CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Partial body found in bayou,” proclaimed the cheerful headline.

“Go ahead,” said Shreck, “read it.”

Dobbler squinted.

Lafayette Parish

The partial body of a man was found floating yesterday near Spencerville, Lafayette Parish. Sheriff’s deputies said the victim, who has been identified by fingerprints as Tomas Garcia Montoya, of McDonoughville, was evidently the subject of an alligator attack as his body, from the chest down, was missing.

Cause of death, however, was listed as a gunshot wound to head.

Montoya, a Cuban émigré, had listed his occupation as “consultant” but was known to police and other New Orleans law enforcement agencies as a paid informant. He was 54 years old.

Deputies speculated that he may have also been a victim of the escalating drug warfare in the state’s rural parishes, in a struggle for control of the city’s drug routes between old-line mob interests and newcomers representing the cocaine cartels of Central America.

Montoya was shot in the head by a heavy caliber rifle bullet.

“Only a large-caliber center fire rifle bullet does massive damage like that,” said Lafayette Parish coroner Robert C. LaDoyne. “This man was shot, judging by the wound channel and tissue displacement, by a hollowpoint bullet of.30 caliber or more.”

Parish deputies said it may represent the coming of a new kind of professional killer to the parish’s drug wars.

“Mob boys favor the silenced.22 from close range,” said Deputy Ed P. St. Etienne. “The Colombians like little machine pistols, and fire a hundred bullets into their victims. This boy is something entirely new.”

“He’s not new to us, is he, Dobbler?” said the colonel.

“No,” said Dobbler, swallowing. “How on earth -? He’s dead! We saw the – ”

“Dobbler,” snapped the colonel. “Look at me.”

Dobbler looked into the colonel’s forceful dark eyes and felt the full might of his wrath.

“Tommy Montoya was a free-lancer we used when we operated in the South. He was with Nick Memphis. Now he’s dead, sniper-dead. That means one thing and you’d better get used to it fast. All right? Comprendez, amigo?”

Dobbler swallowed miserably.

“Yes,” he said. “I see.”

“Swagger is alive. How, why, I don’t know. I don’t even give a fuck, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is this new reality: he’s teamed with the one man in America outside the proper circles who’s seen our file. So right from the start, he knows more than anybody who’s come after us before.”

He looked hard at Dobbler.

“In case you don’t get it, Doctor, we have a war on our hands. This motherfucker wants to track us down and blow us away. But what we’re going to do is blow him away first. Are you listening, here, Dr. Harvard Psychiatrist? No bullshit; we have to get close, put the muzzle against his head and blast his brains all over the landscape. Or he’ll do it to us.”

The colonel’s glare was unsettling; Dobbler swallowed.

“What do you want me to – ”

“What I need from you is an idea how they’ll operate. Their relationship – how’s it going to play out? Will they get along? Will they fight? Do they make a good team?”

“Ah,” said Dobbler, unprepared, “ah, Bob will be the strong one. He’ll dominate the younger man. The younger man is no problem. Bureau trained, he’ll be orthodox and plodding. No, Swagger is dangerous because of the unconventionality of his mind. He’ll come at us out of instinct, brilliantly, improvising madly. He’ll – ”

“Where will they head?”

“Bob will head home. If he was in New Orleans to meet or rescue Memphis, then he’ll take him to the Ouachitas. It’s where he’ll feel safest. And the sense of safety is – ”

“The chances of us making an interception are nil. Not in his territory. All right,” said Shreck, leaning forward, “let me ask you a question. Have you ever hunted?”

“Hunted? Good God, no. I mean, it’s so…barbaric.” A faint look of distaste came across Dobbler’s face, unintended.

“Yes, well, you put all that aside now. You just became a hunter. It’s your job to work out a way we can lure this tough old boy and his new pal into ambush. Hunt him, Dobbler. You don’t have to kill him – we’ll take care of that – but you have to hunt him.”

Dobbler nodded apprehensively. And he noticed something he’d never quite seen before.

He swallowed.

Shreck is scared.

Some days later, Nick Memphis was in a contrary mood.

“Now what the hell is this?” he said. “Why are we – ”

“I think I liked you better when you were Baby Googoo, and you just looked up at me with your mouth open. Now you won’t shut up. Talk, talk, talk, like a woman. Now, don’t say nothing here. You let me do the damned talking. Got that? I don’t want you explaining something to this old coot and putting him into a coma.”

There was no give in Bob’s voice as he looked through the dust-spackled windshield at an extremely spacious ranch house on a spread just outside of Fort Supply, in western Oklahoma.

“You better – ”

“You just smile, boy. This old man isn’t going to want to give up his information easy to strangers, but he knows more about what he knows about than any man alive. Come on, now.”

Bob got out of the truck. He wore a straw Stetson and had found a gray jacket to go over his denim shirt; suddenly he looked strangely like some kind of cowboy royalty.

“I still don’t – ”

“Button it, Pork. You’ll see.”

An old lady sat in a rocker on the porch at the top of the stairs. She just watched them come, made no gesture of welcome. She fanned herself; it was hot and dusty out and the sun lurked over the hills behind a gassy spread of clouds.

“Howdy, ma’am,” Bob sung out.

“Whachew want?” the old lady asked.

“See the colonel.”

“Colonel don’t see nobody these days.”

“Hell, I have me a line on a pre-’64 70 in.270 once owned by a famous bad boy. Thought he might be interested.”

“He’s got enough guns.”

“No such thing as enough guns, ma’am, I’ll beg your pardon for saying so.”

The woman eyed him suspiciously, then got her weary body up and yelled inside. “Rate? Rate, you in there? Fella out here says he gotta line on a 70.”

“Well, shoo him in, then, honey,” came the call from the dark interior.

Bob walked in and Nick followed.

The room was large. The man who owned it had at one time or other killed every creature large and dangerous that walked upon the earth, and now the heads of his victims looked down upon their slayer, who was a plump man in his seventies sitting in an Eames chair reading a copy of – Nick blinked, double-checked to make sure, but, yes – The New York Review of Books.

He didn’t rise. The beasts stared from the walls. Most of the furniture was wooden and sleek and expensive, and Indian blankets and pottery were all over the place. And so were books, hundreds and hundreds of books. And rifles. Nick had never seen so many rifles and so many books in one place before.

“And who might you gentlemen be?” asked the fellow. He removed a blanket from his lap to reveal a six-shooter, high chromed, seven-and-a-half-inch barrel, and he had merry, clever eyes. There wasn’t a morsel of fear in him anywhere. Nick had never seen a man who had less fear.

“Name’s Bob Jennings, from over in Arkansas. Do some trading in fine firearms. This here’s my associate, named Nick.”

“Well, Mr. Jennings, I must say I know most of the fine gun dealers in this country, having spent much money in their abodes. Can’t say I’ve heard much of you.”

“I’m new to the business, sir,” said Bob. “Just starting my reputation. But you know that fellow the FBI killed, that Bob Swagger?”