Blue Heaven Part 31

Sunday, 10:32 P.M.

THE LITTLE CAR made it up the hill and the road leveled out. Villatoro could see the lone porch light of a house blinking through the trees. He could no longer feel his fingers, or his feet. A sense of utter calm sedated him.

"Stop here," Newkirk said.

When he did, Newkirk leaned over him and pulled out the keys. "Get out."

Villatoro opened the door and unfolded himself. Cold rain stung his face and sizzled through the trees. There was some kind of pen in front of him, and huge, dark forms scuttled behind the slats of a fence. He heard a grunting noise that sounded like a man, then a squeal. Pigs. They were pigs.

A big man, Gonzalez, wearing a raincoat and pointing a pistol at him, stepped out from the shadows near a shed.

Gonzalez said, "Good job, Newkirk."

"I've got a wife and a daughter," Villatoro said. His voice seemed to be coming from someone else.

Gonzalez stopped and leveled his gun with two hands, the muzzle a few feet from Villatoro's face.

He heard Newkirk say, "Sorry, man."

He heard Gonzalez say, "You going to do this or am I?"

He heard Newkirk say, with a choke in his voice, "You do it."

"You never should have come out here, old man," Gonzalez said to Villatoro. "You should have stayed in the minor leagues. s.h.i.t, you're retired, right? What's wrong with you?"

Villatoro looked up and saw a silver ring hanging in the dark inches from his eye. It was the mouth of the muzzle. He wondered if he should strike out, try to hit someone, try to kick someone, try to run. But he had never been a fighter. The two fights he had had as a youth had both ended badly, with him cowering on the ground while being punched and spit upon. He didn't have the mind of a fighter, preferring reason to force. In thirty years, he'd never been attacked or forced to draw his weapon. Oh, he thought, if I could live my life again I would learn how to fight! He had a strange thought: Do I keep my eyes open or do I close them? Hot tears stung his eyes, and he angrily wiped them away.

"f.u.c.k this," Gonzalez said, and the ring dropped away. "You need to finish the job you started. That's what the lieutenant told you, right?"

"I guess," Newkirk said, sighing.

"Then finish it."

Villatoro felt his stomach begin to boil sourly and hoped he wouldn't get sick.

"Take care of this guy," Gonzalez said, turning toward the house and walking away. "Take care of this fake cop." Then he laughed softly. Villatoro was humiliated, and angry. But most of all, he was terrified.

Villatoro felt Newkirk's gun in the small of his back, pushing him forward.

"Walk down to the end of the pen along the rails," Newkirk said, his voice weak. "And don't look back at me."

He's going to shoot me in the back of the head. That's better than in the face.

As he stumbled forward, he sensed one of the hogs, the huge one, walking along with him on the other side of the fence. He could hear the pig grunt a little with each breath.

Villatoro's shoe caught in a root, and he staggered, but Newkirk grabbed the collar of his shirt and held him up. "Watch where you're going, G.o.dd.a.m.n you."

"Sorry."

"Shut up!"

Newkirk pushed him ahead until they were under a canopy of trees at the corner of the corral. He kept his hand on Villatoro's collar, guiding him ahead. It was dry there. Villatoro could feel the crunch of pine needles under his soles although the tree dripped all around them.

Any second now. He could barely hear the drip of the trees because of the roar in his ears. And something else ...

"Mister, I'm ready to shoot your eye out of the back of your head." It was not Newkirk who spoke, Villatoro realized. It was a voice from the trees, from the dark. The voice was deep and familiar, but Villatoro couldn't place it, and for a moment he thought it was his own imagination, his brain trying to give him a second or two of false hope.

But Villatoro felt the gun twitch on the small of his back and heard Newkirk say, "Who is it?"

Another sound, the snort of a horse somewhere in the dark cover of the trees.

"The guy who's about to blow your head off."

Villatoro felt Newkirk's grip harden on his collar, but the gun left his back. There really was someone out there! And the voice, it was that rancher he had talked to at breakfast. Rawlins.

The gun returned, this time pressed to Villatoro's temple.

"I don't know who you are," Newkirk said, his voice rising, "but if you don't back off, he's a dead man."

"He's a dead man anyway from the look of things," the rancher said. "So fire away. Then there'll be two dead. Simple as that."

Villatoro tried to look in the direction from which he thought the voice was coming, but the gun against his head prevented movement. At any moment he expected to feel and hear an explosion, experience a flash of orange lights and his body dropping away. But Newkirk did nothing.

"Who are you?" Newkirk asked, his voice weak.

"Tell you what," Rawlins said. "No harm, no foul. Let the guy go and step back, and I'll let you walk away."

Villatoro could almost feel Newkirk thinking about it, weighing the odds. Villatoro wanted to speak, but couldn't find his voice anywhere.

"I can't just go back," Newkirk said, sounding like a little boy.

"Let him go, and I'll let you fire your gun in the dirt," Rawlins said.

"They'll think you did your job, and I'll never tell. Neither will Mr. Villatoro."

He p.r.o.nounced my name correctly, Villatoro thought.

"It will never work," Newkirk said.

"I don't think there's a choice in the matter."

"They'll find out."

"Too bad for you if they do."

"But ..."

Villatoro felt the grip on his collar loosen, felt the absence of the gun on the side of his head although the place where it had been pressed seemed to burn on his skin. Then he was free. He chanced a step forward, and nothing happened.

"Keep walking, Eduardo," Rawlins said. "Don't stop, don't turn around."

Villatoro did as he was told. He emerged from the canopy, felt cold raindrops on the top of his head. Nothing had ever felt better. He kept walking. From the dark, a hand gripped his forearm and pulled him into the warm flank of a damp horse.

"Go ahead and shoot," Rawlins said to Newkirk, "but don't even think about raising the weapon again."

The explosion was sharp but m.u.f.fled, and Villatoro felt his knees tremble at the sound of it. But there were no more shots.

"Go back to the house now," Rawlins said to Newkirk.

Finally, Villatoro turned to see a glimpse of Newkirk's back as he walked away into the foliage. The big pig shadowed him along the rail, grunting for food, agitated.

"Climb up," the rancher said in a whisper, offering his hand.

"I never rode a horse," Villatoro said.

"You won't be riding. You'll be hanging on to me."

Sunday, 10:55 P.M.

IT STOPPED raining," Newkirk said to Gonzalez.

"No s.h.i.t," Gonzalez replied.

They were on the deck of Swann's house, sitting on metal lawn furniture under the eave. Newkirk was still shaking, but he watched the red end of Gonzo's cigar, watched it brighten as the ex-sergeant sucked on it, the glow bright enough to light up his eyes.

Lieutenant Singer and Swann were inside, Swann talking. Newkirk could hear the pigs grunting and squealing, hungry. Those d.a.m.n pigs were going to give him away. If Gonzo walked down there and couldn't find the body ...

"That guy from Arcadia must taste good," Gonzo said, and Newkirk felt a wave of relief since Gonzalez had mistaken the sound. "Did he give you any trouble?"

"No."

"I'll never understand that, especially from an ex-cop. Me, I'd fight until my last breath. I'd be like that knight in Monty Python, you know? Cut off my arm, and I'd keep coming; cut off my leg, I wouldn't give a f.u.c.k. I wouldn't let somebody just take me out and shoot me in the head."

Newkirk grunted.

"One shot to the brain, right?"

"Yeah."

"I just heard one shot. But it was raining."

Newkirk was drunk but not drunk enough. Violent shivers coursed through him, making his pectorals twitch. He tried not to think about Villatoro and what had happened. He wanted to be able to do what he used to do on the force in a bad situation. Like the time he was first on the scene to a gangland slaying, four bodies tied up with electrical cords, multiple shotgun wounds to their heads. He'd been able to think of himself in the third person then. It wasn't him who walked through the warehouse, through the blood, it was someone else who knew to call for backup in a calm voice. Just like it wasn't him that evening who gained Villatoro's confidence, or told him everything for the sole purpose of getting the man to Swann's place. It was someone else playing him, acting out a role, reading the script he'd been handed. Not him. He wasn't evil. He had a wife and kids, and he coached soccer. He had even come to like that small-town detective a little. And to turn Villatoro over to the guy in the dark without a fight, then to keep silent about it? Well, that wasn't him, either. What he couldn't decide was whether his action was based in virtue or cowardice or something else. Maybe depression. But enough of that kind of thinking.

"What's Singer planning in there?" Newkirk asked, taking a long pull from the bottle he'd brought with him.

"He's figuring things out," Gonzalez said, irritated. "He's the planner. You know that. You asked me the same question five minutes ago. You're starting to make me nervous, Newkirk. Just shut up if you don't have anything to say."

Newkirk was glad Gonzalez couldn't see him in the dark, couldn't see the mixture of hate and self-revulsion he was sure was on his face.

"You better cool it with the boozing, too," his old boss said, his voice dropping with concern. "We might have to go into action tonight again. You need to be sharp."

"I thought I'd just let you do the killing," Newkirk said, surprised that he verbalized it. Sure, he was thinking that, but he didn't mean to actually say it.

"What the f.u.c.k does that mean?" Gonzalez said, instantly hostile.

"Nothing."

Gonzalez turned in his chair, put his huge forearms on the table between them. "You think I like it? Is that what you think?"

Newkirk wanted to take back his words, but he couldn't. "No, I don't think that. Forget I said anything."

"But you said it, a.s.shole," Gonzalez said, his voice rising. "So you meant it. That's what you think, that I like shooting guys in the head. You think I like that, don't you?"

Newkirk shook his head hard, tried to get his wits back. There was too much alcohol in him. "No, really, I ..."

Gonzalez was across the table and his hand shot out. Before Newkirk could pull back, a thumb jammed into his mouth between his teeth and cheek, and he felt Gonzalez clamp down with his fingers and twist as if he were trying to tear his face off. Newkirk groaned and gagged, turned his head in the direction of the twist, his head driven down into the tabletop.

Gonzalez was now standing over him, bending down, his mouth inches from Newkirk's ear. The thumb was still in his mouth; the pressure and pain were excruciating.

"Don't you dare get sanctimonious on me, Newkirk," Gonzalez hissed. "Don't you f.u.c.king dare. You're in this as deep as I am, as deep as all of us. None of us like what's happened. I had nothing against that guy ...except the fact that he wanted to put me into prison. He wanted to take my new life away from me. I like my life, Newkirk. I'll do anything to keep it. And if that means shooting a sanctimonious p.r.i.c.k like you in the head, I'll do that, too."

Newkirk blinked away tears and tried not to make a sound. The thumb in his mouth tasted of metal and tobacco. He wanted to be still, let the moment pa.s.s, give Gonzalez a moment to cool down.

"I'm sorry," Newkirk said after a beat. Or tried to say. But it sounded like a croaked moan with the thumb in his mouth.

Gonzalez relieved the pressure, and Newkirk sat back up.

"I said I'm sorry," Newkirk said. "I mean it. It was the bourbon talking."

"Yeah," Gonzalez said, drying his wet hand on his pants, his anger receding. "But the bourbon used your mouth."

They heard a chair being pushed back from the table inside. "Somebody's coming," Newkirk said.

"It better be Singer," Gonzalez said, standing.

Singer stepped out onto the porch. "Did you solve our problem?" he asked Newkirk, all business.

"Solved," Gonzalez said. "The pigs are happy."

Singer's face went dead as he listened. "You cut him up?"

Newkirk choked as he spoke. "Nah."

"I told you to cut him up."

"When I shot him, he fell back into the pen," Newkirk lied. "The pigs were all over him. I didn't want to go in there with him."

Singer looked away, obviously angry. "What did you do with his car?"