As I worried if Herzog had overplayed it, I felt something crawling on my elbow and brushed at it. A sting—ouch!—jerked my eyes down to see a yellow-and-black mud dauber. I swatted it to the floor and crushed it under my boot. My jaws clenched as I endured the sting’s radiating pain. Tears broke into my eyes as the welt reddened. I brimmed to curse aloud, but I kept my teeth gritted.
Herzog elaborated on his theory. “Fear triggers people’s adrenaline to the point where individuals in overwrought states perform superhuman feats.”
“Are you bullshitting us, clown?”
“Not at all, Deputy. Well, I know you’re busy, and other microfilm waits for me. If I see Mr. Fishback, do I advise him to contact you?”
“Yeah, you do that,” said Ramsey.
“If you’ve jerked us off, clown, I’ll kick your nuts up to hang off your ears,” said Wines.
The modest Mrs. Zigler made a prim “ahem” noise.
“Herzog, why don’t you get out of Ada’s hair?” said Ramsey.
“As you wish it. I shouldn’t be playing hooky. I should be looking for work.”
“A little strapped, are you?” said Ramsey.
“August isn’t a terribly busy time. Or profitable.”
Wines snorted. “You lawyers are rolling in dough.”
“Not this one, I’m sorry to say.”
As they re-climbed the steps, Ada lingered at the banister. Herzog thumbed the button to print out a last page. “Just put the reels of archival microfilm in that cardboard box.” Her sharp-nailed finger pointed at the top of the reader. “I’ll file them at the day’s end.”
“Certainly,” said Herzog after her hurrying up the steps.
My glance over the piles of paper bags overflowing with used books collected for the library’s next book fair saw an Exit sign. A smaller one under it read “For Emergency Use Only!”
“Brendan, come read this.”
I stepped over and Herzog gave me the page printed off the reader and still warm to the touch.
The obituary of Baxter Sizemore reported that fresh out of law school he’d served as a chief adviser to Jeb Longerbeam, an executive owning the Umpire printery. Baxter had lobbied Governor Clements to order in the state cops, a move that sapped the will of the pressmen’s strike. I gave the page to Mr. Kuzawa.
“So Longerbeam got Baxter to lobby for the governor’s help to strong-arm the strikers.”
“His surviving son Ralph is Ashleigh’s dad,” I said. “Small world, after all.”
Ada Zigler the bulldog guarding the entry upstairs forced us to use the emergency exit. I shoved down on the metal bar to thrust out the door, and no alarms clanged at us. I led our scramble up the exterior steps to the sidewalk, and we pelted down the block to where my cab truck hid behind the same cinderblock wall as earlier.
I wheeled us around in the hardpan side yard, and I took measure of the Arbogasts’ plain farmhouse before us. What did Sizemore see in it? Nothing actually. He was just a rich bully who got his jollies by throwing around his weight to smash up lives, and my rage heated up by a few more degrees. Just then, a girl’s wheat blonde head appeared climbing the cellar outside steps. She toted a wet mop in one hand.
“I thought I heard your truck engine, Mr. Kuzawa.” She yawned. “I stayed up last night stuffing comic book orders into their envelopes. Hey, it pays even if it’s a pittance and I have to stay busy. Is this Brendan I talked to last night?”
My nod took the credit.
Profiled by the sunlight streaming behind her, Alicia brushed off her baggy dungarees fringed at the cuffs and a peach maternity smock. She approached my age but looked—especially in her soft, pliable face—younger. A girl, actually. She had flawless skin, and her breasts protruded acorn nipples through the fabric. She smiled, oblivious to any danger because her all focused on her portended middle.
“Sorry to barge in like heathens,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
She leaned the wet mop against the gutter spout. “Not at all. I’m just a castaway starved for company. Have you had lunch? I fixed a mess of deviled eggs, and I will eat them all unless you help me. Stacking on the pounds, I’ll burst apart like a whacked piñata.”
“Dandy. Can we eat later?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.
“Well, I’m hungry as a bear,” she said.
Mr. Kuzawa gave her the nutshell version of why she was a sitting duck. He concluded with, “Sizemore got away, and no telling what he will do next.”
Her girlish face paled. “Brendan told me something about that last night. I haven’t seen Mr. Sizemore for several days.”
“You’re in danger so we’ll move you to your grandparents’ place,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“I like the idea, but what if I go into labor?”
“We’ll go fast. Meantime give your grandparents a phone call to expect us.”
“Have you picked up any local scuttlebutt on Sizemore’s drug dealing?” I asked her.
“Nothing out here.” She wagged her head. “He does that stuff?”
“He’s not a very stand up guy.”
We hauled her belongings from her bedroom in the farmhouse to load on the bed of my cab truck. I brought out a bassinet, a baby carriage, and milk crates filled with folded cotton diapers. The red tick I’d spotted the last time panted under the porch. She told me Rocko belonged to the neighbors on the next farm. Mr. Kuzawa tossed his last beef jerkies to the grateful Rocko and climbed into the cab seat.
I added the final item, a bevy of teddy bears won at the carnival nickel pitches. When Herzog didn’t appear, I went back in the farmhouse and bumped into him. Acting sheepish, he gave me taking a bathroom break as his excuse, and I let it slide.
With no room to spare in the cab, Herzog clambered into the back to ride between the tool chest and our payload. My sore bones and wire-tight muscles nestled into the cushiony seat under the steering wheel. The Arbogast farm receded in the mirrors while Alicia’s breasts (more voluptuous than Ashleigh) mashed against my side, a pleasant sensation.
Alicia smiled at us. “My grandparents who just moved in haven’t had a chance to drive up and see me. Thanks for your help.”
“You’re most welcome.” I savored the feel good moment since a qualm told me the next one was far away. I saw Mr. Kuzawa cut a hard eye in the rearview mirror. I did, too, but I didn’t see Sizemore’s goons on our tail. Herzog rode flaked out asleep in the truck bed as if he’d no care in the world. That’d soon change.
***
Soon after, we soon crested the treed mountains and, with my ears popping, swooped down into the next leafy draw. Chatting with Alicia on the drought causing the brush-and-timber fires, Mr. Kuzawa pointed a finger at the cut-off swerving into a deserted, shady wayside.
“Why don’t we grab a quick bite?” he said.
“You snatched the words out of my mouth,” said Alicia.
Slowing, I signaled my turn. In the rearview mirror, I saw Herzog sit up, a bemused expression on his face. I wanted to find better privacy for us. My cab truck once trolleyed across the parking lot vaulted the concrete curbstone, and my tires crunched over a slate chip footpath that angled into a copse of hollies, their berries already scarlet. The canopy of shade and the musical creek lent us a haven from the road’s baking slab.
“Is it legal to picnic down here?” she asked.
“Who cares? We renegades spit on the rules,” replied Mr. Kuzawa.
She giggled at his hardboiled patter, but his foxy eyes never let up probing around us. I halted the cab truck, and as I ranged out, I saw the lean body tension making his movements whiplike and stealthy. Something had put him on needles.
“I’ve got a picnic feeling.” He counterfeited a smile. “Alicia, break out your deviled eggs and the fixings.”
“May I use your tailgate?” she asked me.
“But of course,” I replied, yanking at the latch to flip down my tailgate and create an impromptu table.
All smiles, she broke out a red-checkered tablecloth from her wicker basket. “Give me a few minutes for set up.” She waved her hands, shooing us off.
“We’ll be off soon, so Herzog pitch in. Brendan and I will scout for unfriendlies.”
Herzog’s saucer eyes fastened to Mr. Kuzawa fingering his .44’s hammer. “Why? I didn’t spot anybody.”
“That’d have been hard for you to do,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “You rode down stretched out taking a damn nap.”
“The wind musses my hair.”
She laughed at us. “Hey, that’s my line, Mr. Herzog.”
Mr. Kuzawa and I left the holly bower and tramped up the slate chip footpath. Out of earshot, Mr. Kuzawa diverted me off the footpath to hide from the state road behind the pump house where a corn snake lazed on its hot tin roof.
“Herzog is lying through his stinking teeth,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “I saw a sedan shadow us from Yellow Snake. They lagged behind, anticipating our turn, and I saw them whip down a side road to avoid passing us.”
Having glimpsed at the mirrors every few minutes, I started to dispute him. “State cops or the sheriff?” I asked instead.
“Neither of them run tail jobs. They’d just haul us off to jail.” Mr. Kuzawa’s eyes slitted to gauge the copse of hollies. “Somebody knew we’d left Yellow Snake. I’d bet my dog tags that so-called lawyer is Sizemore’s stooge, and he phoned Sizemore from Alicia’s farmhouse before we left.”
I didn’t want to admit what by now was more than apparent. My bullet scratch inflicted during Mr. X’s raid at Lake Charles burned my side. “Herzog is my lawyer and I paid him.”
“Brutus was also thought to be an honorable man.”
I nodded as my acceptance sharpened. “A few other things look fishy. Herzog’s late night phone calls from the Chewink Motel leave him on shaky ground. His claim to be out scouting wears thin, too, doesn’t it?”
“Paper thin.”
“We didn’t just bump into him at Lake Charles. Wasn’t it a cinch locating the pot gardens? He had an uncanny sense of where to steer us. Why didn’t we tangle with the badass growers?
“Cobb and you sure did.”
“Fucking A we did. At the store while off finding his gloves, Herzog probably clued in Sizemore. How else did he lay armed in wait with a night vision scope to cream us at his mansion? Herzog also said he lost his gloves in the woods, but probably he left them as a marker pointing the way to us.”
“Your making bail got Sizemore jumpy, and he needed a spy. Herzog grabbed the bribe.”
Resentful blood heated by the new rage blasted into my face as I nodded.
“We’ll deal with Herzog in a bit. Right now Alicia is our main concern.”
“No guarantee I can keep a lid on my temper.”
“You gave her your promise, so we should get her moved.”
My headshake was forced. “Fine, let’s get to it.”
Back underneath the shady hollies, she’d laid out a tailgate feast of pickles, ham sandwiches, potato salad, and, of course, the deviled eggs, but I didn’t bring much of an appetite. Murder and deceit churned those glass shards together, tearing an open slash in my gut.
* * *
Smiling like the butcher’s dog, Mr. Kuzawa smacked his stomach. “Man, I’m full as a stuffed tick. Brendan eats so little. That’s how he stays bayonet-lean.”
Her laugh was nice. While she and Herzog cleaned up, I palmed Cobb’s .44, what I’d trade for a Zebco reel, an ice chest of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and a long, sunny afternoon of bass fishing on a pristine natural lake, not the gummy, man-built Lake Charles. Or I’d opt for a weekend at sloshing through a clear-as-vodka mountain stream, casting my home-tied flies to snag and release the rainbow trout. When had I last taken a break to trout fish? Eons ago, it seemed.
Sad to say any trout fishing was a farce. That musical creek behind us had dulled to a plodding note. Rehashing my talk with Mr. Kuzawa at the pump house relit my flame-tipped nerves. The betrayal I felt stoked my fury. Something better give and fast, or else I’d explode.
From the get-go, Herzog had played me for a chump. He was Sizemore’s boy, no denying it. The crushed glass grinding in my stomach gave me cramps. I stalked to the passenger side where the cab truck doors sat ajar. For a picnicker, Herzog sitting there looked glum and haggard. This unexpected side trip to move Alicia to Umpire had fouled up their big plans to nail me. My heartbeats galloped, and I almost went out of my head.
“Something rotten has loused under my skin,” I said.
“Is the trial stressing you out?” He placed his fleshy hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. I have it in the bag and sewn up tight.”