Snow

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the gloom of the hallway outside the computer room, Todd sat on the floor with his back against the wall, loading fresh rounds into magazines. He could hear the others talking in hushed tones farther down the hall in one of the offices.

Setting the gun down, he managed to wrangle his wallet from his pants without having to stand up. He opened it. The folded racing form was still inside—the racing form that was stained with his blood.

It was a winning ticket, the one that had ended his unfathomable losing streak. That one race had been his last chance, knowing that it would be all or nothing, and that he had no other choice. He’d bet to win, the name of the horse—Justin Case—almost prophetic in its allusion to his son. And it had seemed God was smiling down on him that sunny afternoon, because the motherfucker had won, had come in first. Todd had not only won enough money to pay back Andre Kantos, but would also have some left over for the next few months’ rent. Needless to say, Todd had been flying high when he left the Atlantic City Race Course.

Kantos and his men had picked him up in the parking lot of the track. They were leaning against his car, four or five of them, each only uglier and angrier than the next. He’d already had a few run-ins with Kantos’s men, the most recent one outside a Manhattan bistro where two of them smacked him around a little bit—a run-in that had hurt his pride and his conscience more than his face and ribs. But he knew Andre Kantos meant business; he wasn’t going to be able to put him off for too much longer.

Todd had paused in the parking lot when he saw Kantos and his men leaning against his car. The sun was already setting, the sky the color of ripening fruit on the horizon, and his shadow was stretched out long and skinny on the gravel before him.

“This is where I find you,” Kantos said, peeling himself off Todd’s car. He was stocky with large meat-hook hands and a face like a patchwork quilt. His thinning hair was the color of steel wool, greased back off his Neanderthal brow. A diamond stud earring winked at Todd, catching what remained of the sunlight. “You owe me a shitload of money, Curry, and this is where I find you?”

“I was gonna call you tonight, Andre,” he said.

“Well, shit.” Kantos smiled—a grim Halloween pumpkin smile. “I must be a fuckin’ psychic, huh?”

“I’ve got your money.” He’d produced the cashier’s check with the racetrack logo in the corner. One of Kantos’s men came over to him, plucked the check from his fingers, and nearly pressed his beaky nose to it as he examined it. Todd also showed him the racing form. “See? I’ve got it.”

Kantos came over to look at the check and the racing form. His beady little eyes glittered. When he turned back to Todd, there was a dispassionate sneer tugging at the corner of his pocked face. “You know, Curry,” Kantos said. “I take it back what I said to you last time we met, about how you’re one unlucky son of a bitch. Maybe I had you pegged wrong. Maybe you are lucky. What are the odds, right?”

Some of Kantos’s men grumbled with laughter.

Andre Kantos took the cashier’s check and folded it nicely into the front pocket of Todd’s shirt. He did the same with the racing form. His face so close to Todd’s, every nick and pore and crosshatched pockmark was clearly visible. The man’s ruinous little eyes glittered like polished jewels.

“So I guess I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning with my money, huh?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Kantos turned and lit a cigarette. “I hate motherfuckers like you who get lucky when the cards are down. Luck is for slouches and losers, Curry. People too afraid to cut their own way rely on luck. I ain’t had a day of good luck in my life, you know that?” He turned to one of his men—a beastlike guy with a mug like an old catcher’s mitt. “Show Mr. Curry how much I hate slouches and losers.”

They showed him.

He’d slept off the worst of the pain in the backseat of his car, too defeated to attempt to drive. Later, he’d had to pull over on the Black Horse Pike where he vomited blood into the bushes at the shoulder of the road. The next morning his face had looked like a Halloween mask and he was certain his nose was broken, along with a couple of ribs and the knuckles of his right hand. (He’d been right on all accounts—it seemed his luck had turned around, after all.)

But the worst was not the pain. It was not the doctor visits or the bandages or the harness he’d worn to bed for weeks until his ribs managed to mend themselves. The worst was that he could not let his son see him like this, that he could not tell Brianna that he had sunk so low. He’d canceled the boy’s visit. And wept like a child himself that night.

Those thoughts washed through him now, a tidal wave of emotion. He felt something heavy in his chest.

“Hey.” It was Kate. In his recollection, he hadn’t heard her approach.

Stuffing the racing form back into his wallet, he looked up at her and tried to summon his best smile. He wondered if she could see through it to the misery and torment boiling just beneath the surface. “Didn’t hear you sneak up.”

“Am I interrupting anything? Did you want to be alone?”

“Not at all. Have a seat.”

She sank down beside him, her back against the wall. “You feeling okay? You look a little…disconsolate.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Disconsolate?”

“It means sad, pensive, melancholy.”

Grinning, he shook his head and put his wallet back in his pocket. “I know what the word means. I just never heard anyone actually say it in a sentence before.”

“But am I totally off the mark?”

“I guess I’m just thinking about things. Giving myself time to let my life flash before my eyes. Just in case there isn’t time for it later.”

“Don’t say that. Todd, you’re gonna find that computer, bring it back here, and help us call the police.” She leaned closer to him. “All of us. You’re all coming back to save the day.”

He just kept grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help himself. “What’s this big change in you, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re certainly not the same woman I met last night at the airport bar.”

“Jesus,” she said. “Last night? It seems like a year ago.” She looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”

“You’re not the hard-edged, the-world-can-kiss-my-ass firecracker you were last night.”

Kate laughed. “Oh, brother, believe me—after all this, the world can certainly still kiss my ass.”

“I guess I’m just wondering if this is the real you.”

“I don’t open up to a lot of people, Todd.”

“What about me? You think if we were in a different place and under different circumstances, you would have let me in?”

“No.” There was no humor to her voice. “My parents fucked me up pretty good and now I’m fucking myself up every chance I get. I doubt I would have sat still long enough to see who you really were, had the situation been different.”

“What if I would have asked you out right there in the bar? Forgetting for the moment, of course, that you’re engaged.”

She put her hand on the side of his face. Kissed him. Softly.

“This is a map of the whole town,” Bruce said, pointing to the printout on the desk in the computer room. It was just Todd, Bruce, and Brendan in the glow of the halogen lamp, their weapons already secured on their belts. Each one was armed with a handgun and extra magazines, a shotgun and extra shells, and several rounds of loose ammunition packed into his pockets. Bruce had strapped Tully’s extra flamethrower to his back, the fuel canisters at his waist, while he’d given both Todd and Brendan portable butane torches. Only for use in extreme emergencies, Bruce had warned them, wary about drawing unwanted attention to themselves while out in the open. “This is the sheriff’s station here,” he said, pointing with one steady finger, “and this is the town square here. The whole bird’s-eye view. We’re talking just over a mile to the square then, of course, just over a mile back. You both look to be in pretty good shape, but it can get pretty treacherous moving through the snowdrifts.”

“It’s not the snowdrifts I’m afraid of,” Todd said.

“My plan is to cut straight through the trees here, bypassing the road. It’s a straighter shot but it’ll get a bit dicey going through the woods. It slopes down to a small stream that we’ll have to cross, then climb up the embankment on the other side. From there we’ll have no choice other than to cut straight through Vermont Street and over onto Fairmont. That’s when we’ll be the most visible.”

Bruce traced his finger up the map toward the center of town.

“Crossing Fairmont will bring us up to the back end of the shops in the square. Most of them are connected but there are narrow alleyways between some of them. That’s our ticket into the square itself—take one of those alleys down to the street on the other side. We’ll come out roughly about here”—Bruce pointed—“and the Pack-N-Go is three or four shops down this way to the left.”

“Three,” said Brendan. “Three shops down.”

“What’s this thing look like, in case we wind up having to search for it?”

“It’s in a black nylon carrying case,” Todd said. “Pretty standard. It’s got a tag with my name and address on it.”

“All right,” Bruce said. “We’ll establish rendezvous points as we go. In the event any of us get separated, we backtrack to the last rendezvous point and wait for the others. And if all hell breaks loose and we’ve got the computer…well, let’s just remember what our goal is here. Priority one is to get that laptop back here to the station. That means it’s a priority over your life”—he pointed to Todd—“and your life”—he pointed to Brendan—“and my life. We’ve got two kids downstairs who need to grow up.”

“And an unborn baby,” seconded Brendan.

Bruce nodded. “Right.” He rolled up the map and handed it to Todd. “You take it in case you get lost and turned around. Brendan and I grew up here; we can find our way back blindfolded.”

Todd folded the map and tucked it into the pocket of the police coat Bruce had given him. “Good idea.”

“And these,” Bruce added, sliding two walkie-talkies across the desk. “We’ve only got two batteries that still have any juice, and they’re both about half full, so we can’t waste ’em. And whatever is blocking your cell phone signal, Todd, it’s also interfering with the handhelds, although not as strongly, since we’re down here on the ground. The frequencies stay pretty low, geographically speaking.”

Todd picked one up. It was about the size and weight of a brick.

“You take one,” Bruce said to Todd, “since you’ll be the one who’ll probably get hands-on with the laptop. If we’re not in earshot when you grab the computer, give us a chirp on the handheld and let us know we need to beat a retreat.”

“Sounds good,” Todd said, clipping the handheld to his belt.

“All right,” Bruce said. He was piling a few extra articles of clothing into a backpack. “Are we ready?”

Both Todd and Brendan said, “Yes.”

Outside, the world was silent. The sky radiated with a sickly green hue and the low-hanging clouds looked like brownish chunks of clay. There was no breeze; the bare branches of the nearby trees remained motionless, climbing up into the false-looking atmosphere like countless medieval spires. Kate, Molly, and the two kids stood by the double doors as the men waded out into the snow. Before leaving, Bruce handed Kate one of two keys that unlocked the front doors. “The minute we start walking, Kate, you lock this door behind us,” he told her. “And when we get back here, you demand we show you our shoulders.”

“Roger,” Kate said, nodding. Bruce had also shown her where the shotguns and shotgun shells were kept in case of an emergency. He’d shown her how to load and charge the weapon.

Brendan and Molly hugged. Bruce tousled the kids’ hair. From the doorway, Kate smiled at Todd. He winked at her and said, “Don’t look so disconsolate,” and Kate laughed and covered her mouth with one hand as tears welled up in her eyes.

They left.