Savage Season (20 page)

I shoved the phone's insides back into place and crawled over to the wall connection and snapped the clip into place and tried to hold my mouth just right while I punched O. The operator came on the line after three rings and I had her connect me to the sheriff's office. I told them what I thought they ought to know and hung up. The phone was slick with the blood from my cut hand.

I crawled back to the door and sat up next to Leonard.

"We better come up with some story," Leonard said.

I thought awhile. I put my mouth to his ear so Soldier couldn't hear.

"That's for shit," he said.

"Got one better?"

He shook his head. "Hap, you know I told you I been worse?"

"Yeah."

"I lied."

"Me too," I said. "We gonna make it?”

“I am," I said.

Leonard tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. He opened his hand. I took it and held it.

Chapter 30

I remember coming awake on the way to the hospital in the ambulance, and there being a man from the sheriff’s office there. He was determined to have some kind of statement. I think I gave him one. After that, things got hazy, then things got white and there was this light and people bending over me, then I was out again. When I awoke it was to sunlight shining through a hospital window.

A nurse came in and spoke to me and gave me some water and sat me up in bed so I could see out the window better, and later on she came back with an orderly and a wheelchair and they got me in that and pushed me over by the window for an even better look.

I sat and looked out on the hospital lawn. The bad, wet weather was gone and the sun was out and the trees on the big lawn were moving gently in the wind. It was probably a cold wind, but certainly nothing like the way things had been. I wanted to take that as some sort of sign of good things to come, but it wasn't long after that the doctor came in and he had a big man with him in a long black coat and another big man dressed up in hat and boots and the standard issue that the sheriff's office gives out.

The doctor was a little man with a bland face and thinning blond hair. He stood with his hands in front of him, left palm over right. He made me think of a preacher, way he stood there. He was very polite. He said, "Mr. Collins, I'm Dr. Dumas. You know, you been out three days."

"Three days?"

"That's right. And I got to tell you, you're a lucky man."

"I don't feel so lucky," I said.

The man from the sheriff's office took off his cowboy hat and showed me a vein-riddled bald head. He went over to the corner and leaned there. The big man in the long coat took the single chair and pulled it around so that he was straddling it. Both he and the sheriff's man had their eyes on me.

"You're lucky nonetheless. Fraction of an inch here, a fraction there, it could have made quite a difference. One bullet went in your back, just above your buttocks, about here, but it caught the fatty part and turned and came out on the right side in front of your hipbone. One in your shoulder tore some muscles, but punched on through. There was a slug lodged just under your skin, right below your sternum, slightly to the right. You weren't too bad to patch up."

"What about Leonard?" I said.

"Medical science has something to do with Mr. Pine's survival, but his constitution may be more amazing even than yours. But he won't be up and around as soon as you are. He's got some nasty internal injuries* and his leg, well, I don't know. He'll keep it, but he may not walk well on it."

"My compliments to you, Dr. Dumas."

"That's my job. These men are here to ask you a few questions," Dr. Dumas said. "I'll let them introduce themselves."

Dr. Dumas went out.

The man in the long coat said, "I'm Jack Divit." The man from the sheriff's office didn't introduce himself. He looked around the room like he was bored.

Divit said, "I'm with the FBI. Sheriff’s office has a statement from you, and now that you're feeling better, we'd like one too. You don't mind going through it again, do you?"

I took a shallow breath and started telling it the way Leonard and I agreed to tell it.

"My ex-wife. Trudy Fawst. She came around and said she had a job for me and Leonard. She wanted us to recover a boat for her and some other people and if we did they'd pay us some money."

"They tell you why they wanted to recover the boat?"

"No. It didn't matter. It was a job. We recovered the boat and it had lots of money in it in watertight canisters. They didn't want to pay us then and they took us with them, said they'd let us go later. Turned out they were going to use the money to buy guns so they could be revolutionaries, you know. Silly idea. One of their bunch, guy named Paco, was out to make his own score and he hooked them up with a guy named Soldier, woman named Angel. There weren't any guns and Trudy didn't bring any money along, except for five thousand dollars. She said the rest was at Leonard's and we ended up going back there, only there wasn't any money and things got out of hand. "

"What about this money?" the man from the sheriffs department said. "You say you saw some money, then there wasn't but the five thousand."

"I don't know. There looked to be more than five thousand. I wasn't counting. If there was more, I don't know what happened to it.'"

"This guy, Soldier," Divit said. "He tells a different story."

"Does he? How is old Soldier?"

"Physically, pretty good," Divit said. "But you see, he's a boy we been wanting to see for a long time. He's got a record."

"Imagine that."

"He's got some bad things to his credit. Drugs. Arms. Murder. Rape. Been busy. This Angel that was with him, she wasn't exactly for the church choir either. But still, Soldier tells it different. He says there's some money. Says it was some kind of holdup money this Howard fella knew about. Says you were all trying to score."

"I told you what I know," I said. "I don't know where the money came from originally or what they did with it. Howard claimed it was buried on Leonard's place, but Trudy, before she died, told me different."

"She told you where it was?" Divit said.

"Nope. She said it wasn't on Leonard's place. That was just a lie she told Soldier to stall. You'd seen this guy in action, you'd have lied to him too if you thought it would save you. He's a real animal. But the bottom line is she told me it was gone forever."

"What do you think she meant by that, Mr. Collins?"

"I got the impression she was trying to tell me it was destroyed. She might have been out of her head then. She'd had a nail driven through her hand, lots of shock, you know."

"Yeah," Divit said. "That shock's bad stuff. But what Soldier says, it matches some facts. And this Paco guy, he turns out to be a big-time revolutionary, head of the Mechanics. We thought he was dead since way back."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And Soldier says this Paco told him this money was from a bank robbery some years back. Guy named McCall headlined it. Howard, he was in prison with this McCall. Lot of ties, huh? This money, the five thousand we recovered at your friend's house, it's clean money. Means it might not be stolen. Means too it might have been laundered and can't be traced. And Soldier, amount he's claiming Paco said there was, is a lot more than was robbed from that bank. Dirty business all the way around."

"I got this feeling," I said, "Soldier might tell a story."

"That occurred to me," Divit said. "Also occurred to me those bank officials might story some."

"A banker lie?"

"Yeah, who'd believe that?" Divit said. "Then you're saying you don't think we got cause to believe Soldier's story?"

"Not all of it. Sounds to me he's trying to work me and Leonard into this for vengeful purposes. You wouldn't want to take the word of a scum like Soldier over my word, would you?"

"You got a little record yourself," the man from the Sheriffs office said.

"Forget that," Divit said. "That's no kind of record."

The man from the sheriff’s office didn't look offended. He got out his pocket knife and went to cleaning his nails.

Divit paused and looked me over. "Listen, Collins. Your friend, the war hero, Pine, he tells it like you tell it. I guess that's a better story than the one Soldier's telling. But if that money turns up, you'd let me know, wouldn't you?"

"You'd be the first," I said. "We going to trial for anything?"

"You don't end up in the middle of a slaughterhouse like that and not have to do a lot of talking. But you got a good case for self-defense. You'll be loose in a few days. Get you a pretty good ambulance chaser, and you'll do all right."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me," Divit said. "Don't thank me for nothing."

Couple days later they let me limp down to Leonard's room. He was full of tubes and wires. Those bags they hang on those bars were all over the place, thick as fruit on trees. I hadn't expected him to look as bad as he did.

He had his head turned to me. "Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"You all right?"

"Good enough. I'm going home pretty quick. I don't know I've got enough insurance for all this."

"Man, I lay here and think about my dogs. About old Chub too. Got to considering, he bought the big one standing up for me. Well, maybe not me, but for an idea. I guess if he'd known Soldier was that nuts he'd shut up, but, you know, he maybe wasn't such a bad guy. . . . Hap, what I said about you not really being my type? Remember?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I just wanted you to know, I meant it."

I laughed.

Three days later they let me go home. I talked to Divit again, but it was a conversation not too unlike the other. He said he felt certain Soldier would get some years for a lot of things. Quite a few years. Like maybe three lifetimes. He mentioned the money again, about how if it showed up I'd keep my promise about letting him know.

I lied to him again.

I went home for a couple of days and rested, then I drove over to Leonard's. Calvin had left his spare key in the hiding spot, and I took it and went inside. All the crime scene stuff was gone and it had been cleaned up some.

Calvin had buried the dogs and nailed plywood over the busted windows. I went out to the barn and looked around. The shovel that had killed Howard and that I had used to zing Angel wasn't around. Maybe the cops called it a clue. I found a hoe, took that and limped out to the creekbank. On the way over there I noted where a lot of digging had been going on. The holes had been filled carefully and leveled off, but it didn't fool me. A country boy knows about digging and dirt, and those holes were fresh. I wondered if Divit had been here to supervise. I wondered if they had found the money. If so, I might be talking to them again and have to lie some more.

But it wasn't likely. I had an edge they didn't have. I had some idea of where it was supposed to be.

I went along the bank and found the part where the gravel had been put down. I looked around there but didn't see anyplace where she might have dug.

I guess I stayed at that for a couple of hours, looking around like that, digging a spot or two on a whim, but I didn't come up with anything. I got down on the very edge of the creek and tried to think like Trudy might have thought, out here in the freezing weather with a flashlight and a shovel, trying to be quick and smart about it. I went back to the barn and took a straight path from the back door to the creekbank, walked down it to where the gravel was, then went over the edge and right up against where the water ran.

All right. Don't think about the gravel and clay except as a guide. She came here and started shining her light around. Maybe she shined it across to the other side. I looked and didn't see any dig spots, but I saw an armadillo hole in the side of the opposite bank. Roots from trees partially exposed by erosion draped over it.

I jumped the little creek and went over and looked in the hole. There was dirt not far down in the hole, so that proved the armadillo didn't live there anymore. Nothing lived there anymore. I raked back the dirt and looked inside. There were several plastic bags.

I reached in and took them out. They were those sealable bags. I stuffed my coat pockets with them, took the hoe to the barn, and went back to the house. I felt surprisingly casual.

Neither the FBI nor the sheriffs department were waiting in the kitchen.

I sat down at the table and put the money on it. When I reached for one of the packets to open it, I saw the nail hole where Trudy's hand had been. I put my hand over it and centered it about where I thought the hole was.

Poor Trudy.

I opened the bags and poured out the money and counted it. There was a little over three hundred and fifty thousand. Subtract the five thousand the authorities had, and you were still short, but not much. Trudy might have rough-counted that night, or maybe Paco palmed a little. It didn't matter.

I put a hundred thousand in one bag. It was a tight fit. I got up and got a big black trash bag out from under Leonard's sink, looked through the drawers till I found a big grocery bag and some package tape and scissors. I went back to the table and sat down. I put the rest of the money in the plastic bags and put all of it, excluding that one hundred thousand, into the trash bag. I folded the bag down and around the money and made a nice compact bundle. I opened the paper bag, put the trash bag in and folded the paper bag around it, used some package tape and the scissors to make a nice parcel.

I got up again and looked around until I found a black marker. I went over and wrote in big bold letters on the package, GREENPEACE. I'd have to look up the rest of the address later, but seeing it written made me feel pretty good. It wasn't what Trudy had planned to do with it, but what she had planned had ultimately been in the support of things like that. I liked to think she would be proud of me. After all that talk Leonard and I had given about not giving to the seals or whales, I thought there was a certain pleasant irony in it all.

The hundred thousand was for Leonard. He'd need it when he came home. If the insurance didn't pay his hospital bills, it wouldn't do him much good, high as they are, but it could give him eating money until he could go back to work.