Ty handed over the little snub that he’d brought. “The lady’s pistol.”
Pushing it hard now that it was his time. East kept quiet. They spilled money out onto the seat and split it three ways—Ty put in the Michael Wilson money too. Most of three hundred dollars apiece. Then they pocketed it, because you didn’t know.
“I don’t have a key. So leave the van unlocked,” Ty said.
“You don’t think we’re all coming back together?” said East. “You don’t even drive.”
Ty just said, “You don’t know.”
“It can be unlocked.” Walter shrugged. “People out in the woods don’t even care.”
“They don’t care. Ha-ha,” Ty said. “All right, let’s go for a walk.”
A walk. East closed his door and stretched his arms inside the itchy sweater. The van’s engine cooled, ticking. Walter bounced on his toes. Exercising. Ty went into motion without showing a thing. East tried to do the same. He didn’t look at Walter. Walter would show back what East was feeling now, as surely as if they’d spoken it aloud. And as impossible to take back.
They walked the curve of Lake Shore Drive, the three of them in single file. But keeping close to Ty. Barely any light left in the day.
As the line of pine-rimmed houses drew near, they cut off on the track running through the trees and behind the cleared-out yards. The path led uphill from the lake. They found a loosening between trees and cut through to spot the houses.
“What’s it? Fourth or fifth house?” said Walter. “No numbers on the back.”
“Look for that black truck,” said East.
A swish and hard squawk, and the pine straw beneath seemed to flip up and give forth a black ghost, a risen, screaming thing. East grabbed on to a tree, and Walter fell down. Ty nearly somersaulted to get away. It was a bird, a turkey or pheasant or something awakened in the pine straw, awakened from darkness. East could see nothing of it fleeing, but he heard the legs scrambling, the wings chop the air as the bird beat away, crying harshly.
“Damn,” breathed Ty. “Could have had that.”
“No shooting yet, junior,” said Walter.
“No shooting. I could have tackled that bitch.”
East brushed off pine needles. They looked around. Lights burning on half the houses. An old white swing set like a gallows in the dark. No people around that they could see.
Three houses they’d passed. A couple more to get there. They moved together under the pine boughs in dark, scented air. East’s eyes were opening up to the dark, but still he could not see all the branches, had no feel for space. There wasn’t really space. He listened to Ty creeping ahead, Walter trying to stay on his feet. A snap of branch, a muffled curse.
He breathed it. He could sleep in here. The dark, the soft ground. Not even cold. But he too made his way. Nothing to carry, just the hard little spigot of the gun at his hip.
The ground kept climbing slightly. They passed a fourth house, lights on upstairs but quiet. A ceiling fan turning above the light. The fifth house was dark.
East was separated by fifteen, twenty yards. The fat boy had gotten himself snagged, had to unhook himself, fell behind. His brother likely was already there. That was it. That was the right house; he was certain. He picked a way under pines toward the dim light in the clearing.
Ty was already there, waiting just outside its edge.
“The house?”
“The house,” Ty agreed.
Boxed in tight except for the drive—trees came to within ten or fifteen feet of the house. Not wide enough for a firebreak. The clearing was uncut field grasses, calf-high, still green.
Walter came creeping out, hands and knees. “Easier to crawl,” he grunted. “Not so branchy.”
One yellow light hung unlit over an empty deck, another over the back door.
For East, the house was stunning in its anonymity. They’d crossed all this land to an address: this was it. Just a brown house in the woods. Big A on each end made of windows running light from front to back.
“Seems empty,” Walter whispered.
“Nice to be sure,” said Ty.
East looked up and gauged the sky. Seemed dark as they’d walked up, but now silver, strangely luminous, in the gap between the pines.
“Easy as pie,” Ty whispered. “Angles on every inch of the place. Big windows on the bedrooms. No basement.”
Walter said, “Where is the guy?”
“Can’t see,” said Ty. “Could be in bed in the dark. Could be out to dinner. Could be sitting right there on the sofa in the dark with a gun, waiting.”
“You expect one or more than one?” East said.
Ty rolled his eyes. “I don’t expect. We take what we get.”
Walter said, “So what do you want to do?”
“How about we spread out a little and get some angles on this.”
“All right,” Walter said. “But stay back. It’s no rush. Make sure we got the right guy.”
“Did you call your George Washington?” needled Ty. “Is this the place?”