THE NIGHT MANNY picked him up it was raining, and they went for Rick, splashing through black streams covering the roads at every low intersection. Ray held the thickened bones in his arms, and under the dark clouds they sang to him, an eddying ache that made him wince and sigh. The van slewed in the water, and Manny cursed. “Christ, look at this. And it’s still a thousand degrees out, how is that possible?”
“I figure it’s good for us. Keeps the civilians indoors, watching TV.”
They slowed in front of a white house in Horsham fronted with crumbling asbestos tiles. Rick limped out under a sheet of newspaper and climbed in. “Look at that rain. I thought maybe you’d call it off.”
Ray shook his head. “Nah, neither rain nor dark of night. What happened to your leg?”
“Ah, I went around to my ex’s to get my fucking stereo back, and her asshole boyfriend was there. Like to take my fucking knee off with a monkey wrench.”
Manny put the van in gear. “Been there. You notice they always trade up for somebody with bigger shoulders than you?”
Ray watched Rick rubbing the knee. “You take something for that?”
“Ah, you know. I handled it.” Manny looked over at Ray and shook his head.
“Rick, you high right now?”
“No, man. Just took the edge off, you know.”
“If you aren’t a hundred percent it’s better you tell us now.”
“No, no way. I’m cool, really. It was hours ago, and I’m in the pink.”
Ray watched Rick, who looked out the window. He did seem all right. When he turned and saw Ray considering him, he smiled, held up his hands.
The car in front of them stopped short, and Manny stood on the brakes, the back of the van fishtailing. They all cursed, and Ray put a hand out to the dash. Rick slid forward and hit the back of Manny’s seat; he screwed up his face and grabbed his knee. “Mother… fuck.” He gritted his teeth and clenched his eyes shut.
After a minute they began to inch forward. Ray saw a cop, waving a flashlight, and a traffic barrier three cars ahead. They were being waved onto a side road. Far ahead a tree lay across the road, green leaves splayed out in the rain, pink shards of wood broken over the road looking like wet bone. Ray grabbed a map from the floor and began to try to orient himself.
Rick pointed at a road sign. “Left or right?”
“Left. No, right.”
They turned onto a smaller side street. Dark water streamed in a ditch by the road, and lightning illuminated low clouds that looked to be a few feet above the trees. Ray called the turns. Once they ended up in a cul- de- sac and had to backtrack. Eventually they came out on the right road a few miles beyond the tweaker farm and pulled over.
Manny and Ray climbed into the rear, and Ray pulled a duffel bag out of the back and put it on the rear seat. He opened it and pulled out the DEA windbreakers and Manny’s pump gun and handed them over. Next came a box of shells and a big Colt Python with a six- inch barrel. He held the gun out to Rick, opening the cylinder and spinning it to show him it was loaded. He pulled out three folded parkas and handed them around and then brought out two walkie- talkies and three heavy police flashlights. He flicked on one of the lights and pointed it at the walkie- talkies each in turn, tuning the dials to the same channel and then clicking them on. He adjusted the volume on both and handed one to Rick and clipped the other to his belt. He rummaged in the bag for a minute, pulling out items to show Rick and Manny and then dropping them back in the bag. Tape, the heavy wire wraps that they used as cuffs, a folding knife, a half pound of ground meat, bottles of water.
He took out his map and laid it on the seat and put the light on it.
“This side is me. I’m moving up from the street along these trees. You’re on this side, and we’re both moving parallel to the driveway in the middle. You two come to the side door here, I’m going to the front door. I’ll take care of the dog, if it’s out. Fucking thing barks nonstop anyway as far as I can tell, so it’s not a big deal.” He drew an arrow on the map.
“When you get to the side door here, key the button a couple of times. Don’t fucking say anything, just key the button.” He clicked it so they could hear the corresponding click and hiss on the other walkie- talkie. “I key you back and we go in.” Manny, loading the shotgun, nodded and gave him a thumbs- up.
Ray pointed at Rick. “Just take it fucking easy. If you’re clear when you get to the door, take off the parka so they can see the DEA jacket. They’ll piss and moan, maybe they’ll try to hide, but no one’s going to draw down on a Fed unless he’s fucking insane, and then we got a bigger problem.”
Manny smiled. “Which is how to get the hell out fast.”
“If they shoot, run. This’” Ray pointed at the Python in Rick’s hands. “This is for show. You’re not a Fed, you just play one on TV, get it? This ain’t worth nobody getting a bullet in the brainpan. Not even those shitbirds up the hill. Plus the whole fucking place is liable to burn like a furnace you shoot off a gun in there. They’re meth cookers. The fucking place is full of acetone and ether and Christ knows what- all.”
Manny laid the shotgun down on the floor and went into his pocket for a glass vial. He pulled an old piece of rearview mirror out from under the seat and shook out three rocky lines of off-white powder. He took a flat piece of cardboard out of his pocket and pulled a single- edged razor blade out of it. He chopped the three lines into six. He rolled up a twenty and handed it to Rick.
“Oh, man, thanks.” He did two lines and passed the twenty to Ray, who did the lines and then opened one of the water bottles and poured a little out into his palm and then snorted the water out of his hand.
“That is some nasty biker crank.”
When they were set, Ray got behind the wheel and drove slowly past the property, pointing up the tree line he’d be walking. “I’ll be heading straight up this way.” He drove past the driveway to the fence on the other side of the property and stopped. Manny and Rick got out, guns out of sight under their parkas. They slammed the doors, and Ray angled the van over to turn around, awkwardly jockeying it back and forth until it was headed back up the road.
He parked again in the little turnoff and looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Grabbing the bag, he turned off the ignition and dropped the keys under the seat. After a minute of running through things in his head, he took a deep breath and stepped out of the van. He stuck the Colt in his windbreaker pocket and made his way up the hill, moving slowly in the black.
HE KEPT SLIPPING in the grass. He walked for what felt like forever and didn’t seem to be moving far from the van. The night and rain turned him around, and he had to keep looking back down the hill to get his bearings. The line of trees seemed wider somehow and the ground more uneven than he remembered it. In a couple of minutes he was struggling, his own breath roaring in his ears under the parka and sweat pouring down his back. The bag weighed a ton, and he looped the strap over his shoulder.
After what seemed like an hour, he crested the hill and saw the lights of the house. He couldn’t see the dog and thought that a good sign. He was panting now and dropped to one knee to catch his breath. There were lights in the house and one on upstairs in the barn, which he didn’t expect. He had thought the building was a padlocked wreck and hadn’t paid much attention to it. He took the binoculars out and put them on the barn window, but the dark made them about useless.
He put the binoculars away and moved toward the house along the driveway, then crouched behind the blue van, breathing hard. He felt exposed, the lights in the barn were throwing him off. His shaking hands were slick with sweat and rainwater and he kept sticking them under his parka and wiping them on his jeans. He moved around the van and then walked fast to the barn, keeping to the side away from the house. Now that he was close he could see the caved- in doors were open, and he swore to himself.
The black, empty doorway felt like a mouth waiting to close on him. He slowly crossed in front of the sagging doors and then edged around the building, stopping once to pull the Colt out of his pocket. When he came to stairs leading up inside the barn, he stood for a long time, listening, but heard nothing from inside. There was a hiss- click, loud in his ears from the walkie- talkie, and he jumped and almost pulled the trigger on the pistol.
He put his hand on his chest and willed his heart to stop racing, then moved quickly across the driveway to the side of the house away from Manny and Rick. He inched across the front, keeping low, ducking under a dark window to reach the porch. He pulled the parka off over his head and threw it behind him. He pulled the walkie- talkie out his bag, dropped the bag on the porch, and pointed the big Colt at the door. He keyed the mike twice and threw the walkie- talkie down and kicked the door in with a steel-toed boot.
THE HALLWAY WAS dark. There was a stink of ammonia and acetone and charcoal, the wet, catpiss reek of meth labs that made his eyes water. He heard Manny shouting that they were federal agents and did the same. He moved into the open space, wheeling left and right with the pistol. Somewhere in the house the dog barked, crazy to be let out. There were two dark and empty rooms on either side of the hallway and stairs leading up. He ran down the hallway screaming, “Down on the ground; get down!”
At the end of the hallway he turned right and saw Manny standing over Ponytail, who was on his knees with his hands behind his head.
Ray pointed at Rick with his empty hand. “Cuff him.”
Rick stuck his pistol into his jeans and pulled a wire wrap from his belt. He pushed Ponytail onto the floor face first and jerked his hands up behind him, fumbling with the wire wrap. He rubbed his knee and winced. “Hold still, you dumb Piney fuck.”
Ponytail screamed into the floor. “You got to read me my rights. You like to broke my nose.”
Rick pulled the pistol out of his belt and smacked the barrel against the back of the prone tweaker’s skull. “Shut the fuck up, hillbilly, or I’ll break your head.”
There was a piercing scream from the doorway, and the thick-waisted woman stood there in a yellow T-shirt and cutoffs pointing a long- barreled shotgun. Rick jumped up as Manny and Ray aimed their guns at her. The dog was going insane behind a door somewhere, the barking like a scream over and over.
“Drop the gun!”
“Federal agents!”
She swiveled the gun at Ray and Manny in turn, her eyes wild and full of tears.
“You leave him be!”
Ray pointed his pistol at the floor and held one hand out. “Calm down, for Christ’s sake. No one’s hurting anyone.”
Ponytail tried to raise his head. “Charlene, go get my cell phone and call my brother!”
Ray bared his teeth, trying to smile. “Don’t move, Charlene.”
Ponytail’s voice was hoarse, lisping through rotted teeth. “It’s the Zionist occupying army. They come to put them chips in us.”
“Chips? What?” Ray heard a loud metallic click and turned to see Rick pulling back the hammer on the big revolver, the gun at Ponytail’s temple.
“Drop that’” was as far as Rick got before Charlene’s shotgun went off, deafening Ray. The blast spattered Rick and Ponytail and a yellow refrigerator with buckshot. Ray dropped his pistol, and Manny pulled the trigger on his scattergun, knocking the woman back into the hallway. Rick howled on the floor, rolling in blood and brains from Ponytail’s shattered head and what looked like milk leaking from a half- dozen holes in the refrigerator.
Ray felt like his skull was cracked, his ears ringing. He took two steps into the hallway to see Charlene’s staring eyes and caved- in chest. Manny stepped to the side door and vomited into the rain. Ray picked up his cold pistol and stuffed it into his belt. “Everyone be calm,” he said to no one.
Rick moaned and turned in circles on the slick floor, trying to stand up. The air was full of blue smoke. Ray smelled burned gun-powder and the meaty tang of blood. He pulled a chair onto its feet and sat down in it. “Everyone just stay put.” He felt insane.
There was a cracking somewhere and a rush of feet and the dog was in the room. Ray jerked at the pistol at his waist, but the animal careened through the kitchen and out the side door, knocking Manny off his feet and leaving a trail of bloody paw prints.
Rick sat back on his haunches, bleeding from his arms and his chest. “Jesus, my arm’s broke.” His eyes rolled back white and he fainted, falling into the corner against a pie safe. Urine splashed out of his pant leg as he breathed one last terrible, gargling breath, a sound like water emptying from a copper pipe. The dog’s barking dwindled as it disappeared into the storm.
Manny lurched back into the room, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Ray shook his head, not believing any of it. He said, “We gotta go.”
“Fuck that. I’m not doing this for free.” Manny stepped across the kitchen, trying to avoid the mess on the floor.
Ray held his hand up. “I’ll look. Let me look. Find something to get rid of this mess with.” He looked around at the blood on the walls. “Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck happened?”
They stood there for a minute, and then Manny put the shotgun on his shoulder and walked out into the rain. Ray got up and walked back out through the hallway, trying not to look at the woman and to stay out of the widening pool of blood. Neither plan worked. He saw that her T-shirt was a uniform red now. He forced himself to keep moving, scraping his shoes on the linoleum to get the blood off. At the end of the hallway he turned left and came back out to the landing. He went out to the porch and rummaged in the bag for his flashlight. When he got back inside he pushed the broken door back into place and pointed the light into the corners of the front room. He could see the cooker with its tubes and wires, dark and cold, and thanked the Tweaker Jesus for this little bit of mercy. There were Mason jars and empty two- liter soda bottles on a long table, a stack of coffee filters, a pile of charcoal briquettes. In the corner of the room was a yard- high pile of empty charcoal bags and ripped packages for cold medicine.
He made his way upstairs, forcing himself to move fast and trust that there was no one left in the house. He kept replaying the scene in the kitchen over and over, trying to make it happen right. He moved from room to room down the narrow hallway, finding each one empty. A wet, reeking bathroom, the tiles peeled from the wall; empty bedrooms, old bedsteads furred with black dust. In what had been the master bedroom there were clothes on the floor, bottles of water, and a box of surgical masks. Under the mattress on the floor was a paper bag with a few hundred bucks in it, and he picked it up. He rolled it tight and jammed it into the pocket of the windbreaker. He pushed open the closet doors, pointing the flashlight beam at stacks of wood, a pile of newspapers with headlines about Reagan.
Off the master bedroom was a padlocked room, and he lifted his leg and kicked the door twice hard with the sole of his boot. The cleats gave way in the rotted wood, and the door swung back with a banshee howl from the rusted hinges. He found a light switch on the wall and pushed it up with a hand covered by the sleeve of his parka.
A faint orange light set in a lamp shaped like a rocking horse showed a child’s room, a room for a girl: white furniture, a pink plaid ruffle around a sagging bed. Everything was sunken in gray dust unmarked by fingerprints. A brush with a red handle was sitting on a white vanity, a Mariah Carey poster hung bowed out and sagging. Ray thought there was something wrong about his going into the padlocked room, and standing in the doorway he wished he hadn’t forced the door. The closet stood open, empty, and he half- heartedly opened a couple of drawers, releasing a shower of dust onto his boots. He turned off the light and backed out.
He came back downstairs and pulled open more closets. Kicked over a low desk and dumped out the drawers. Retraced his steps back down the hallway and turned left. A door hung on its hinges, the edges clawed. They must have locked the dog in here. He stepped in and covered his nose with his hands and tried to breathe through his mouth. There were piles of shit on the floor, a rubber replica of a rolled- up newspaper with holes chewed in it, a dented metal bowl. There was a cracked window and deep claw marks on the sill. On a table was a stack of plastic bags. He picked one up and dumped it out, and a dozen smaller bags of powder rolled out onto the table and the floor. He swept them back in and looked around for something to carry them in. On the floor was a duffel, and he pulled it open and saw bundles of cash, tens and twenties and hundreds held together with rubber bands. There were more plastic bags jammed with foil packages. He stuck his pistol into his belt and swept the bags from the table messily into the duffel and then hefted the bag with both hands and hustled it out the door. He dragged it out the front door and dropped it on the porch.
Manny appeared near the porch carrying a can of acetone. He and Ray went back into the kitchen and began dragging the bodies down the hallway and into the front room by the cooker.
Ray pointed down the hill. “Get the van, I’ll finish this.”
Manny ran off the porch and down the drive. There was a flash of lightning that lit the whole world, and for one fraction of a second Ray saw everything in a flare of blue white light and black shadow: Manny halfway down the drive, running flat out, the dead man and woman and their horror- movie wounds, the tracks of blood and fluid leading out to the hallway, the footprints, the money, the discarded shotgun, and his own terrible face in an antique mirror over the fireplace. His eyes were huge and white, his hair matted, his mouth open as if he were screaming. Then it was dark again.
He went back into the kitchen and bent down over Rick. Ray put a finger on Rick’s neck but wasn’t sure what he should find. He felt nothing but cold skin, and Rick’s staring eyes were dry and black. Ray looked into the dead and empty pupils, inches from his own but staring through him, as if reading something written on the wall behind Ray’s head. He almost turned to look.
Finally he grabbed Rick’s jacket and pulled him slowly toward the door. The body twisted and began to come out of the jacket, and Ray struggled to get a purchase with bloody hands. He began to be conscious of the stink of shit and blood and piss, and he started to gag. How long had they been here? An hour? Three? Would it be light soon? He braced himself against the door jamb and pulled and got some momentum. He pumped his legs hard and didn’t stop until he collapsed by the front door. Good enough.
He stepped out to the porch. He heard the van coming up the drive and grabbed Manny’s shotgun off the bag and ran to take a position behind the ruined pickup in the grass. When Manny opened the door and jumped out, Ray stepped from behind the truck and showed himself.
Manny jumped. “Christ, you scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry. I was standing there listening to you come, and it just hit me that it might not really be you.” He handed Manny the gun and ran to the porch and dragged the duffel, bumping, down the stairs.
Manny left the side door of the van open and came over to help him heft it. “Christ, is that all cash? How much is in here?”
“What ever it is, it’s not enough.”
They policed up the house and the yard, doing a quick look for anything they had forgotten or dropped in the excitement. Finally Manny went to the van and Ray went back into the front room. He picked up the acetone and uncapped it, splashing it on the bodies and the floor and backing out to the door, choking on the stink. He spat into the grass and then dumped the last bit of the fluid on a snapped- off piece of dowel rod he found on the porch and lit it. He tossed the can underhand into the house and threw the lit stick in after it. There was a rush of air and a thump, and the front room glowed blue for a few seconds and then flashed over white and orange and the front windows blew out.
He stood back and watched it burn for a moment, then ran over and jumped in the passenger side of the van. Manny gunned the engine, throwing gravel and splashing through ruts filled with water.
AS THEY CRESTED the hill there was a flash of lightning, and they both saw a car turning into the driveway in front of them.
Manny jammed on the brakes. “Oh, Jesus Christ. You have got to be fucking kidding.”
“Swing right, up on the grass. Go.” Manny spun the wheel and the van skidded and slid, the back end fishtailing around. Ray tried to see behind them, but what ever was going on at the house was still out of sight behind the hill.
“Calm the fuck down.” The car moved slowly toward them up the driveway, something long and wide across the ass’a Dodge Charger, an old one. Dark blue, maybe, or black. Manny hooked around them, and Ray caught a brief glimpse of a young guy be hind the wheel, long hair and a neat goatee, smiling, and a dark figure beside him. Manny punched the gas and the wheels spun in place, burning a hole in the wet grass. The other car disappeared over the rise toward the house. Ray, breathing hard, put a hand on his chest and felt his heart hammering. Manny smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his hand and stomped on the gas. The back end of the van slid down the hill and the tires caught. The van popped forward about three feet and the engine stalled. Ray put his hands up and caught himself. Manny hit the steering wheel hard with his chest. “Motherfucking motherfucker.”
There was a couple of seconds of silence in the van, and Ray could swear he heard shouting from somewhere. Manny grabbed the key and twisted. Ray’s mind went completely blank, and he just watched Manny cranking the engine over and over. There was a glow over the rise behind them, and Ray began to see red light reflected on the tops of the wet trees. The starter growled and finally caught, and Manny hit the gas and spun the wheel to straighten them out. He got the van moving down the driveway and picked up speed as they moved down the last of the hill and thumped down onto the street. Manny twisted the wheel and the tires spun and whined, trying to find a grip on the wet asphalt. They shot down the road as the Charger’s headlights disappeared over the rise, where now Ray could see flames cresting the hill.
“Oh, Jesus, get moving.” They were almost out of sight of the driveway when the Dodge shot back down the driveway and took the corner. Ray could see it fishtailing, and it almost kept going across the road into the trees, but the driver got it under control and gunned it. Smoke formed around the rear wheels as the car gained traction and shot forward after them. They lost sight of it as the van rounded a corner and began to climb.
THEY WERE LOST, and Manny was moving too fast for them to get their bearings. Ray tried to keep him moving east toward the Delaware, and Manny made turns when he figured the van could make it without catapulting them across an intersection and into the trees that lined the dark country lanes. Ray climbed across the seats and tried to hold himself at the rear window with the shotgun. He jacked more shells into the breech and held on to a seat belt strap as the van banked from side to side. Manny jammed on the brakes to make a turn, and Ray smacked his head against the door. The car would be faster and handle better on the wet roads, but once they had made a couple of turns it didn’t seem likely that the men following them would know where they were.
Ray climbed awkwardly into the front and dropped into the passenger seat, sweating and cursing under his breath. There were no lights and not many signs, and none of them meant anything to Ray. They passed farms and small developments with a few houses and crossed a creek swollen and black in the moonlight.
There was a hissing, clicking noise, and Ray jumped in his seat.
A voice, close by, said, “Ten- four, good buddy.”
Ray looked at Manny, who looked at Ray’s waist. The walkie-talkie. Christ, they must have dropped the other one in the yard. The cheap thing only carried a few miles, so that meant the Charger was still behind them and moving fast to stay close.
“Man, you guys know how to party.” Ray unclipped the radio from his belt and held it up. “Come on, let’s talk for a minute.”
Manny shook his head. “Throw that thing the fuck out the window.”
Ray held up his hand. There was something about the voice. Ray wondered if it was the young guy he had seen at the wheel of the Charger. It was deep, confident. Amused, maybe, at how fast things could get fucked up.
“Say something. I figured you left this one behind ’cause you wanted to talk things over, figure out how to resolve this thing.”
The guy had a soft accent, a New En gland burr that slightly opened the vowels with r’s and twisted others, like the way he said “resolve” with a throaty “aw” sound.
Ray clicked the handset twice, then, after a beat, twice again. Manny slowed at a five- way intersection, headed vaguely left.
The voice said, “Okay, that’s better.” There was a long pause. “I’m just trying to understand this. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Old Randy was a crazy man. Maybe things just got out of hand? You were just going over there to cop and Charlene came on to you, shows you her stuff. Randy flips out, starts in with the black he li cop ters or some shit? Something like that?” The voice was calm, but in the background they could hear the Charger’s engine racing, trying to catch up with them.
Manny shook his head, glaring. “Will you throw that fucking thing away? Suppose they can home in on the fucking thing or something.”
“They’re not the CIA, man. It’s just a pissed- off dealer, and maybe he tells us something we can use to stay the fuck out of his way.”
The voice said, “I guess there are two problems with that scenario, where it’s all just a big misunderstanding. One is this here radio. Which I can’t figure unless you were police, or miscreants, and this little dime store thing is not police issue. The other thing’and this is where things get real complicated’the other thing is you stole my fucking money and my dope.” The voice had an edge now. “Now, I know you might think I want to avenge the deaths of those two hillbillies or some shit. I tell you sincerely I am only thinking about the money.” The voice was fading, static building on the line.
“So here’s a way out for everyone. You just tell me where you are, you drop the bag out the door and drive away. Then this becomes a funny story about how you almost ended up getting tortured to death for no good reason, instead of a sad story about two headless corpses found in the river.” Riv- ah, the way the guy said it. Ray tried to think if the guy at the farm house, Randy, had an accent, or the woman. Rick had called him a Piney, and that’s what Ray remembered, a backwoods kind of accent tinged with Philly.
They came to a stop sign, and Manny turned right. The road climbed and twisted, and the van slowed with the effort. The voice got louder and clearer. Ray stared into the rear window, eyes burning with the strain of trying to pick something meaningful out of the wet dark behind the van. “What do you think, that you’d be that tough to find? A couple of white guys ripping off dealers in a brown van? This walkie- talkie tells me you’ve been doing this a while. And that means there are a bunch of people out there who want me to catch you and put a bullet in your eye.”
There was lightning, and the walkie- talkie hissed and popped with static. “You should think about this. You can still make it all go away. The fire, that’ll probably keep the cops out of it. I love a good fire, it’s like the fuckup’s friend.” Ahead, two yellow eyes appeared in the road, and Manny stood on the brakes. The van jerked and swiveled in the water, and Manny fought to hold the road. The van spun until it was sliding broadside down the road. Ray was thrown against the door, trying to grab at the dash, the seat, anything. The eyes in the road got huge, like some kind of monster bearing down on them. Finally the van stopped with a scream of rubber. They sat for a moment, watching the deer move daintily into the trees. Manny let a breath out like air escap-ing from a tire and cranked the wheel until the van pointed back down the road.
The voice said, “Don’t make me do all the talking, pal. I’m patient, but you gotta start dealing with this situation or there are going to be serious fucking repercussions.” There was hissing and a harsh click timed with a flash of lightning. “I need that fucking money, you hear me?”
Manny hit the roof of the van with his fist. “That’s enough of that shit.” He grabbed the radio out of Ray’s hand and sailed it out the window into the trees.
Ray nodded. “Yeah, fuck it. Just go.” But he had wanted to hear more. He wasn’t learning anything, not really, and he probably wouldn’t have. It would have been impossible to say why he wanted to keep hearing the deep voice, telling him he was going to be caught and die, but he did. He would have sat there all night with the walkie- talkie listening to the terrible shit that was going to happen, if Manny hadn’t grabbed the thing and thrown it away.
THEY MADE A right and then a quick left again and passed an old Victorian house with a bed- and- breakfast sign and then came to a dead end.
Manny yelled at Ray, “Where am I going?”
Ray took in the yellow sign marked with arrows pointing north and south. “This is River Road. Turn right and haul ass.”
Ray stowed the shotgun under the first row of passenger seats and covered it with a parka and then climbed into the passenger seat again. The road was narrow, and they began to see traffic going the other way. Ray stiffened every time a car passed them, thinking they were going to get a face full of windshield if it was the Charger.
What could they know? So they had gotten that there were two of them in a brown van. The guys in the Charger had been at the house for like five minutes before they came out after Ray and Manny. If they had looked at their faces, what could they have seen? Ray had barely registered the driver of the Charger, and it seemed to Ray that the guy had been staring straight ahead.
“Assume the worst, right?” He looked over at Manny, whose face was dripping, as if the rain were coming directly at them into the van.
“I’m way out ahead on that. I’m thinking they’re already at my house with a blowtorch.”
“I mean, how much trouble could we be in? What could they even find out?” Ray’s mind raced and his head throbbed. “They saw the van, so what? The plates are from the junkyard, and we dump the thing tomorrow somewhere.” He wanted a cigarette. “They ID Rick? Can they tie him to us? And why would they? Who knows our business?”
“Hoe Down.” Hoe Down was Ho Dinh, a Viet nam ese in Philly they downed drugs to from the dealers they took off. Ho was the one they ran all their scores by, the guy connected to the bikers and the organized guys running speed. They talked with Ho about everything they did, and Ho would warn them off dealers or cookers who were protected.
It made what they did a kind of public service for the established guys. Cleaning the little operations off the street, keeping things quiet and running smooth in ways Ray didn’t even get. What Manny called agita, Philly Italian for heartburn, aggravation.
Ray said, “Yeah, but doesn’t Ho have as much to lose as we do? If word got out he was taking the stuff we took off other dealers and putting it back out on the street?”
“Dude, some biker sticks a gun in his mouth he’s only got one thing to lose.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Ray liked Ho, didn’t like to think of the moment they couldn’t trust him anymore.
“Then? At that minute? He’s not thinking long term.”
AFTER A FEW minutes they came to a bridge and crossed into Frenchtown on the Jersey side of the river. The houses were dark and nothing was open. When the road dead- ended again they turned south on 29, following the black coil of the river and passing through crossroad towns, most of them too small to have names. When they hit Lambertville, Ray told Manny to get off 29, and they drove through the town. Ray saw his first human being on the street, an old man walking a dog on George Street. As they passed under a streetlight Ray angled his watch and looked at the time. Twelve thirty- five. Everything had happened so fast. He tried to think about each thing but it all just unspooled in his head in a rush. The noise and fire and the stink of blood and ether and smoke. And those guys, those fucking guys in the Charger. At the south end of town they kept going, headed toward 95.