The Prince Of Deadly Weapons Read online

  Whatever was happening, whatever the cause, the brothers were like two factions of the same warring body until something Shane said or did brought his brother's attack to a halt and Tommy flung the tire iron into the weeds.

  Dane ran down the slope to his pickup. He reached into the open window. The cellular was on the front seat. He got hold of it and clicked on. "Yeah."

  "I'm outside in the parking lot," said Essie. "We can talk. Where are you now?"

  He scrambled back up the hill. "I'm at a bridge on Route 160 just past a town called Isleton."

  The brackish clay gave way beneath his feet and he partly slipped back down the hill. Essie could hear his grunts. "What's happening?"

  He tried to steady himself. "The Boyz have pulled off the road and are getting into some kind of fight."

  Dane got his footing back enough to climb the hill again. When he could, he grabbed hold of the guardrail and pulled, boots crabbing up the last few feet. He stood. Essie could hear his voice snap, "Shit!"

  The Bronco was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  DANE'S PICKUP SKIDDED back onto the road and swept under the steel towers of that girder bridge and his neck craned into another turn and when he got the wheels straight and gears shifted and was tearing up Isleton Road where it worked its way north he grabbed the cellular.

  "Dane… Dane?!"

  "Yeah."

  "Do you see them?"

  "No. But if they'd gone back the way they came I would have seen them. I'm sure."

  The speedometer on that small black Rampage kept climbing and still no sign of the Bronco.

  "Could they have gotten off the main road? Could I have lost them?"

  "Where are you now?"

  The landscape moved past him like a backdrop that was rotoscoped on the horizon. There was nothing he could anchor a mark on until a green and white road sign rose out of the distance across the river and shot past.

  "Ryde."

  She tried to think, to see. She knew the country. She had been on that road since she was old enough to see over the dashboard.

  "Well?"

  But the anxiousness she felt was bleeding out her ability to visualize what she knew by heart.

  "Are you there?"

  She closed her eyes and focused on the narrow corridor of that road. Somewhere behind her a yacht horn shrieked into her concentration but she pushed it away by focusing down tighter and tighter and suddenly she was aware she was in that same place as the night she swam Disappointment Slough.

  "Are you there?!"

  "There's no road. None till you get to Walnut Grove, which is a few miles. So keep going. Go!"

  Dane's boot had the accelerator tongue flat against the floor-board.

  "The gas gauge is starting to lick at empty."

  "Maybe I should call the police and tell them—"

  He cut her off, shouting, "No!"

  * * *

  SHANE STARED at the gym bag in the back seat. They were carrying a shitload worth of jack and the whole fuckin' day hung over him like some black invocation. It was one thing to play neck for those sons-of-bitches. All right… All right… But to have to take it when some mouth jockey comes right into your crib and throws his smack at you and you can't get to retrofit him for the box…

  He looked at his brother. Tommy was grimly agitated as he watched the road just peel away beneath the Bronco. Shane wanted to say "Let's rape 'em. Take the fuckin' bag, load the plane and just sky it. Leave them holding each other's dicks— period."

  * * *

  THROUGH A broken line of trees the deep green flat of orchards and farmland spilled outward under oncoming gray thunder-heads. Details were, for Dane, inconsequential blurs. Everything was the road ahead, the road ahead.

  Essie stood alone like some castoff by the dock side railing, her breaths short, pensive. "Walnut Grove isn't going to be far now… you'll be able to see River Road… remember… where we went drinking that night down at Sugar's… Remember?"

  His eyes were fixed on that small core of space where the asphalt cut the horizon; his hands felt hot against the steering wheel.

  "Unless they stop there's more than one way to go… but they're gonna have to take one of two bridges… watch the bridges."

  He had to catch them first.

  "Watch the bridges," she told him.

  "I heard you."

  In the wavery distance his eyes marked a shield of light coming off bumper chrome.

  "This might be them—"

  The road took a hard turn and rose imperceptibly and with it Dane saw the Bronco sitting on its huge tires until it was lost behind a wall of wind rippled undergrowth and palms.

  When Dane's pickup took the hard turn he could hear the polished burn of tire tread along the white line and then Walnut Grove was there between the slanting shadow of trees and open spots of sky, like some brush landing that grew out of another century.

  Dane had to watch traffic now. A van slid in front of him and he gunned past using the slow lane. A head croaked out the van window cursing and Dane put his fingers to his lips as if to say "Ssssh" and then he spotted the Bronco again strobing through the steel girders of a bridge that crossed the Sacramento.

  "They're on the bridge."

  "Which bridge?"

  "The one to my right. South of River Road."

  "Tell me if they turn left or right."

  Dane pushed it into the fast lane using traffic for cover. "They're going right," he said as he made the turn that would take him across.

  "That's gonna lead them inland, Dane. Walnut Grove Road."

  He looked at his gas gauge. "I don't know how far I can make it. I'm living on fumes here."

  "Listen to me. They can't be going too far. Not Tehachapi. Not even Stockton. Otherwise they wouldn't have come this way from Rio Vista. It's my guess they're going somewhere close in the Delta."

  * * *

  WALNUT GROVE Road cut an angled line to the southeast across Tyler Island. On his left Dane passed scrub hills that made up the West Thornton Gas Fields. The earth there was the color of parchment and honey. He saw the old levee road which traced Snodgrass Slough as it made its way down toward the North Fork of the Mokelumne River.

  A strange circuity struck him that he had not felt even the first time he saw the Delta by air. The way those sloughs and rivers swept in at odd angles then slipped away almost as suddenly, as silently. And the places you came upon looked so much like places you had just been. It was as if this intense, high speed meander he was taking had gone a long distance but not gotten very far. And he wondered if this was the world subtly warning him of its ways.

  The Bronco wasn't high stepping anymore, but doing a casual sixty-five and it forced Dane to ease back rather than edge out. He kept wary. "How does it feel," he asked Essie, "to know you were right?"

  She opened her eyes and stood looking at the water, water which might well have passed through a channel way exactly where Dane was now. She remembered how it felt having been right once before, or close to right anyway, the night Taylor was taken from the earth.

  A collection of emotions seized her. At the center one was more especially true than the others. "It scares me," she said. "It scares me."

  "How I wish… they're turning off the road."

  * * *

  WHAT IS going on? Where are you now?"

  There was a bridge, another slough. The ground ahead was mostly open farmland except for a road just before the bridge which led down to a landing of some kind cut from the berm thicket. The Bronco had turned onto the road which passed two wooden buildings facing the slough then curled around and down further yet to a sand parking lot that backed both buildings.

  From his description she knew right away. "Giustis," she said. "You should see a wooden sign—"

  Perched above the trees he saw the clap board calling card. "Yes," he answered. He was maybe a hundred yards back. "If I follow them down that road I'll be found out."

 
"Cross the slough," she told him. "Cross. There's plenty of trees on the other side."

  * * *

  IT WAS a risk. But so was staying where he was. He had to pass less than fifty yards behind them. If they caught sight of his pickup in their rearview mirror…

  * * *

  SHE HEARD the change of sound his tires made as they went from road to bridge to road then swerved left.

  She could see it now. The Bronco taking the turn past Giustis. Then Dane gunning it across the bridge. She felt like she had crawled into his head, was there behind his eyes watching.

  * * *

  THE FENNS parked in the lot below the bar. Shane walked quietly behind his brother who carried the gym bag over one shoulder.

  Shane knew he didn't have much time to make his case. Romero might already be there waiting for them. "I don't know why we just don't take that bag, load the plane, and go."

  Tommy did not respond. He did not turn around. His brother got nothing but back. An RV pulled into the lot and passed alongside them kicking up dust. They had to continue on Indian file up the driveway.

  "Tommy. You hearin' me? They couldn't do shit. Let's just rack 'em."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A ROAD RAN parallel to Giustis across the slough and tucked in behind a hedgerow of bulrushes. From there Dane could talk to Essie and watch the landing without being seen.

  "Where are they now?"

  Dane saw the Boyz park when he'd crossed the bridge. He now scanned the road that fronted Giustis and a long series of wooden stairs half hidden by trees that led down from the road to the dock. Two boats were tied off, a third was being refueled.

  "I don't see them."

  "Maybe they were never going to Tehachapi. Maybe they're set to meet someone. This Merton. Maybe him. Maybe there."

  * * *

  THE RESTAURANT was dark and quiet. It took the eyes a little getting used to the lack of light. Tommy and Shane sat at the bar alone. In the far room a few tables were occupied.

  "You didn't answer me."

  Tommy sipped his beer. "I answered you."

  "You said nothing."

  "I thought that was enough." Tommy glanced at his watch. "Drink your beer."

  * * *

  IT'S ALL stolen, isn't it?" said Essie.

  "Charles sends some bullshit package to Nathan who is to bring it to the Boyz who are going to deliver it to so on and so forth."

  Essie looked at the yacht club building. Its mural windows stood out in stark relief against the sleek white stucco lines and reflected in those huge glass panels a tidal darkness that was sweeping away the blue distance. "Maybe the Fenns are using Nathan, and he doesn't know."

  "The Fenns have the classic look of Jethros who have reached their high-water mark as bottom feeders."

  "The rumors about Nathan and the General that Taylor always blew off as gossip, they must be true then. What I saw and heard that night between Nathan and Ivy, that must be true."

  Deflated, she sat on a bench. There were gulls overhead and another shrill air cutting of a yacht's horn. "I don't want it to be true. I don't want to know I believed in the wrong people."

  The trees and bulrushes around Dane twisted with the tidal storm that was closing in and he squatted to hold his cover. "There's what you think you see, what you want to see, and what you actually see. If that's too much, there's not seeing at all. I know firsthand."

  * * *

  WE SHOULD punk 'em, Tommy."

  Tommy put his beer down. "I got to hear this rant from you every time. Every fuckin' time." Shane was turning into the bad thoughts dreams were made from. "You believe they'd just sleepwalk through a loss like that? They got people carrying these jewels out of a country stuffed up their assholes."

  "Let 'em find us."

  "You're thinking strictly trailer park. How-much-I-got-in-my-pocket-now shit. We can't go maverick. Look at Nathan and the General. That gig they built for themselves. I served dudes like this in Kuwait. All brass and ass. Any B-felony bullshit they can pull off we can pull off. And Charles, that Gen-X illusion married good otherwise he'd be somebody's bitch in stir for dealing."

  Tommy got right in his brother's face, got him in the grip of his stare. "We will learn their business, their contacts. We will do as they ask. We will change their fuckin' diapers if we got to. And don't fuck with Rudd. You hear? Don't go maverick. 'Cause when the time comes we are gonna ask for a little gold leaf. We are gonna ask to be their partners. Serious mainline shit. And if we don't get it, then all bets are off. We will take it to their crib. Show 'em what a serious dose of—"

  Tommy stopped short as Damon Romero slid into the darkness beside them. "Sorry I'm late."

  * * *

  WHY DIDN'T you want me to call the police?"

  It was becoming cool as the sunlight slipping through that great river of rain clouds grew less and less.

  "Dane? I could call Roy."

  The door to Giustis opened and Dane eased himself up to see over and through the wind-turned bulrushes. "What if the Boyz are gone by then? What if they've managed to hand off that gym bag before they're hit on?"

  Romero stepped out into the grainy daylight. The bulrushes were snapping wildly and Dane had to push them away from his face to see who this was.

  "Is that the only reason?" Essie asked.

  "What other reason would there be?"

  "Getting away with a little taste of 'moral outrage'… Dane?"

  Romero looked over his shoulder and Essie was listening closely now, not just for what Dane said but how he said what he said, and he was listening as he watched and here came the Boyz stepping through the doorway and joining Romero and he could hear the silence at her end loud and steady as the ticking of a clock.

  From decency to rage to cunning and the day wasn't over yet. "I won't lie to you," Dane said. "There's a part of me that can relate to the Boyz' roadside approach to life. If that's what you're asking."

  The Fenns followed Romero across the road.

  "Is this about me, Essi e… or you?"

  Tommy had the gym bag slung over a shoulder.

  "Is it because the people you believed in were not worth you?"

  The first spots of rain fell on her face and everything she felt she refelt in instant variations. Was this about him… or her? Was it because the people she believed in had become suspect and so she felt a need to test him? Did their deceit demand she test her selfhood against them? Was it because the system she put her faith in had failed her? Or did she just plain flat-out hate the Fenns and wanted a reason, any reason, to exact a little "moral outrage" of her own, to be there ringside carrying a skull and crossbones sign when they looked up stunned from their own destruction.

  "The Boyz are back," he said. "With a man I've never seen before."

  Essie stood. She wiped the drops that wet her cheeks and eyes as Dane described Romero; the strut walk, the lean well-manicured profile, each word marked by a hand movement, his shirt open one button too many, maybe a gold crucifix brandished around his neck, maybe a crucifix.

  Where were they going?

  Dane lost them for a moment in the trees along the levee side of the road. He ran through the bulrushes pushing open a pathway, his eyes darting from point to point to point until he picked them up in the half shadowed patches of tinted light making their way down that long series of plank steps to the dock.

  "The dock," he said. "They're going to the dock."

  Romero stepped onto the dock, as did Tommy.

  "They're getting on a boat."

  Shane was left to release the pile line.

  "Is it possible to follow them?"

  Essie couldn't see how. Romero stepped into the closed cabin of that day cruiser. He took the helm, sliding down into a pedestal seat. She couldn't envision that rival landscape of channels and waterways fast enough to give him a chance. Shane jumped on-board. She couldn't create a cogent road map from memory with the kind of immediacy he would need.

&
nbsp; Dane could hear the twin inboards fire as he shunted his way through the trees and rushes shouting into his cellular, "They're taking off! Is there a way to follow them?"

  "I don't—" She stopped herself from finishing that sentence of a thought.

  The day boat swung out into the slough. "Essie!"

  The rain hit against her eyes and cheeks. A thrust of anger went through her. Anger at being impotent. At being helplessly unable. At being a set of eyes and a mind that stared into the phone voiceless. At being—

  "Stay with them as best you can!" she said. "Give me a few minutes. And keep the line open!"

  As the day boat came around Essie raced across the yacht club parking lot toward her Falcon. When the huge inboard Cats kicked out full throttle Dane could hear it across the slough and the cruiser shot forward. It was heading back up the Mokelumne, back the same way the Fenns had come.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ESSIE CLAWED AT the glove compartment box trying to get inside so fast the cover snapped loose. She found her map of the Delta beneath a stuffing of car insurance forms and compacts. As she shook the map open the sky erupted and left its acetylene mark from heaven to earth. She got the map flat across the rain-spotted engine hood when thunder breached the miles.

  Against a green background the map traced in the Delta roads and sloughs, channel depths were numbered, the location of ferries and bridges was placed, whether bridges swung open were raised or stationary was scripted in, as was the clearance of each for boats.

  "Dane… where are you?!"

  He told her he was running Walnut Grove Road west. She finger raced to that spot on the map.

  "Listen to me," she said.

  Through a rain-spatted windshield he could see the day boat ahead and to his right. "The slough swings away from the road soon," she said. Tommy was inside the covered cockpit beside Romero. Shane was standing behind them, holding onto the rocket-launching-type rod holders bracketed into the roof's tailing edge. "After that, there's one of two ways to go. They can stay on the river till it turns into Snodgrass Slough or… they can take what's called the Cross Delta Canal, which leads back to Walnut Grove and the Sacramento River."