Anyway, I climbed out of the truck and hustled back toward the Avalon, hoping Pops had a plan of some kind. I had a strange feeling running through the rain and the dark, I’m not sure how to describe it. My body felt heavy, but I was also tingling all over, and my movements all seemed to be in slow motion, but not hard or difficult, just kind of dreamlike.
Then I unlocked the Avalon and climbed inside. It smelled like cigarette smoke and air freshener. As soon as I turned the ignition, the music came on. McClaine had Sirius Radio, and it was tuned to a classic rock station. That guy with the really high voice, Christopher Cross, he was singing about sailing away somewhere. It was all just too surreal. I wanted to break out laughing but I also couldn’t stop shivering.
I heard what sounded like a single muted pop a couple seconds before the Avalon turned the corner into the building. My breath caught and I wondered if Pops was okay, but then I turned the car into the bay and there he was in the headlights, holding the revolver and looking down at Phil McClaine laying belly-down on the floor.
I pulled up to within ten feet of them, put the car in park and then felt like I couldn’t move. If I moved, all of that mess in front of me would be real.
Pops came walking toward me then and laid the revolver on the hood. Then he pulled off his T-shirt and motioned for me to put down the window. I did, and he handed me his shirt. His body was white and his chest sunken. He looked so small and weak to me then, and he was walking sort of lopsided, holding his left shoulder higher than the other one.
“Wipe the steering wheel, the keys, anything else you touched. Leave the keys in the ignition.”
I did what he told me, then climbed out. I couldn’t help staring down at Phil and the puddle of blood around his head. Pops struggled to pull his shirt back on. “You know this is the only way it could have ended good for you,” he said.
“I didn’t expect it to end good.”
“I did,” he said.
I kept standing there, feeling sort of like I wasn’t even in my body anymore. Like the real me was over in the corner somewhere, watching it all.
Pops gathered up the box of money, then the revolver off the hood of the Avalon. With his foot he nudged the chrome pistol across the floor so it lay closer to Phil. “Let’s go,” he said.
“We’re just going to leave them here?”
“They’re a Chinese problem now, son. Let’s go.”
We walked out toward the bay door. I turned around to take a last look inside. And that’s when I saw them. All those muddy footprints.
I bent over and pulled my shoelaces loose. Pops said, “What are you up to now?”
“Look inside.”
He did, and it took him about five seconds to understand. “Good thinking,” he said. He bent toward his own shoes, but then he winced and kind of moaned “Ahh” and put a hand up to his chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. A little pinch is all.”
“Go get in the truck, Pops. I’ll take care of this.”
“Why not,” he said. “I guess I wiped up after you a good many times when you were little, didn’t I?”
“You always have. Go take a rest.”
I pulled off my socks then, set my shoes around the outside corner and off the concrete, and held the socks in the rain till they were soaking wet. Then I went inside and crawled around on my hands and knees, smearing every one of my and Pops’ prints into a pale brown circle. It wasn’t a perfect job but perfect wasn’t necessary. It was quick and it was enough.
I put my shoes on again and went back to the truck. Pops was sitting in the passenger seat, so I tossed my wet socks onto the floor, climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. I needed the headlights to get back down the slippery road safely. Pops told me how the moment he’d pulled the truck up alongside the Avalon earlier, Phil McClaine was at his door with a gun pointed at his head. “If you’d kept the revolver like I wanted you to,” I said.
He shook his head. “Could’ves and would’ves never accomplished a thing. We got it done. That’s all that matters.”
We were maybe ten yards from the bottom of the lane when a figure came out from the side darkness to unhook the chain.
“Who the fuck is that?” Pops said, squinting through the windshield.
“Donnie,” I told him.
“Son of a bitch.”
“What do I do?”
“Look at him grinning. He thinks it’s a McClaine boy driving.”
“Should I drive through?”
“Pull on up beside him.” Pops laid the revolver atop his leg, ready to put a bullet through the window if he had to.
I did, then held the brake down. Donnie walked up to the window, grinning all the way. He had to get his face right up to the side window to recognize me through the film of rain. Then his grin disappeared, kind of twitching a little and fading away as sure as if the rain had washed it right off his face.
He turned back the way he had come, taking long strides at first, then breaking into a run. I drove out to the end of the lane and there was Bubby’s pickup parked along the shoulder. Donnie hopped into the passenger side, and within seconds the pickup was squealing away.
“Better follow them,” Pops said.
Following Donnie and the truck wasn’t so much a follow as a chase. The moment the other pickup’s driver saw my headlights turn their way, they floored it.
Pops sat up close to the windshield, still holding tight to the revolver. “This is no time to drive like your grandmother, son. Keep up.”
The driver turned off the main road at the first left. After that we flew down black asphalt single lanes, squealing and sliding through turn after turn. Sometimes we lost sight of their taillights, then picked them up again and tried to close the distance. We were maybe four miles out in the country when the driver took a left turn too sharp, fishtailed and overcorrected. I saw the taillights turn over in a circle and a half before they both blinked out in pink puffs of glowing smoke.
“Pull over here,” Pops said. We were maybe fifty feet back from the upside-down pickup truck. “Keep your headlights on. But if you see a vehicle coming up behind or toward you, kill the lights and lay down on the seat.”
He sprung open the door and climbed out, taking the revolver with him. I watched him walking that fast short-legged walk of his, but there was something not right about it, something a little lopsided, almost as if he had to shove himself forward with every other step.
He went to the driver’s side first, knelt down in the gravel and looked inside and then put his hand in. Then pulled it out again and walked around to the other side, which was in the grass over top of the drainage ditch.
He didn’t even go the whole way up to the window, but stood there about three feet from it looking at something in the grass. Then he looked back at me. I thought about climbing out and calling to him, but before I could, here he comes back my way.
He comes right up to the window. “If I ask you to do something for me, Rusty, will you do it? One last thing, no questions asked?”
“Pops, what are you—?”
“Russell. One last thing. Last thing I will ever ask of you.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know that.”
“And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. And do it gladly.”
“I know.”