Mr. Majestyk Part 12

11.

THE BROKER ACTED like he was doing him a favor, buying the trailerload of melons and waiting around after quitting time while Majestyk unloaded the cases himself because the warehous.e.m.e.n had gone home. He asked Majestyk how his hired man was. Majestyk told him Larry Mendoza was his friend, not his hired man. The broker said it must've been an accident. Mexican sleeping there in the shade, car comes along doesn't see him, rolls over his legs. Those people were always getting hurt with broken beer bottles and knives, the broker said. Now they were getting hurt while they slept. Majestyk didn't say anything. It was hard not to, but he held on and finally the broker went into his office. Later, when he picked up the check, he didn't say anything either. It was getting dark by the time he got out of there, heading home with the empty trailer. like he was doing him a favor, buying the trailerload of melons and waiting around after quitting time while Majestyk unloaded the cases himself because the warehous.e.m.e.n had gone home. He asked Majestyk how his hired man was. Majestyk told him Larry Mendoza was his friend, not his hired man. The broker said it must've been an accident. Mexican sleeping there in the shade, car comes along doesn't see him, rolls over his legs. Those people were always getting hurt with broken beer bottles and knives, the broker said. Now they were getting hurt while they slept. Majestyk didn't say anything. It was hard not to, but he held on and finally the broker went into his office. Later, when he picked up the check, he didn't say anything either. It was getting dark by the time he got out of there, heading home with the empty trailer.

Home. n.o.body there now. A dark house at the end of a dirt road.

As he turned off the highway onto the road he looked at the rearview mirror, then out the side window to see the car that had been following him for several miles continue on. An Oldsmobile, it looked like.

He could hear crickets already in the settling darkness, nothing around to bother them. The packing shed was empty, Mendoza's house, the melon fields-driving past slowly, looking out at the dim fields the way he had looked at fields and rice paddies from the front seat of a jeep a dozen years before, feeling something then, expecting the unexpected and, for some reason, beginning to feel it again, now.

Majestyk drove up to within fifty yards of his house at the end of the road, stopped, turned the key off, put it in his pocket and waited a few moments, listening. When he got out he reached into the pickup bed for a wrench and used it to free the trailer hitch, crouched down between the pickup and the trailer where he could inch his gaze over the melon rows and study the dark ma.s.s of trees beyond his house. Pine trees. He didn't know what kind of trees he had watched twelve years ago, lying in the weeds not far from a Pathet Lao village after the H-34 helicopter had gone down, killing the pilot, the mechanic, and the ten Laotian soldiers. No, the trees were different. Only the feeling inside him, then and now, was the same.

Lundy cut his lights as he turned off the highway, hoping to h.e.l.l he didn't get hung up on a stump or something. Once the road got into the trees it was all right. It was so narrow brush and tree limbs sc.r.a.ped the car on both sides, and the ruts were deep enough that he could feel his way along in the darkness and not worry about going off the road. He came up next to the Dodge parked in the small clearing, got out, and moved through the trees to where Bobby Kopas was watching the house.

Hearing him, Kopas looked over his shoulder. "He just come home."

"Who do you think I been following?" Lundy said. "Where is he?"

"By the truck. See him?"

It was about forty yards across a pasture to the house with its dark windows, and about the same distance again down the road to the pickup truck and trailer. Lundy held his gaze on the front end of the truck.

"I don't see him."

"Unhitching the trailer. He was was."

"Well, where's he now?"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, he was there a minute ago."

"He go in the house?"

"I'd have seen him."

Lundy looked around, getting an uneasy feeling. "Where're the others?"

Kopas pointed with his thumb. "Down there in the trees. So's to watch the side and back of the place."

"Later on," Lundy said, "we'll bring some more people in, seal him up." He looked at Kopas. "If he's still here."

"He's here. We can't see him is all. Down in behind the truck."

"I hope so," Lundy said. "You imagine what Frank would do to you if the man slipped out?"

He moved through the melon rows to the irrigation ditch and again, smelling the damp earth close to his face, experienced a feeling from the time before. It was easier this time because he wasn't carrying the M-15 and the sack of grenades. He wouldn't mind having the M-15 now, or the .30.30 Marlin in the house or the 12-gauge Remington. The shotgun would be best, at night, at close range. He had thought of the gun when he thought of scouting the house and decided against it. He could be caught in the open too easily. It was better to look around first, make sure, and not approach the house until it was full dark. He reached the end of the irrigation ditch and came up behind the pump housing. From here, in the deep shadows, he was able to walk into the trees.

It had been midsummer when the pesticide tank truck came in through the back road to spray his outlying fields. Studying the trees he had remembered the road. It was a point to reach and follow, to help him keep his sense of direction. He remembered the clearing, too, and approached it through the dense trees and scrub as he had approached the village, smelling the wood smoke from a hundred meters away. He stopped when he heard the voice.

"I mean the man's got to be around, hasn't he? His truck's here. How's he going to go anyplace 'less he's in his truck?"

He knew the voice. There was another voice then, lower, and the sound of a car door slamming.

"Hey, I forgot to tell you-this afternoon, right after I got back-"

The familiar voice was drowned out by the car engine starting. Majestyk moved back into the trees. He waited. When the Olds 98 rolled past him he was close enough to touch it.

The deputy at the road repair site, sitting by the radio in the tool shed, said to the Edna Post, "His truck's still over there. Haven't seen nothing or heard a sound, so I judge he's home safely."

"Harold's about to leave," the voice coming over the radio said. "He wants to know what you want on your hamburgers."

"Mustard and relish," the deputy said.

"Mustard and relish, out."

"Out," the deputy said and flicked the switch off.

He heard the car coming and waited until it pa.s.sed before stepping outside with the binoculars. So he saw only the tail-lights of the Olds, the lights becoming little red dots before they disappeared. He raised the binoculars putting them on Majestyk's house, inching them over to the trees and back again. It was too dark to see anything. Dark already, the melon grower was probably in bed, and here he hadn't even had his supper yet.

There were five of them watching the house. He came on them one at a time as he circled through the trees, pa.s.sing them, seeing dark silhouettes, hearing a m.u.f.fled cough. The last man was looking out of the trees toward the equipment shed and past it, across the yard, to the back of the house. Majestyk knew he could take the man from behind if he had to, with his hands. But he told himself no, as he had told himself the time before, circling the perimeter of the Pathet Lao village and almost running into the sentry-a young man or a boy who wore a cap with a short visor and held a Chicom machine gun across his skinny knees. He remembered the profile of the boy's face in the moonlight, the delicate features, and remembered wondering what the boy was thinking, if he was afraid, alone in the darkness. He could have shot him, cut his throat or broken his neck with his forearms. But he backtracked into the rain forest and waded for miles through a delta swamp so he wouldn't have to kill the boy. Maybe he had lost too much time and it was the reason they captured him the next morning as he slept, opening his eyes to see the muzzle of the Chicom in his face. He wasn't sure it was the reason he was caught; so he told himself it wasn't. They were on patrol and had stumbled across him.

There had been five of them then, as there were five now. They tied his arms behind him with hemp and looped it around his neck, to lead him back to the village or to another village. He was filthy and smelled from wading through the swamp. At a river he remembered was the Nam Lec, he asked if he could wash himself. One of them untied him and took him, with his Chicom, to the edge of the water. The rest sat on the bank ten yards away and began rolling cigarettes, leaning in toward the match one of them held, and the one guarding him was turned to watch them. Almost in one motion he grabbed the man by his collar, pulling him into the river, chopped him across the face with the side of his hand, took the Chicom away from him and shot two of the Pathet Lao with a single burst as they scrambled to raise their weapons. The three that were left he brought with him, thirty miles to the fire post at Hien Heup.

They gave him a Silver Star and a seventy-two-hour pa.s.s, which he spent in the bar at the Hotel Constellation in Vientiane. He told the story to a friend of his, another combat adviser sergeant, saying it didn't make sense, did it? Fall asleep and have to work your a.s.s off to get out of a bad situation and they give you a medal. He remembered his friend saying, "You think people set out to win medals? They're just guys who f.u.c.k up and get lucky, that's all."

He was still glad, when he thought about it, he had not killed the sentry.

The one here, watching the back of the house, was nothing to worry about. Majestyk came out of the trees fifty yards down from the man, crossed at an angle so that the equipment shed would give him cover, and reached the side of the house without being seen. Then over the rail to the porch, where he waited a good minute, listening, before going in through the screen door.

In the dark he moved across the room to the cabinet where he kept his deer rifle and automatic shotgun, placed them on a long table behind the sofa that faced the front door, and went back to the cabinet for sh.e.l.ls and cartridges. He began loading the shotgun first, thinking, You could go out the same way and take them one at a time. Except Bobby Kopas would be last and he'd run. Get them all together somehow. And Frank Renda, get him out there. That would be too much to ask, to have Renda waiting for him in the woods and not see him coming.

The sound was faint, the squeak of a floorboard, but clear in the silence. He came around with the shotgun at his hip, almost in the same moment he heard the sound, and put it squarely on the figure in the bedroom doorway.

"Don't shoot me, Vincent."

Nancy. He knew it before she spoke, seeing her size and shape against the light from the bedroom window, though not able to see her face. Her voice sounded calm.

"How'd you get here?"

"On the bus. It was going by-I went up to the driver and told him to stop. I told him I forgot something."

"You must've forgot your head. You know what you walked into?"

She didn't say anything. She had never heard this tone in his voice. Not loud, quiet, but G.o.d there was a cold edge to it, colder than it had been when he told her to leave.

"There are five men out there," Majestyk said. "With guns. They're not going to let me leave and they're not going to let you leave either. You got nothing to do with this, but now you're in it."

She said to him quietly, "So I guess you're stuck with me, Vincent."

After a moment, when he came over to her and put his hand on her shoulder, turning her in the doorway so that the light showed part of her face, she knew his tone would be different.

"Why did you come back?"

"I don't know," she said, and that was partly true. "Maybe see what it's like to be on the same side as the grower. That's a funny thing, Vincent. All my life I've been fighting against the growers. Now, this is different."

"You like to fight?" He kept watching her, making up his mind.

"You don't know me yet," Nancy said. "I like to do a lot of things."

He raised the barrel of the shotgun. "You know how to use this?"

"Show me and I will."

"How about a deer rifle?"

"Aim it and pull the trigger. Isn't that all you do?" She waited, looking up at him.

"I don't want you to be here," he said then, "but I'm glad you are. You understand what I mean?"

"You don't have to say anything. If I didn't know how you feel I wouldn't be here."

"You're that sure?"

She hesitated. "I hope so."

"You do have to leave yourself open, don't you? Take a chance."

"That's what it's all about."

"We'll have to talk about it again, when we have more time."

"Sure, it can wait." She smiled at him, even more sure of herself now.

"I'm going outside," he said. "Bring the truck up closer to the house-case they get it in mind to pull some wires."

"Are we going to make a run?"

"I don't know what we're going to do yet. First thing, I'll show you how to work the rifle." She followed him to the table and watched him as he began to load the Marlin. "If anybody tries to come in," he said, "shoot him. Don't say, 'Put up your hands' or anything like that, shoot him."

"All right, Vincent."

He handed her the rifle and picked up the shotgun again. "But make sure it isn't me."

Wiley was on the bearskin couch with her book. She looked up, over her reading gla.s.ses, at Lundy and said, "Gene's here."

Renda didn't pay any attention to her. He was on the phone again. Lundy had never seen a guy who was on the phone as much as Frank. The first time he ever met him-after doing seven on the armed robbery conviction and getting out and going to see him with the note his cellmate had given him-Frank was on the phone. It seemed like he had been on it ever since.

Right now he was listening, standing by the bar making a drink, the phone wedged in between his shoulder and his jaw. He put the scotch bottle down, picked up his drink, took some of it, then put the gla.s.s down hard and said, "What the f.u.c.k you talking about-I got back yes yesterday. Where's the wasted time? What if I was still in Mexico? You going to tell me everything would stop? s.h.i.+t no." He listened again, moving about impatiently. "Look, it's a personal matter-you said so yourself. It's got nothing to do with the organization. I get it done and we get back to business. Not before."

He slammed the phone down and picked up his drink again. "f.u.c.king lawyers. You don't know if they're working for you or you're working for them."

Wiley said, "I think your friends are worried you might get them involved."

"That's what I need, some more opinions."

She went back to her book as he turned to Lundy.

"What's he doing?"

"He picked up his trailer," Lundy said, "and went right home."

"Alone?"

"He was was. But Bobby says there's a girl there. Come before he got back. I don't know," Lundy said, "man's waiting to get shot he's got some tail with him."

Put yourself in his place, Renda was thinking, and said, "The cops could've told him don't worry and he feels safe. Thinks, with all that's happened, I won't come for him right away."

"Whenever we do it," Lundy said, "we can't just walk in. The cops could be there waiting."

"You see any?"

"No, but they could've slipped in when it got dark. Be all over the place."

"I don't have time to fool around," Renda said. "They're starting to pressure me, give me some s.h.i.+t, tell me forget about the guy or hire it done."

Lundy agreed with them 100 percent, but he said, "You want to hit him yourself you got to wait for the right time, that's all."

"I don't have have time! Can't you get that in your head?" He took a drink of scotch and calmed down a little. "How many guys you got there?" time! Can't you get that in your head?" He took a drink of scotch and calmed down a little. "How many guys you got there?"

"Five. In the trees by his place. There's a back road takes you in there." He watched Frank put his gla.s.s down and go over to a window that looked out on a dark patio and swimming pool.

When Renda turned to him again he said, "If it can take you in, n.o.body sees you, it can take him out, can't it?"

"If there's no cops in his house."