The Lonely Silver Rain (18 page)

She was terrified. She was shaking. But she turned the knob and pushed the door open. I carried the set in. I caught a glimpse of Ruffi in the doorway to the kitchen.

"You dumb bitch!" he yelled as he moved back out of sight. I had seen only that his hair was tousled and he had blue beard shadow on his jaws. Up until that instant I hadn't been certain Cappy was pulling some kind of elaborate scam.

I ignored him. I had her move the black-and-white set off the low table it was on. I put the new set on the floor, reached down into the plastic bag and lifted the set out, with my fingertips holding the automatic pistol against the underside of the set. I put the set so far to the front of the low table I was able to ease the weapon out from under it and leave it on a couple of inches of table behind the color set.

Chatting merrily about what a good set it was, I plugged it in and I took the aerial leads off the black-and-white set and fastened them to the new one. When I turned it on I got a splendid picture on Channel 5, and I quickly jiggered one of the back side controls until I started the picture rolling slowly. And then, of course, I was very concerned.

"I can't imagine why this is happening, Mrs. Casak. I'm very sorry about this. I don't understand it."

She stood near me, breathing through her open mouth, almost panting with nervousness. Her breath was sour. She was a flat-faced pallid woman with a wide flat nose and so much dark discoloration around her eyes she made me think of a raccoon. The cotton dress, sweaty, revealed a ripe, big-breasted, serviceable body. Her face was twisted with alarm. Her fists were clenched.

So I couldn't depend on her to play her part in the original scenario. I fixed the horizontal hold and got the good picture back. I motioned her to back away from me. I yelled, "Mr. Casak! Hey Mr. Casak. Will you please come see if these color values are okay? Mr. Casak!"

He had to know I had seen him in the kitchen doorway. And he had to know that if I had recognized him, I probably wouldn't be hollering for him.

He came into the living room, and glanced at the screen. "It's okay, dummy. Get the hell out!"

I said, "I can make an adjustment in the back here to give it slightly less vivid color values."

As my right hand closed on the grip of the pistol, I sensed movement out the corner of my eye and knew before I turned that he was too close.

Instead of quieting him, it galvanized him. He started bounding around like a big rubber ball, yelling sounds without words. I was in a small room with a crazy person. In hospital wards and precinct stations it takes six people to subdue one crazy. Six trained people. He came at me and drove me back against the wall, hit me a good one high on the left side of the head, and I went over, taking a tall cabinet with a glass door with me. When he spun to lunge for the gun, I dived forward and caught an ankle, hugged the foot to my chest and spun with it. He went down and turned with the foot, kicked me on top of the head with the free foot and tore loose. By then I had a glimpse of Irina holding the gun in both hands.

I yelled to her to throw it out the window. They were double-hung windows, the bottom sash up, screening across the bottom. As he reached for her she spun and flicked it through both layers of glass, out past the porch and into the dirt yard.

Roaring, he came back at me, swinging good punches. I could lift the numbed arm. I took the blows on my forearms and upper arms, protecting my head. It was like being hit with round rocks. When he saw what was happening, he came right down through the middle with an overhand right that hit the shelf of my jaw and knocked my mouth wide. My knees went loose and white rockets sailed behind my eyes. I bicycled backward and only the wall kept me from going down. I hit it hard enough to shake the house. Just as my head was beginning to clear I saw him coming at me again, and this time he launched himself into the air in some kind of strange scissor kick, coming at me feet first. I slid sideways along the wall, and with my good left arm operating well, I snatched at the heel of the lower of the two feet and whipped it as high as I could. The first thing that hit the floor was the back of his head. He rolled slowly up onto his hands and knees, shaking his head. Once again the dropkick. He came down on his back, rolled up, and as he came halfway up, I chopped him hard with the edge of my left hand, a diagonal blow just under the ear. He melted down onto the floor, eyes unfocused. And then he began to climb back to his feet, in slow motion. He was like some mythical monster that can't be killed, blinking slowly, like a lizard.

As I was reaching to chop at him again, Cappy pushed by me, and with a wide swing laid the flat side of the automatic against the side of Ruffi's curly head. It made a crisp, sickening sound. Ruffi lay down so hard his head bounced. There was a nearby scream and a plump young girl came running in to drop to her knees beside him. She had a fatty face, long straight brown hair, lipstick, mascara, little wide-apart breasts the size of baking-powder biscuits under a tight pink T-shirt. She wore short white shorts. "You kilt him!" she sobbed. "You shits kilt him!"

"Shut up, Angie," said her mother in a tired voice.

"Don't get too close to him," I told Cappy. "He'll play possum."

"Not for a while, he won't."

"Something to tie him up with, Mrs. Casak?" She took me into the kitchen and opened a large low drawer. It was full of odds and ends of string, tape, rope, chain, screwdrivers. As I was selecting some rope, I noticed two little tubes of Miracle Glue, still in the store pack that can only be opened by gorillas. It would be easier and quicker.

I took the Miracle Glue into the living room. I nipped the tip off one tube and divided it evenly between the palms of his slack hands. Then I pulled his shirt high, crossed his arms and pressed the hands against the sides of his torso, against the hairless skin just above belt level. I rubbed them around a little bit, then pressed them hard against his body. In a few moments when I released his hands, they stayed right there. I used the second tube on the inside of one thigh, after pulling his shorts high, spreading it from just above the knee to halfway to the groin. I pressed the thighs together and in a few moments they clung.

He coughed and rolled his head from side to side and then opened his eyes.

When he couldn't move his hands or his upper legs he frowned and muttered, "What's going on?

"Miracle Glue has a hundred household uses," I told him.

"Hey, Roof," Cappy said. He turned his head to see Cappy. "Getting a nice bonus, you freak?"

"Get away from him! Get away!" a child-voice said from the other doorway, which I assumed led to back bedrooms: The voice trembled. She held a Ruger longbarrel.22 target pistol in two fat tan hands.

"Atta girl!" Ruffi said. "At's my lover girl. Shoot them, sweetie. Shoot 'em all and we'll go away together and I'll show you the whole world. Shoot the big bastard first."

Cappy dropped to his knees and socketed the blued muzzle of his pistol in Ruffs left ear. He grinned at the child. "It better be me first, pumpkin. My finger will probably twitch, though, and it'll come right out that other ear."

Irina walked slowly toward her daughter, saying in a sing-song voice, "Shoot your mommy, dear. Go ahead, Angie. Shoot your mommy."

The girl began crying. "But I love him and he loves me."

Irina reached and took the target pistol out of the girl's sagging hands. "He doesn't love you, honey. He can't love no eleven-year-old fat dumb kid. The only thing he loves is that thing that sticks out of the front of him. He stuck it into me a dozen times by promising if I let him he'd leave you alone. Then he got tired of me. So he started sticking it into you. He'd stick it into a gator if she'd lie quiet. And I know what I'm going to do to him so nobody else has to put up with him."

She handed me the target pistol and as she did so her back was to Ruffi. She gave me a wink that screwed up the entire left side of her face. Some people can't move the eyelid alone. It has to be half the face. I knew it meant she wanted to have her way. She went out into the kitchen and came back with poultry shears. They were slightly rusty but they looked able to cut through tough skin and chicken bone.

She knelt beside him and unzipped his shorts and reached in and pulled him out.

"Mom!" the child yelled. "Oh, Mom, no!"

Ruffi raised his head and looked down. "No, Irina, please." He raised his knees and tried to scooch backward. She followed right along, moving sideways on her knees until his head reached the wall and he could move no further. He was circumcised and the glans was so bloodless with his fright it was a pallid lavender. She opened the shears and laid the penis between the blades.

He groaned, his face contorted, ashen.

"Want you to remember this, Ruff or Roof or whatever they call you. Anytime the rest of your life you get a chance to stick this thing into anybody or anything, you're going to remember how steel feels and it won't get hard."

She gave it a little pinch with the shears for emphasis, then tucked it back into his shorts and zipped him up. She grunted to her feet. Ruffi was trembling, his eyes leaking.

Cappy had put the gun away, probably back into his shoulder bag. He went over and put his arm around Irina. She turned toward him, rested her forehead on his shoulder. "Thanks," she said in a low voice. "Thanks for helping me one more time."

He patted her. "We gone sell this cat to the Peruvians. Won't bother you again."

In a husky voice, Ruffi said, "Cappy, I can make you a good deal. More than you can peddle me for. I know where you can get to one hundred thousand dollars. I can't get to it, but you can. ItIl be a better deal foryou."

Cappy said to me, "You think of any reason we have to keep listening to all that shit?"

"None whatsoever."

Cappy picked up the two tubes of glue, discarded one, squatted next to Ruffi and put one hand on Ruffi's forehead to hold him still and dribbled the final bit of glue along his lips. He tossed the tube aside and then pinched the lips together, smiling up at me. He did too good a job. He left Ruffi all pooched out, looking as if he were about to kiss or whistle. Ruffi's eyebrows went high and his cheeks hollowed as he tried to pull his mouth open.

"It's gone nice and quiet around here," Cappy said.

"Mmmm gh mmm. mm," Ruffi said.

"I want to look around," Cappy said. He went into the back of the house. The television was still on, the sound off. A woman who looked like an expensive hooker was apparently yelling bad things into the face of a man who looked like a hairdresser. They were both overdressed and standing in what could have been the bedroom of the departed Shah of Iran. So it was an afternoon soap, and I felt the hollowness of no lunch yet. My jaw creaked. I had sore bruises on both arms. My head ached.

"What about the TV?" Irina asked.

"Enjoy."

She turned the sound up. Mother and daughter moved closer, watching and listening. Cappy came out of the back of the house carrying a tan leather duffel bag and a jar with a screw-top lid.

"These clothes will fit, and what I got here is maybe eleven or twelve ounces of prime white lady"

'Leave me some!" Angie yelled. "You leave me some."

Her mother stood up and Angie never saw the hard palm coming. It smacked her on the side of the face, spun her halfway around and dropped her onto her hands and knees. Angie scrambled to her feet and went bellering into her bedroom and slammed the door.

"Will she testify?" I asked Irina.

"Would that be a good idea?"

"I think so. He killed a couple of girls on a boat last year. Raped them and cut one's throat and cracked the other one's skull. I don't think they'll ever nail him for it. The only witness is dead. They can get him for this."

"What charges?"

"Statutory rape. Corrupting the morals of a minor child."

The woman nodded. "She'll testify. By God, she'll testify! He's been here a week yesterday. I had to phone her in sick at school. He walked in on us like he owned the place."

Cappy came in from outside. "McGee, I don't think I'll go back in with you for that other ten. On the same ratio when I pay off, you get fifteen. Wait a minute. You took five hundred back, so you'll get… fourteen thousand two hundred fifty."

"What are you going to do?"

"The big genius there with his mouth stuck together, he had the title and registration in the side pocket of that Mercedes out there. It shows no paper out on it. It's got a little over four thousand miles on it, and give me a half hour I can sign his name better than he can. And I got a contact on Route 19 a little north of Clearwater. I can get thirty minimum for it in cash in ten minutes. I go back in with you, I'm taking an extra chance. I head west from here. How about you come out with me, Irina, and move that little junker of yours out of the way."

He picked up the duffel bag, nodded to me and said, "See you around."

"Hold it. You're forgetting something."

He snapped his fingers. The three of us went out. He led me away from Irina and said, "What you do, you go to the magazine stand in the lobby of the Contessa over on the Beach and you find a girl works there name of Alice. She's got little half glasses. You tell her you want to see Lopez. She'll say she doesn't know any Lopez. You tell her the Capataz told you to ask her. Wait until there's no tourists around. Okay? Try for fifty. What the hell. See you around. You got good moves, McGee."

He put the top up on the Mercedes. I moved the Buick back out of the way. He gunned the white car a few times, then put it in gear and went rumbling over the hump bridge, turned west, waved, and was soon a high-pitched whine in the invisible distance.

I went back into the house with Irina. Ruffino had managed to work himself up into a sitting position, back against the wall, dark eyes glaring at us over the pursed mouth. She went to the ruins of the toppled cabinet and picked a small white bowl, unbroken, out of the shards of other treasured things. She put it on top of the new television set.

I asked her permission to use the phone, and looked up the number for the county sheriff. It had been a few years. I wondered if Wes was still there. A lot of them leave. The top slot is political, and the pressure seeps down through the ranks. When the communications clerk answered, I asked if Deputy Wesley Davenport still worked for the department.

"Yes, sir, Captain Davenport is here today. Is this a personal call?"

"Yes," I lied. She gave me a different number to call.

"Cap'n Davenport," he said.

"Wes, this is McGee. Travis McGee."

"You kilt somebody again, pardner?"

"I've managed to hold back."

"Builds character. What have you got?"

"Last time I talked to you those twin daughters of yours were pretty small. How are they doing and how old are they?"

"They are just fine little old gals. Going on eleven."

"You know where the Casak house is?"

"Rings a little bell. Hang on. Sure. Hugo Casak, armed robbery. Put him away and he's been out well over a year now. But he never reported in, so right now he's on the list for violation of parole. He lived out there on that damn little lonesome swamp road that goes nowhere. Okay. I can find the house. So?"