CHAPTER 5

 

IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING and Reader had picked up his partner Eddie. They paid the toll taker and headed across the bridge on Lake Pontchartrain. He gripped the steering wheel and stared ahead through the windshield at the ribbon of causeway that stretched before him and tried to ignore whatever Eddie was saying. The German Shepherd in the back seat lifted his head from time to time, but stayed down and didn’t bark or whine. Reader felt bad about the dog and what he was going to have to do to him. He liked the dog better than he did the man sitting across from him, but then he usually liked most animals better than people. Animals were honest about their actions. There weren’t many humans who could fit that description in his opinion. Certainly not the punk sitting next to him, yakking away about all kinds of stupid bullshit.

This was the best part of the day, Reader thought; hardly anybody was out driving on the Pontchartrain Causeway this early on a Sunday morning. He stuck his head out the window and let the wind blow his long black hair, the ends whipping him in his eyes. It felt good, clean. Ninety-two degrees and climbing, but he preferred the windows down, the faintly salt air blowing in, humidity and all, to the air-conditioning. He pushed his hair back with his fingers and settled back behind the wheel.

The only boat out was a small homemade shrimping trawler over to the east on the Gulf side a mile or so away, crawling at a leisurely pace toward the open sea. Some welder who worked in one of the shipyards in East New Orleans, he bet. Out to get a few shrimp for the family to boil later on, plus a few to sell to Deanie’s Seafood for money to buy some beer.

That’s the life, he thought. Maybe that’s what he’d do after this job. Rig him up a little boat with some nets, get a big-ass cooler and fill it up with Pearl beer and go after brown Mexican shrimp. Have him a dog to come along, keep him company, some mutt like the one in the back seat. Better company than a broad. He laughed and Eddie looked sideways at him, his eyes round and wide. Reader could smell the man’s fear like it was aftershave. Eau de sweat.

Yeah, that would be the life. Shrimping. Get a big pot boiling, throw in the crab boil and toss the buggers in till they turned red. Heap ‘em up on newspapers on a table in the garage so high you couldn’t see over it, sit down and pig out on shrimp and Pearl beer till you went cross-eyed. Get the dog drunk and watch him fall down. Run into things.A drunken dog was a sight.

Yeah, that’s what he’d do, but first there was the little matter of this job.

And, once all this was over he wouldn’t be anywhere near New Orleans or the Gulf. He wondered what kind of shrimp were in the Caymans. Warm as it was, warmer than the Gulf, they were probably as big as lobsters what with that long of a growing season. Shit, one shrimp was a whole meal probably.

Reader swung off the causeway into Covington and it wasn’t long before they were turning off the main highway and through the town, out in the country, traveling past horse farms and cane fields.

Rolling down a dirt road past one farm they could see a small oval track that came close to the road and a chestnut thoroughbred getting a workout. Astride the horse was a small black boy, shirtless in coveralls and baseball cap turned backward. The horse was coming on, flat-out flying, his tail out straight behind him. The glistening of the animal’s sweat was visible from the car. Reader slowed down to watch.

“Jesus!” Eddie exclaimed.

“Yeah. Remember that one. I’ll lay odds you’ll see him next week at the Fairgrounds. Put serious green on that one.”

“We’ll have us some green too, won’t we, Reader! Shit!”

Reader pressed down on the accelerator. “You know why they raise so many good horses in Louisiana?” He didn’t wait for Eddie to reply. “It’s the iron in the soil. And the sulfur. Calcium, too, I think. Best-kept secret in the world. Everybody thinks the best horses come out of Kentucky, Virginia. Bullshit. The best horses come from Loozana. It’s the dirt. Chock-full of vitamins, minerals, makes the stront bones in the world. You never see a horse from Loozana have to be put down ‘cause of a broken leg. Kentucky horses, yeah, those babies go down like flies. The soil’s all worn out in Kentucky. They going on past reputation. The future’s here.”

Eddie started to say something, but Reader went on, talking more to himself. “The salt air’s got something to do with it, too. Toughens ‘em up, helps their wind. Yeah, Kentucky’s got a lot more horses, but per capita, Loozana rules, horse-wise. More bettin’ money made on horses from here than anywhere else. Loozana horse hates to lose, especially to a Kentucky horse. And don’t talk about those sissy horses from Virginia! Those nags are better off in fox hunts, la-de-da crap like that. Racin’, they suck swamp water. Your Loozana horse, that’s the ticket if you want a runner.”

“You know a lot about horses, don’t you, Reader!”

“Yeah,” he said, “At this foster home I was at, the guy gave me a horse.” Took it back too, when he left, but he didn’t mention that.

He’d like to have him another horse. One they couldn’t take back. Maybe a whole stable fulla horses, all running out at the Fairgrounds, maybe over to Arkansas. Good tracks in Arkansas, too. Fuck a buncha California racetracks and fuck New York and especially fuck Churchill Downs. That was all political, rigged. The real horse races was in the South. Real men and real horses. Kentucky! Call themselves a southern state! Ten feet from Indiana. He’d been to Indiana. Bunch of hillbillies raising corn and talking out of their noses. Walk south across a river and serve you a sissy drink called a mint julep and they think they’re Rebels same as real southerners! It made Reader want to hit someone.

“How far, Reader?”

“‘Bout a mile. Relax and enjoy the view. Have another beer. See if the dog wants one. He knew what was coming; he’d get drunk for sure.” He laughed until he started choking and Eddie looked at him like he thought he had a screw loose.

The beer was a test. Eddie had all of the signs of a boozer and boozers worried Reader. Juicers got high to get it up for a job, hold a gun on someone’s chest. Liquid guts. He’d brought the cooler to see what Eddie’d do. One or two beers this early in the morning wouldn’t mean too much. If the man drank much more than that, he’d look for a new partner.

Eddie reminded him of his father without the size. He looked like him. Drank like him, too. He bet Eddie got mean when he drank, beat up on people. People littler than him, weaker. Like his father. An image of his father rose up on the screen of his mind and rolled, like a movie. He saw his thick work boots, the ones with the steel toes, and he could feel again the pain of those shoes as they sank into his ribs.

Little kids, he thought. I bet you like to beat up on little kids, don’t you, Eddie.

“Nah. I’m done.” Eddie was saying. “I drink another one I’m gonna be pissin’ every five minutes.”

Good, Reader thought. You passed the test, bitch.

Up ahead he spotted the turnoff. An old logging road that went back through a swamp and into acres and acres of mostly oak trees they cut down and hauled out so Yankees could have cute little coffee tables. Once in a while an opening would appear and a flooded rice field would materialize, a deer standing on the edge of it close to the trees. They weren’t going that far. Only to a small sugarcane field on the edge of the swamp where the woods began, an isolated spot some coonass probably planted on land he didn’t own. He’d searched for weeks for the right place and this was it.

Only straight johns called him anything but Reader. Charles. His given name was Charles Kincaid, no middle name, odd for a southern boy, but his daddy was a Yankee, who’d done the reverse, moved south for a job. Not that he’d ever found one worth a damn or hadn’t fucked up with his drinking. His Yankee daddy said all the time he wasn’t ever going to have a kid of his going around with a hillbilly name like Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee, but what Reader told people who asked, was that they were too poor when he was born to afford a middle name. It was one of the few jokes he ever told.

He wasn’t much for joking. The Reader was the name they’d pinned on him over in Angola the first time he got sent up, on account of all the time he spent in the prison library. After a while, it got to be Reader. That was twenty years and two more stretches past, one spent in Raiford, which was pretty good considering. In that space of time most guys he knew spent more time in the joint than out, so his own track record was not bad, not bad at all. It was funny; the only reason he went into that library in the first place was to avoid the cane fields. He’d heard it was the best lick in the joint other than working in Identification, I.D. The librarian, an old semi-literate lifer who only read comic books, laughed at him. Said he couldn’t afford it. Said the gig cost fifty green unless he wanted to be his bitch, give him nice blow jobs, access to his young, sweet ass, things like that.

Reader dwelt on what the librarian said for a while, sitting in his cell and that week he killed the librarian with a straightened-out laundry pin. He did it during the Saturday morning movie, an Audie Murphy flick, coming up behind him in the darkened theater and reaching around and sticking him in the throat, feeling him choke on his own blood. The next day he put in a chit for the vacancy. The prison guard with the library assignment remembered him coming in all the time and recommended him, so he got the job. They never suspected he was the one who did in the former librarian. He wasn’t one of the ones they called in and smacked around trying to find out. The guy they thought did it, a guy who was sitting next to the librarian when he bought it, was doing straight time and the prison released him the next month when his time was up. Since they couldn’t prove anything they couldn’t hold him any longer. He was a stand-up guy by the name of Bobby Rodriguez and he kept his mouth shut. Bobby lost three teeth and a lot of blood when they questioned him, but wouldn’t give up Reader or snitch on him. His nose got broken, too. It was two brothers, twins, who worked him over. They were on permanent midnight shift on the hole at their request. That way they could have their fun with the inmates since nobody ever went down there voluntarily. To get put in the hole you were obviously a fuckup, so who cared? Sadistic mothers. Their favorite trick was to lay an inmate down, one holding him, while the other one picked up the end of one of the heavy wooden benches and dropped it on the poor slob’s head.

The Duren brothers, lifer hacks. There was a joke that Angola got its hacks from the trains that went by in the night; that they were bums who got off in the wrong place. When Reader got out, he returned Bobby the favor he felt he owed him for being a righteous guy.

A month after Reader was released, he caught one of the Duren twins coming out of a bar in town. It was Anthony Duren, the one who considered himself a ladies’ man. Reader “convinced” him to take a ride with him out in the country. “Remember Bobby?” he said to him, grinning, enjoying the way his eyes widened.

Two days later, Bobby received a package in the mail. In the package was a newspaper clipping. A story on an Angola prison guard who had been murdered. There were three teeth rattling around in the bottom of the package. The note wasn’t signed, but Rear knew Bobby would know where it came from.

He learned a lot working in the prison library. He learned a lot about electronics, among other things.

First thing he did when he made parole was pull an armed robbery on a supermarket. Took himself seven grand from the Schweigmann’s out in Kenner on Double-Coupon Day and went and looked up Bobby. He handed him half the take in a paper bag and left without saying a word. From then on when Reader did a job, he’d send Bobby a little something. Bobby was a mechanic and fixed up cars for him when he needed one for a job. Bobby knew electronics too. He’d showed Reader a couple of things, mostly about boats and how to make them go where you wanted without your being on board. Matter of fact, he was working on a special boat for Reader at this very minute.

When this job was over, Reader planned to surprise Bobby with another chunk of cash. Show his appreciation for his part in the job. A bonus. He’d paid him in advance for the boat he was working on, but this would be extra. Bobby was probably the nearest thing he’d had to a close friend in his whole life. He was certainly the only person he’d ever trusted to any degree after what he’d done for him in Angola.

Around eight-thirty a.m. on Sunday was when Reader’d picked to have his little demonstration for Eddie. He figured it would be a time when most of the local civilians would be in church and the area would be deserted. They’d been on the back road fifteen minutes and hadn’t seen a single car. Hadn’t passed a house. They’d seen nothing but swamps and possums crossing the road. Pine woods, too. Lots of pine woods. Once an armadillo. “Those’re good barbecued,” Eddie said, pointing at the animal when they went by. Reader said, “Yeah, you hillbillies eat anything if it’s barbecued,” and Eddie laughed and said, “Hey, Reader, you were in Angola, right? I guarantee you ate your share of armadillo and probably loved it--you didn’t think that was Black Angus in the Friday night stew, did you? Too greasy.”

“Down there,” Reader said, pointing a finger straight ahead through the windshield. They were pulled off the road onto a little clearing. In front and to the left was the cane field and behind it the edge of the woods, thick-trunked oaks and a few cypress trees remaining from when the swamp reached that far. Eddie snuffled back phlegm and complained.

“Down there? That’s pure mud, Reader. These are Stacy Adams, pal. You don’t get these fuckers at Payless Shoes. These shoes don’t like mud, Reader. All they know is concrete, sidewalks, cool marble hallways. I don’t like no mud, neither. There’s snakes out there, too. Bad-ass snakes. Water moccasins, rattlesnakes. Fucking coral snakes. Pretty little cocksuckers. Kill your ass for drill. I ain’t ruining these.” He thrust his foot up on the driveshaft so Reader could see for himself.

Reader laughed. “Those’re leather, Eddie. Leather comes from cows and cows love the mud. Mud to a cow is like a bubble bath to a blonde. This’ll be a treat for ‘em, make ‘em think they’re back home down on the farm where the living was easy. Where they lived the dolce vita before they got whacked out and ended up on your smelly feet. C’mon, let’s go.” He opened the door.

“You carry it.” Reader jabbed a thumb at the paper bag on the seat.

“Me? Hell, no, I ain’t carrying it. It’s your shit--you carry it. I don’t even like sitting next to it. I don’t know why you couldn’ta left it in the trunk.”

Reader sighed and picked up the large grocery sack lying on the seat between them. He’d allow a little insubordination, but the little punk’d pay for it later. When he first decided whahe was going to do, he figured to use a gun, make it quick when the time came, but the bastard’d made him mad, acting like a cunt all the time, whining. Wonder what he’d say if he knew his method of execution had changed to a knife? Stuck in the stomach, at the right place, a man is paralyzed and dies slowly. You twist it just so, every so often, keep it up as long as you want and he cannot move. There’s something to that way of shanking a person that makes them think that if they can only keep completely still, they won’t die and so they sit stock-still and take it. Somebody knows what they’re doing can make it last a long time. Someone like himself.

“C’mon, chickenshit. Let’s go.”

He wondered if maybe he’d made a mistake bringing Eddie in on this job with him. Little shit, looked like a jockey ‘cept for his little pot belly. Only he’d never make the weight a jockey needed ‘less he quit drinking beer. He was your basic punk. Robbed liquor stores, gas stations, chump jobs like that. This would be the man’s first real score. His last, too, if things went according to Hoyle. Reader didn’t kid himself this would be his own last job. He was too old a pro. Scamming was in his blood. It wasn’t the money so much. What’d they say, the business guys, the straights? Money was a means of keeping score? The game’s the thing? The Donald Trumps, the Bill Gates, they were right. The score would be high, this one. The World Series, the Super Bowl of scores. The Masters. That’s the one. This would be the Masters of heists. He caught a picture of himself in a green jacket and golf cap sitting on a pile of money and smiled.

“Get the dog, Eddie. Put the leash on him and be sure you don’t let him get loose.”

Eddie glared at him, but didn’t say anything this time, only opened the door and snapped the leash on the German Shepherd. He yanked him out of the car and the dog yelped as his legs splayed and he hit the ground on his chest, then struggled to get up.

“Hurt that dog again and I’ll hook this shit up on you instead, Eddie.” Reader spoke in a low conversational tone, but cut glass was along the edges of the words. “That’s a dumb animal, never did anything to you.” Eddie started to say something, but thought better of it and did as Reader ordered, only tugging a little harder than necessary on the leash as he followed Reader down into the muddy cane field.

Reader remembered the little black-and-tan hound puppy he’d brought home the time he was seven years old. Stole him from a yard six blocks over. Took him away from a kid a full head bigger than he was. Big, soft-looking kid, but not big enough to cross the kid with the Barlow knife who wanted his pooch.

In his mind, he saw his daddy coming home that night, falling-down drunk and slipping on the pile of dog shit in the yard. He remembered his daddy kicking the dog, lifting it clear in the air to land against the far wall and then fall to the floor. Reader could see his puppy was dead from where he was, and then he was busy trying to protect his own ribs and stomach and head, all the places where his daddy’s work boots were trying to connect.

His mom came in and tried to stop the attack. His father turned on her, hitting her in the stomach with his closed fist. He left them both on the floor and stormed out, heading for a juke joint to pick a fight with someone else.

One thing Reader’d learned from his daddy. How to fight. His father gave him quite a few lessons on the right places to punch to inflict the most pain on the human body.

What’d he learn from his mom? Not much, unless it was valuable to know you never pay the price a whore quotes you. Only ministers paid the full freight. His mother, he remembered, loved miters, but she wasn’t the least bit religious. She thought fucking them got you somehow closer to heaven.

***

“Goddammit!”

Reader looked back and laughed. Eddie was keeping behind him through the rows of cut sugar cane stalks, trying to step in Reader’s footsteps to keep the mud off his shoes. He slipped and fell on his side once; slick brown slime covered not only his shoes, but one side of his Perry Ellis trousers as well. To his credit he still held on to the leash. The dog stood patiently to the side.

“Why th’ hell we got to do this? I’ll take your word it works. Fucking shoes are ruint. Lookit my pants.” He got up, cursing.

“Because. I want you to see what happens, how this works. I want you to understand this. You can buy a dozen pairs of shoes this time next week. Hundred, two hundred pairs, that’s what you want. Get ‘em all different colors. ‘Sides, I want to see if it works myself. This is the first one I made.”

Eddie was a punk, but if he rode him hard enough he’d do. Once the job was over he was history. A zero like Eddie would roll over the first time a cop slapped him hard or squeezed his nuts. In a way it was a good thing Eddie was a jive-ass punk. Anybody more hip would have known Reader wasn’t going to leave any loose cannons lying around. Eddie was too stupid to think of anything but the broads he was going to be able to buy and the top drawer booze he was going to drown himself in. And maybe the shoes he was going to stock up on. He was whacked over shoes. Reader guessed it was because he’d never had any when he was a kid.

They reached the spot Reader had in mind at the far end of the field. He’d spotted it a month ago, driving around out in the country. An ancient oak stump that went at least twelve feet around, three feet high, its roots sticking out of the ground. Perfect for what he wanted. Anyone who heard the noise while driving by on the main access road would think--no big deal--some farmer getting rid of stumps. Farmers were always blowing up junk in fields. He took the leash from Eddie and tied it around one of the exposed roots.

He knelt down, reached inside the grocery bag and took out the contents.

“What the hell’s that, Reader? Looks like something you make in art class in second grade!”

It did look weird. A rectangular blob of material with a length of ribbon cable coming out of one side, a connector at its end and the end of another connector peeping out of the other side of the blob.

“It’s a plaster of Paris mold, Eddie. All the goodies are in there, the bomb and the circuit. A remote control receiver. All we need to do is hook it around the guy, tight, so he can’t get it off without breaking the connection and we’re in business. Like this.”

He reached over and patted the German Shepherd on the head and bent down and let the dog lick his face. He picked up the contraption and strapped it on the dog’s back, snaking the cable under his belly and snapping the connectors together on the other side. The dog reached around with his head and tried to bite at the lump that was on his back. He sat down on his haunches and began to scratch at the cable with his hind foot. He couldn’t quite reach it.

“There. It’s all set. Slick, huh?”

“Jesus, Reader. What if the mutt breaks that thing loose?”

“He goes boom. Us too, if we happen to be too close. The wires come loose, get cut or broken, it sets it off, same as if you put the juice to it.”

Eddie backed away, his eyes wide. Reader saw red lines in the whites of his parer’s eyes and felt nothing but contempt.

“Let’s get the fuck up to the car, man! Look at him. He’s gonna break that thing. You’re crazy, Reader!”

Reader smelled the animal fear coming from him. Good. Eddie needed to get a little respect for this.

“You know, you’re right, Eddie. Let’s go back. We’ll set it off up at the car.”

“What’s in that mold, that gizmo thing? Dynamite?” Eddie asked, stepping over the drainage ditch alongside the road and walking over to the car.

“You never took high-school chemistry, did you, Eddie?”

Eddie fixed his eyes on the dog that was still digging with his hind foot at the contraption strapped to his back.

“Fuck no. I was a woodshop man. Fuck a bunch of chemistry.”

“I would have guessed that, Eddie. I would have picked you to be a woodshop man. Yessir, definitely a woodshop man. No, it’s not dynamite. It’s saltpeter and some other stuff.”

“Saltpeter! Isn’t that what they put in the beans in the joint, take away your sex drive?”

Reader laughed.

“Over to Raiford, cons claimed it was in the mashed potatoes. I guess in a way it might take away your sex drive. At least, when it goes off and you happen to be in the neighborhood. Some other things, too. Sulfur, crushed charcoal. You water it down, mix it up, bake it in an oven at two-fifty. You got to be careful. It’s packed in a six-and-a-half-inch galvanized pipe, half-inch diameter. Picture something twice the size of your willie, Eddie...”

“Fuck you, Reader.”

“...bit more powerful, though. It’s got a flashbulb in one end, wires running out a hole in one of the caps, hooked to the circuit. You saw the connectors. Dynamite’s not a good idea. Too easy to be traced. They put little pellets in dynamite. Color-coded. They can tell where it came from in six seconds.”

Eddie nodded like he understood, but it was plain he was not listening. His whole attention was riveted on the dog who was scratching at the cable with his other hind foot.

“Know anything about electronics, Eddie?”

Reader walked around to the back of the car and popped open the trunk from which he extracted another grocery sack and came back up to the front of the car where Eddie stood staring at the dog.

Eddie said, “Yeah. You ever unhook the VCR to take it in to the shop you want to mark the wires so you get it back right. I never remember how to do that. It’s easier to go out and steal another one hooked up to the TV. Get two for one that way, too. I remember one time...”

“Electronics are the future, Eddie. Computers, robotics. You can do anything with electronics. Like this.”

“If you say so.”

“How would you do this job? How would you take out three, four million from somebody who doesn’t want to cooperate? Stick ‘em up with a 12 gauge?”

“Works for me. Folks don’t argue with a sawed-off.” He sucked back phlegm and swallowed. “Look! That mutt’s goin’ nuts!”

“I guess they don’t, Eddie. Only what if they have a 12 gauge too? Tell me this--how many times you been in the joint, Eddie?”

“A few. Who hasn’t?”

“That’s right. Who hasn’t. How many times you using a gun when you got busted”
“Well, shit...every time, I guess. So what?”

“Ever do a bank job?”

“Naw. Thought about it though.”

“Know what happens on a bank job?”

“Sure. You go in quick, get out quick. Listen to that dog whine, Reader.”

“Get caught quick, too. How many people get caught doing bank jobs, do you suppose?”

“I dunno. Some.”

Reader reached in the bag and took out the Futaba and extended the antenna to its full length of a foot and a half. Next, he took out a video camera. He folded the bag and threw it through the open window onto the front seat.

“Not some, Eddie. Most of ‘em. Most bank robbers get caught. I’d say about all of them. What happens is a couple of guys go in with shotguns, pistolas under their coats. They hand the teller a note or just announce it, hold down on the guard, all the customers. That’s when their troubles begin. Electronic shit starts to go down. Shit, electronic shit’s been going down before they walked in. Cameras, trip alarms set up in cash drawers, you name it. Today’s average bank is a fucking electronic wonderland. Before they got the green in their mitts, helicopters are whizzin’ around outside and every cop in town is standing outside behind squad cars with a donut in one hand, .38 in the other, pissed off ‘cause they were compelled to leave their coffee and it’s gettin’ cold and they was halfway to first with Trixie, the waitress. And if you get out quick enough before all that happens they got a movie of you. Electronics, Eddie. The bank robbers are beat before they start. By technology. See what I mean?”

“I guess, Reader. We gonna do this or what? It’s gettin’ hot.”

Reader handed the Futaba to Eddie, who took it gingerly. He held it by his fingertips like he thought it might explode. The sun was bright, melting away the morning mist, but Reader didn’t think it was the heat that made little drops of perspiration pop out on his partner’s forehead. Guy truly was a punk.

Reader aimed the video camera at his partner, then found the Futaba in the viewfinder and zeroed in on it. In a smooth, steady shot, he swung the camera around and found the dog at the end of the field and turned the zoom control until the dog looked like it was ten feet away. He switched the camera off and turned and faced Eddie.

“So, bank robbers are Indians, Eddie. You’re an Indian. And you don’t have to be so careful with that. That’s the transmitter. The dog’s got the shit that blows up. The dog’s the one that ought to be nervous, but then the dog’s got balls.”

“What the fuck’re you talking about Indians t’me, Reader? I’m no Indian. I’m Acadian. Me, I’m Eddie Delahousie. Delahousie, that’s French, not Indian. And that dog’s got fleas, not guts.”

“Just some history, Eddie. History. Indian history. Besides, you’re not French-Canadian. You’re a coonass. An Indian coonass. Indians were in this country thousands of years before the white man came and getting along fine. That all got ruined. Indians tried to fight the white man with bows and arrows. The white man shot muskets.”

“Yeah?”

It started to sprinkle lightly. The sun was out, but it was raining. Reader liked that when it happened. It put him in a happy mood.

“The Indians got muskets themselves, took them off the few white men they were able to kill with their fucking Stone Age bow and arrows. They started to hold their own again for a while. But the white man came up with repeating rifles. The Indians were right back in the soup again. It kept happening, over and over. Once the Indians got their own selves some rifles, the white man said okay, we got to have something else. Andey did. They invented Gatling guns. That was the end of the Indians. You see, Eddie, it’s technology. Today the technology is electronics. They got it--we don’t. That’s why we get caught. By we, I mean those of us on the other side of the law. That’s why you’re an Indian. You and everybody who looks like your sorry ass. You’re trying to fight somebody with a bow and arrow and they got a Gatling gun.”

“You know what, Reader?” Eddie sat the transmitter down on the car hood and reached through the window into the back seat and took out a beer from the cooler. He popped it and took a long pull, beer dribbling off the sides of his mouth. “You’re a smart cookie I guess. Me? I’m a simple gangster, don’t know that much. Know something else? I don’t fucking care about all that shit you’re talkin’. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Only don’t call me no fucking Indian. I’m French-Canadian, me, Eddie Delahousie. I don’t know if you been puttin’ me down or what, but don’t do it no more.”

Reader laughed. “Okay, Eddie, okay. Look, I wasn’t putting you down, my friend. Explaining some history, that’s all. Tell you what. You do it.” He handed the Futaba back to Eddie.

“Me? Whaddya do?”

“Push the power button. And duck.”

“Duck?”

They both looked to where the dog stood. They could see his tail wagging. He’d quit trying to rid himself of the lump on his back and was standing facing them. He barked.

“Yeah. I’m not sure how big a charge that is. Might be pieces of pipe flying around. Be a shame you got your head tore off before you got to buy all them nice new shoes. Wait’ll I get the camera set.”

Eddie looked at him like he was trying to figure out if he was kidding and shook his head. Quickly, Reader picked up the camera, turned it on and found Eddie with it. As before, he swung the camera around, seeking out the German shepherd. Once in his sight, he held the zoom button down until the dog looked like he was only ten feet away.

“Now,” he said to Eddie.

Eddie held the Futaba out away from him at arm’s length and closed his eyes and pressed the red button. For a split second nothing happened and then…

“Holy fuck!”

The dog evaporated. Half his back disappeared. Flat-out disappeared. The odd thing was, he remained standing. For a second. His back was gone and half his head, the top half, but he remained standing. A frozen millisecond and then the dog collapsed and sank to the ground. Smoke and chips and chunks of metal flew in every direction, but none came as far as the car. They could see small flames sprouting up on the stump the dog had been tied to.

“Hot damn! Would you look at that, Reader! Man!”

“Yeah. Did a number, didn’t it? Took out Rover, killed half his family.” He turned off the camera, tossed it into the back seat.

“What’s the camera for?”

“We’re gonna have a private viewing in a few days. You, me and Mr. Clifford St. Ives, the Third.”

Eddie’s forehead wrinkled, making his eyebrows arch.

“That’s the mark, huh? Who’s--”

“President of Derbigny State Bank. He’s going to see what one pipe will do. Being as he’s gonna have three wired to his ass, I think we’ll have his attention.”

“Three pipes? Why three? That dog’s vaporized. Half that damn stump’s gone, too. Only take one to do the job.”

“That’s right, Eddie.”

He opened the car door and got in. Eddie got in his side. Reader started the engine and turned around in the road and began driving slowly back the way they’d come.

“Mr. St. Ives will see what one pipe will do. When he knows he’s got three hooked to him we’ll have his complete attention. Taped to his back, close to his spine and his kidneys and six dozen major arteries. His suit will hide it. Coats usually hang away from the body there. C’mon, get in. We got things to do, some more stuff to pick up.”

“Why we gotta go to all this trouble? You got me running here, there for all this crap when most of it we could pick up in one store.”

Reader sighed. He’d told Eddie a few details, enough for most people to grasp the idea, but Eddie didn’t seem to get it.

“I told you, Eddie. Every single thing connected to this job has to be gotten separately and in ways they won’t remember who they sold it to. Like our friend out there. You go to the pound and somebody remembers your face. You buy a mutt off some local yokel, nobody knows nothing. Why do you think I drove over a thousand miles to get this Futaba clear up in Ohio? I coulda picked it up in town.”

“Well? Why didn’t you?”

“Because, moron. Because some of the stuff I got doesn’t get sold every day. This job goes down--the Feds--everybody--will be all over the place. They’ll know every piece of equipment we used and if they trace it there’s a chance they’ll get a description. I walk into Radio Shack and buy a fine-ass remote controller like this Futaba and the FBI sends a sheet around to all the dealers in the country. About that time, some citizen out in Metry says, ‘Oh, yeah. I sold one of those to a guy looks like this.’ They bring one of them computer artists in and they get together and in two hours they have my face on Unsolved Mysteries in thirty-six countries. That’s why, you idiot.”

Reader tapped out a cigarette, got it going.

“Most fucks who do a job like this go in with guns drawn, lots of firepower showing. Fucking major mistake. For one thing, we can’t go in when the bank’s open because of all the problems I went over. The electronic shit. Now. St. Ives gets the money on Friday evening when the bank’s closed. Don’t ask me how I know this, I just do. It’s fucking drug money he launders for this outfit.”

“Ain’t no way to take it off?”

Reader looked at Eddie and the word moron went through his mind.

“Eddie, the only hard part of this is I have to convince St. Ives that a single mistake on his part gets him blown to hell and back and I won’t blink an eye doing it.” He straightened around in the seat and put the car back in gear.

“You think I can convince him of that, Eddie?

***

On the drive back to town, Eddie was quiet for a long time until he began talking again. “Where’d you say you got all this shit, Reader? Why can’t it be traced?”

Reader reached into his pants pocket and felt around for a bill. They were approaching the toll booth for the Pontchartrain Causeway.

“Easy. I got the only traceable part from someone who won’t talk.”

“Bullshit! You can’t trust anyone.”

“I can trust this guy, I think.”

“Oh yeah? How so?”

Reader stared at his partner and smiled.

“Because he’s dead.”