Crow's Landing (33 page)

“Start counting,” Virgil said.

“One—”

Virgil leapt to the side and cut the rope, heard it whipping like lightning through the pulleys as the netting fell away. Yuri was standing directly under the middle of the load, and as the basketballs cascaded onto him he began firing wildly with the machine gun. The instant he cut the rope, Virgil hit the floor and began to scramble across the hardwood. He glanced up quickly, hoping to see Dusty disappearing out the door.

But Dusty had no such intention. When Virgil looked up she was sprinting toward Soup's body, sliding on her hip across the floor for the last few feet. She grabbed the .38 in both hands and from her knees she let loose on the Russian, who was firing at Virgil scurrying across the floor, random shots hitting the bouncing basketballs, the balls popping like firecrackers, the air whooshing out of them. Dusty's first shot hit Yuri in the shoulder, jerking him back against the stage, and her second took him just beneath his left eye. His head went back, and his black cowboy hat flipped off. Both elbows caught the edge of the stage for a moment and then he pitched forward onto the floor.

The balls were still bouncing, slower and slower, the hissing of escaping air fading away to nothing. When the noise stopped, Virgil stood and walked over to Dusty. She was still on her knees, the revolver in her hands pointed even yet at the dead Russian. She was trembling. Virgil reached down to help her to her feet. She glanced up at him, as if she wasn't quite sure who he was, then looked at the revolver in her hand.

“I knew that gun was a good idea,” he told her.

“We have to move,” Virgil said. “No telling how far those gunshots might travel. This might be hunting country, but that sounded like a war.”

“Shouldn't we call somebody?” Dusty said. She stood looking at the bodies scattered across the gymnasium floor.

“Who we going to call?” Virgil asked. “This was self-defense. Self-preservation. But you're on parole. You want to try to explain to the cops what happened here?”

“Someone would have to explain to
me
first,” she said.

“Let's go.”

After they'd wiped down everything they had touched, Dusty gathered the duffel once more and they headed out. Moving toward the door, Dusty looked at Soup's body, bent and crumpled on the floor, his eyes wide open, and went back for his jacket, which she placed over him, covering his face. Walking past the dead Russian, Virgil saw her hesitate before leaning down to pick up the Uzi. She glanced at him, and once again he knew she was thinking about Cherry. She probably never stopped thinking about Cherry.

They got into the truck and drove away along the narrow gravel road. Virgil kept expecting that they would meet the police but they saw no one. Maybe random gunfire wasn't all that rare in the area. And Pop's Camp was pretty secluded. They saw a number of people at the cabins they passed on their way out, but nobody seemed to pay them any mind.

By the time they were back on the main highway, heading east, it was early evening. It was a long drive back to the city and Virgil was still concerned that someone had noticed something and taken down his plate number. If there was nothing on the news by morning, it meant that the carnage at the camp hadn't been discovered. He decided that the smart move would be to lie low overnight.

“Okay,” Dusty said without hesitation when he suggested it. “Christ, I'm tired to the bone.”

A short time later, they saw a sign advertising Ronnie's Rustic Cottages, with an arrow pointing north. It was dusk when they took the road down to a small lake, about a mile long and half that distance across, surrounded by evergreens. Ronnie's was a humble operation, with a main house attached to a registration office and several imitation log cabins behind, stretched along the lakeshore. A tall thin woman with frizzy red hair checked them in, and they asked for the cabin farthest from the office. By the time they parked and went inside, it was nine o'clock.

The cottage featured a combination kitchen–living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms, rough-hewn pine furniture, and pictures of mountains and streams and Indians on horseback. The place smelled of cleaning fluids.

Virgil brought in the box containing the remaining pieces of chicken and fries they'd bought earlier. Dusty carried the heavy duffel from the truck and placed it on the floor in the living room. She turned to look at Virgil, then sat down on the couch and put her hands over her face. He thought for a moment that she was crying, but when she took her hands away her eyes were dry. He had no idea what was going through her head. The last couple of days would have broken most people.

Virgil went back out to the truck. When they left the farm
that morning he'd thrown some cheese and crackers in a Budweiser cooler bag and stashed it behind the seat. Along with the food, he'd brought along the bottle of Jameson they opened the night before. Back inside, he placed the bag on the kitchen table and took out the whisky. While he went through the cupboards, looking for glasses, Dusty walked over and had a drink from the bottle. She looked at him, then drank again before putting it down.

She looked tired and distracted as she sat down at the table. Virgil poured some whisky into plastic cups and put one in front of her. After taking a drink, she reached for her purse. She found her phone and began to search for something else, finally dumping the contents onto the table in frustration. After a moment she came up with a business card, which she placed flat in front of her. From where Virgil stood, he could see a caricature of a hot rod on the card. Dusty opened her phone to punch in the number, and stopped.

“Shit,” she said. “My battery died.” She turned to Virgil. “You wouldn't—no, of course you wouldn't.”

She glanced around and saw a phone on the kitchen counter beside the fridge, brought it over to the table, punched in the number on the card.

“I got your dope,” she said when someone answered.

Virgil could clearly hear the man's voice in reply, asking if she really did have it, his voice rising with doubt.

“Why would I say it if it wasn't true?” she replied. Dusty, absently studying the scattered articles from her purse as she talked, now reached for a torn page from a real estate flyer, featuring pictures of a dozen or so houses. One, tagged
Cobleskill 3-Bedroom,
had been circled in pen. Dusty placed the ad on the table, smoothing the creases in the paper with her fingers.

The man said something else that Virgil missed.

“How I found it is none of your business,” Dusty said. “You want it, it's for sale.”

Saying it, she wouldn't look at Virgil. In fact, she seemed a little surprised herself at the statement. Virgil thought he heard the man on the phone chuckle, then he asked how much.

Dusty looked a moment longer at the real estate ad, then reached for the plastic glass and took a slug. “Sixty-eight thousand dollars.”

For a time there was nothing from the other end of the line, and then Virgil heard the man say something that sounded like “All right.”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Dusty said and hung up.

She sat quietly for a moment, taking another drink before gathering her possessions and putting them back in the purse. She still wouldn't look at Virgil, leaning against the counter.

“At least you talk a good game,” he said.

“Fuck you,” she said. “You don't get to judge me.”

“I'm not judging you,” he said. “You're the same as the rest of them. It was always about the money.” He poured more whisky for himself. “Hey, maybe I am judging you.”

“It wasn't about the money,” she snapped. “It was about me staying out of jail.” She tossed the real estate ad carelessly toward him. “And now it's about getting my kid out of the city. Why should I give it to Parson for nothing?”

Virgil indicated the duffel bag on the floor. “Let's dump it in the lake.”

“I just made a deal.”

“I heard you,” Virgil said. “So you get your money and that shit hits the streets.”

“You going to moralize now?” she asked. “Little late in the game for that, isn't it?” She reached for the cup but stopped. “Don't think I haven't thought about that. Guess what—I'm not in charge of all the bad shit that goes down in this world. All I can do is keep my own little corner clean.”

“Keep your corner clean and Parson happy,” Virgil said.

“You want me to admit that's part of it?” she asked. “Well, it is. There's no way he's getting any part of my son. So tomorrow I hand him his cocaine and I hope I never see him again. I have to trust him just this once. Is that too much to ask?”

“I don't know the answer to that.”

“Well, neither do I.” She indicated the bag on the floor. “I do know that I did three years inside for that shit. And I did something today that's going to be in my head forever. So I'm going to pretend that this bag owes me. Fuck the moral considerations. And fuck Parson too, once it's over.”

Virgil didn't want to argue with her anymore. He wasn't at all sure that she was wrong. It was just that he wished it had turned out differently. On every level since he had encountered Dusty in his wheat field that day, he wished it had turned out differently. Not so much for himself, but for her. He watched now as she got wearily to her feet.

“I have to sleep,” she said. She indicated the first of the two bedrooms. “Can I sleep there?”

“Yeah.”

When she was gone Virgil sat down at the table. He drank more of the Jameson and picked at the cold chicken in the cardboard box. He should have been tired but he wasn't. Back at the farm, his calves would be hungry, and he hoped the horses had water enough to last them until morning. He sat there for maybe an hour, listening to the faint sounds of the lake outside, and to the breeze in the trees, and finally
he got up and walked into the other bedroom. There were French doors that opened onto a deck overlooking the water and Virgil pulled the blinds to look outside. The moon was on the rise, crossing the sky just above the horizon, casting a shimmering light on the surface of the lake.

He stripped to his shorts and lay down on the mattress. There was a wool blanket at the foot of the bed and he pulled it over him, trying to put from his mind everything that had gone on. Just as he was slipping off, he heard a noise and looked up to see Dusty standing in the doorway, barefoot, but still in her jeans and shirt.

“Can I sleep here?” she asked, and he said yes.

She got into bed and curled up beside him, her body touching his but just barely. She seemed to relax within seconds and pretty soon he could tell she was asleep. Virgil lay there in the quiet, listening to her steady breathing and watching the moon outside.

 * * *

Parson was in the garage, aimlessly surfing the Internet, when the phone rang. He stood and walked around the shop while he listened to Dusty on the other end. He couldn't say what he'd been expecting but it wasn't this. Enough time had passed that he was beginning to believe the cocaine was gone forever, though he had no problem believing she'd found it. There was no reason for her to lie about that, and it wasn't like her to lie anyway. Besides, he was the one who had sent her after it in the first place. He was a little surprised that she was asking him to buy it from her. Maybe she was getting jaded and greedy, like everybody else in the world.

Not that Parson had any intention of paying her. It was his dope. He'd paid for it in the Caribbean seven years ago and
just because it had been at the bottom of the Hudson ever since didn't mean he was about to pay for it again.

After Dusty hung up he stood looking at the call display for a moment. Ronnie's Rustic Cottages. With the number and area code. He went back to his computer and while he typed the information into Google, he called Cherry's cell.

“She's got it,” he said when Cherry answered.

There was a long pause. “Tell me where I'm going,” Cherry said.

“Have it in a minute,” Parson said, looking at the laptop. “Shit. She's halfway across the state. I'm sending you the link. I need you to go there tonight.”

“Sure thing.”

“And Cherry … don't hurt her,” Parson said. “I mean that. Just get the coke. Leave her alone—there's something I need to ask her.”

There was no reply from Cherry.

“You hear me?” Parson said.

“I hear you.”

Virgil lay awake a long time and just when it seemed he wouldn't sleep at all, he must have nodded off. When he woke, the moon was high in the sky and brighter than ever. The wind had come up and the surface of the lake was choppy, with little whitecaps farther out. The wind whistled through the trees surrounding the cottage, emitting a loud moaning sound. He saw by the clock on the table beside the bed that it was twenty past three. Dusty's body against his back was warm, her breathing rhythmic and even. Virgil stayed quiet for a few minutes, but he had a nagging feeling that something had caused him to wake up.

He slipped out of bed, pulled his pants on, and walked out into the main room of the cottage and immediately saw that the lights were on in the office up front. The building had been dark when Virgil had gone to bed. Why would the owners be up now? Daylight was still a couple of hours off. He walked to the front door and stepped outside. A car was idling in the driveway just past the office, beyond the glow of a light mounted on the gable of the building.

He crossed the lawn in his bare feet, angling to his left, where a number of large spruce trees provided cover. He went up the slope that led to the office until he got close enough for a good look at the car parked in the drive. It was a blue Mercedes roadster.

So much for trusting Parson.

Virgil moved behind one of the spruce trees and waited. After a few moments the office door opened and a man walked out. He had dark hair and he was dressed entirely in black. The redheaded woman who had signed Virgil and Dusty in earlier stood in the doorway, wearing pajama bottoms and a long pink T-shirt. She was talking amiably, pointing in the direction of Virgil's truck, and he replied in a like tone, saying that they were expecting him.