“What’s in it for him?” says Cooper. “Money?”
“There’s money involved, but someone like that? Money is never his motivation.” Rigo perches on the edge of a desk, leaning back on his arms, legs crossed at the ankles, like a man who’s got nowhere to be and all day to get there. “As far as our friend Dietrich knows, we’re all leaving together with what we came for, one big happy family. I’ve got two of my best men tailing him to make sure that doesn’t happen. But for now, we’ll let him, you know, work out his issues. All you and I need to do is sit tight and make sure we don’t get caught in the crossfire.”
Cooper’s still searching for that plan. Still coming up empty.
While he searches, his fists get impatient.
Decide to act alone.
Fucking fists, Cooper thinks, as he hoists one. Okay, here we go.
Rigo’s surprised at the swing, a clumsy, glancing one, given that he and Cooper were just moments ago discussing their newly revealed role as co-conspirators. Rigo dodges it easily and the blow doesn’t really connect. When Cooper takes another shot with his left fist, because what the hell, this is apparently the plan now, Rigo fends that one off easily, too. Then Rigo reaches for his pistol, which isn’t there. That’s right, he gave it to Dietrich. So he holds up his hands instead.
“Cooper—Cooper!” Rigo says, wheeling back. “You and I are on the same side. We’re about to walk out of here—”
Third swing. In Cooper’s experience, if the first two don’t land, you shouldn’t expect better results with number three. Yet here it comes, nonetheless. “Fuck you, Rigo,” he says, roundhousing like a drunk. “Get out of my town.”
Rigo feints again, easily. He’s all arms and angles. “Don’t worry,” he says, inching back to keep his distance. “Once Dietrich gets his jollies, we’ll take care of him. We’re not going to leave him alive.”
But Cooper keeps coming, keeps swinging. “You never should have come here, Rigo. You never should have stepped out from behind that fax machine.” His fists are angry, jumpy, anxious, and Cooper’s not inclined to hold them back. “The smartest thing you ever did,” he says, taking another hack at Rigo, “was make me look each of those three men in the eyes. Colfax, Gable, Dean. Because when they saw what was coming, they knew that they deserved it. Even if they didn’t remember why, they knew. And that made it easy for me.” Cooper lunges again, flailing. Rigo dances away. “And the dumbest thing you ever did, you fucking idiot, was come here and show your face to me. Because now I can look you in the eye, Rigo. And I see exactly what you deserve.”
Rigo circles behind a desk. “In about an hour, we’re leaving. You can either come with us or we can leave you here with Dietrich until he’s done. Believe me, he won’t stop until he runs out of bullets—he won’t even stop then. He’ll rip your fucking throats out with his teeth.”
As if on cue, from the distance: pop pop pop pop pop.
Cooper knows what the sound means. It’s the town being slaughtered, one by one.
“Leave now, for all I care,” Cooper says. “But you’re not taking that boy.”
“Not to mention the two hundred thousand dollars,” says Rigo. “You ready to forfeit that?”
Cooper stops. He’s winded. His punching is getting him nowhere. He needs a new plan, pronto.
“I didn’t think so,” says Rigo. “So let’s stop this—”
“I have a different idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to kick you in the balls,” Cooper says.
Rigo squints. “You’re what—?”
Then Cooper kicks him in the balls.
Cooper learned this in a lifetime full of barfights. If you try to kick someone in the balls, you almost never connect, because everyone instinctually protects their balls. But if you tell someone you’re going to kick them in the balls, they get momentarily distracted, because they’re busy thinking about how much it sucks to get kicked in the balls. Then whammo.
Rigo whimpers and drops.
Cooper kicks him in the balls again.
Well, that didn’t solve much, not in the big picture, thinks Cooper, and it definitely cost me $200,000.
Rigo murmurs on the floor.
Cooper kicks him in the face, for good measure.
That one was free.
Then he runs out of the trailer, into the empty street, toward the gunfire, toward Fran, and toward the boy.
33.
AGENTS COREY AND BIGELOW WATCH DIETRICH from a distance as he ambles his way down the road, stopping occasionally to heft his rifle and fire staccato shots into bungalow windows, moving with the lazy languor of a boy skipping stones in a pond on his way home from school. If Dietrich spots someone in the distance skittering across the roadway toward shelter, he sights the rifle and cuts them down expertly. Corey and Bigelow lay back, a good fifty yards or so, weapons holstered, ostensibly as Dietrich’s backup. Their real task, however, is to tail him and, once he’s managed to cleanse a good portion of the residents, take him down. There’s no way they’re letting a psychopath like Dietrich come back to the civilized world. He’ll be cut down in a valiant but belated effort by the agents to save the poor people of this town. This will be the official story, anyway.