Later that night, I prowled Natalie’s darkened front room. She’d offered to stay up with me, make coffee and keep me company – but I was pretty gruff and she finally took the hint.
This was the place I was never good at: the waiting. I grew more and more restless, like an over-wound top waiting to whirl into action Tasmanian-Devil-style. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling; as usual it was like a bellyful of bad drugs spinning away in my gut. I kept yawning from tension too, and my jaw was sore from nervously gulping air so often.
I’d had Natalie and Randy lay their bedding on the bedroom floor in case of gunplay. I checked on them from time to time through the open door as I paced the front room: two blanket covered oblong hummocks, one large, one small, looking like graves in the dimness. I couldn’t tell if they were asleep or just pretending to be, but their figures were motionless beneath their bedding and I did my best not to disturb them.
There was a quiet knock on the door and I almost jumped before I got a grip. When I peeked out the spy hole, a tall wide silhouette stood blocking the street light’s glare.
“Everyone in the Gardens is in place,” Big Moe said through the hole. “We’re all up for it, and if he comes we’re ready for him. We got cars if he gets away from us.”
I opened the door and shook my head. “He’ll see a car easy, and he can outrun anything you’ve got if he knows you’re behind him. Minivans and that cute little Taurus of yours got no replacement for his displacement. And if you lynch-mob after him up Moose Creek Road, you know the cops will be waiting. That’ll be suicide for you all.”
I shook my head again. “No, son. I have my plan – sometimes one guy on foot can do things a group could never get away with.”
Big Moe left and stood for a moment at the corner of Natalie’s stoop, clearly visible in the light of the full moon before wandering off on his rounds, the war chief checking his troops. Down the block I saw a cigarette coal flare, illuminating the face of a male Hmong who stood in darkness next to a bungalow. Around the area, several other still figures stood guard in whatever pools of shadow could conceal them from the streaming moonlight.
How had Sam and Elaine made out? Were they still alive, or had the Driver come calling and caught Sam napping? I restrained the impulse to call – I would have wound up wearing out the phone like any worried parent.
Sam could handle his end. And if he couldn’t, if the bastards took out my son, the only family I had left in the world? Then God help Stagger Bay, because I wouldn’t have any pity or self-preservation left in me.