When we got to Natalie’s, something was burning in the trash can where the Crips usually stowed their empty 40-ouncers. Smoke and flames came from the top of the can; I stepped in closer and saw it was a man’s clothes on fire in there.
“I'll never regret Wayne,” Natalie said as I joined her on the porch to watch the pyre. “He gave me Randy after all. But you can’t sleep with the dead and it’s time to put Wayne to rest all the way. I have to clean house and move on.”
“I’m tired of being in love with pain,” she said, harsh and anxious. “Hate won’t warm my bed. It just takes. And takes.”
“You’re right about that,” I said.
Natalie started to say something else but I’d already commenced walking to the Garden’s entrance. Once there, I studied the stillborn development across the way.
Even before it had seemed like those empty lots were besieging the Gardens. Now they had all the charm of a malignant tumor about to metastasize and engulf the people who lived here.
I surveyed my intended battle ground. One wide avenue ran directly across my front, with the Gardens’ entrance teeing into it midway. A hundred yards to the right and to the left, the avenue turned 90 degrees away at the corner, extending a hundred yards from me before joining the far fourth side of the huge blank rectangle that was the series of ghost lots, all surveyed and ready for the retirement community to be built.
I crossed the avenue and hopped the curbs, dodging surveyor stakes as I trotted across the graded earth, finally reaching the far side of the development. I was next to a big Caterpillar grader parked by the lead contractor’s hut.
The avenue in front of me was twin to the one fronting the Gardens a football field length behind me – an easy scrambling lope. I was midway between both corners, which were again a hundred yards to my right and left.
Directly in front of me the access road led up that steep, short slope and teed into the highway running along the crest of the ridge. To my right, the ridge highway curved around the hospital and past the swamp to Stagger Bay proper. To the left it curved out of sight up Moose Creek Road through the tall pines, into the lair of the Driver.
I turned and looked back at the Gardens. Even from this distance I could identify Big Moe and the other 18th Street Crips watching me. Several of the Hmong men were with them; but I saw no women except Natalie, standing by herself to the side, staring in my direction with her arms folded under her breasts.
There was no traffic in or out today. The Crips weren’t serving any customers, and no kids were playing outside. The Gardens were Alamo-ed up.
That was only fair, of course. Even if I was doing this alone, the Gardens folk had to know they were my lure.
Gauging the distance from the Gardens, studying the ground and the rectangle of road surrounding the construction zone, I figured it should just be possible for a man running full tilt to get to this access road before a fleeing car, even a big beast like the Cougar. He’d be driving balls out and slaloming around the corners, but the Driver would have to slow at each turn – and slow even further before sledding up that last steep stretch of access road.
A street racer like the Cougar? No way would he take it off-roading, or try to cut across the construction site – he’d stay on the asphalt.
There was no guarantee he’d come in his ride of course – hell, there was no guarantee he’d come at all. He might come, but just drive by the Gardens and heckle us. Or he might come all sneaky to do a recon, and leave without us ever knowing he’d been there.
But he was an excitable boy. He’d come to the Gardens (I hoped, I prayed, I yearned) and try to do the dirty deed he loved so much.
If I could take him down before he struck, I’d do so. If not he’d make his getaway, with a victim as passenger or not.
And when he made the final turn out of here, when he thought he was home free? I’d be waiting for him with a bullet or ten to blast him straight to hell. If there was a God, the Driver would know it was me killing him when he died.