Valentine's Exile (27 page)

“What's that?”

Valentine walked to the end of the table and used the saw edge on the pocketknife to split Rooster's pants at the buttock line.

“A big, bull Grog, Rooster.”

Valentine winked at Ahn-Kha. The Golden One snuffled and snorted around.

“I don't like this,” Rooster said. “I think we sent a train like that north somewhere.”

Valentine dipped his hand in the smelly cat offal. “You'd better dig deep in your memory, before our bullyboy gets deep into you, Rooster.” Valentine smeared the bloody slime up Rooster's crack.

“You can't mean—”

Ahn-Kha began to paw at Rooster, his giant, long-fingered hands taking a grip on his shoulder. He whined eagerly, like a starving dog begging for dinner.

“He thinks you're a female in estrus, Rooster.”

“Holy shit, that's big,” Dahra said, as the other two girls' mouths dropped open. “Pimp, my forearm's got nothing on this Grog—”

“Stop him!” Rooster shouted.

“Where?” Valentine said, leaning down and looking him in the eyes. “You're about a minute away from a lifetime with a colostomy bag, if you don't bleed to death. Where?”

Something brushed up between Rooster's spread cheeks. “Laurelton, Ohio. Laurelton!” Rooster shrieked.

“Pull him back,” Valentine said, and Ahn-Kha grunted as he came off Rooster's back. Valentine threw down the hood. “Show me on this map!” Valentine said, opening an old, rolled-up state atlas.

He did.

Duvalier lifted the eggplant she'd been working between Rooster's buttocks, sniffed the smeared end, and made a face. The teens giggled.

“There, you've helped yourself out of a jam, Rooster,” Valentine said. “Sorry about your dog, but we'll have to keep you here a few months. Once we've checked your destination out, we'll let you go free.”

Rooster sagged in his bonds.

“What do they do with the women there?” Valentine asked.

Rooster, his nose planted on 11 Black, said: “I dunno. It's just very important that they arrive healthy. A doctor accompanies each train.”

“How many trains?”

“One or two a year. Maybe a hundred total bodies.”

Duvalier and Ahn-Kha exchanged shrugs.

Valentine picked up the bowl of cat guts and sent it spinning into the darkness. “Girls, watch Rooster for a moment. Don't take advantage of a pantsless man.”

They went to a stairwell where a candle burned. “Everready, you think you can take care of those girls and keep an eye on that prisoner for the summer?”

Everready nodded. “Be a nice switch from fresh Wolves with the milk still on their chins.”

“If we're not back by New Year's, I'll leave it to your discretion,” Valentine said.

“Everready's home for wayward girls,” the old Cat said. “I kind of like the sound of that. Maybe this old Cat should retire and take up a new line of work.”

“In your dreams, Gramps,” Duvalier said.

“Looks like I'm Ohio-bound. You two want to go back?”

“Never,” Ahn-Kha said. “Will Post is counting on us.”

“It does occur to you that you're looking for a needle in a haystack,” Duvalier added. “Maybe a haystack that's been blown across half the country.”

“You're going back, then?” Ahn-Kha asked.

“Maybe the ravies is finally kicking in,” she said. “I'm game. But next time, Val, you're squatting under Ahn-Kha's junk and holding the vegetable, okay?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The heat reminded Valentine of Haiti, which is about as much as could be said of any hot day, then and for the rest of his life. Even in the shade he sweated, the humidity about him like a sticky cocoon, turning his armpits and crotch into a swamp as moist as either of the bottoms flanking the peninsula of land projecting like a claw into the lower Tennessee.

Everready's map had been accurate, right down to the “friendly” homes along the way where they could trade news and a few bullets for food, a hayloft hammock, and washsoap. But the Old Black Cat's knowledge of the area ended at the dipping loops of the Tennessee. From there they'd need another guide to get them to Ohio. And he only trusted one.

“Trains are no good. There are checkpoints at all the major rivers,” Everready said as they talked routes on the top deck of a defunct casino. “You'll have to go overland. Only man who knows the ground I know of is Hoffman Price. This time of year you'll find him at the Goat Shack on the Tennessee. He can't bear to hunt in August.”

The name, but not the man, sounded vaguely familiar to Valentine, but he couldn't place it.

“What's he hunt?”

“People. Real criminals, not Kurian fugitives and whatnot. Though I'm not sure that's from morals, it's more that they don't bring enough warrant money.”

“What about guerillas?” Duvalier asked.

“He sticks his nose into no war—or feud, I should say. He calls the whole Cause a big feud. He's brought in a free-holder or two. Like Two-bullets O'Neil; he and his posse were going around hanging Quisling mayors and whatnot along with their families.”

“What are we supposed to bribe him with?”

“Give him this,” Everready said. He took off one of his Reaper-tooth necklaces, and searched the string. After a few minutes of fiddling he extracted two teeth and passed them to Valentine. One had the letter
h
carved into the root, the other the letter
p
.

“Tell him Everready's calling him on his debts.”

Valentine watched the Goat Shack through his Memphis river patrol binoculars. Except for the horse tails swishing under a barn's awning and ATVs parked around the outbuildings, he'd suspect the place was deserted.

The Goat Shack certainly looked dilapidated—even abandoned. Glassless windows, the front door laid out across the wide porch, a few holes in the roof. The road-facing side had fresh cypress boards nailed on horizontally to cover a pickup-truck-sized hole. A dock, divided into an aluminum half by the shore and a wooden extension out onto the lake, ended in a boathouse. Pilings for other docks, perhaps swept away in some flood, dotted the whole riverside behind the house.

Goats rested in the shade of the porch. Valentine watched a tired-looking billy plunge his head into a water trough fed by a downspout and drink.

Valentine suspected it had once been a bar and restaurant for pleasure craft on the river.

A few feet behind, Duvalier lay flat on her back, her feet up on her pack. Ahn-Kha sat cross-legged with his back to the chestnut tree shading Valentine.

The smell of goats reminded Valentine of his first day as a Wolf.

“It just doesn't feel right,” Valentine said. “It's like the place is waiting for us.”

“We could try going north on our own,” Ahn-Kha said. “I don't think this country is muchly inhabited.”

“No, we need a guide,” Valentine said. “Oh, screw it. Ahn-Kha, cover us from out here with your gun, would you?”

While he changed into the cleaner cut-down black clothes he'd worn in Memphis, Ahn-Kha unstrapped the leather belts around the blanket rolls containing his gun. Duvalier picked up her pack and slung her pump-action shotgun, then handed Valentine his U-gun.

They wandered off the small hummock the chestnut shaded and walked the broken-up road, more potholes than grade.

“What if this Hoffman Price isn't here?” Duvalier asked.

“We find someone else.”

“Reaper teeth won't do us much good.”

“I have some gold left.”

“Just enough to be robbed of and left for dead.”

Valentine put his arm on her shoulder. “As if you'd let that happen.”

She shrugged him off.

The nanny goats lying on the porch watched them walk past a pair of motorcycles and up onto the porch. A mutt watched them from the shade beneath a truck up on blocks. Duvalier wrung out her neckerchief in the water trough and wiped the sweat from her deeply freckled face and neck.

Valentine heard the clatter of a generator.

“Ready when you are, Val.”

“Hello the house,” Valentine called. “May we come in?” The brilliant sunshine made every crack in the repaired section of wall a black stripe. There were bullet holes in the door frame and around the windows.

“You a warrant-man?” a crackly woman's voice called back.

“No,” Valentine said.

“Then you're not welcome here. Be off.”

“We're looking for a warrant-man, actually.” Valentine heard movement inside, chairs being pushed back from tables, perhaps.

“Who?”

“Hoffman Price.”

“Then come in, friend,” the voice said.

It smelled like vomit in the big, welcoming room. It took Valentine's eyes a second to adjust. He instinctively stepped out of the door, and Duvalier followed him in.

A mountain of a woman, gray-haired and with a washed-out red halter top, sat on a stool at one end of a chipped bar with an electric fan blowing on the back of her neck, talking to a bearded man wearing what looked like a bathrobe. Valentine looked around what was evidently a bar. Sandbags were piled around the door and windows, and circled the entire bar at least to waist height. The floor was thick with grit, the ceiling with spiderwebs. The furnishings appeared to have been pulled out of boats and cars. Two men in leather and denim and linked chain sat at a far table, biker boots stretched out in opposite directions toward each other like the tails of a yin and yang symbol.

“Good afternoon, Black and Red,” the woman with the crackly voice said, horrifying Valentine with her teeth. “I'm Greta. What can I get you?”

Duvalier was examining the wallpaper, to which was glued an assortment of wanted posters, from cheaply printed ten by twenties to full-color photos to what looked like fax paper.

“What does the house recommend?” Valentine asked.

“I like him,” Greta said to the man in the bathrobe, then turned back to Valentine. “Polite goes a long way with me. I do a real mint julep.”

“You're kidding,” Valentine said.

“I shit you not, Black,” she said.

He looked at Duvalier and she shrugged. “Two then.”

“Being strangers, please put the guns on top of the sandbags there. Take a seat,” Greta advised.

They disarmed themselves, but sat next to their weapons.

Greta got up from her stool, revealing a .45 automatic lying on the bar. She tucked it into a leather back-waistband holster and waddled off to a door at the back, next to the far end of the bar.

“You two got someone you're looking to bring in?” the man in the bathrobe asked.

Valentine shrugged. “You're not Price, are you?”

“He ain't allowed in here.”

Valentine wondered at that. “Then I'd rather not discuss it.”

“Just asking, Black,” the man said. “I wouldn't jump your claim. I'm retired, like.” He shifted in his seat and revealed a conspicuous lack of underwear.

“Peekaboo,” Duvalier said, rolling her eyes at Valentine. He heard a grinding noise from the doorway.

Greta returned with two tall, thin glasses, the outsides slick with moisture. Valentine looked at the drinks as she set them down.

“Ice!” Duvalier exclaimed, putting both hands around the glass.

“Only ice machine for fifty miles,” Greta said.

“We don't come here for the decor, Red,” the man said.

“Close up shop, George,” Greta said. “It wasn't a prizewinner in your best days, and nobody's going to pin a blue ribbon on it now.”

Valentine sipped at the sweet drink. The alcohol dropped and hit like a sledgehammer driving rail spikes.