“Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.”
Ozan gave him a smile, but it looked forced. The Redbone’s hesitancy shocked Forrest. He’d watched Ozan commit acts as brutal as anything he’d seen in Vietnam, even among the tribes up in the Highlands. To see him sobered by such a logical proposal gave Forrest pause.
“When will you decide?” Ozan asked quietly.
“I think I already did. The only question is when. It’s too late to stop the girl from getting tomorrow’s newspaper out. Whatever she knows at this point is going to hit the street. I just have to hope my name is nowhere in it. And that Snake’s is.”
“It will be,” Ozan said with certainty. “I checked with Brody’s mole at the paper, like you said. They know Snake killed one of those women in the insurance fraud case. The whistleblowers. Morehouse told Henry the story. They’re going with that tomorrow.”
A rush of excitement went through Forrest. “Goddamn, that’s perfect.”
“As long as the cops don’t arrest Snake before he can take out our targets.”
“They won’t. What evidence do they have besides a story told by a dead man? No, there’s a mile of wiggle room between a newspaper story and an arrest warrant.”
Ozan jerked in his chair at the muted ring of a cell phone. He dug into his uniform pants and brought out a black TracFone.
“Who the hell is calling you?” Forrest asked. “Didn’t everybody get my order?”
“We got two guys missing, remember?” Ozan said. “The ones we sent to get Dr. Cage at his partner’s lake house. I hope to God it’s them.”
“Is that a burn phone?”
“Yeah.” Ozan answered with a press of his thumb. “What’s the word?” he asked, then waited for a coded reply. “Okay. What happened?” As Ozan listened, his face darkened. “Where are you now?” he asked after nearly a minute. “Then get here as fast as you can. . . . What? . . . I’ll tell him. Out.”
The Redbone clicked off and looked at Forrest with something close to fear in his eyes. “This ain’t our night.”
“What happened?”
“That was Floyd Grimsby, one of the two guys I sent after Dr. Cage. The other was named Deakins. They’re off-duty cops from Monroe. They were the closest to where we traced Dr. Cage’s nurse’s cell phone to.”
“And?”
Ozan shook head. “They found the doc there, down by the water. Deakins was about to shoot him when Dr. Cage gut-shot him with a pistol from his pocket. He fired right through the pocket. Floyd went for his piece, but Cage had the drop on him. Then Cage drugged him and dumped him out in a cotton field somewhere.”
Forrest felt as though a cold wind had blown through the room. His blood pressure was dropping. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Old Dr. Cage?”
Ozan shrugged. “You told me he served in Korea, didn’t you? And him and that Garrity did kill Deke Dunn.”
“Was Garrity at the lake house?”
“No sign of him, Grimsby said.”
“Jesus Christ. We can’t catch a break.”
“There’s one more thing,” Ozan said.
“What’s that?”
“Dr. Cage gave Floyd a message for you.”
“Me? What message?”
“Floyd said it had to be face-to-face. He’ll be here in less than an hour.”
“My face’ll be the last thing that fuckup ever sees.”
Ozan got up and started pacing. “What kind of message would Dr. Cage send you?”
“You don’t think the FBI has Grimsby, do you? That this is a setup?”
“I don’t think he would have given me the right code if it was like that.”
Forrest snorted. “A dirty cop from Monroe? Can you put a man down by the gate before he gets here?”
“Sure. I’ve got four in the bunkhouse.”
“Do it. Meanwhile, I’ll have a think about Tom Cage, M.D.”
“How much do you know about him?”
“A bit. Daddy always liked him. And I know he did some favors for Carlos Marcello back in the day.”
“Dr. Cage?”
Forrest shrugged. “It was the sixties, man. Strange times down here. Get that man on the gate, Alphonse. We’ll wait down by the river with a radio. If it’s the FBI, we’ll take the boat.”
Ozan pulled on his duty coat and headed for the nearby building where overflow guests stayed when hunters came in large groups.
After the door closed, Forrest walked back to the study where the seven-hundred-pound razorback he’d killed with the atlatl spear glared from behind the desk. His cousin Billy used this desk more than anyone else. In the top left drawer was a box of Cuban cigars. As Forrest sat in the padded chair, he opened the drawer and thought back to the days when his father was alive, an afternoon when Dr. Cage had given Forrest his junior high football physical. He remembered the easy manner in which his father and the doctor had dealt with each other—Frank Knox and Tom Cage, two men from opposite ends of the social spectrum. His father always said they didn’t make them like Dr. Cage anymore. If what the cop from Monroe had told Ozan about the gunfight was true, Frank Knox had been posthumously proven right.
Wouldn’t be the first time, Forrest thought, lighting one of Billy’s cigars and settling in to wait.
CHAPTER 14