“If any witness saw him with us, we’re toast,” I said.
“Who saw us together? Mrs. Cornwell not wearing her bifocals is blind as a bat. Alicia will stay mum, and she really saw nothing. Niki our server skipped off to Shreveport to hang out. All of us whites look alike to the zipperhead fry cook. The store clerk just blew her cigarette smoke into his face. He stayed in the cab while you and I talked to Mrs. Nelson and Victor.”
Nodding, I said nothing and felt tapped out. I’d gone over my limit of spies, jails, overdoses, kidnappings, beatings, double crosses, bullets, and, all the furtive glances I’d taken over my shoulder day and night.
They were back. Mr. Kuzawa told me to watch the cab truck mirrors. Our wary tail job gave us an extra cushion, but their persistent high beams never snuffed out. Within the next mile, we galloped up on dogleg curve in the two-laner and a sunken dirt road tracking straight ahead into the deep woods.
“Give them a taste of their own medicine,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
The cab truck barreled off the two-laner onto the sunken dirt road, coasted a short distance, and halted in a dirt track skid. After extinguishing the headlights, Mr. Kuzawa worked the column shift into reverse, dumped the clutch, and the cab truck—its rear tires digging—hurtled us backward. At the last second, he cut the wheel and swerved in behind a craggy rock formation. A dust cloud sifted by us. Only when he downshifted to first gear did I catch on. Our pursuers would come up and wonder just which road we’d used.
Meanwhile the rock formation, one of many, was our concealment, and he nestled us behind it. We hopped out and scaled some twenty feet to reach the rock’s cap. The chilly air smacked my face. My foot balanced on the narrow ledge gave me a commanding vista of the crossroads. My cold fingers clinging to the fissure in the rock ached. The bands of muscles across my lower back tightened.
After a few minutes, our tail job traipsed along the two-laner, and observing the divergent roads seemed to baffle them. The sedan sledded off the two-laner, came to a crunching halt, and its doors flailed out. Two stickman shadows moved by the front fenders and into the headlights’ triangles of brightness. They left the engine idling. The binoculars I’d had the quick wits to bring up with us magnified the agitation in their postures. I also saw them clicking their flashlights on and off.
“I told you they’d stop.” Mr. Kuzawa below me was helping to buttress my perch on the rock wall. He whispered up more. “Who are they?”
“The dark makes it hard to see them.”
I focused my binocular lenses on the headlights. The shadows cloaked the pair of men until they advanced into the tunnels of brightness. I was able to make out their dark suits over narrow ties and white dress shirts. One man’s coal black pigment contrasted to his partner’s onion white skin.
“They’re a salt-and-pepper team,” I murmured down to Mr. Kuzawa. “They’re in dark suits, and their boxy car has a whip radio antenna screwed to the trunk. No weapons are in sight.”
“Dark suits and a boxy car, you say? A whip radio antenna is on the trunk. Aw man, shit.”
Processing that, I wet my lips. “What do you mean?”
“Our salt-and-pepper partners ain’t with Sizemore. They’re G-men.”
His revelation unnerved me. “Feds?”
“Probably DEA or maybe FBI.”
“
Sh-h-h.
They’re heading this way.”
The white man headed down the hard surface of the two-laner, craning his head as if for a clearer sight angle. His flashlight beam crisscrossed the pavement. Then I panned the binoculars wide right. The black agent, shorter and stockier, halted ten or so paces on the sunken dirt lane we’d taken. His flashlight beam spraying back and forth inspected his front, and I could see our stirred up dust eddying in the shaft to its brightness.
“Earl, what’s your read?” asked the white man, his abrasive bass amplifying over the dark. “Did they go your way? Or did they stick to the hardtop?”
“Well, Gil,” said Earl, speaking with a drawl. “I can observe a bit of dust and a fresh skid mark. Their taillights didn’t seem to follow the hardtop’s arc. I say that indicates they forked off this way, but we’ve lost their signal, so that’s no aid.”
“That’s par for the course in these toolies. Playing the percentages, we’ll stick to the hardtop. There’s no good reason why they’d use the dirt road.”
“With these squirrely mothers, logic doesn’t seem to fly,” Leaning in to peer, Earl hosed his beam to probe between the shaggy tree trunks. “They’d have their nutty reasons. The dirt road is a local shortcut, maybe.”
“No sir, we’ll continue on the hardtop.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Gil’s voice was a bark. “I’m pulling rank on you, Earl. I say we follow the hardtop.”
“Sure, Gil, whatever. I’m easy about it.”
Flashlights off, they did an about-face, and their shadows stalked into the headlight’s bright streams again.
Gil’s sharp look included Earl. “These hillbillies are gun crazies. Take that convenience store robbery.”
I saw Earl’s curt nod. “Yeah, Christ. The glass and blood splattered all over. The crime scene photos look as if an abortion took place in there.”
I replayed the store robbery we’d thwarted: taunts, gunshots, and corpses.
“Tell me why four New York punks are even in Tennessee,” said Gil.
“Just off on a long joyride,” replied Earl. “That’s the song they sang at their police grilling. The state boys collared the last punk in the hot Caddy. He’d run out of money, gas, and luck.”
Gil’s face buckled in its anger. “The shotgun-toting granny is a liar. She thinks she’s so clever. Somebody sure as shit gave her a hand.”
“Boss, don’t let it pop a blood vessel. Who gives two farts? The local yokels can handle that part of investigation.”
I watched Gil jerk his shoulders. “True enough. We just work the federal side. All right, let’s bag it for the night.”
“Holiday Inn, tally ho and none too soon.”
The car’s doors thudded shut, and the V-8 engine growled to life. The sharp-dressed agents skidded broadside, squealing to grip the two-laner and then lit out in the direction of Yellow Snake. Spidering down from the rock wall allowed us to sit down and rest at its base. The pellets of sweat dribbled off my forehead. The feeling returned and eased my finger cramps. Mr. Kuzawa got my capsule summary of what I’d overheard, finishing with, “Now the DEA narcs are in our pants.”
“No, we’re just a useful conduit. Their tentacles are out for the local pot growers. Just the major operations get them juiced up.”
“Major operations?”
“It stands to reason. We learned Sizemore raises tons of pot at Lake Charles, and now the Feds have caught wind of it.”
An inspiration excited me. “That’s how we get rid of this hot potato. See?”
“Not really, Brendan.”
“We tie up what we have on Sizemore and dump it on the DEA.”
“But no solid evidence pins the dope on Sizemore. Besides our goosing the DEA might jeopardize Edna’s safety if he feels the heat and decides to end it all in a messy hurry.”
That made sense. We needed to drum up the proof. Mr. Kuzawa drew out a flashlight from his pocket and knelt down at my cab truck. He aimed the beam’s oval on the front bumper and, leaning, groped his hand underneath it to get at something.
“I verified this electronic tracking gizmo belongs to our pals.”
Taken aback, I studied the James Bondian transmitter—no larger than a pack of Marlboros though weighing a bit heavier—Mr. Kuzawa had given me. “That’s the signal they just mentioned. Why didn’t they dog us from the wayside down to Umpire?”
“Because while we chowed down at the wayside I deactivated the tracking gizmo. Then I flipped its beeper on before we left my place. That’s why I waited until dark to return to Yellow Snake, and how they keyed on us again. But I had to be double sure. They lost the signal after we deployed behind this big rock.” Mr. Kuzawa flipped off the tracking gizmo. “We’ll sign on again, but we’ll do it when it suits us the best.”
“When did they plant it on my bumper?”
“Probably while we were inside the library.”
“What tipped you off?”
“Their surveillance was too slick for Sizemore’s crew. Once a Fed myself, I played a hunch and found it.”
“How long were you a Fed?” I asked.
He grew curt. “We’ll just leave it at a few years.”
I quit my nosy questions. Mr. Kuzawa told me he thought Sizemore had returned to the mansion and making another nighttime raid was too risky. So we elected to bivouac in my truck cab parked behind the rock column. Our seats were comfortable enough. Soon I heard his heavy breaths, but having rested earlier, I didn’t feel sleepy and stayed vigilant. Herzog’s game pouch jabbed me in the hip. I disabled the handheld radio and tossed it from the window. Bored, I let my imagination tune in to Valdez’s pulsing nightlife. The soft neon to the ad signs glowed as a beacon to the lost sons. I’d better look hard and fast, or else I’d miss seeing it.
I tagged along with a gang of pipeline roughnecks out barhopping. With the long necks in their grasps, they took swigs between belting out cheers. They were a happy-go-lucky bunch, and you couldn’t help but want to join their off-hours revelry. Shivering in the dark, cold cab, I started to feel bereft and hollow on the inside. The high times in Valdez stood a world away from Lake Charles, and I’d never get there by sitting on my thumbs as I was now.
Mr. Kuzawa moaned in his sleep. He garbled something about “Chosin,” “blood,” and “death.”
I just let him be.
* * *
At daybreak, my cab truck accelerated back to Sizemore’s main estate. My leg and arm muscles were sore from our rock climbing the night before, but my sidelong glance took in a visual treat. Out Mr. Kuzawa’s window, the cerise red streaks painted Wednesday’s breathtaking sunrise on the indigo horizon.
We traversed Yellow Snake through its residential streets and parking lot cut throughs. My radar didn’t key on any sheriff’s deputy or government sedans. A geezer pushed a power mower trimming between the geometric-shaped hollies in his bonsai garden. A lady who resembled a youthful Dinah Shore plucked her newspaper bundle from its toss into an azalea bed. Beyond the town limits was the driveway entrance to the Arbogast farmhouse where Alicia had cooped.
Mr. Kuzawa tipped his chin at it. “Set a Zippo to it.”
I nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
“The last time we searched in Sizemore’s house, so now we’ll check in the outbuildings.”
Soon we rode up on Ralph Sizemore’s main gate. But instead of driving by it and turning on the nearby bush road that we’d used before, Mr. Kuzawa tamped our brakes, and we slowed.
“Rub out any rent-a-cop guard,” he said.
“You’re kidding, I hope.”
“I’m not ready to get my ass shot up, are you?”
I retrieved the 12-gauge stored under the cab seat. A rustic guard hut constructed of fieldstone with a red slate roof sat at the base of the serpentine driveway. No guard waved a gun at us turning at the gate into Sizemore’s driveway. It snaked us uphill between the fenced pastures. The fields of jade green grass I saw rising and falling to the tree-clad foothills was worthy of a tourist postcard.
Sizemore’s mansion on its own knoll supported a steep-pitched roof, and the gutters were patinated copper. Steel bars girded the angular windows, and the building had the grim charm of a prison cellblock. A bungalow sat tucked behind it under the maples, and a blue Javelin parked under their shade. No fancy car driven by Sizemore was in sight. Further on, I took in a tennis court and a below ground swimming pool, neither looking in recent use. Ashleigh had excelled more as a doper than as an athlete. Just the pothead calling the kettle black, I scoffed.
My truck bumped off the driveway pavers and traveled over the mowed grass. More eye candy awaited us. Svelte thoroughbreds raced in the next pasture. We rolled by an outdoor ring, paddock, and stable complex, all well kept. Ashleigh Sizemore had blossomed into a nubile girl on this fairytale set where I played her venomous troll. One kiss from me and her graces went all to smash. My sight turned hazy as I dipped into a brief reverie.
“Sorry about that, Ashleigh. It’s a knack I have.”
“I can see you’re closing in on my actual killer.”
“Our odds are improving all the time.”
“Excellent. You’ve one more small matter to do in my service. It will test your courage more than anything else has so far.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. I’m almost out of this. Did you know all along Herzog was double crossing us?”
She laughed, no teeth. “Brendan, you’re so gullible. Friends will always fail you.”
“Then I don’t believe I want to talk to you anymore.”
The bite of anger jolted me back to real time. “We’ll case that first building,” I said, pointing.