Recoil. Part 21

In the sudden uneasy silence that followed the shooting Roger snapped the cylinder open and punched the hot cases out onto the little bra.s.s pile by Mathieson's feet.

"Here. Load it up and let's see if we can't clear up this little problem."

Mathieson fumbled cartridges into the cylinder and began to lift it toward the target; he heard Roger's steady talk: "Now gentle down, take it easy. You want the front sight level with the rear notch. A straight line across the top. OK? Now you want the target on top of the front sight. Good so far?"

"Fine."

"Take in some air and hold your breath where it's comfortable. Squeeze easy."

He had his eye on the target and the sights wavered a little and he relaxed the pressure until they steadied. When it went off it surprised him, as it was supposed to.

"Low and left," Homer remarked.

Roger moved around him to his left side. "Try it again, old horse."

He lifted it, c.o.c.ked it, dropped his right wrist into his left hand ...

"Oh for Christ's sake."

"'S the matter?"

Roger was turning toward Homer. "He always shoot like that with one eye shut?"

"I don't-"

"No wonder." Roger threw up his hands. "Both eyes, you dumb dude."

"But you can only use one eye to-"

"Both eyes, old horse. Focus on that front sight. Not the target-the front sight. You can still see the target back there but it's the gun you're aiming, not the d.a.m.n target. Focus on the sights and that way you know where the gun is. Homer, who taught you how to shoot?"

Homer's mouth was pinched resentfully. "Army."

"That figures."

The essence of magic is simplicity: This was magic-he emptied the revolver and each of them went home dead center; he lowered the gun slowly in disbelief. Roger shot a crafty sidewise glance in Homer's direction. "I think he's gettin' the idea. Old horse, load up and try it again."

He emptied the cartridge cases onto the pile and bounced the unfamiliar weight of the revolver in his open hand. "I don't think so."

Homer pivoted toward him. "Say again?"

The thought formed in his mind as he expressed it; it took him by surprise: "It's something I can do if I have to. That's all I need to know."

Homer's puzzlement turned into accusation. He addressed himself to Roger: "What's the matter with him?"

"Better ask him."

Mathieson put the empty revolver in Homer's hand. Before he walked away he said, "n.o.body's making a killer out of me."

2.

They were eight at dinner and Vasquez presided with a movie monologue filled with Byzantine digressions: He was encyclopedic, wistful, opinionated and almost sycophantic when he spoke names like Cooper and Welles.

Roger refused to be baited and Vasquez's frustration led him into outrageous overstatements. Roger stirred in his chair. "Movies are my living, not my life. I don't go to the things unless I have to."

Vasquez scowled belligerently at him. "Amazing."

Roger stood up, detesting straight chairs. "You younkers take off. We've got grown-up talking to do. Only bore the h.e.l.l out of you."

Ronny and Billy glanced at each other like French underground conspirators and sped from the room. Amy said, "Those two together go like a match and a stick of dynamite. Don't be surprised if this house gets demolished."

Jan laughed-to Mathieson it sounded brittle. Homer stood up. "You going to want me?"

Vasquez said, "An extra viewpoint never hurts."

In the big front room Roger slumped into a Queen Anne chair. Amy sat down on the floor and leaned her head back against his knee. Homer perched on a small chair by the wall as though expecting to bolt the room. Mathieson took a place beside Jan on the couch; she gave him a glance and, hesitantly after a moment, her hand. It was cold.

There was a bench seat built into the bay window and covered with velvet upholstery. Vasquez sat straight up, centered on it. Casually he had positioned himself precisely at the focus of intersecting attentions, giving himself command of the scene.

In the corner of his vision Mathieson picked up the quick amused smile that fled briefly across Homer's tight cheeks; probably he was accustomed to Vasquez's seances and expected pyrotechnics tonight. But Mathieson couldn't imagine Vasquez producing anything spectacular this time; the situation was too glum.

Vasquez began politely: "I commend your efficiency. I'm sure it wasn't easy to break away on such short notice."

"You had it all set up-Homer with that U-Haul truck. All we did was follow the script."

"Nevertheless. You must have had difficulty breaking your commitment to the producers. The program you were filming."

"Taping, not filming. Television horse s.h.i.+t."

"How did you manage it?"

"It's one of those doc.u.mentary things. The life of the working cowhand. You know the kind of c.r.a.p. All I was there for was the narration. h.e.l.l, I just called this kid up in Vegas that does nightclub impressions? You know, Cagney and all. Kid's pretty good, does me better than I do me. Then I told my manager to clear it with the producers. Amos got a tongue like old-fas.h.i.+oned snake oil, he'll sell it to them. That kid's real good. It'd take a voice-print graph to tell it wasn't me talking. n.o.body'll ever know."

"Ingenious," Vasquez said. "The fact remains, your lives have been egregiously disrupted. It's an error for which I share blame. Among other things I'd like to try and ascertain what the appropriate redress might be."

Roger said, "You and me, we share the same bad habit-puttin' on airs. Mine's harmless-I'm a professional Texan and I talk like one. But we'd get along a little faster if you'd come down off the Oxford Dictionary and talk plain English." He glanced at Mathieson. "As far as blame goes, I'd just as soon not waste half the night arguing about who among us ought to put on sackcloth and ashes. Let's us get down to the business at hand."

Vasquez's long jaw crept forward, pugnacious in quarter profile; he jabbed a finger toward Roger. "You're about as rustic and unsophisticated as an Apollo moon rocket."

"Son, just because I talk like a country boy don't make me n.o.body's fool. My daddy didn't raise no stupid children."

Vasquez's finger lowered. In the corner Homer shoved his nose into his cup of coffee.

Vasquez said, "The fact remains, you came into this inadvertently, as a bystander."

"Bystander h.e.l.l. They put their men on us. Tapped our phone. Next thing you know they'd start shooting at us. Don't be so d.a.m.n exclusive-it's our fight too."

"If you choose to make it so."

Mathieson said, "It's not your fight. I'm sorry you're involved-it was my stupid fault-but it's not your fight, Roger."

"Old horse." Roger leaned back until he was almost supine. His eyes slid shut. After a moment without opening them he said, "Like the man says, we choose to make it ours. You want to try and keep us out of it? You want that kind of trouble with me?"

Amy said wistfully, "Roger surely does love a good fight, Fred, don't you go denying him his pleasures."

Vasquez said, "Very well. You're in."

"Thank you kindly." Roger's drawl was complacent.

Amy said, "Did any of you folks know what I used to be when I was a liberated woman before I met this here macho chauvinist pig? Happens I used to teach seventh grade in Del Rio, Texas."

With his eyes comfortably shut Roger said, "Don't mind her. She's had a couple of drinks."

"I'm making perfect sense, curmudgeon. We got two boys in this house and ain't neither one of them likely to see the inside of a cla.s.sroom for a spell. n.o.body wants them to grow up like ignorant slobs like you."

Roger opened one eye. "To whom would you be referrin', my deah?"

"It'll give me something useful to do. Next time anybody goes into town we pick up a few schoolbooks and we put these spoiled younkers to work."

Jan said, "That's a fine idea." To Mathieson's ear it sounded hollow: wholly without enthusiasm. He realized why. It would only isolate Jan more than ever.

Roger closed his eye. "That fresh pond down the valley-any fish in that thing?"

"A few," Homer said.

"Trout?"

"No. Carp, I think. Meuth claims there's a catfish or two."

"Reckon I'll find out for myself. While old Fred's puffin' around the track, I mean. Personally I got no use for exercise for its own sake." Suddenly he got up on his elbow and peered at Vasquez. "But I'd be obliged to sit in on your strategy sessions."

Mathieson said, "You will."

"Certainly," Vasquez agreed.

"That's all right then. I always did want a crack at a pa.s.sel of real live bad guys."

3.

He came out of the pool after the fortieth lap and dried himself in the sun. A sudden gnas.h.i.+ng noise startled him: He peered over his shoulder. A door stood open and beyond it Mrs. Meuth was in the corridor swinging her electric buffer from side to side, leaving arcs of s.h.i.+ned wax on the floor.

He took his towel around to the far side of the pool and rested a hip against the filter-pump housing. In a rack beside it were the cleaning tools-the long-handled net, the sections of vacuum hose, all of it half concealed in shrubbery. Beyond the pool's ap.r.o.n the garden sloped away from the house. The pale sky seemed vast.

A cardinal took flight from the stone birdbath. Instinct startled him and intelligence informed him: Something had frightened the bird.

He wheeled just in time.

A looming figure rushed him from the sun. Mathieson caught the fragmented glitter reflecting off the knife blade.

There was no time to adjust to it. Before he realized what he was doing he had the aluminum net-pole in both hands, swinging toward the a.s.sailant ...

Homer stopped, lowered the knife, stepped to one side out of the glare, smiling. "Pretty good."

"All right." Mathieson put the pole back in its clips. "But how often am I going to be carrying one of these around?"

"You made use of what you had at hand. That's the thing. At least you didn't stand there paralyzed. If you hadn't had the pipe you'd have tried to drop-kick me or you'd have made a run for it, right? You'd find the nearest available weapon and you'd head for it. He could be a genius with a knife but you can still beat him if you can hit him from outside the radius of his reach."

"It wouldn't help against a gun, Homer."

"You'd do the right thing."

"What's the right thing?"

"Depends, doesn't it. What you've got at hand-what cover you've got. Sometimes you can't do a d.a.m.n thing. Sometimes the best thing's simple. Off the cuff. Do the unexpected. At least it may throw their aim off."

"Comforting."

"There's no magic anyplace. But at least you'll know your options-that's the best I can do for you. You're as ready as anybody could possibly be with a few weeks of intensive training. There's a point of diminis.h.i.+ng returns. Some field experience and another eight, ten months of training you could become a professional. You've got most of the instincts. But--"

"A professional what?"

"That'd be up to you, wouldn't it."

It was five o'clock and it had been a long day. He moved past the corner of the ap.r.o.n to one of the granite benches; he sat on it and watched b.u.t.terflies jazz around the garden. Down below he saw Meuth come along with his tractor and pull out winch cable to remove a dispirited palm tree.

Homer put one foot up against the end of the bench and rested his elbow on his knee. He blinked in the suns.h.i.+ne. "Your buddy caught some kind of a ba.s.s down there. I didn't know there were any."

"Maybe he--"

"Mr. Merle." It was Vasquez. He had come out on to the end of the ap.r.o.n; now he turned away toward the corner of the house, beckoning over his shoulder. Mathieson followed him around the house and by the time he crossed the driveway Vasquez had hiked himself onto the top rail of the paddock fence to watch the two boys far down the hillside chasing each other at full gallop. The rataplan of hoofbeats came faintly to Mathieson's ears.

"I've just received more information on Pastor and his a.s.sociates."

Mathieson climbed onto the top rail. "And?"

"We're still about thirty bricks short of a full load. But we're approaching the point at which I think we'll have all the useful information we can expect to obtain. After a while one begins to suck up more muck than treasure. Besides, our time here appears to be drawing short."