Bobby had dropped Lloyd off at the trailer park about 7:30, listening to him complain the whole way there, and then drove home to rethink things. He'd definitely underestimated Karen. She'd made fools of all of them. He parked and went to his apartment, searching his brain on his way up the stairs, trying to remember anything Karen had said that would help him find her. Where would she go? With over a million dollars, anywhere she wanted.
Bobby opened the door, went in and stopped. He couldn't believe it, the place was trashed. His fish tank was shattered on the living room floor. He saw the piranha on its side against a wall, beached on a strip of shoe molding. He saw his golf clubs in a pile on the soggy carpeting. Saw a cocktail glass on the coffee table, like whoever broke in was sitting there having a drink, Jesus, drinking his booze. Bobby had the.32 in the waistband of his pants, his olive button-down J. Crew hiding it. He drew it and went into the kitchen, tiptoeing through an inch of water. He saw the Green Giant pack ripped open on the counter. He went to the bathroom and checked the Band-Aid box. They'd found that money too. Just about everything he had. He left the apartment, walked down the stairs to his car and got in. He was nervous looking around the parking lot, thinking for sure someone was watching him. He drove out of the lot, checking the rearview mirror, no one was following him. He pulled out, cruised past cars parked on the street. Didn't see anything suspicious, nobody sitting in a car watching him.
Karen had it all planned that was obvious. They'd rob the safe; she'd take off, direct Samir's men to Bobby's apartment. "You want the mastermind, the one who organized it?" Bobby could hear her saying. "He lives over in Troy. Take 1-96 to 75 and get off at the Big Beaver/Crooks exit. Somerset Apartments, 2335 Sprucewood, you can't miss it."
He drove back to the Chateau Estates Mobile Home Community in Southfield, and parked down the street from Lloyd's trailer as a precaution. He'd looked in the rearview mirror, checking to see if anyone was following him on the way over. No one seemed to be. Bobby walked to Lloyd's trailer and knocked on the door. Lloyd opened it and Bobby said, "I need a place to hang out for a while."
"I thought you didn't like mobile homes," Lloyd said, a can of beer in his hand. "And now you want to stay here, huh? Sure this is good enough for a royal Canadian such as yourself?"
The shit Bobby had to put up with anymore. But it was only for a night he told himself. Then he told Lloyd about the apartment. Someone was on to him.
Lloyd said, "You think they're going to come here?"
"I don't know." And he didn't. He'd been wrong about everything, lately.
"Well if they do," Lloyd said, "we're going to be ready for them."
Lloyd's bravado made him feel better. "You still have the.45?" Bobby said.
"Yeah," Lloyd said, "and I've got something better."
What could be better than a.45? Did he have a machine gun in there somewhere? Lloyd left the room and came back carrying a strange-looking bow and a quiver full of arrows.
"It's a Hoyt Pro-Star," Lloyd said, handing the bow to Bobby.
It looked like a weapon designed by aliens, the strange shape with its lacquered curves. "It's a real beauty," Bobby said. What were you supposed to say about a bow?
Lloyd took the bow back and gave Bobby one of the razor-tipped arrows. "These are Zwickey 2310 broadheads. You can bring a grizzly down with this rig."
"Keep it handy," Bobby said, picturing a gang of Chaldeans attacking the trailer park on camels, carrying those swords with the curved blades. Scimitars, he thought they were called.
Lloyd said, "Since you're staying, I'll give you the grand tour?"
The grand tour? Bobby was in the main room, could see the whole trailer without taking a step. Was this Lloyd's dormant sense of humor kicking in?
Lloyd said, "My bedroom's in the back next to the bathroom. Check it out. It's got a sliding door that opens onto the deck. This model is called the Ver-sales. It's a French word."
Bobby liked the fact that they didn't abandon the chateau theme. This was good, a trailer named after a famous French chateau and Lloyd didn't have a clue. "What are the names of the other models?"
"There's one called the Vouv-ray and another called the Chartrez," Lloyd said.
Somebody had a sense of humor: the contractor or the marketing people who named the place.
"Well make yourself at home." Lloyd headed toward his bedroom with the bow and arrows.
There was a brown armchair, a beat-up old plaid couch, a coffee table piled with carry-out containers and empty beer cans.
Lloyd was quite a little homemaker. The TV in the corner was turned on to the WWF. Lloyd came back in carrying two cans of Molson Ice, handed one to Bobby, and Bobby said, "Who's your favorite wrestler?" Lloyd just stared at him for a couple seconds.
"Psychosis." He said it as if there was no other choice. "Who's yours? Don't tell me Little Guido." Lloyd grinned. "Not Booker T."
Bobby didn't know who he was talking about, but assumed they were wresters. "I'm between favorites right now," Bobby said.
"What kind of smartass answer is that? You making fun of me? Because if you are, you can go find another place to stay." Lloyd grinned then and said, "I got you. You should've seen your face."
Bobby figured Lloyd had slipped into one of his multiple personalities. But, which one? He'd identified at least three. Lloyd, the laid-back country boy; Lloyd the boastful con; Lloyd the bow hunting survivalist-and Bobby was sure this was another one. Oh yeah, he was also Floyd, the boozehound, who got dead drunk and turned into Avoid.
Bobby slept on the couch, a spring popping through, digging into his back, the.32 within easy reach. He couldn't believe the way his luck had soured-everything going wrong at the moment like a black cloud hanging over his head. That's what his mother, Zsuzsa, would've said, delivering the line in Magyar, the official language of Hungary and the Gal family.
Bobby felt the presence of his mother in the trailer and could've sworn he smelled onions cooking, the smell he associated with his mom and goulash, his favorite dish.
Bobby's mother believed bad things happened in threes. He could hear her saying:
"A baj haromig meg sem al."
And you had to get out of bed on the same side you got in on or you had bad luck. Bobby's bed was against the wall so that wasn't an issue. His mother also said if your left hand itched, you were going to be rich.
"Ha a ball kezed viszket, penzt kapsz."
And if your right hand itched, you were going to be poor.
"Ha ajobb kezed viszket, penzt kotesz."
He didn't believe in these crazy notions but at that moment he wanted his left hand to itch. He lifted his arm and stared at his hand. He'd take anything. But he didn't feel any unusual sensation and it bothered him.
He thought he heard a car, got up and looked out the window. It was a pickup truck parking in front of a trailer down the street. He went back to the couch. He heard a dog bark. In the odd silence the bark sounded like a guy calling someone named Ralph. "Raaaalph," a long bark followed by two short ones, "Ralph, Ralph." Maybe the dog was calling his buddy.
"Barney, shut the hell up, that's enough," a voice said.
The dog stopped barking. All Bobby could hear now were crickets and he wondered why they made that noise. When he was a kid someone said it was because the crickets were doing it, having sex and that's the sound they made. He started drifting off…
Next thing Bobby heard was the floor creaking. He opened his eyes and saw Lloyd moving toward him with the bow in his hand, an arrow ready to go. It was dark out. Lloyd put his index finger over his mouth and pointed toward the window. Bobby thought he heard the sound of a car door closing.
They went to the window, crouching, looking out. There was a guy standing next to a dark-colored Cadillac, an old Seville, the car was between the guy and Lloyd's trailer. Bobby thought he was the shylock who had grabbed him at the casino, and he was probably the one who trashed his apartment and followed him here. Bobby watched him coming around the car, holding a semi-automatic with a suppressor on the end of it that was almost as long as the barrel.
Lloyd slid the window open, pulled the bowstring back and let fly. The arrow sliced through the front passenger window like it was made out of paper, and now the guy was on his knees, scrambling to get on the other side of the car. Lloyd moved into the kitchen ready with another arrow. Bobby saw the shylock's head appear, looking over the hood of the Seville, and an arrow went through the windshield inches from him.
The shylock ducked behind the car again and then rose up and started firing. With the silencer, the big semi-automatic sounded like a BB gun. Rounds were punching holes in the thin aluminum walls across the front of the trailer. Bobby hit the deck, got on his belly and stayed as low as he could, and called to Lloyd, "You all right?" No response. "Lloyd…" Nothing. Bobby crawled the length of the trailer on his stomach. When he got to Lloyd's room he looked out the sliding door. There was a deck and beyond it, a grassy area and a pond. The shooting had stopped. He didn't see anyone. He slid the door open went out on the deck, moved down the stairs and started to run.
O'Clair'd gone back to Bobby's apartment and waited till Bobby showed up, knowing he'd open the door, take one look and make a run for it. And that's what he did. O'Clair followed Bobby to the trailer park-Chateau Estates-hanging back giving him plenty of room. He figured Bobby was going to the Diehl residence. Dumb- shit put his real address on the warehouse rental contract, a bone- head move that reminded O'Clair of dimwits he'd arrested over the years. The moron who robbed a Comerica Bank during a snowstorm came to mind. O'Clair followed his footsteps from the bank to his house three doors away. The man was at his kitchen table, counting the money, when O'Clair came through the door and drew down on him. Another good one was the guy who held up a liquor store and wanted all the money and a fifth of Jack Daniel's. The store owner said he couldn't give him the booze unless he was twenty-one. The guy took out his license and held it up and it was recorded by a security camera. O'Clair was first on the scene, got the guy's address, went there and arrested him. Unbelievable.
O'Clair pulled up in front of the trailer with his lights off and killed the engine. He picked up the Browning, racked it and opened the door. There was a glow on the eastern horizon, the sun starting to rise. He got out and pushed the door to close it, trying not to make noise, and started around the car. He heard it before he saw it, an arrow that blew through the front passenger window and took out the driver's side window too. He got down and crawled around to the other side of the car. He waited and peeked over the hood and another arrow just missed him, went through the windshield and through the front and rear seats and landed in the trunk.
O'Clair rose up and fired eight rounds across the front of the trailer, reloaded and grouped four more shots in a tight circle where the last arrow had come from. Now he made his move, running to the trailer and went in. It was the kitchen. There were bloodstains on the cabinet doors and more on the greasy linoleum floor, spots of blood and smears. He got one of them, he hoped the Indian, but it appeared as though he was still alive, the blood trail going across the floor of the kitchen into the main room. He followed it through the main room into the bedroom. Checked under the bed and in the closet, and went in the bathroom and slid the shower curtain open.
O'Clair went back in the bedroom and glanced out the sliding door, opened it and saw the blood trail continue across the deck. He went outside and looked around. There was a pond. He saw people staring at him from the windows of their trailers, and then he heard the wail of a siren in the distance.
Lloyd sat hunched under the deck holding the bow as best he could. He'd been hit in the thigh, the round had punched through the aluminum wall of the mobile home and slammed into the meaty center of his upper leg. The velocity had knocked him off his feet and probably saved his life as rounds continued to punch holes in the beige laminate cabinets above him. The pain was intense. There was no other word he could think of to describe it. The wound was through and through, a little hole in front, and the back of his thigh was blown out, blood and tissue on the cabinet door below the sink.
He'd heard Bobby call him, but he was in too much pain to open his mouth. The son of a bitch didn't even check to see if he was okay. Lloyd dragged himself the entire length of the trailer, thinking at the time, he should've rented a Vouv-ray model, which was a little shorter-five feet-but might make a difference if the guy came in and caught him.
Lloyd heard movement and felt the floor above him sway and held the bow, watching the backyard through a section of latticework. He could see a couple canoes beached at the edge of the pond. People fished its murky depths, kids mostly, catching goldfish and carp.
Lloyd rubbed his leg trying to get some relief from the pain, and had to breathe a certain way or it hurt more. The pond reminded him of a lake he swam in when he was a boy in northern Minnesota. He'd float in the warm clear water and then dive into the cold depths, the water temperature changing as he went down, getting colder and darker until he touched the bottom and scooped up a handful of sand, and then shot up toward the light, lungs ready to explode, coming out of the water, taking gulps of air. He'd show his friends the sand, proof that he made it all the way down.
He was directly above Lloyd now, the metal creaking. Then he was on the deck, his footsteps sending dust through cracks in the plank floor. Lloyd sat up with the bow ready to fire as a khaki leg appeared and then another one. He took a breath and knocked a broadhead, aiming at the guy's leg and he heard the wail of a siren.