Valentine's Exile (26 page)

“Okeydokey,” Rooster said.

“What's the plan for these three?” Valentine said as they walked.

“Inventory Inspecshun,” Rooster slurred. “Fresh stuff, just off the train, that I picked out this week. Privileges of position and all that. They go back in the inventory hopper Monday morning.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Provided I don't get a lot of lip,” he warned. “Then it's back with the deposits.”

“Three?”

“I don't mind sharing. I like to do one while the others watch.”

Valentine looked at the trio. The youngest looked fourteen. He read silent pleas in their eyes.

“I think I'm going to bring my camera for this,” Valentine said.

“Great idea!”

They walked slowly down the line of houseboats. Lights burned within some. Valentine heard moaning from the open window of another.

“Another Midway party!” Rooster said, as an orgasmic cry rolled out of the boat.

Valentine approached his boat. Their Dallas neighbor was apparently out for the evening.

“Red?” he called from the pier.

Duvalier popped out from the cabin like a jack in the box. One of the girls screamed. “The hell?” she said, gaping.

Duvalier had blood caked in her hair, under one eye, on her hand.

No time. Valentine brought his hand down, hard, on Rooster's wrist. He grabbed the butt of the club with the other hand, found the trigger, and released his grip on the wrist as he stuck the metal-tipped end against Rooster's breastbone.

A buzzing sound and the smell of ozone filled the riverbank air.

Rooster dropped, twitching, and he turned on Duvalier, expecting her to lunge, not knowing what he'd do to her. . . .

“Back off, Ali,” he warned.

“Val, are you nuts? What's going on?” She sounded coherent, though her eyes blazed brightly.

“We're getting out of here.”

“I was just going to suggest that.”

“You want out of Memphis?” he asked the girls. Rooster moaned, and Valentine zapped him again.

“Yes,” one said. The others nodded dumbly.

“Get in the boat.”

He opened up the pocketknife and cut the bands between their legs, stuffed the hood in Rooster's mouth, and tied it down with the leather lead. He searched him, found a key to the girls' shackles, and transferred the restraints from the chicks to the cock.

“Who's the blood from?” Valentine asked Duvalier as they cut the lines from the little cabin cruiser to the wharf. Valentine made sure to leave a long lead at the front of the boat.

“Our Dallas neighbor,” Duvalier said, pushing the girls into the cabin. “He insisted he knew me. I think he just wanted in my pants.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

Valentine glared at her.

“Don't worry, I did him in his shower. Gave a blow job he never had time to forget. All the blood flowed into the boat drain.”

“Except for what got on you.”

“What's the plan now?”

“Thank God the river flows in the direction of Tunica.”

Valentine hopped into the water and pushed the boat away from the wharf. The water was only four feet deep along the bank.

“Try and find something to use as a paddle,” he suggested.

“Whaddya think you're doing, buddy?” someone called from another boat as they headed toward the river.

“Fishing!” Valentine yelled back. “Have a great weekend! ”

The boat began to drift, and Valentine went around to the front and took up the line. He waded along the river, Mississippi mud, the real kind, treacherous beneath his feet. More than once his feet slipped on the bottom.

All Duvalier could find to use as paddles were dinner plates.

So he waded on, keeping close to the Memphis bank, until he passed Mud Island and got into the current. He fell into the boat as it slowly spun down the semi-intact bridge to the Arkansas side.

A few other pleasure craft were out, everything from ship-rigged sailcraft to linked lines of inner tubes, escaping the summer heat of the city but keeping well clear of the midchannel markers that evidently served as some kind of boundary. He parked the teenagers around the stern—their names were Dahra, Miyichi, and Sula, of Kansas, Illinois, and Tennessee respectively—and had them all hold plastic cups as though they were drinking. Valentine and Duvalier paddled with the dinner plates, weary work that required hanging off the side whenever the current threatened to carry them too close to a passing boat or the bank.

“The fever's down, I take it,” he said to Duvalier as they caught their breath.

“Broke this afternoon,” she said. “God, I'm tired.”

Fewer and fewer craft were to be seen the farther south along the shore they drifted. They came to the second bridge. Only the piers nearest the shore were still connected with the road.

Valentine saw sentries on the empty bridge. It might seem odd to guard a bridge to nothing but a hundred-foot drop, but the vantage gave a superb view of the river south of Memphis.

“Ali, you get in the cabin with your shotgun. You three—pretend to be passed out,” Valentine said.

After they passed under the bridge a spotlight hit them.

“You're coming up on the buoys,” a megaphone-amplified voice called down. “Commercial and security craft only.”

Valentine stood up, wavering. “My engine fell off,” he yelled. “I need a tow!”

“Not our problem.”

Sula raised her head and shielded her eyes from the spotlight. She jumped up on the front of the boat. “What unit y'all in?” she yelled, doing a thicker local accent than Valentine could manage convincingly.

“Bravo Company, Corsun's Memphis Guard,” the voice called back, a little friendlier. “And you're about an eighth of a mile from being arrested.”

“Well then, throw us a line,” Valentine yelled.

“Bravo Company Memphis Guard,” Sula yelled, raising her shirt. She hopped up and down in the spotlight.
“Whooooo!”

“What's going on out there?” Duvalier asked softly from behind the cabin door.

“Distractions,” Valentine said.

Approving yells broke out from above.

Then Sula sat down and hugged her knees, and they drifted until the spotlight went off.

“Nice improv,” Valentine said. “Except it's likely to bring six patrol craft down on us.”

Valentine knew vaguely that at the bend ahead a largish island divided the river. If they could reach it they'd be near the wall to the ravie colony.

A patrol craft even smaller than their boat plodded up the river on a single outboard.

“Are we in trouble?” Miyichi asked.

“Row toward the bank. Paddle!” Valentine urged. He leaned over and dug into the water with a dinner plate. Someone on the bridge with a good pair of night glasses would still be able to distinguish individual figures.

The boat turned sharply their way. A small spotlight or a heavy-duty flashlight lanced out through the river night.

“Keep down, you three,” Valentine whispered. Then, a little louder, “Ali, small boat. If one sticks his head in the cabin, you blow it off!”

Valentine stood up and waved with both arms. “Hey there. Can you give us a tow?”

“Where's Miss Midway?” a voice called from the boat.

Sula stood up. “I was just funnin' with the soldiers. Didn't mean any harm.”

Valentine tried his drunk voice again. “I'm sorry about her not keeping the flotation devices properly stowed, sir.”

“Hey, Corp, let's turn 'em in as vagrants and take the bounty,” a shadowy outline next to the flashlight said, too quietly for Sula to hear. Valentine felt a little better about what he was about to do.

“Let me do the thinking,” the corporal said. “Get the man on board and handcuff him. If he's a Somebody we apologize and bring him home to mama. Otherwise we'll take a little snatch break with the girls before we collect the bounty.”

Valentine opened his pocketknife to the longest blade and climbed up on the front of the boat, where Sula had done her exhibition, and knelt. He made a move to tuck in his shirt and stuck the open knife in his back pocket. “Toss me a line, there, sir. I really appreciate this.”

The police boat came alongside. It had a small trolling motor and a big inboard. A waterproof-wrapped machine gun was lashed to a platform on the retractable top. Unlike Valentine's craft, the front was open, with more seating.

A lean man with corporal's stripes in a blue-and-white shirt tossed Valentine a rope. His partner wore a black baseball cap with a Memphis Guard patch sewn to the front.

Valentine leaned forward to catch it and went face-first into the river.

“Grab onto this, you idiot,” he heard as soon as he surfaced. Sputtering, he grabbed onto the rope-loop boathook the corporal had extended.

“You're really racking up the fines, friend,” the corporal said as he pulled Valentine into the boat.

You two or us. You two or us. You two or us,
Valentine thought, working himself up for what had to come. He saw the other come forward with the handcuffs—

—and put his foot down—
hard
—on the corporal's instep. The knife flashed up and into the side of the man's throat. Valentine twisted his wrist as he pulled it out, opening the carotid artery.

The other dropped his cuffs and reached for his holster as his partner instinctively clapped a hand to the spurting blood. Valentine's fist seemed to take forever to cross the distance to the hat-wearer's face, striking him squarely between the eyes.

The gun quit coming up and spun off the stern.

Valentine threw himself after his fist and bodily knocked the man against the boat's side. The knife ripped into the Guard's crotch, digging for the femoral artery just to the side of the groin, then up and across the eyes.

A sirenlike wail and Valentine saw an explosion of light. He backed off, shaking his head, trying to think, to see. When his vision came back the man was on the deck, the blackjack he'd struck Valentine's temple with still in his hand. Duvalier was astride the railing, bloody sword cane in hand.

"Ali...”

“Not a bad killing,” she said, nuzzling him. “But we have to go. Right now.”

They transferred the people—including the bound Rooster—over to the police boat. Duvalier tossed over their dunnage bags as Valentine put on the river patrolman's baseball cap. They tied their now-empty boat to the transom on a ten-foot line. Valentine went to the control console and pushed the throttle forward. He didn't open it up all the way; too fast an exit might alarm the bridge watchers.

But they were still heading away from Memphis.

Valentine turned on the flashing police light. Perhaps the bridge sentries would think that the river patrol had spotted another craft and moved to intercept. They passed out of sight of the bridge behind the island, roaring down the river with a
V
of white water behind. . . .

They rounded the island and rejoined the main channel of the river as it zigged back south again. “Ali, rig one of the cans with a timer,” Valentine said. “We're into the ravies colony area now. We'll send this thing to the Arkansas shore and have it blow.”

“Hope all this was worth it, Val,” she said. “I don't think we're going to get another try at the Pyramid after this.”

Valentine looked at the three girls in the bow of the police boat. “It was worth it.”

Twenty-four hours later they stood in a dark lower deck of one of the old casino barges. A single lantern threw just enough light off the remaining bits of mirror and glass to reveal just how big, dark, and empty the former gambling hall was. Rows of broken-open, dusty slot machines stood like soldiers on parade.

It reeked of bat guano and mold.

Valentine, Ahn-Kha, Duvalier, and Everready surveyed their handiwork. Rooster was tied facedown on an old roulette wheel, his hands solidly bound to the well-anchored spinner. The rather haggard-looking deposit-and-inventory man couldn't see anything; his head was enclosed in a bag with the number ten written on it.

A small bowl of foul liquid—blood and musk glands from a sick old tomcat Valentine had shot with his .22 an hour ago—rested on the wooden bar for the players' drinks.

“Money, then?” Rooster said. “Moyo's loaded. He'll pay to get me back.”

Dahra, Miyichi, and Sula sat on the stools next to the wheel so they could see Rooster's face. Valentine took the hood off.

“Okay, Jacksonville, I give up,” Rooster said. The man was crying. “You win. What do you want? What did I ever do to you?”

“No, this is purely professional,” Valentine said. “I need to know about a certain train.”

“I deal with dozens of trains a week, man. How am I supposed...”

“No, this is right up your alley,” Valentine said. “It's a really special train.”

“Look, I have a dog. No one to look in on him. He's dying—”

“Listen to the question. A train. A special train, not deposits. All women on board. Routed through Memphis. Some sort of medical test selected them. Maybe joining with similar trains.”

Slight hesitation. “I don't know anything about a train like that. Let me go and I'll find out for you—”

Valentine turned to the young women. “Looks like you're going to get to watch after all. Bring it in, Smokey.”

Ahn-Kha stepped forward from the opposite end of the table, snuffling and snorting. Rooster tried to look behind himself, but couldn't get his chin around his shoulder.