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Then anger bloomed in his chest like an old friend, cleansing his mind of all his self-accusatory thoughts.
Show time, boys and girls.
He flipped back the blanket that was folded around the M-1A rifle, the semiauto civilian equivalent of the old M-14. It was a far better piece than any of the other modified military weapons, silenced and scoped, deadly accurate, rapid-firing, the twenty-round magazine packed tight with soft-nosed .308s. He worked the blanket out from under the rifle and draped it over his head like a tent. Then he gathered up the weight of the rifle, knelt on one knee, and fitted the stock against his shoulder and cheek.
A man’s head swam into the lens of his telescopic sight, and Axel’s mouth opened wetly against the stock, almost like his lips were pressing at a twisted angle into a woman’s throat. He exhaled slowly and tightened his finger inside the trigger guard. This one’s for Jimmy and me, both, he thought.
“I heard you were queer bait with Vice before NOPD let you start blowing heads,” a voice said behind him.
Axel jerked around, the blanket sliding off his head and shoulders, and stared into the face of a kid who looked like a 1950s greaser. Where had he seen that face before? On a composite? The kid smiled briefly, as though he were about to introduce himself, then shot Axel with a .22 Ruger automatic between the eyes. The kid watched Axel tumble into the cane, then nudged Axel’s head to one side with his shoe and leaned over and fired a second round into his ear and a third into his temple.
The splatter hit the barrel of his pistol and he used the blanket to wipe it off.
When the shots went off, the elderly black man had been walking back down the bank to look for a pocketknife he had lost. He stood stark still, his heart racing, and watched the young dark-haired man with white skin, who only a moment ago had seemed like a fellow taking a stroll, straighten up from his work and mount the slope, a pistol hanging from his hand.
The black man thought he should run, but his feet would not move. He was going to say, “White people fightin’ ain’t my bidness,” but he never got the chance.
“How’s it goin’, cappie?” the young man said, and passed him by, shaking a pair of black-framed glasses loose from their case and slipping them on his face.
The black man watched him wrap his pistol in a paper bag and cross the road and toss the pistol on his car seat and drive away, his turn indicator clicking to warn oncoming traffic of his presence.
20
The night was absolutely black when Alafair and I got home two hours later. In the dash light her face was drawn, her eyes filled with questions that she didn’t have adequate words for. And I was both depressed and angry with myself for having taken her to Clete’s when I knew Axel Jennings might be coming after him.
I pulled into the drive and parked next to the gallery.
“I’ve got to help Batist close up. I’ll see you in the house, okay?” I said.
But she didn’t move. The light on the gallery shone through the trees and made shadows inside the truck. She stared at nothing, her eyes almost luminous in their solitary concern.
“You sure it was Johnny?” she said.
“That old black fellow picked out his photo from five others,” I replied.
“He shot point-blank in the man’s ear? It wasn’t self-defense or something?”
“It was an execution, Alafair.”
“But you said it saved Clete’s life.”
“Remeta thought he owed me a debt and I guess this is how he paid it.”
“Then he’s not all bad, Dave.”
“When people kill other people, they find a flag of some kind to do it under. But their motivation is always the same. They enjoy it.”
“I don’t believe that about Johnny.”
She got out of the truck and walked across the yard to the front door. But she paused before she went inside and looked back at me, as though seeking approval or just the knowledge that I did not condemn her for her humanity.
“Alf?” I said.
She opened the screen and went inside.
I walked down to the dock and helped Batist total up the receipts and hose the dried fish blood and cut-bait off the dock.
Clete Purcel’s Cadillac came down the road, bouncing through the rain puddles. Then Clete pulled up at an angle across the cement boat ramp and cut the engine and got out and left the door open. He walked toward me with a can of beer in one hand and a pint bottle wrapped in a brown bag in the other. Under the string of electric lights his face was oily and distorted, his mouth unnaturally red.
