Blood and Bone (32 page)

Angela had already fired up the engine of the Gran Torino and was trying to maneuver it around on the road to face back toward north. Considering his options on the run, Hannibal steered his feet toward his own rented car. Angela was a good driver, but the Torino did not handle like a Porsche and if he was fast enough, he might catch her.

He had to now.

Hannibal was a track star in high school. At one time, he pushed his hundred meter dash time to a hair above ten seconds. But that was at the apex of his physical ability under perfect conditions. Now, in boots and jeans, on a dirt road instead of a paved track, he was panting hard, driving his legs to forget the years between then and now. Sweat stung his eyes as he ran hard toward his car, now only fifty yards ahead. His arms pumped hard as he dragged blazing hot air into his lungs.

He could hear his heart pounding when his hand snatched the Ford's door handle. The aluminum burned his palm but he ignored it, consumed with getting into his seat. The car started quickly and he pressed the accelerator to the floor. Dust spewed up behind him and after an annoying second of hesitation the car burst forward.

The little Tempo was an automatic, so Hannibal simply kept his foot mashed to the floorboards and prayed the car would stay on the road. He roared past Cindy waving on the porch, and within seconds he had the Gran Torino in sight. Angela's car had a lot of power, but the dust covered, pot holed road made it
almost impossible for her to put her advantage to good use.

He had never turned the radio off and now he recognized the guitar tune coming from it. It was an intricate piece called Malaguena, which he had heard on a school vacation to Spain. Back then nothing was life and death to him, and he had almost recovered from the serious emotional blow of learning, at six years old, how the Viet Cong killed his father. Thank God he had his mother all those days, months, years to hold him together. Knowing the pain of losing a father tempted him to slow down, let Angela go. Knowing how family could ease the pain of loss made him will his car to move faster.

He was within a couple of car lengths of the Torino when the wooden bridge came into view. The road beyond it was smoother and a little wider. A good driver could lose him on a well-paved straightaway. He had to stop her now. He pulled to his left and, to his surprise, began to gain on his quarry. She was slowing slightly. They were closing on the bridge. Her left hand came out her window, pointing the big revolver backward. Hannibal swung his steering wheel left, then right.

Angela fired. Hannibal reflexively ducked. He heard a burst of crackling white noise and his windshield became a mass of white spider webs, except for the fist-size hole almost dead center. He jerked the wheel right again, hoping to be in the middle of the road. An impact jarred him. The screech of metal on metal, like chalk on a blackboard. Then his car crunched into the bridge's left side wooden railing and his head snapped into the steering wheel and everything stopped.

Quiet. No roaring engines. No tires whining on the dirt track. Hannibal shook his head and watched shards of crumbled safety glass shower down onto his lap. He was sore, but not aching anywhere the way you do when a bone is broken. He did not smell gasoline, did not see blood.

“Any wreck you can walk away from,” he muttered. His door opened easily enough, and the front of the car did not look too bad. All four tires held air. He might even be able to drive this heap. Then he clamped his eyes shut as he realized he was alone. Angela must be halfway to Texas by now. He slammed a fist into his car's door. He had done his best, but it was not enough. Time ran out, the buzzer sounded. It was over. He lost.

He turned to start his walk back to the bordello when a scream froze him in place. He stared around, trying to find the source. Then he heard it again, a woman's voice, shrill with fear. Running around the Tempo he followed the sound to the edge of the bridge. No one in sight. A third scream. Very near. And down. Under the bridge?

The gray trunk of a car stuck up out of the shallow river the bridge crossed. The picture formed at once. He had sideswiped the other car. It swerved right, he swerved left. The bridge stopped him. But Angela had
gone past the bridge and down the seven foot bank into the water.

At the water's edge, Hannibal found Angela sticking halfway out of the Torino's driver's side window. Her door would not open. The dirty water was over the edge of the window and poured into the car, which was still sinking. Her eyes were panicked, but as she saw him the fear increased. He stretched as far as he could, planting his right foot as far into the river as he could, leaving his left on dry land.

“Give me your hand, girl,” he said. “Now, or you'll be sucked under with the car.”

Incredibly, Angela hesitated. “I lost my gun, damn it. I'm not going back, understand. I won't go back and I won't go to jail. I know what jail does.”

“Just give me your hand,” Hannibal said, pleading rather than ordering. But both her hands were on the door, trying to push herself out of the car. Then the Torino shifted, sliding on the muddy river bottom, and she reflexively reached out. Hannibal had a good grip on her wrist and yanked hard. Angela slid free of the car, splashed up through the water, and scrambled to her feet. In less than a minute she and Hannibal were kneeling on the ground beside the bridge's railing. Tiny tears started in her eyes, but her mouth was set in a defiant line. Hannibal leaned forward and Angela's forehead fell onto his shoulder.

“I'm not going back,” she whispered.

Hannibal took her shoulders in his hands and held her at arms' length. “There's no more need to run, girl. Please believe me. Everything you know is a lie. Everything you dream is true.”

The Tempo made more noise than its earliest relative, the Model T, but it carried Hannibal and Angela back to the house where it all began. He
stared at the peeling paint and missing shingles, and saw the house's abandoned appearance as an analogy for the lives it had contained.

Hannibal climbed out of the car and helped Angela out through his door, the other being jammed shut. He held her by the arm as they marched slowly up the porch steps. More than her waterlogged clothes weighted her down, he knew. She was burdened with a lifetime of resentment, a load almost as difficult to put down as it is to carry. Exhausted, he pushed the door open and took three steps inside before he realized something was wrong. Cindy and Malcolm shared the love seat on his far left, their faces twisted in horror.

“You come right on in.”

Hannibal turned right toward the voice, and stared into two wide gun barrels. Johnson stood at the base of the stairs, aiming a long double barreled shotgun down at Hannibal's head. His yellow teeth shone triumphantly. Hannibal looked close, confirming what he knew must be on the back of the man's left hand. Then he gently pushed Angela toward the others and turned to face the gun.

“If you put that down, all the evil can end right here,” Hannibal said.

“Put it down?” Johnson almost laughed. “I ain't putting shit down. Not till I'm done rid of that bitch.”

“You mean Angela?” Hannibal asked. He waved the girl toward the sofa without turning, and was rewarded with the sound of her footsteps moving away. “I don't see the point of that. I'm taking her back to the States and out of your life for good. Why kill her now?”

“It'll make me feel good.”

Hannibal stepped farther into the room. The shotgun pivoted to follow him, leaving the others behind. “I can't believe you'd kill your own daughter. But then, she isn't yours is she?” Another step forward. “In fact, there's not a drop of your blood in her, is there?” Another slow step, but he still faced the gun. “If I'm right, I dug up her father's bones in a cellar in Baltimore.”

“Guess I got to kill you too.” Johnson took one menacing step forward.

Hannibal faced him squarely, stepping back slowly toward the kitchen. “They used to call you Killer, didn't they? You are Killer Nilson, right? And Scooter, she used to be Barbie Robinson. Figured that out when I saw those old scars on the backs of her legs. Doctor Lippincott told me about them when I asked about the young girl who took Jacob Mortimer away.”

“Oh God,” Cindy moaned behind him. “She didn't have any more imagination than Jacob did. He called her Dolly, as in Barbie doll. And Barbie's best friend was Scooter.”

“I figure you met her in your bar, Killer,” Hannibal said. “She's the girl Detective Dalton told me about, the one you and Pat Louis fought over. I guess you won, eh?”

“We was married,” Scooter said from the sofa. “Long before my baby we was married.”

“Sure,” Hannibal said. “You got married, then you went to jail. Scooter, Barbie, must have met Jake Mortimer while you were in stir. They fell in love and she got pregnant. From what I've heard they were pretty happy until you got out.”

“She was my wife,” Johnson shouted. “She belonged to me.”

“Right, and you were the well known Killer,” Hannibal said. “So how much of that was hype? Were you really so dangerous? Well, we know you killed one man. Angela's father.”

Behind him, Hannibal heard Angela cry out “No! No!”

“I killed lots of men,” Johnson said. “Should have drowned that bitch in the tub when she was too small to cause trouble.”

Hannibal controlled his breathing, but he could not stop the sweat breaking out on his forehead through force of will. “Yeah, but you didn't, did you? From what I've seen, I'll bet her mother wouldn't let you.”

“I begged him,” Scooter said from the sofa. “I swore I'd do anything he said if he'd spare my baby. I swore I'd never leave him if he'd just leave her be. He didn't know who Bobby was but I told him he was Jacob Mortimer and his family was important. The police, they look for peoples what kills important people. So we come down here to get away from the police. But he always hated Angela, always mistreated her.”

Scooter was rocking now, fighting her grief. Angela held her arm with two hands. “Momma, why didn't you tell me? Why'd you tell me my name was Patty?”

Scooter's voice was a squeal now. “Your father named himself after two Black Panther leaders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. So I named you after the only woman black liberation leader I could think of. Angela Davis. When we got down here, Killer said we all had to have new names. Best I could come up with, only other woman revolutionary I knew was Patty Hurst.”

“Shut your face, woman,” Johnson shouted, “Or I swear to God I'll kill you.”

“And who you going to kill after that?” Hannibal asked. “Me? Angela? You only got two barrels. Malcolm over there's young and strong. Once that gun's empty, he'll just get up and kick your big black ass.”

His heart had climbed halfway up his throat, but he was still focused, waiting for the instant of action. He knew it would be soon. The man he faced had stopped being Killer Nilson long ago, and Nelson Johnson was not nearly the same man. Hannibal could almost see Johnson's spine being eaten away by years of paranoia.

“He ain't going to do nothing,” Johnson said, but his eyes wavered. “He'll sit there and watch me blow you in half.”

Hannibal stopped at the end of the counter. “You know something Johnson, or Nilson, or whatever the hell you call yourself? I don't like your attitude. Now!” With the shout, Hannibal pointed toward Malcolm. And Johnson's fear made him move the shotgun toward the sofa for an instant.

Knowing he had only a second, Hannibal relaxed his legs and spun, to drop behind the counter. He reached down under his left pants leg. A swarm of twelve gage hornets burst through the counter, leaving a hole the size of a man's head inches above Hannibal's back. But he had the little Colt Commander out of its ankle holster and in one smooth movement he swung his arm around the counter and fired. Johnson jerked as if someone had punched him in the left shoulder and blood burst up from his sleeve. He slumped against the wall, the shotgun's barrels swinging toward the floor. Hannibal leaped to his feet like a berserker and charged through his own gun smoke. Johnson began to slump,
but Hannibal held him up with his right hand around Johnson's throat. He pressed his pistol's short barrel into Johnson's neck and breathed the hell fire of retribution into Johnson's face.

“You murdering bastard,” he said through clenched teeth. “You killed him didn't you? You stabbed the man you knew as Bobby Newton and dumped his body in the cellar.”

“Yes,” Johnson gasped. “I did him. I did him for her.”

Behind him, Hannibal heard Scooter burst into tears, wailing louder than ever. She probably never forgave herself for the tradeoff she made. Hannibal felt her pain. He felt Angela's pain, and his swirling mind reached out to all those who had suffered because of one act of greed so long ago. The entire Mortimer family, who lost a son, a husband, a father. In some twisted way it also resulted in Nieswand's corruption and his wife's eventual breakdown. All their pain converted easily to anger. And he could dispel his rage with one bullet fired into Johnson's hated brain. His finger tightened on the trigger. Johnson relaxed, as if he knew what was coming. Maybe he had been waiting for it for decades.

“Hannibal,” Cindy shouted. “You don't want to.”

“The hell I don't,” he screamed back. “He's nothing but a cold-blooded killer.”

Cindy walked to within four feet of her man. “He is,” she said. “But you're not.”

Teeth grinding together, Hannibal felt the anger boiling in his belly again. He must learn to control that.

And he did. The red haze passed from his eyes and he heaved a heavy sigh of partial regret. For a moment he had wanted this man to die by his hand, but he had to face the facts.

“You're not worth the bullet,” Hannibal said, lowering his gun. “You're a hateful old man, an evil old man, a vicious old man. But after all that, you are still just an old man.”