Swonger came through the door angry, gun raised—expecting Gibson to have taken off running in one direction or another. Guns conferred a lot of advantages, but they could also make you feel invulnerable if everyone else was unarmed. Make you reckless. And Gibson hadn’t run. He was right there waiting for him.
The burst of sunshine blinded Swonger and bought Gibson time to close the distance between them. Gibson put one hand on the gun and jerked it sharply past his hip, down and away. That combined with Swonger’s forward momentum dragged his face in line for a clean, quick punch in the jaw. Gibson uncoiled through the blow, snapping Swonger’s head around like a flag in the wind.
Swonger had some fight in him, though, and held on to the gun with a pit-bull grip—understandable but a real bad idea. Off balance, his body followed dumbly where his gun hand led him. That momentum was all Gibson needed. He stepped into Swonger’s path and planted an elbow on the bridge of his nose. A twist of his wrists, a hard hip pivot, and Swonger was on his back, gasping for air. Gibson didn’t need to kick him in the head, but he did it anyway. Then he did it again. He wanted Swonger to have something to think about on the drive home.
It was all over in five seconds.
Gibson dragged the two men over and slumped them against their car. While he waited for them to shake it off, Gibson unloaded Swonger’s .45 into the storm grate, listening to the bullets rattle down the pipe to the sewer below. He considered taking the gun but vetoed the idea quickly. Who knew where this gun had been or what it had done? Swonger had done time for something. Instead, he disassembled the .45 on the hood of the Scion and pocketed the firing pin and the stop. If it ever came to it, it would be good to know Swonger was not a threat. Unless Swonger knew his firearms, and Gibson bet he didn’t, then he wouldn’t know anything was amiss until he pulled the trigger.
The gun reassembled, Gibson fished the car keys from Swonger’s pocket and started the Scion. He wasn’t surprised that it worked—the Scion, a patchwork of Bondo, had been sanded and primed for a paint job Swonger couldn’t afford yet was tricked out with an oversized aftermarket spoiler and racing tires. Exactly the kind of car that he imagined Swonger would drive. The Marines attracted its fair share of gearheads, and the Scion was popular among cash-strapped tuners because the base model was cheap and the aftermarket options were almost limitless.
Gibson shoved the gun under the passenger seat. A six-pack of beer spoke to him from a cooler in the backseat, and he helped himself. It tasted better than cheap beer had any right to taste and helped cut the adrenaline from the fight. He thought about leaving Birk and Swonger in the alley to fend for themselves, catching his train, and putting some miles between them. But what good would that do? They would just follow him. Turn up again when it was least convenient. He was already zero for two and didn’t rate his chances of spotting them the next time. He drank another beer and pondered what to do about his stalkers. He was still pondering when Swonger came around. Gibson offered him a beer, which Swonger held gingerly to his jaw. Birk was slower. He had really taken a shot to the head and was likely concussed. When he finally stirred he moved like a man who’d been dipped in wet cement. It would be a few days clearing those cobwebs, and Gibson was all right with that.
“Where’s my gun at?” Swonger asked.
“What gun?”
Swonger’s mouth opened, shut. He eyed Gibson hatefully.
“You with us there?” Gibson asked, snapping his fingers at Birk, who nodded, rolled away from Swonger, and threw up against the tire. When he sat back up, his eyes had cleared slightly.
“All right, now that I have everyone’s attention, let’s get a few things straight.”
They waited for Gibson to go on, but he didn’t know what to say to them. Nothing that would get them to do what he wanted anyway. Birk might be reasoned with, and if Birk was really running the show, then Gibson might expect him to keep Swonger on a leash. But Swonger was the real threat. Gibson hadn’t seen it clearly enough at the ballpark or at the farm. Sure, he’d seen the prison tats, the missing teeth, heard the busted English. He’d written Swonger off as just another ward of the American penal system. But beneath the ignorance, bluster, and dubious personal hygiene, a carnivorous intelligence lurked in Swonger. Birk thought he was in charge only because Swonger let him think it. Nothing Gibson could say would get Swonger to trust him, get him to go back to the farm so Gibson could take his run at Merrick without constantly looking over his shoulder. A kick to the head hadn’t dimmed Swonger’s determination any. Whatever else you could say about Gavin Swonger, there wasn’t any quit in him. Swonger was a relentless, angry tide that would just keep coming.
He didn’t like the options that left him.
“I’ll drive,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They crossed the George Washington Bridge in silence, the gloom of the lower deck matching Swonger’s mood as he brooded in the passenger seat over whom to blame for the face-shaped dent in his precious Scion. That left Gibson to reach back every few minutes and shake Birk, who was definitely concussed, to keep him from falling asleep. The Scion was a two-door, so Birk had to lie sideways across the narrow backseat. Gibson accelerated around a lumbering pickup, and felt the car leap forward powerfully. Swonger had been tinkering under the hood as well.
The silence held until exit 9 on the Jersey Turnpike.
“Want my gun back,” Swonger said.
Gibson ignored him. Swonger folded his arms and waited until exit 6.
“Where’s my gun?”
After that it was every exit, like a kid demanding to know if they were there yet. At Baltimore, Gibson relented and told him it was under the seat. Swonger fished around between his legs and cleaned the gun off with the hem of his T-shirt. He popped the magazine and saw it was empty.
“Where the bullets?”
“At the bullet store.”
Swonger thought about it. “This is some unconstitutionality right here. We got amendments.”
“That’s not what that means.”
Gibson reached back and shook Birk’s leg again, and Birk raised himself up to see where they were, didn’t recognize anything, and tried to make himself comfortable.
“One thing I can’t figure out is why . . . ,” Gibson began, articulating a question that had nagged at him since the farm.
“Why what?” Birk said.
“Why Merrick would say anything. About pennies. About any of it. I mean, think about it. He went to jail, served his bid, kept his mouth shut for eight years, then all he has to do is drift away quietly. But now, inexplicably, months from release and getting away with it clean, he goes and broadcasts it in a national magazine. I just don’t get it. What’s his angle?”
“I don’t know why he said it, but he said it,” Birk said.
“The hubris,” Swonger said, still looking out the window.