On his third circuit Ricky leans into Tyler’s room. Disney World poster, bed like a race car, brightly painted. No Tyler tonight. Sometimes there’s a shape in the bed that might be his little boy, but not tonight. Decides not to check on Alicia and Reya because the girls will be with Tyler, all three together, forever and ever, amen.
The new house, big as it is, is too small to contain him. In the laundry room he slips into a pair of elastic-waisted, cotton gym shorts, heads into the four-bay garage. No shirt, no shoes, he loves the feeling of air on his skin, believes he can soak up oxygen, make himself stronger. He decides, on impulse, to leave the Beemer and take Myla’s new convertible Mini Cooper. Pushes the driver’s seat as far back as it will go, his big arms cocked over the sides. Thinking he must look like one of those Shriners driving a toy car for the kids. All he needs is the funny hat.
Ha, ha, ha, he laughs all the way to the airstrip. Not quite to the airstrip, actually, because the ruts and potholes on the final approach are bigger than the Mini. So he parks the little car in the brush, goes the last couple of miles on foot, snorting great drafts of muggy, night-swamp air though his flaring nostrils. The odor of ancient muck, animal scat and the thin, delicious scent of slow-moving water. Thinking, this is how the old-timers did it, hunting more or less naked, alive to the world, paying attention with all the nerves of their bodies.
Ricky feels power flowing into him, and a soothing calmness that slows his brain, stops it from spinning like an off-kilter gyroscope. When he emerges into the clearing he instantly clocks the beautiful Beechcraft exactly where he left it, wings glinting with the light of distant stars. Not far away the jacked-up, fat-wheeled Dodge Ram lurks next to the camouflaged hangar. The toothy front grill makes the truck look like a shiny steel cougar ready to pounce.
“Roy!” Ricky bellows, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Dug! Roydug! Roydug! Roydug!”
Amused by putting their names together, the swamp-cracker twins who have sworn him allegiance in exchange for the new truck and whatever crumbs may dribble their way. Roy is the brains of the family, meaning he doesn’t drool overmuch. Whereas Dug, his very name apparently misspelled by his illiterate, white-trash mammy, young Dug seems to be missing about half his puzzle.
Ricky always deals with Roy, for obvious reasons, but this time it’s Dug who comes lurching out of the truck, swollen eyelids crunchy with sleep.
Upon seeing Ricky he stammers, “Um-um. Yeah hey what?”
Bare chested, bare-legged Ricky Lang coming out of the dark, chanting his name, it’s like being awakened by a hard slap in the face. An experience not entirely unknown to Dug, whose late and unlamented pappy was notoriously ill-tempered and free with his hands.
“Where’s Roy?” Ricky wants to know.
Dug is looking around, wondering how the man got here. A little segment of his brain wondering if maybe the crazy Indian really can fly without benefit of aircraft. Materializing like a ghost with Dug’s name in his mouth.
“Um-um,” says Dug.
“Um-um, where’s he at?” Ricky demands. Standing close so the stammering white-bread can smell the feral stink of him, the swamp and danger on his breath.
Dug is afraid of Ricky—any sane individual smaller than King Kong would be afraid of Ricky Lang, who exudes a kind of steroid strength from the top of his bowl-cut hairdo down to his splayed feet—but Dug is even more afraid that he’ll react the wrong way, ruin everything for Roy. Not knowing what to do, fearing the wrong reaction, he’s reduced to stammering, making um-um noises while his brain sorts out the options.
Strangely enough, Ricky seems to understand what’s going on with Dug—the obvious strain of having to think—and steps back, giving him room to work it out.
“Roy,” Dug finally says, savoring the name. “He gone to check on the girl. I’m guardin’ the airplane.”
Giving it the swamp-cracker pronunciations, two words, era plane.
“Left you the truck,” Ricky observes. “What’s he driving?”
Dug has to think about it, then carefully assemble the words. “Four-wheeler. One in the shed?”
That sets Ricky back on his bare heels just a little, because he has always intended the four-wheeler to be a present for his children, eventually. Purchased on a whim months ago, with nobody’s birthday pending anytime soon, he’d decided to store it at the airfield until they were old enough to drive the thing. Picturing Tyler gleeful as he guns the engine, spins the fat wheels. Tyler screaming.
Ricky takes a deep breath, swallows his rage, saving it for later.
“Took the wheeler, did he?” he says pleasantly, showing his teeth.
Dug nods deliberately and with enthusiasm, as if grateful for any question that doesn’t require a verbal response.
“Where’s that cell phone at, Dug? The one the girl had. Did Roy leave it with you?”
Dug nods again. Two in a row.
“Give it over, I need to make a call,” says Ricky, holding out his big fist, opening his blunt fingers.
Dug hurries to the truck, returns with the sporty little Razr cell phone, places it carefully into the palm of Ricky’s hand. Takes a step back, waiting.
“Battery, Dug,” says Ricky, ever so softly. “I need the battery, too.”
Back to the truck like a two-legged retriever. Actually Ricky’s pleased that the twins remembered to remove the battery, as instructed. Ricky knows all about surveillance and triangulation, and how an active cell phone can be a homing device.
He assembles the phone, fires it up, waits until the signal bars are glowing. Then thumbs the redial button, watches the familiar number march across the little blue screen.
“Yo, Edwin,” Ricky says jovially, his free hand slipping into his gym shorts, adjusting his genitals. “You still up. Me again, yeah. What’s a matter, can’t sleep? You call the cops yet? No? FBI? CIA, Wackenhut, Pizza Hut, whoever? No? You swear? Oh that’s good, I believe you. You’re pretty smart for a white dude. Yeah, I’m down with you, bro. We can figure a way out of this, we put our brains together and think real hard. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I know you’re worried about your son. I know that. You should be worried. If we can’t work this out, if you can’t help me, I’ll be forced to cut off your boy’s ears and his nose and his fingers and little white pecker, and then FedEx him to locations around the world.”
The FedEx stuff is pure improvisation, something he heard in a movie or on TV. Ricky has already decided that when the time comes the body will go into the swamp, clean and simple and forever. But who knows, FedEx might work for the smaller appendages.
Ricky loves this part, deciding who lives, who dies, who gets the power, who shrivels like an earthworm in the sun.
“Calm down, Edwin,” he says. “Concentrate on figuring out how to get me what I want. You’ve got twelve hours before I start cutting.”
19. The Taste Of Dirty Pennies
Men, most of them, seem to think that when a woman cries she’s signaling weakness, falling apart. But sometimes crying is just what you do to relieve the tension. Guys scream or sweat or kick the cat. We cry. There’s this old movie with Holly Hunter, she’s the producer of a TV news show, and she starts the day by sitting at her desk and crying her eyes out for about thirty seconds. Then she’s good to go.
I’m having a Holly Hunter moment. The forbidden word abducted is spoken and I’m a fountain, sobbing so hard it hurts in my ribs.
Give him credit, Randall Shane doesn’t try to comfort me or offer a shoulder to cry on. He sits back and gives me time, and when I’m finished blowing my nose he simply continues where he left off.
“It’s a theory and therefore by definition it could be wrong,” he says. “But I think we have to proceed on the assumption