I’d been down this road before. But it had been years ago, and the road had been dark then and was darker now. The moon, just a faint blur in an overcast sky, was no help; only my headlights lit the world, which is to say the stretch of concrete immediately before me.
This was the River Road, the road in question being narrow two-lane Highway 22, the river the Mississippi, although its presence over at my left-not at all far away-couldn’t be proved by me. A blackness of trees, beyond the railroad tracks, obscured any river view.
Soon-not far from Davenport, really-the quarry began, or signs of it anyway: dunes of crushed rock rose at my right like monstrous anthills; my headlights caught swirls of powder, which built into a modest but steady dust storm. Then, at left, skeletal steel buildings and machinery mingled with silo-like structures, awash in a greenish-gray glow, amber lights winking here and there, white billowing smokestacks lathering the dark sky, tempting God’s razor.
And now on my right was the vast quarry, acres of emptiness, beautiful in its barrenness, a natural wonder enduring this ongoing invasion stoically. An enclosed conveyor mechanism slashed across the sky diagonally, from the plant to the quarry, going again and again to this limestone well to make little bags of cement, and bigger bags of money.
Beyond the mile-long quarry was Buffalo, a village whose small business section-a few unpretentious restaurants, antique shop, gas station-was scattered along the right, with railroad tracks and, finally, the visible Mississippi at left, its surface reflecting the gray filtering of moonlight.
And beyond Buffalo was another quarry, an abandoned one, filled with water now, put there by man or nature or somebody, so that it was, in effect, a lake. And on that lake, above its shimmering surface, above the ledges of limestone, was a house. It was not small; its lines were modern in the Frank Lloyd Wright sense, with the central part of the house a story taller than the rest. A few lights were on, glowing yellowly behind sheer curtains. From the highway, looking across the expanse of what for lack of a better term I’ll call Lake Quarry, it seemed not just distant, but abstract.
Behind the house, the bluff rose, thick with trees; those trees were bare, but no matter-tonight they were an ebony blot against the charcoal sky. The home-the estate-of Preston Freed was seemingly impregnable. Fuck it; I was going calling, anyway.
Half a mile or so down, there was a road-two narrow lanes of gravel-that seemed the most likely access to the Freed estate. My Sunbird stirred up dust, climbing the bluff until it leveled out, and dipped and farmland began appearing on my left; but on my right was forest, and barbed wire with signs that said, PRIVATE PROPERTY- TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. Added to one of the signs, by somebody unimpressed by these cornfield threats, was: AND EATEN.
Soon, off to my right, a paved driveway materialized, blocked by a heavy, unpainted steel gate-nothing fancy, just formidable. A car, a brown Ford, was parked on the other side of the gate, on the grass, and somebody was in it; the orange glow of a cigarette showed on the driver’s side.
I’d gotten a good look, going by, and without attracting undue attention, either. On gravel like this, you had to move slow; and on a night this dark, the watchdog in the parked Ford couldn’t see whether I was looking his way or not. And what the hell, with that massive, unpleasant-looking gate, anybody driving by for the first time was bound to gawk a little.
About a mile down I found a little access inlet to a cornfield, and I left the Sunbird there. I was wearing a black windbreaker over a black turtleneck sweater with black slacks and… let’s just say I was wearing your basic black and leave it at that. I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t not nervous. Home invasions are not, as I believe I said, my style. And a home invasion where an estate is involved-an estate inhabited by a wealthy paranoid political crackpot who thinks the Soviets are after him-was like nothing I’d ever attempted.
I had a nine-millimeter in the shoulder holster, under the windbreaker, which was unzipped. I did not have the noise suppressor attached. If this little endeavor came apart on me, I could need to do a lot of shooting, fast, considering the number of bodyguards and security types this guy would likely employ. And a silenced gun can’t be used rapid fire; you have to work the action by hand, each round, because the gas you’re suppressing, to keep the gun quiet, is the very thing that makes the automatic automatic.
What I had instead-and what was in my hand this very moment as I moved across the gravel road to the barbed wire fence and its warning signs-was a so-called stun gun. I’d picked it up at a pawnshop in Davenport this afternoon. I’d never used one before, though I was plenty familiar with the principle, as I’d carried its bulkier relative, the Taser, on some jobs right before I quit the business.
The Nova XR-5000 Stun Gun was pocket size, not much bigger than a doctor’s beeper, which it somewhat resembled; its two brass studs would send not a beep, but a 47,000-volt message. I gave it a test burst, and an arc snapped and sizzled whitely between the two test electrodes. Just like in an old Frankenstein movie.
This toy had its drawbacks: you had to be in direct contact with your man, and the jolt of the thing would probably make your man scream; it took three to five seconds of contact to make the subject lose muscle control. The Taser, on the other hand, shot darts, and at a good distance. But then the Taser needed reloading every two darts, and this puppy carried around thirty hits, if properly recharged.
Tonight, you see, I had to be careful not to kill anybody. It was a pain in the ass, but it was necessary.
The barbed wire fence was only waist high; it could be stepped over without much difficulty, if you were careful, and I was. For all the threatening NO TRESPASSING signs, and the heavy gate, Freed’s security wasn’t anything to write home about. State of the art it wasn’t. There were no television cameras down by that gate, nor was the gate anything that couldn’t be ducked under or over. Killing the watchdog in the Ford would be no real challenge to anybody who even vaguely knew what he was doing.
I moved slowly, breath visible in the chill air, easing through the trees, most of which were bare of leaves, though there were occasional pines, so I had both leaves and needles under my sneakered feet, which made for some crunching no matter how hard I tried not. I wasn’t any fucking commando, after all, though I’d done some jungle fighting. But you didn’t run into many pine cones or beds of leaves where I had my on-the-job training.
Finally I came to the edge of the trees and the house was perched on a gently rolling, landscaped lawn, like a tiny toy house on top of a great big cake. Only it wasn’t a tiny house: it sprawled, an angular, many-windowed affair, dark natural wood and sandstone giving it the feel of a cabin or lodge.
My vantage point was to the right rear of the place; in back there was a big garage-big enough for a small fleet of cars-which connected to that paved driveway, which I now could see travelled along the edge of the quarry drop-off. I was up high enough to see the view: Lake Quarry; the narrow highway; some trees and the Mississippi beyond. Even on this dreary night, it was some view. A man who lived in a house like that-who owned a house like that-who looked out on a view like that-could come to think of himself as pretty all fucking powerful.
I almost didn’t see the guard. He walked right by me, not five feet away. The trees hid me, and he was lazy, not directing his flashlight into the trees; in fact, his flashlight wasn’t even on.
But he was a burly guy, in a heavy brown leather bomber jacket with a. 357 mag on his hip; he looked like a sheriff’s deputy but without the insignia. He didn’t hear me come up behind him, slip the stun gun under his coat and against the small of his back. My hand was over his mouth, stifling his scream, slapping the wide slash of adhesive tape in place and his body shook from the shock of it. Nice part is, the shock doesn’t transfer from his body to yours. You just hold on, pressing the button while counting One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi, Four Mississippi, Five Mississippi, and he just does this pathetic jitterbug in your arms, wetting his pants.
I lowered him to the ground and brought his hands behind him, using flex-cuffs to bind him. I bought a gross of these “throw-away handcuffs” years ago-they’re like garbage bag ties, little lightweight pieces of plastic with a serrated tip that draws up tight through an eye. I put another one of them around his ankles-the only way these things could be removed was by cutting the fuckers off-and dragged him by the feet into the forest. He smelled bad. Full bladder.
There wasn’t piss on his jacket, however, and he was enough bigger than me that it fit over my own; his keys were in the jacket pocket. He was out of it. It would be fifteen minutes before his brain resumed control. I removed his black western-styled holster and slung on his. 357 mag. I picked up his flashlight, which he had dropped (understandably), and carried it in my left hand-the stun gun in my right, twenty-nine or so more pops to go-and moved with casual authority across the rolling golf-course of a lawn, toward the house.
It was a walk that took probably three minutes and only seemed an eternity. I walked across the paved area to the back of the house, where a stone stairway with wood banister rose to a landing flush with what was probably the kitchen, and was about to go up when the door opened and another sentry came out and said to somebody within, “It’s quiet tonight, too quiet,” archly ominous. And then he laughed. He was another big man, wearing jeans and plaid shirt with a big revolver on his hip. Probably another. 357.
He was standing on the landing, lighting up a cigarette when I joined him and put the stun gun in his belly, slapping tape across his open mouth, his eyes so wide the white showing overwhelmed iris and pupil. He struggled, and I pushed against him, maintaining the contact, and he danced with the jolt, and peed, and broke the railing behind him and landed on his back about a story down. I pondered going down and cuffing him, but figured the sound of wood breaking and flesh-and-bone thumping might have roused people within the house, and I couldn’t fuck around with it.
So I went inside, and it was a kitchen, a big, white, gleaming kitchen you could feed an army out of, though, incongruously, there was but a tiny table in its midst, where a paperback adventure novel was folded open, a cup of steaming coffee nearby, another empty cup before another chair, which was pulled out. No one sat at this table; apparently my most recent dancing partner had been sitting there. But so had somebody else, and where was the guy? Or was he the one who was sleeping in the forest, at the moment?
I moved into the house; the floor was slate-a stone waterfall, lit from below with amber lights, gurgled under a winding, open staircase. Off to the right was an office area, a secretarial post apparently, several photocopy machines, three desks with small computers, counters and cupboards for storage and work areas, the wall space decorated with framed posters from Freed’s various campaigns, all of them showing his white-haired, tanned, blue-eyed, boyishly smiling countenance. As much as ten years separated some of the posters, yet he seemed the same in them all; plastic surgery, or a portrait aging in the attic, maybe.
The secretarial room opened doorless onto what was apparently a conference room, although it had a fireplace (unlit) over which reigned a framed oil painting of Freed, dressed as a riverboat captain, and a small but well-stocked bar was in one corner. This room was hung with wildlife paintings and prints and glassed-in displays of frontier weaponry, rifles, bowie knives, the like. Attached to this warm, open-beamed room, with no doorway separating it, was a small office/study, with a desk and many phones and a wall of photos of Freed with celebrities (including Angela Jordan’s soap opera star), and two walls of books-political ones exclusively, authors ranging from Adolf Hitler to Robert F. Kennedy, from Karl Marx to Eugene McCarthy.
“Have you seen Dick?” somebody behind me asked.
I picked up a paperweight from the desk-a heavy brass replica of the Presidential seal, about as big around as a glazed doughnut-and turned and hurled it into the stomach of the approaching bodyguard, another brute, the missing link from the kitchen table, this one with thinning blond hair and a light blue workshirt and jeans and, on his hip, the ever-present. 357 mag.
Which he was going for, incidentally, when I reached out and shoved the stun gun in his belly and pressed the button; he let a yelp out, but not much of one, because the paperweight I had tossed into him, like a discus, had knocked the wind out of him and he hadn’t recovered. And now he was busy doing the electrical dance. I kept my hand over his mouth till he was under, and eased him down. He didn’t pee. Maybe that’s where he’d been: the john.
I did take the time to flex-cuff this guy, hands and ankles both, and slap some tape on his mouth, and went back the way I’d come-past the winding staircase and waterfall, past the front entryway, and into a living room with the breathtaking picture-window view I’d expected. There was another fireplace, also unlit; over it was another oil portrait of Freed-this time dressed in buckskins, like a frontier hero. The furnishings were modern and expensive but looked comfortable; modular stuff, earth tones. A big 27-inch console TV was perched in one corner. Glass sliding doors opened onto a patio, or did in nicer weather, anyway.
I back-tracked again, and went up the winding staircase. I found myself in a round room, a circular bar with more political posters and Freed memorabilia on display, a few more antique frontier weapons hanging, and windows on the world. Chairs were gathered around the edges of the circle, as if someone (gee, I wonder who) might have occasion to stand centerstage and pontificate in the round.
Off to the right, I could hear muffled sound; then laughter, also muffled. I moved closer to it. From behind a door, to the left of a well-stocked, leather-fronted bar. Talking, laughter, very muffled.
Sitcom.
Somebody was watching TV in there. But who, and how many of them were there? Well, sometimes one is reduced to the obvious. I looked through the keyhole.
Another large bodyguard type was sitting in a chair, and he was smiling; the chair was comfortable, he had a can of beer in one hand, and Bill Cosby was on the TV screen. What more could a man ask for?
I was on top of him putting the stun gun in his belly as he slouched there before he could do anything but try to scream into my hand and the adhesive strip, and pee his pants. Beer’ll do it to you.
I cuffed him, hands in back, and secured his ankles, too, then looked around what seemed to be the quarters for the security staff. Though not much more than a cubicle, there was a TV, a small refrigerator, a couple of couches, several stacks of men’s magazines and paperbacks and a private bathroom. Then I explored the room beyond: a simple guest room, double bed, empty dresser.
Moving back into the circular bar, I tried another doorway, found myself in a hallway; past a closed side door, at the end of the hall, was light. Muted light, but light, like the first glow of dawn over the horizon. If you get up that early.
I rounded the corner and there, on a waterbed the size of New Jersey, on black silk sheets, a mirror overhead, was the Democratic Action party’s candidate, with his dick in the mouth of an attractive young woman. Or at least what I could see of her was attractive: her ass was to me.
That’s where I hit her with the stun gun.
Right above the crack of it, actually, and fortunately for Freed, she opened her mouth wide, rather than clamp down, and I slipped the tape over her mouth and gave her a three-second jolt, which did the trick. Freed recoiled, his icy blue eyes damn near as shocked as the unconscious girl, who I noticed with certain amusement was the redhead from his campaign headquarters. He’d been feeding her the party line, but now he plastered his naked self against the fancy western-carved headboard of the waterbed, withering.
“W-What do you w-want?” he said. Even stuttering, his voice was melodious, like a radio announcer’s.
“Sorry about your silk sheets,” I said, making a tch-tch sound, noting the dampness the girl had caused.
“If you’re going to kill me,” he said, suddenly brave, “then get it over with.”
“If I’d have agreed to kill you,” I said, “my life wouldn’t be so fucked up now. And you’d already be dead.”
The blue eyes narrowed. “The Soviets?” he asked.
“Put some clothes on,” I sighed. “I don’t talk business with naked politicians.”