Part 25 (1/2)

He's giving me instructions, Crow realized-and maybe risking his own life in the process.

33.

Was that him?” Barry Jenkins asked when Ed Keyes hung up the phone.

”Was that who?”

”Edgar Ransome-the young white man who's traveling with a young black man who happens to be a person of interest in the murder of a federal prosecutor. You've practically been harboring a fugitive, Mr. Keyes. How did a former cop get mixed up in something like this?”

Jenkins and Collins had arrived at Keyes's trailer-park address just after ten. It had been Collins who pointed out that it would look weird, calling in sick and then going to arrest the suspect in the Youssef case. This way they could say honestly that they'd followed up on a lead that Dalesio had shared with Collins before he died. But Jenkins always forgot how long it took to cover the 130 miles between Baltimore and the Delaware beaches, even in the off-season. The first hour flew by, making you c.o.c.ky, but then came Delaware and the long, dark stretch of 404, a two-lane road where one stubborn farmer could bring the average speed down to forty-five miles per hour. At night the landscape seemed desolate and eerie, the kind of countryside where people broke down in horror films. And Collins, so bold in every other respect, was restrained behind the wheel of a car. That probably came from a lifetime of DWB.

They could have left earlier, but Jenkins wanted to go through the motions, walk through the steps that they would later claim to have taken. One less lie to keep track of. They had even gone by Gabe's house, although they didn't need to go in. After all, Gabe had already told Collins what they needed to know-the name of the likely contact, his address over in Delaware. They were almost to the Bay Bridge when that c.u.n.t called, suddenly ready to play, and Jenkins had agreed to meet her rather than let her know that he was nowhere nearby. She wouldn't be the first woman he'd stood up.

Once they arrived in Fenwick, they had decided not to go straight to the ex-cop's trailer. They chatted up some neighbors in the trailer park. They were skeptical types, but again official ID and badges worked wonders, and they eventually loosened the jaw of one old biddy, who had noticed a strange young man hanging around.

”White or black?” Jenkins had asked.

The woman had cast a nervous look toward Collins, as if unsure of the propriety of referencing race in his presence.

”Why, white,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. ”He sat outside and drank a beer with Ed on Sunday, bold as you please.”

Bold because it was Sunday, because it was beer? Jenkins wasn't sure of her logic.

”You get a name, or any information about him?”

”I think Ed said he's a seasonal worker, helping him out at the park.”

”The park?”

”You know, the place he runs down to the boardwalk.”

Of course Jenkins didn't know. But she volunteered the info eventually, in her own scattered way. So while Jenkins was sitting with Ed Keyes, sharing a beer with him and trying to get him to open up about his ”seasonal worker,” Mike Collins was already en route to FunWorld to make his acquaintance.

Then the phone rang. Jenkins wasn't fooled. He knew what the old guy was trying to do-but he also knew he was too late. Collins probably would have shot the old guy, but Jenkins was trying to do this right for once.

Mike Collins sat parked outside the shuttered amus.e.m.e.nt park, trying to figure out where all the entrances were. Fearlessness had always been his greatest strength-and his largest liability. He never doubted that he could outrun, outshoot, outfight anyone. Outthink? No. But in any physical contest, he would win.

But that was in Baltimore, on occasion Prince George's County, places where it was never truly dark. Off-season, the town of Fenwick sat in inky blackness, clouds blotting out whatever light the stars might have provided tonight. The ocean, which Collins could hear but not see, should have been a comfort. Wherever they went, they couldn't go east. That was one direction he didn't have to worry about. Still, it bothered him, this unknown territory. He saw only one door, in the center of a clown's leering mouth, but what about all those garage-type entrances? He had to get the kid now or risking losing him, losing everything.

Just the kid, Jenkins had said over and over, as if Collins were stupid. Just the kid. Take him into custody, and we'll stage our final act out on the road. Jenkins's idea was that they would stop for a bathroom break somewhere, or so they would tell folks later on. That lonely stretch of 404, the bypa.s.s around Bridgeville. The kid would demand a chance to whiz on the side of the road, and Jenkins would join him, then the kid would go for Jenkins's gun, and Mike would have to shoot him. Would they throw down the knife, too, or was that overkill? Collins was fuzzy on that part.

Just the kid.

Well, he'd do his best.

He eased out of the car and positioned himself in a doorway opposite the side entrance to the amus.e.m.e.nt park. Could they raise those big shutters? Not quickly, he guessed, and not without a lot of noise, chains rattling and s.h.i.+t. d.a.m.n, he wished he knew the layout of the place inside. Maybe he should wait for Jenkins so they could control for someone trying to go out the windows. Maybe- But here they were. Two men, about the same height and build, moving silently and quickly toward an old Jeep. He was on them before the driver was in the car, his gun in the guy's back. Normally he would have roared, too, used the adrenaline-fueled bl.u.s.ter he'd been trained to employ in such situations. But it was almost as if the guy expected him. His hands went up in automatic surrender. A civilian, as Jenkins had predicted. A candy-a.s.s.

”Mike Collins?” the man asked.

”Yes,” he said automatically even as he thought, How? How do you know my name? The girlfriend, s.h.i.+t, the girlfriend- ”Run, Lloyd!” the man screamed. ”Run!”

And the boy took off toward the ocean of all places, ran toward the sound of that angry surf. Surprised, then furious, Collins caught the man across the face with his weapon, then hit him again, and he would have kept going if he hadn't remembered that the man, infuriating as he was, wasn't the quarry. Just the kid, Jenkins had said. Should he finish the man off, was he still off-limits? No, he had to chase and catch the kid. He'd have to do the throw-down on his own. Jenkins would understand.

The kid had a good head start, and it took Mike a moment to realize he'd have to shuck his shoes if he wanted to be compet.i.tive on this wet sand and surf. Still, the kid was just a runt and a slacker, underfed and underexercised. He had no chance. The distance between them was closing, and the stretch of beach ahead was increasingly desolate. Mike wouldn't even try to catch him until they got past that last line of houses, where he could be sure that they were alone, unseen.

Lloyd thought briefly about Crow's advice that he should learn to swim. If he could get out in the ocean, would he be safer? Guy was a brother, maybe he couldn't swim either. Too late now, and he'd freeze to death in that water anyway. His lungs were on fire, his legs felt like lead, churning in the sand, but he had to keep going, not daring to look back. He was pretty sure that cops, even dirty cops, couldn't shoot you in the back. Someone had told him that. Who?

Le'andro. f.u.c.k.

He wished he could take it back, every bit of it. Rewind his life as if it were a video, go to that night before Thanksgiving. No, Le'andro, I can't help you out. No, Le'andro, I'm not going to hide here and listen to what this guy tells you to do, then do it for you.

Two hundred dollars and a North Face jacket. Crow was right. It was a p.i.s.s-poor payment for one's life.

The houses seem to be giving way, disappearing. He was now on an open stretch of beach, and he could hear that guy grunting behind him, steady as the Terminator. Crow was wrong. He shouldn't have run. Guy might not have killed him in front of a witness, but he'd sure as h.e.l.l do it out here in the middle of nowhere. Crow was just protecting his own a.s.s, maybe, like in Robocop, where all those guys keep running from the guy that the machine had targeted for a.s.sa.s.sination. f.u.c.k Crow. f.u.c.k everybody. Lloyd could sense the other man gaining on him, and he was beginning to think he couldn't go another step when light flooded the open beach and that pathetic ugly Jeep crested the dunes just ahead of him.

Crow hadn't abandoned him after all. But what could Crow do anyway?

Crow's nose was broken, he was pretty sure of that, and something felt off in his cheek. Whatever had happened, it was the worst pain he had ever known, worse even than being stabbed, because at least then he had gone into shock, been beyond pain.

Still, he knew he had to get to Lloyd. He didn't even take time to deflate the Jeep's tires, not caring if it got stuck in the sand. The thing was to get there, to be present, to bank on the fact that a witness would take the air out of this scheme. He raced up the stretch of Highway 1, wis.h.i.+ng that the summer speed traps were there so he could lead them into the chase, pulled into the parking lot of the public beach, and then rammed up the path used by the surf fishers. His headlamps picked up two running figures. The one in front looked ragged, on the verge of collapse, while the other moved with a brisk, confident stride.

”Stop!” he screamed. ”We'll come with you together! We'll both-”

To his amazement, the man on the beach turned and fired straight at him, hitting the Jeep. The lights probably made it hard for him to aim with any accuracy, but now he was approaching, coming toward the Jeep's side, his weapon drawn. And for the first time in his life, Crow understood that he was in danger, that he could be killed. Lloyd, yes. Lloyd, sure. Lloyd, of course. He had been protecting Lloyd all along. Lloyd was vulnerable because he was the kind of disposable kid whose death no one would notice, as long as it was under the right circ.u.mstances. But not him. People like Crow didn't get killed, not by cops, no matter how crooked and desperate.

Yet here was a man approaching him with a gun, a man who was going to shoot him and then Lloyd. How would he explain it? Crow backed away, moving behind the car, but it seemed unlikely that they could maintain this game of ring-around-the-rosy, like in some old retro movie where the boss chased the comely secretary around the desk.

”You can't,” he shouted to Mike Collins. ”It's over. You can't-”

Yet the man's very posture made clear that he could, that he would. Crow bent down and grabbed a handful of sand, flung it in Collins's face. It wasn't clear if he hit his eyes as he had hoped, but Collins flinched instinctively, and it was all Crow needed. He dove into the Jeep and grabbed the gun he'd taken from Tess, the .38 Smith & Wesson that she retired when she bought her Beretta. Lloyd, as if sensing his plan, threw himself on Collins from behind, knocking him down in the sand. Like a child, at once single-minded and unfocused, Collins turned his attention on Lloyd, pus.h.i.+ng him off, positioning himself in the sand, taking a two-handed grip on his gun and aiming straight at Lloyd's forehead.

”Don't!” It was unclear if the man could hear, if he ever heard, if he understood anything other than his own need to survive. Lloyd closed his eyes, surrendering, ready to die.

Lloyd opened them again at the sound of the gunshot, watched in seeming amazement as Collins crumpled. Crow, who hadn't handled a weapon since he earned a merit badge in riflery, had made the first shot count, because he knew this was not a night for second chances.

Jenkins wasn't surprised when he heard the knock at Ed's trailer door. He had been expecting Mike to come back and tell him the boy was safely in tow, that they needed to head back. In fact, he wasn't sure why it had taken this long.

He was surprised to see the two men he'd been searching for. They had become abstract to him, somehow, objects, one with a name and one without. He knew the one face, from driver's-license databases, although it had been far more handsome in that official photo, without the nose bloodied and crooked.

”Call the police,” Crow said to Ed. ”And then I need to call a lawyer.”