "You've got nothing on. I'll park the car. Go inside."

I spread my hands, looked down at myself. I wore a sweat-drenched, blood-streaked undershirt. There was blood on my pants, my hands, my arms. Even the blue snake curling his way up to my left shoulder was smeared with Tony's blood.

Eve took the car keys from my hand. I did what she said, went inside, to a room where a nurse sat behind a cheerful yellow counter beside yellow double doors you couldn't see through. It was warmer inside, but I didn't feel warmer. The smell was cold and the shiny vinyl floors were cold and the deserted silence was very cold.

The nurse asked me some questions about Tony and I filled in some forms. There were a lot of things I didn't know. Eve came in with my jacket. I put it on. She went around a corner, came back with a steaming paper cup, handed it to me. The hand I took it with must have been shaking; hot coffee slopped over my fingers, dripped onto the floor. Eve took the cup back, waited, handed it to me again. I held it in both hands. The coffee was bitter, with oily green droplets floating on the surface, but as I sipped it I finally began to warm.

Eve said, "Do you feel better?"

"I'm all right." My voice sounded loud in the stillness.

"You probably saved his life, driving like that."

I reached a cigarette from my pocket, lit it without answering her, because we both knew that Tony might not live, even so.

The nurse behind the counter glanced up at the sound of the match. She rested a long look on me, on the cigarette, on Eve. Then she went deliberately back to her paperwork as though nothing was amiss. I wondered whether some people were born understanding the true nature of kindness, or if it was something you had to learn.

A state trooper came through the glass doors, knife- sharp creases in his pants smoothing at the knees as he sat.

"You the guy I was following?" I asked him.

"Uh-huh. Donnelly." He had crinkly blue eyes and a wide smile. He stuck out his hand. I reached for it, then saw my hand, dirt, blood, and coffee in equal parts darkening my skin. I withdrew it, said, "Thanks."

"What happened?" he wanted to know.

I finished the coffee. "Drive-by."

"Yeah?" he said. "Like the movies?"

"Yeah."

"You know who it was?"

"No."

"You know why?"

"No."

"Anybody else hurt?"

"No."

"Well," he said, "none of my business. I'm just supposed to keep an eye on you until someone who knows something gets here."

"On me?"

"Sure." He was a little surprised. "You're a witness. From what I hear, you're
the
witness. You're gonna be a popular fella around here."

Somehow, I doubted that.

I stubbed out the cigarette, found the men's room, lathered liquid soap on my arms, my face, my neck. I took off the undershirt, threw it away, washed again. There weren't quite enough paper towels to dry on; Housekeeping must have had a heavy day.