Storm Prey

calling from a pay phone. I need to talk to Joe.”
    “One minute.”
    Joe came on and said, “Honey Bee. I was afraid to call you.”
    “I’m on a pay phone. Joe—everybody’s dead. I saw Lyle dead. Somebody tortured him. Tortured him. They say your dad’s dead, too. They say there was drugs up there, and they tortured Lyle to get them.” She kept her voice down, watching people walking past her, but tears started, and she began to cry into the phone.
    “We’re coming back,” Joe Mack said after a while.
    “You know who it is?” Honey Bee asked.
    “Maybe,” Joe Mack said.
    “Is it the doc?”
    More silence, then Joe Mack said, “How’d you know about the doc?”
    “They’ve been looking all over for a guy called the doc. One of the cops said that there might have been some kind of powder on Lyle, that came from doctor’s gloves.”
    “Could be the doc. Could be another guy. I’m not sure. But if an Arab guy comes looking for you, or a skinhead guy, you stay the fuck away from them. You get behind your shotgun and you don’t let them in the house.”
    “I’m not in my house; the cops hid me in a hotel.”
    “Good. Stay there. You got a phone?”
    “Not a clean one.”
    “See if you can get one, call me back at this number.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Find the doc and this other guy. Have a talk.”
    “They think the doc did it. They tortured Lyle something awful, and something they were talking about makes me think a doc did it. They cut him. I think they cut, you know, his balls ... off.”
    “Ah, Honey Bee ... Christ, his balls?”
    Honey Bee started weeping into the phone, and Joe Mack said, “Listen to me. Listen to me. Do they still think I killed that lady?”
    “No. They say somebody else did,” she said. “They think it’s the doc. I told them it might be. They were going to put me in jail unless I told them something.”
    “Okay. Be cool. Did you get the cash out of the circuit breaker?”
    She nodded at the phone. “Yes. I put it in a safe-deposit box at US Bank. Seventeen thousand dollars. Don’t go to the bar. The cops are tearing the place apart.”
    “Okay. Now listen. Sit tight. Cooperate, but don’t tell them I’m coming back, and don’t tell them about this phone. Eddie’s got a lawyer pal in Wisconsin who’s done a lot of work for the Seed. He’s gonna sign one-third of the bar over to you, make it look like you owned it for a couple years, and he’s going to make a will for Lyle that leaves half of his share to you, and half to me. So we’ll be half owners, but you gotta run it, okay?”
    She sniffed. “Okay.”
    “I’ll be back late tonight or tomorrow. We’re coming, Honey Bee.”
     
     
    BARAKAT TOOK the call from Joe Mack, who asked, “Have you seen Cappy?”
    “I can get in touch,” Barakat said.
    “Tell him that the cops are looking for him. They might know about the van, too. He either better dump it, or dump the plates.”
    “Where are you?”
    “On my way to Mexico. I ain’t coming back, Al. Everybody’s dead, and I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just heading out.”
    The dummy, being clever.

16
    CAPPY AND BARAKAT nosed Barakat’s car down the snow-covered track to the boat landing, talking about the van problem. Cappy said, “I’ll take the California plates off my old van and put them on the new one. When I get to Florida, I’ll sell the new van on the street, and buy a legit one.”
    “How will you sell it on the street? Do you know somebody ...”
    “I’ll hook up with some bikers. They can take care of it. Everybody needs a van.”
    A few trucks had been down to the boat landing since the last snow, and there was a packed turnaround spot at the end. The water on the Wisconsin side was partly open, from the heat put in at the Prairie Island nuclear plant a mile or so upstream.
    Nobody out there at dawn. They got out, looked across the rim of ice to the open water, and Cappy walked out until he was ten feet from the edge.
    “What do you think?” Barakat called. He was afraid of ice.
    “Looks okay to me.”
    “Is it deep?”
    “It looks deep,” Cappy said.
    “You can try it,” Barakat said, “but let me get the car turned around, so we can get out fast.”
    They got the car turned around, pointed back toward the highway a quarter-mile away, and then Cappy got one of the grenades out of the back.
    “You’re sure you know about this?” he asked Barakat.
    “One hundred percent,” Barakat