Carrion Comfort (66 page)

“They’re here, man,” whispered Leroy.

Three loud automobiles, slung low, roared to a stop on the street at the opposite end of the alley. Young men poured out, laughing, singing, shouting in Spanish. Several of them went over to the van and began beating on its side with baseball bats and pipes. The vehicle’s lights came on. Someone inside shouted. Three men jumped out the side door of the van; one fired a shotgun into the air.

“Come on,” hissed Marvin.

The line of gang members silently sprinted twenty yards down the alley, staying close to the sides of garages and fences. They paused in an empty area behind a shed, most leaning against a low metal fence. More shots rang out from the direction of the van. Gentry heard the low riders accelerate away toward Germantown Avenue.

“Grumblethorpe,” Leroy said, and Gentry peered through the fence to see a small backyard, large, bare tree, and the rear of a stone house.

Marvin crawled near. “They got bars on the first-floor windows. One door in back. Two in front. We’re going in both ways. Come on.” Marvin, Leroy, G. B., G. R., and two others flowed over the fence like shadows. Gentry tried to follow, got hung up on torn wire, and landed heavily on one knee in frozen soil. He pulled the Ruger free of his pocket and ran to catch up.

Marvin and G. B. beckoned him to the side of the house. Both carried pump shotguns and Marvin had tied a red kerchief around his forehead and Afro. “We gonna do the street doors.”

There was a four-foot-high wooden fence between the stone house and the delicatessen next door. The three of them waited for an empty trolley to rumble past and then Leroy kicked open the gate and he and G. B. stepped out boldly, nonchalantly walking past shuttered windows to the two doors. Low railings stood on either side of each door like entrance stiles. There was a padlocked cellar door slanting almost to the sidewalk. Gentry stepped back and looked up at the front of the old house. No light was visible in any of the nine windows. Germantown Avenue was empty except for the receding trolley two blocks to the west. Bright, “anticrime” streetlights threw a yellow glare on storefronts and brick. The night had a late, cold smell to it.

“Do it,” said Marvin. G. B. stepped to the west door and kicked hard. The stout oak did not budge. Marvin nodded and the two of them pumped their shotguns, stepped back, and fired at the locks. Splinters flew and Gentry spun away, instinctively covering his eyes. The two fired again and Gentry looked back in time to see the west door sag open. G. B. grinned at Marvin and held up his fist in a victory salute just as a single small red dot appeared on his chest and moved upward to the side of his head. G. B. looked up, touched his forehead so that the circle of light appeared on the back of his hand, and glanced over at Marvin with a look of amused surprise. The sound of the shot was small and distant. G. B.’s body was driven into the wooden door and then back onto the sidewalk.

Gentry had time to notice that most of the youth’s forehead was missing, and then he was running, falling on all fours, scrambling for the gate to the side yard. He was barely aware that Marvin had jumped the low railings and had dived for the open west door. Small red dots danced on the stone above Gentry, two shots kicked stone dust in his face, and he was through the gate, rolling to his right and coming up hard against something even as several shots tore through the fence and slammed into frozen ground to his left. Gentry crawled blindly toward the rear of the yard. More shots came from the direction of the avenue, but nothing hit near him.

Leroy ran up, panting, and dropped to one knee. “What the fuck?”

“Shots from across the street,” gasped Gentry, amazed to find that he was still holding the Ruger. “Second floor or rooftop. They’re using some sort of laser sighting device.”

“Marvin?”

“Inside, I think. G. B.’s dead.”

Leroy stood up, motioned with his arm, and was gone. Half a dozen shadows ran by toward the front of the house.

Gentry ran to the side of the stone building and peered into the backyard. The backdoor gaped open and a faint light was visible from inside. Then a van slid to a stop in the alley; a door opened, the interior light briefly silhouetting a man stepping down from the driver’s seat, and half a dozen shots rang out from dark areas near the shed. The man fell into the interior and the door was pulled shut. Someone shouted from the direction of the shed and Gentry saw shadows running quickly toward the large tree. From overhead there came the roar of a helicopter and, without warning, a brilliant searchlight stabbed down to illuminate most of the backyard in white glare. A boy Gentry did not know by name froze like a deer in a headlight and squinted up into the beam. Gentry saw a red dot dance on the boy’s chest for a split second before his rib cage exploded. Gentry heard no shot.

Gentry braced the Ruger with both hands and fired three times in the direction of the searchlight. The beam stayed on but pivoted wildly, illuminating branches, rooftops, and the van as the helicopter spun away higher into the night.

There was a riot of shots from the front of the house. Gentry heard someone screaming in a high, thin voice. There were more explosions and muzzle flashes from the direction of the van in the alley and Gentry heard other cars nearby. He glanced at the Ruger, decided there was no time to reload, and ran for the open rear door of Grumblethorpe.

Saul Laski had not driven a bulldozer in years, but as soon as Jackson had replaced a magneto to get the thing roaring to life, Saul was in the padded seat and working to remember skills he had not used since he had helped to clear a kibbutz almost two decades earlier. Luckily, this was an American Caterpillar D-7, direct descendent of his kibbutzim machines: Saul disengaged the flywheel clutch lever, set the speed selector level to neutral, pushed the governor control to the firewall, stood on the right steering brake and locked it in position with a clamp, checked to make sure that important gears were in neutral, and then started searching for the starter engine controls.

“Ahhh,” he whispered when he found them. He set the transmission and compression levers to their proper settings— he hoped— pushed the starting engine clutch in, opened a fuel valve, set the choke, dropped the idling latch, and clicked on the ignition switch. Nothing happened.

“Hey!” shouted the skinny youth named Catfish who was crouching next to the seat. “You know what the fuck you doing, old man?”

“Absolutely!” Saul shouted back. He reached for a lever, decided it was the clutch, grasped a different one, and pulled it back. The electric starter whined and the engine roared to life. He found the throttle, let the clutch out, gave too much traction to the right tread, and almost ran over Jackson as the man crouched to start the second bulldozer on Saul’s left. Saul got the machine straightened out, almost stalled it, and managed to get it lined up with the trailer complex sixty yards away. Diesel exhaust and black smoke blew back into their faces. Saul glanced to his right and saw three of the gang members sprinting across the broken ground alongside the machine.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” screamed Catfish.

Saul heard a loud scraping noise and realized that he had not yet elevated the blade. He did so and the machine moved forward with much more enthusiasm. There was a roar behind them as Jackson’s bulldozer moved out of the construction area.

“What you going to do when we get there?” shouted Catfish. “Just watch!” called Saul and adjusted his glasses. He had not the slightest idea what he was going to do. He knew that any second now the FBI agents could come outside, step to either side, and open fire. The slow-moving bulldozers would be easy targets. Their chances of making it all the way to the trailers seemed incredibly remote. Saul had not felt so good in decades.

Malcolm Dupris led eight members of Soul Brickyard into Anne Bishop’s house. Marvin had been reasonably certain that the Voodoo Lady was in the other place— the old house on the Avenue— but Malcolm’s team had been assigned to check out the house on Queen Lane. They had no radios; Marvin had arranged for each group to have at least two midgets— members of the auxiliary gang in the eight-to-eleven-year-old range— to act as runners. There had been no word from Marvin’s group, but as soon as Malcolm heard the rattle of gunfire from the direction of the avenue he took half his group out of the alley and into Anne Bishop’s backyard. The other six stayed behind to watch the telephone van that sat dark and silent at the end of the alley.

Malcolm, Donnie Cowles, and fat little Jamie— Louis Solarz’s younger brother— went in first, kicking open the kitchen door and moving fast. Malcolm swung the oiled and shiny 9mm automatic pistol that he had bought from Muhammed for seventy-five dollars. It carried a staggered box magazine with fourteen rounds in it. Donnie held a crude little zip gun with a single .22 caliber cartridge chambered in the makeshift barrel. Jamie had brought only his knife.

The old woman who lived there was not home and there was no sign of the Voodoo Lady or the honky monster. They took three minutes to search the little house and then Malcolm was back in the kitchen while Donnie checked the front yard.

“Bunch of shit on the bed upstairs,” said Jamie, “like somebody packing in a hurry.”

“Yeah,” said Malcolm. He waved at the group in the backyard and Jefferson, their ten-year-old midget runner, hurried up. “Get over to the old house on the Avenue and see what Marvin’s going to . . .”

There was the sound of garage doors scraping open and a car engine idling. Malcolm waved to the others, slammed through the back gate, and skidded into the alley just as a funny old car with a weird grill pulled out of the garage. The car had no headlights on and the old lady in the driver’s seat clutched the wheel with the desperate grip of a timorous driver. Malcolm recognized the white woman as Miss Bishop; he had seen her around the neighborhood his entire life, had even cut her tiny yard for her when he was a little kid.

Five of the gang members blocked the car’s path while Malcolm stepped up to the driver’s side. The frightened-looking woman looked around and then rolled down her window. Her voice had a strange, sleep-walking quality to it. “You boys will have to move. I must get by.”

Malcolm glanced into the car to make sure no one else was in it; there was only Miss Bishop. He lowered his automatic and leaned closer. “Sorry, but you can’t go nowhere until . . .”

Anne Bishop’s hands shot straight out, fingers hooked into claws. Malcolm would have lost both eyes if he had not instinctively thrown his head back. As it was, the white woman’s long nails left eight bloody streaks on his cheeks and eyelids. Malcolm screamed and the old car leaped ahead with a roar, knocking little Jefferson into the air and crushing Jamie under the left wheel.

Malcolm cursed, felt around in the cinders for his pistol, dropped to one knee when he found it, and squeezed off three rounds at the disappearing car before someone shouted at him to look out. Malcolm whirled, still on one knee. The telephone van that had been parked at the end of the alley was roaring directly at him. Malcolm brought the pistol around and realized that in so doing he had wasted his few seconds on the wrong motion. He opened his mouth to scream.

The FBI van was doing at least sixty miles per hour when the front bumper caught Malcolm in the face.

“Let’s get the hell
out
of here!” shouted Tony Harod as something struck the left skid of the helicopter with a thunk and a flash of sparks. They had been hovering sixty feet over a flat-roofed building while Colben blazed away with his Star Wars rifle, all the while keeping a huge, stupid grin on his face. Hajek, the pilot, obviously agreed with Harod since he had the chopper banking right and clawing for altitude before Colben turned away from the window to give a command. Richard Haines sat stoically in the copilot’s left seat, watching out his window as if they were on a nocturnal sight-seeing tour. Maria Chen sat on Harod’s right with her eyes tightly closed.

“Red Leader to Control,” called Colben. Harod and Maria Chen were wearing earphones and microphones for internal communication amid the roar of wind, engine, and rotors. “Red Leader to Control!”

“Control here,” came a woman’s voice. “Go ahead, Red Leader.”

“What the hell’s going on? We have spooks all over Castle Two.”

“That’s affirmative, Red Leader. Green Team confirms contact with an unknown number of armed blacks attempting a B and E at Castle Two. Gold Team is in pursuit of Target Two in a 1953 DeSoto, heading north parallel to Queen Lane. Teams White, Blue, Gray, Silver, and Yellow all report contact with hostile unknowns. The mayor has called twice. Over.”

“The
mayor
,” said Colben. “Jesus Christ. Where’s Leonard for Chris-sakes? Over.”

“Agent Leonard is outside investigating a disturbance at the construction site. I’ll have him get back to you as soon as he comes in, Red Leader. Over.”

“Goddamnit,” said Colben. “OK, listen. I’m going to put Haines on the ground to supervise things at Castle Two. Get Teams Blue and White to seal off the area from Market to Ashmead. Tell Green and Yellow that
no one
is to get in or out of Castle Two. Got that?”

“Affirmative, Red Leader. We have a . . .” There was a loud scraping noise and the contact was broken.

“Shit,” said Colben. “Control? Control? Haines, switch to Tactical Two-Five. Gold Team? Gold Team, this is Red Leader. Peterson, do you copy?”

“Affirmative, Red Leader,” came a man’s voice under stress. “Where the hell are you? Over.”

“Going west on Germantown in pursuit of Target Two, Red Leader. Over.”

“The Bishop woman? Where is she . . .”

“Ah . . . we need assistance, Red Leader,” broke in the same voice. “Two vehicles, Hispanic males, ah . . . We’ll get back to you, Red Leader. Over.”

Colben leaned forward and shouted at the pilot. “Put it down.”

The cool man in the baseball cap was chewing gum. “No place open, sir. I’m holding it at one triple zero.”

“Fuck that,” said Colben. “Put it down on Germantown Avenue if you have to.
Now
.”