Killshot (1989) (4 page)

She said, "Thanks a lot."

They moved into the farmhouse and it kept her busy, Carmen doing more of the fixing up than Wayne, who was handier with a thirty-five-pound impact wrench than a hammer and saw. He borrowed a tractor with a brush-hog twice a year to keep the field cut and have a clear view of the tree line. Carmen, thinking of moneymaking ideas, got him to clean out the chickenhouse, believing someday it could be made into a bed-and-breakfast place; cater to duck hunters and boaters who came up from Detroit and got too smashed to drive home. Wayne said, "We'll call it the Chickenshit Inn. I never seen so much chickenshit in my life as out there." Carmen planted a vegetable garden in the backyard. Every spring Wayne put in a row of corn out by the woods and let the deer help themselves to it in August.

It wasn't until Matthew left for the navy in January, their fifth year in the farmhouse, that Carmen took the real estate course at Macomb County Community College and went to work for Nelson Davies Realty. Wayne said if it made her happy, fine. She sold her first house in April. Wayne took her to Henry's for dinner and listened to her tell how she'd closed the deal, Carmen glowing, excited, telling him what a wonderful feeling it was, like being your own boss. By June Carmen was offering the idea that real estate was the kind of thing they could maybe even do together, work as a team; it'd be fun. Wayne said he could see himself going back to school, Jesus. By August Carmen had him looking into the future, playing with the idea of eventually starting their own company. Wayne said, paperwork being so much fun. Now it was October and Carmen had Wayne at least agreeing to talk to Nelson Davies, a man who'd made millions in the business and wasn't much older than Wayne. Wayne said he could hardly wait.

Carmen got home first and parked in the garage. A few minutes later, in the kitchen putting groceries away, she looked outside and saw Wayne's pickup in the drive. It was half past six, getting dark. Wayne had been coming home earlier since Matthew left. Carmen went out to the porch. She was wearing her "closing suit," a tailored navy; it was lightweight and she folded her arms against the evening chill in the air. Wayne was lifting fat paper sacks from the pickup bed, bringing four of them over to the porch steps.

"Sweet Feed," Wayne said, looking up at Carmen on the porch. "It's corn and oats, but that's what they call it."

"I thought you meant me."

"You're tastier'n corn and oats. How'd it go?"

"I closed on a three-bedroom in Wildwood."

"That's the way."

Wayne was wearing his IRONWORKERS BUILD AMERICA jacket. Carmen watched him turn to the truck, lift out a twenty-five-pound block of salt and place it on the grass next to the gravel drive. As Wayne straightened he said, "I saw Walter out on the road. He showed me whitetail tracks going all the way across his seeding to the state land."

Walter, their neighbor, grew sod for suburban lawns. Carmen would think it was a strange way to make a living, watching grass grow.

Wayne came over to the steps with two more bags of Sweet Feed. "They love this stuff."

"They think what a nice guy you are," Carmen said. "Then you shoot them."

"You don't want to eat live venison," Wayne said. "They're hard to hold, and it's not good for your digestion." He stepped over to the truck, reached into the cab window and came out with paper sacks he handed up to Carmen. "This goes in the house." She could tell from the weight what was inside. Boxes of 12-gauge hollow-point slugs.

"I don't see how you can shoot them."

"I can't, less I get within fifty yards. Not with a slug barrel."

"You know what I mean."

"I don't see them as little Walt Disney creatures," Wayne said, rolling up the cab window. "That's the difference. You shoot some in the fall or they starve in the winter. Look at it that way."

This was an annual exchange, Carmen giving her view without making a moral issue of it; Wayne seeing deer as meat, now and then citing a fact of ecology. Carmen raised her face as he came up on the porch. They kissed on the mouth, taking their time, and let their eyes hold a moment or so after. Twenty years and it was still good. She asked him how his job was going.

"I'm finished at Standard Federal. They want to put me on the detail gang, plumbing up, I said no way, I'm a connector, I'm not doing any tit work."

"You didn't."

"I told 'em that--I want to take a few days off."

"Good."

"I'm gonna look at another job next week." He told her there was a new basketball arena going up in Auburn Hills, fairly close by, except it was all precast, so he'd most likely go to work on the One-Fifty Jefferson project in Detroit, he believed was to be a hotel, thirty-two levels. He said he'd rather drive all the way downtown to a story job than work precast across the street. He said, "Lionel's coming by tomorrow, we're gonna look for antler scrapings."

Carmen said, "Wayne?"

He moved past her and was holding the door open. "Let's have a cold one. What do you say?"

"You promised you'd see Nelson tomorrow."

"I did?"

"Come on, now don't pull that."

"I forgot, that's all. What time?"

"Two o'clock."

"That's fine, Lionel's not coming till four. He's gonna take a look, see if there's any white oak out there. I read that deer eat white-oak acorns like potato chips. They can't stop eating them. I know there's plenty of red oak."

Carmen placed the sack of shells on the kitchen counter. Wayne got two cans of beer from the refrigerator, popped them open and handed her one. "You look nice. I'd buy a house off you even if I already had one."

Carmen said, "You're really going to talk to Nelson?"

"I can't wait. You know how I love working for assholes."

"Wayne, try. Okay?"

"You're gonna be there, aren't you?"

"I'll be in the office. What're you going to wear?"

"I don't know--I have to get dressed up?"

"I think you should wear a suit."

Wayne stepped to the counter, put his beer down and opened the sack. "I could. Or my sport coat."

"And a tie?"

Wayne said, "I'll wear a tie if you want," taking the boxes of shotgun slugs from the sack. "I'm trying three-inch magnums this year. Lionel says they'll 'bull the brush,' nothing like it out to fifty yards. Hit a buck you hear it slap home."

Carmen said, "Wayne?"

"What?"

"How you look is important. The impression you make."

He paused. She could see his mind still out in the woods for a moment. He took a sip of beer, the can almost hidden in his big hand, his wedding band, a speck of gold, catching light from the window. She would see him in the bathroom shaving, a pair of skimpy briefs low on his hard body and would think, My God, he's mine. She wished she could take back what she'd said. He didn't have to try to impress anybody.

"Wear what you want," Carmen said, "be comfortable."

"I wear my blue suit," Wayne said, "and you wear yours, will that impress him?"

"Forget I said that, okay?"

Wayne sipped his beer, staring at her. He seemed to grin. "I like that short skirt on you. I bet Nelson does too."

"If he does," Carmen said, "it's because when hemlines go up, so does the stock market. Nobody knows why. Then interest rates go down and we sell more homes."

"Like the moon and the tides," Wayne said, "is that it? Or the seasons of the year. Did you know hunting season comes when the does are in heat?" He reached into the sack again and took out a small plastic bottle fixed to a display card. "The bucks know it. They're ready, so you use some of this. Foggy Mountain 'Hot' Doe Buck Lure." He held it for Carmen to see, then read from the card. " 'A secret blend with pure urine collected from live doe deer during the hottest hours of the estrus cycle.' "

"You're kidding," Carmen said. "You put that on you?"

"You can, or sprinkle it around your blind. The buck smells it, he goes, 'Man, I'm gonna get laid,' and comes tearing through the woods. . . . I was thinking," Wayne said, "if we could invent something like this for the real estate business . . . You know what I mean? Something you sprinkle on a house and all these buyers come running? What do you think?"

"I think you're right," Carmen said. "Wear the blue suit."

"And my hard hat? It's blue, it'd match nice."

"Yeah, put it on backwards," Carmen said.

"Just be myself, huh?"

"You can do whatever you want," Carmen said, turning to look out the window at Wayne's pickup and dead vines in the vegetable garden and the chickenhouse that would be a chickenhouse till it rotted and fell apart.

"What're you mad at?"

"I'm not mad."

"What are you, then?"

"I don't know," Carmen said. "If I find out I'll tell you."

Chapter
4

IT WAS AFTER THEY CAME to Donna's house in Marine City, Armand invited to spend the night, Richie started calling him the Bird. First, introducing him to this woman Donna as Mr. Blackbird, then right away saying, "Yeah, I ran into the Bird at Henry's." And a couple of minutes later, "Get me and the Bird a drink, will you?" Making it sound like they were old buddies and he'd always called him by that name. The funny thing was, Armand didn't mind it.

The Bird. New name for the beginning of a new time in his life. Different, not so Indian-sounding as he played with it in his mind. Who are you? I'm the Bird. Not a blackbird or a seagull, but his own special kind. He liked the way Richie Nix said it, the guy sounding proud to know him, wanting to show him off. Donna came in from the kitchen with a dark drink in each hand. Richie said, "The Bird's from Toronto," and Donna said, "Oh? I was there one time, it's real nice."

Armand the Bird took a sip of the drink and wanted to spit it out. Jesus Christ, it was the worst thing he ever tasted. Richie said, "What's wrong, Bird?"

The Bird becoming just Bird now.

"What is it?"

"That's a Southern and Seven," Donna said. "It's our favorite."

Armand, or whoever he was this moment, went out to the car, where he had four quarts of Canadian Club in the trunk, for the stay at his grandmother's, and brought one of them inside. He said to Donna, "I don't drink that. I only drink real whiskey."

Once he made this known, Donna stuck close to Richie and didn't say much, peering out through her big shiny glasses like some kind of bird herself, pointy face and a nest of red-gold curls sitting on her head. Hair fixed and face painted like she was going to the ball--except for her tennis shoes and the lint and hair all over her black sweater. Coming here after they'd stopped for drinks and had a talk, Richie Nix had said, "Wait till you meet Donna. She was a hack in the joint where I met her and got fired for fucking inmates, man, if you can believe it."

The Bird didn't care for what he saw of Donna, a woman who had to get it off convicts, or this dump she lived in, a little frame house he could tell in the dark coming here needed to be painted and was overgrown with bushes. He couldn't see how two bedrooms would fit in here and how Richie Nix could sleep with that woman, if he did.

He didn't care too much for Richie either, except the guy had nerve. With a gun against his head saying, "You're just the guy I'm looking for." To pull that off, get the Bird to believe it, took something that couldn't be faked. Telling him, "No shit, I mean it. I'm glad this happened." Telling him, "Man, you have to be somebody, drive a car like this, a piece under the seat." Respect in his tone of voice. Then telling in detail about the deal he had going. The Bird listened and came to realize this punk actually had something, wasn't making it up. It could even work. The Bird had seen enough variations of it in Toronto, all kinds of shakedowns and protection deals; he knew how to convince a slow pay to come up with what was owed. This one was different, a one-shot deal, but based on the same idea: scare the guy enough and he'll pay every time.

There was one part of the deal that bothered him. He had to concentrate to think about it in this living room decorated with prison photographs on the walls: Donna in groups of officials and corrections officers; Donna with groups of inmates, one of them signed "To Donna 'Big Red' Mulry from the boys in E Block." Pictures of Donna's life behind walls, not wearing glasses in any of them. She and Richie were on the sofa watching television, a cop show with fast, expensive cars and Latin rock music. Richie saying now, "Look at that, Bird. I don't believe it." The Bird looked and didn't believe it either, the cop acting emotional, broken up about something. Cops didn't do that, they were cold fucking guys that never showed what they felt--if they felt anything. Here or across the river in Canada cops were the same. There were cops in Detroit right now investigating a homicide that happened this morning in a hotel and would not be broken up about the old guy or about the girl either. This guy Richie Nix, this punk, was grinning with a dreamy stupid look, the woman Donna moving her hand underneath his T-shirt that said it was nice to be nice. She had looked at it when they came in and said, "Oh, is that ever cute." What was she trying to be, his mother or what? The Bird had asked what people called him and he said Richie, that was his name, Richie Nix. "Donna likes Dick," he said, "if you know what I mean, but it isn't my name." There was an Elvis Presley doll in a white jumpsuit standing next to the stereo. There were stuffed animals on the sofa and chairs, little furry things, bears, a puppy dog, a kitty, there was a turtle, a Mr. Froggy . . . This woman who used to be a hack, with her pile of hair and her glasses, was going to stuff Richie and use him as a pillow if she could. That was what it looked like.

The Bird got up out of his chair, walked over to the TV and turned it off. He heard the woman say, "Hey, what're you doing?" When he looked at her she was sitting upright with her back arched, one leg underneath her.

"Time for you to go to bed."

"I got news for you," Donna said. "This is my house."

"Yeah, and it's a dump."

She said, "Well, you certainly have your nerve."

He said, "You want me to take you in there?"

Donna turned her head to look at Richie sitting next to her with his mouth open. Richie looked up at the Bird who waited, not saying anything. Now Donna was looking at him again. Still the Bird waited. After a moment she got up and walked out of the room. Richie called after her, "And close the door." He grinned as they heard it slam.

"You phone the guy tomorrow morning," the Bird said.

"What guy?"

The Bird moved to the sofa, taking his time, and sat down. "The real estate guy. You call him and say to bring the money out to one of the model homes, four o'clock in the afternoon. We'll go out there before and take a look, decide which one."

"Sounds good."

"You know why we do it this way?"

"We'll be out closer to the interstate."

The Bird shook his head. "We do it because if there are cops, he tells them and that's where they gonna be."

Richie waited. "Yeah?"

"We go to his office before he leaves for the model home. Watch his place, we don't see any cops around, or ones that could be cops, we go in. Say about two."