The Reckoning (11 page)

Danziger was thinking about it when Blue Eddie stood up, reached under the counter, and handed Barbetta something. Barbetta looked down at it. It was an iPod and a set of earphones.

“SHOW-pan,” said Blue Eddie.

“Show pin?” said Barbetta, confused.

Blue Eddie shook his head, spoke more slowly. “Show-PAN. Freddie SHOW-pan. Piano music. Keeps yer head clear. Kills da buzzing.”

“
You
have the buzzing,” said Barbetta.

Blue Eddie moved his massive head forward and back and then showed his greenish teeth. “Fuggin' years. Goddid in Paddonz Ard. Onna pig-nig wid Rosamunda. Willa trees along da ribber dere. Fuggin willas are alwez buzzing. Godda nod lissen or words start coming. Den yer rilly fugged.”

“And this works,” said Barbetta, lifting the iPod up. “It keeps the words away? Chopin?”

“Yiz,” said Blue Eddie. “Show-pan. Menly da NOG-turns. Nodda sonadas. Godda idee from Rosamunda. She hadda buzzin in her hed doo. Why she hadda ged oudda Nizeville. Da buzzin fuggin drove her crazy.”

“Your wife thought of this?”

“Yiz,” he said, in a solemn whisper. “Rosamunda did. She figgered id oud. Classigal musig. Didn't stop id, but id pushed id down. Keeps you from hearin da werds. You hear da werds, den yer…”

“Rilly fugged,” said Barbetta.

“Yah. Rilly fugged. Rosamunda…” He stopped, gave a wistful smile, a heartache smile, his eyes moist and shining. “Rosamunda, she wuz…qualidy.”

Barbetta was gone, followed shortly by a couple of other squads, their lights bouncing crazily off the windows and walls, sirens howling.

Danziger listened to the sirens fading slowly away. He lifted his juice glass, drained it, walked up front to Blue Eddie, who was back on his chair, cherishing the .357 with a fresh bar rag.

Danziger put the bill down on the counter, along with Barbetta's cash and another hundred of his own. Blue Eddie studied the pile over his half-glasses.

“Doo mudge, Charlie.”

“How much was the iPod?”

Blue Eddie blinked at Danziger. “Free. Wuz Rosamunda's.”

“What are you going to use now on the buzzing?”

He held up the Llama, grinned at Danziger. “Mebbe dis.”

“Jeez, Eddie.”

“Only kidding, Charlie. God Show-pan onna reddio right here. CD. God him alla time. Bud tings gedding strenge. Nizeville gedding priddy fuggin strenge.”

“You mean Frank?”

“Nah. Keeps Show-pan on, heel be okay. Strenge izz yew.”

“Me?”

Blue Eddie inclined his massive head. “Yew. Frank is ride. You here, my buzzin backed off doo. Buzzin doesn't lige you. I tink yer here to fug with the buzzin. Boud fuggin dime doo.”

“Maybe I should borrow the gun?”

Blue Eddie shook his head again, his cheeks glistening with sweat, his eyes clear and sharp. “No. Gun wod do id now. Wud yoo shud doo…”

“Yeah?”

“Tek da bus.”

They came up the beach just before dawn, three strong young men. Five of them, the diehards, had been sitting around the Kellermans' pool after the patrol guys left, after
everybody
left, sitting around in the wreckage and litter, hungover, depressed, staring at the various citations the patrol guys had written them up for—
drunk and disorderly, underage drinking, supplying alcohol to minors, possession of cocaine for personal use, possession of Ecstasy for personal use
…the list went on for quite some distance, and they knew that there would be
repercussions
.

Serious fucking
repercussions.

From the parental units certainly, possibly from the dean of students at Notre Dame, and from the coaching staff, perhaps even from John J. himself…At the very least, if all of this surfaced in the wrong places, they were off the squad and possibly suspended from the school. Expulsion was not out of the question.

To say nothing of the various criminal charges that were pending the further investigations of the FHP.

Unlike some other universities—say, Duke or UC Santa Cruz—Notre Dame did not look kindly upon the kind of butthead stunts these five young men and their minions had gotten up to last night.

And there was the cell-phone video some total moron had taken, which the cops had happily confiscated, because of the
other
pending charge, the
sex with minors
part.

The Kellerman kid, Nathan, was the first to come up with the notion of payback, but it caught on pretty quick with two other guys. Spencer Ramey was a second-string fullback and Anthony Torinetti Jr. was part of the practice squad; all three of them—Nate, Spence, Tony—were big, nimble, quick, long-armed, and rangy, and all of them were extremely happy to collide with things.

Blake Kellerman was Nathan's older brother, just turned twenty-one, almost as big and dark as Nate, but nowhere near as steroidal. His major was poly sci, his sport was lacrosse, and his participation in the evening had been restricted to the beer keg and the happy contemplation of all the naked girls in the pool.

The last kid was Louis T'Beau Barclay, a red-shirt freshman wide receiver, a rising star who was already being watched by the pros.

When Nate brought up the idea of payback, Louis Barclay, inevitably known as T-Bone, tried to shoot it dead right there. “No fucking way, Nate. We're already in the shit. Now you want to go harass some old retired guy? Waddya gonna do, take away his walker? Cut your losses. Start thinking about damage control—”

“It was none of that asshole's business,” said Nate, flaring up. “He's five hundred fucking yards up the shore—”

“How do you even know it was that Sinclair guy?” Blake wanted to know. “You were making enough noise to wake people up in fucking Daytona.”

Nate rounded on him. “I heard one of the state guys talking to that redneck sergeant who was running things. He wanted to know if somebody should drive up and interview Mr. Sinclair. The sergeant saw me looking at them, pulled the guy away. It was him. Sinclair. Who the fuck else could it have been? There's nobody else on the whole beach other than Sinclair and that skanky Puerto Rican punchboard he's shacked up with.”

Blake shrugged it off, had some beer, and said, “You can go if you want to, Nate. But I'm sure as shit not dumb enough to go with you. We're already in deep shit with Mom and Dad—”

“They fucking got insurance, you dildo. You can pussy out if you want,” he said, standing up, weaving a bit. “I'm going. Who's in?”

Spence Ramey got up, pulled at his beer. “I'm in. What the fuck. Let's go scare the shit out of the old fart.”

Anthony Torinetti, Tony, was thinking about how being on the practice squad could help him get on the Irish full-time. He felt he needed to show some team spirit. He stood up, looked around at the rest of the guys. “Okay. Let's do it.”

“Do what, Nate?” said T-Bone, not moving an inch. “Do
what
, exactly?”

Nate looked around, and then his face just went darker. “That man has just fucked my entire life. I'm gonna go fuck up his.”

T-Bone shook his head, smiled up at Nate. “You go right ahead, Nate. You're the one who's fucked here, banging that tiny thing, letting Spence film it. Me? Hell, patrol ain't got shit on me, other than some dope, and even Barack smoked dope. I'm clean, I got people from the Rams, from the Saints, lookin' at my lovely black ass. I am not fucking that up so you and me and the guys can bond over some poor cracker's busted nose. The rest of you guys got any brains, you'll sit right back down here and we can co-
or
-din-ate some bullshit and get your asses out of trouble. Cool?”

“Cool with me,” said Blake, leaning back in his lounge chair and popping another Stella.

Nate looked at them for a while, uncertainty in his eyes, but then he clouded up again, got red, turned without another word, and went down the wooden stairs that led to the shore.

Spence followed him, and after a second, so did Tony. They were in flip-flops, baggy plaid shorts, and tank tops. Blake and T-Bone Barclay watched them go, three pale figures against the sand, the wide ocean rolling and booming. Far away over the Atlantic a delicate pink glow was in the sky.

“Dumb fucks,” said T-Bone.

“Should we call the Sinclairs, let them know? Warn them?”

Barclay though that over.
Get involved? Or stay off the radar?

“We call, cops could say we should have done more to stop them. Other hand, if those folks know Nate's coming, they can button up and call patrol. Might keep those boys from doing something worse.”

Blake thought about it. “Fuck it. I'm calling.” And he did.

Coker said, “Thanks,” and put the phone down. Twyla was standing beside him in the darkened kitchen.

“Who was that?”

“Blake Kellerman. He says that Nate and two of his friends are on the way up the beach to kick our asses. Says they're all big boys, football guys.”

That did not please her. She turned without a word and headed for the rear hall deck. Coker knew she kept a security piece there, a small Colt Government Model .380 with a seven-round mag. It was a light piece, but he'd seen Twyla bounce a can of cream soda all over a sandlot with it, never missing, at a range of fifty feet.

He followed her down the hall, got a hand on her shoulder. “Honey, we can't be shooting the citizenry.”

She had the gun out and turned under his hand, her muscular frame twisting away, her dark eyes hot. “I know what you're thinking, Coker. You're gonna go out there—”

“And reason with them,” said Coker, and there was that smile, like moonlight on an ice field.

He pulled on a pair of white slacks and a black tee, walked across to the glass doors that led out to the beach, stopping as he got to the threshold. “No, babe. Stay inside. Please.”

“Nate plays for the Irish,” she said. “He's as big as a house, and so are the other two, I'll bet.”

“We'll see, won't we? If it goes bad, don't be calling the cops again. Just scatter my ashes over the Bighorns, okay?”

She looked at him.

“Oh, don't worry. I won't be calling the cops. And fuck your scattered ashes.”

“Too late now,” said Coker, looking down the shore. In the growing light it was easy to see three large figures making their way north along the dunes. “Here they come.”

Twyla stayed in the shadow of the deck awning, the Colt in her hand. As Coker went down the stairs and out onto the beach, she racked the slide and pumped a round into the chamber. The
snickety-snick
sound was faint in the roaring of the ocean, but Coker heard it and smiled to himself.

Twyla was a keeper, he thought, and then he stopped thinking, just came down to the hard sand by the water—the footing was better there—set himself, shook out his shoulders and his neck, and watched the three boys come up.

Nate was the guy in the middle, maybe a touch bigger than the other two. It was hard to make out faces in the half-light, but their general silhouette was informative. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, long arms and big hands.

They stopped a few yards back and spread out a bit. Coker noticed they were all wearing flip-flops, the dumb fucks. Coker was barefoot. Not even Bruce Lee could fight in flip-flops on beach sand.

“Sinclair, you fuckin' snitch,” said Nate, his voice tight and slurred. In the shore breeze Coker could smell beer and dope coming off them. He figured that was good, because they'd still be drunk, or at worst badly hungover.

Coker didn't answer.

“You called the cops,” said Nate.

“Yeah,” said Spence. “You're gonna get beat, old man. Gonna get beat on like a bongo.”

Coker sighed, remembering that he had promised Twyla he'd just reason with them. Not that she believed that for a second.

“Look, Nate, you were tearing the place apart. It sounded like people were getting hurt—”

“You're the fuckhead who's gonna get hurt,” said one of the other two. Coker didn't know him. Coker kept his focus on Nate.

“You're a football player, Nate. You need your health. If you go ahead here, I promise you, your career ends tonight. You'll never play football again. You'll be lucky if you can walk.”

All three of them laughed at that.

“You're a fucking
banker
,” said Nate. “A wrinkly-ass old fuck getting his knob polished by some skanky Puerto Rican whore. So fuck you.”

Coker ran right out of
reasonable
when they started talking about Twyla. He looked out at the ocean for a second, getting his focus, came back to the boys, and now his voice belonged to the lizard that lived deep down in his amygdala.

“Okay. Here's the deal. If you three have to talk until you grow some balls, I'll go back to bed and wait. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and let's get started.”

This sent a ripple through the three boys, and they seemed to fall back an inch or two. Then, with a bullish snort, Nate came at him, the other two going wide and trying to come in from his sides.

Coker turned slightly, braced, timed it, and kicked Nate Kellerman very hard in the left knee, just as Kellerman had planted his left foot in the sand, his right leg in the air, all of his body weight on that left knee. Coker caught him exactly right, putting all his power into it, a snaky scythelike sideways blow coming in fast and full of impact, and he felt Kellerman's knee snapping, a meaty wet pop as the sinews and cartilage gave away and the entire joint tore itself apart. He finished the follow-through and completed his pivot, seeing Nate going down, screaming, holding his knee, the angle sickeningly wrong. Coker came back to the ready, hands at his sides.

The other two kept coming, no hesitation, and Coker knew he was going to get hit, and he did. He felt a rocky fist bounce off his forehead, rode it back, felt strong arms on his neck, head-butted backward and felt someone's cheekbone crack, got punched hard in the left ear, and again felt the drum pop, pain bolting through his skull, and then the rage primeval came rushing in, a flow of streaming electrons, a bloodred tide.

He twisted away from an incoming punch, a straight left, felt it graze his right eye, caught the forearm of the guy connected to the punch—it was Spence—locked him there in a bar, stepped under and in and drove the butt of his open palm into Spence's upper lip, aiming for a place about a foot on the other side of the boy's skull.

Properly delivered, it's a strike that can drive the nasal bones right through the sinuses and into the brain. Coker didn't hold back, but he knew that he had come in a tad low.

He could feel the kid's front teeth crack and shatter under his palm, feel his own flesh shredding on the kid's broken stumps. The kid's head went flying back, blood spraying out in a fan, along with some of his teeth, and Coker pivoted, swept the boy's left leg out from under him, put a choke hold on his Adam's apple, squeezing it tight as he sent him to the ground, where Spence Ramey hit hard and lay flat, snorting, gagging, blowing blood and tissue out of his broken nose and his ruined upper lip.

There was a pause, a break, heavy breathing, and the third kid, Tony Torinetti, was moving back fast, holding something up in his hand, lifting it to his face. Nate was still shrieking and writhing on the ground. The kid, backing away, was saying
No, please no
. Coker thought
Gun, a gun? No, not a gun,
and then there was a flash and a dry click and another white flash and Coker realized it was a
camera,
a fucking cell-phone camera—the asshole was taking pictures. The kid snapped one more while backpedaling like crazy, turned and ran, ran fast and ran hard, his feet kicking up fan sprays of sugary sand.

Coker, his chest heaving, his ear on fire, and blood running down the side of his face, started off after the kid, but the kid was
fleet
, and there was something wrong with Coker's ankle. Twyla was there, with the Colt, breathing hard.

“Coker, are you okay?”

Nate Kellerman was out of it, crying and moaning, both hands wrapped around the pulped ruin of what used to be his left knee, his football days over forever. Spence Ramey was on his back, snorting like a hog, choking on his own blood.

Coker went over to Spence, flipped the kid onto his side so he wouldn't choke to death. Coker stayed there, checking his airway. Coker hadn't crushed his larynx. Too bad. His looks were fucked. Some reconstructive surgery, dental implants, he'd be almost new. Still be a world-class dumbass.

Coker walked away, bent over, put his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Feeling his age. They both watched the third kid running, a black stick figure windmilling down the shoreline.

A camera. A fucking iPhone with a camera.