The Ruinous Sweep Read online

  “Liar,” she snapped. Then her face softened. “You don’t remember, do you.”

  He shook his head.

  She laughed but there was sadness in it. She looked over at the dead dog for a good long moment. If there had been grief, she was mostly over it. She turned her attention back to Donovan; her gaze was level and hard.

  “You must have been the fellow who robbed the car up on the highway,” she said, kicking herself off the door. She walked a few steps toward him. Strode. She strode toward him, all business. Then stopped three strides away. Her hands were at her sides now.

  Donovan had never been much of a liar. If his father had inspired him in any way, it was to not follow him down that road. He wasn’t sure if he nodded or not. The woman chuckled in any case.

  “So, where is it?” she said.

  He waited, tried to think if there was anything he could do. He wanted to close his eyes — maybe click his heels while he was at it. Then he nodded with his chin toward the outside.

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “I’ll need a bit more information than that.”

  “The trash heap,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” she said, cocking her ear, putting her hand behind it. “I work a farm, kid, I’m around a lot of heavy machinery, not to mention a lot of loud mouthed stupid men, so I don’t hear so good.”

  “The junk pile. I buried it.”

  She nodded. “Good place for it,” she said. She looked to her right, where there was a giant spool of some kind of yellow conduit lying on its side. She went and perched on it, and Donovan’s baseball brain kicked in. He was at third, and home was that red door, and the catcher had just peeled off toward first after an errant throw from the outfield.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “You’ve got a gimpy leg. You’ve got a good body but you’re at the end of your rope. And, like I said, I work a farm. I’d have you hog-tied in about thirty seconds, you try running on me.”

  It was almost a relief. Donovan didn’t have much desire to move.

  “You don’t want to run from me anyway,” she said, her voice calmer. “I can be a help. You need help, right?”

  He nodded, wondering now if she could read everything in his head, whether he thought it or not.

  “So, next question,” she said. “What’s in it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whatever it is you took.”

  He hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation in the kitchen with the cops, and she hadn’t even been there, unless she was listening from another room. He didn’t expect the cops had told the men much more than he’d heard.

  “You going to tell me or do I have to smack you around a bit?” Now both her eyebrows were raised. “Better still, I’ll get my brother to do it for me: Mervin, the one with the mane of hair? Goldilocks. Only problem is he just doesn’t know his own strength. Might likely pulverize you and we’d just have to take you back to the swamp there and weigh you down with a concrete block.” She leaned on her knees. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  She smiled as her words hit home. Donovan wasn’t sure how much of what she said was true, but he remembered Mervin Green, all right, with arms like oak branches, a loser at poker with a short fuse.

  “It’s money,” he said. She nodded. “A lot of money,” he added.

  She rubbed her nose with her hand. It was a muscled hand with bitten-down nails. She was pretty, he guessed, in a hard way. Life wasn’t easy on her.

  “You assessing whether I can do the job?” she said.

  He stared blankly at her. “Sorry?” he said.

  “Get you to where you’re going,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “The money will help.”

  “Listen,” said Donovan, suddenly standing up. “I’ll show you where it is and then I just want to get out of here and go home.”

  She had stood up the instant he did and cut the angle toward the door in case he was foolish enough to make a dash for it. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You won’t stand a chance without me.”

  His shoulders sagged. His head drooped. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you don’t. How could you? But you made it back here, which is a start.”

  He stared at her, racking his brain. “Do I know you?”

  She nodded. “It’ll come to you.”

  He had thought he recognized the place. There had been that snapshot when he’d first seen the house up close — seen it as if by day, a flash of memory that went out as quickly as it appeared.

  “Don’t fight it,” she said. Now her smile softened again and he knew he had met her before — this softer version of her.

  “And hey, you’ve got the stump money,” she said. “That’s good, however you came by it.”

  “The what?”

  “Trust me, Donovan,” she said. She nodded as if showing him how to say yes.

  “It all just . . . happened,” he said. “I was hitching and this freak dropped me out near here and then this car was coming way too fast and when he saw me he lost control and next thing I know he’s in the ditch.”

  She nodded, but the look on her face made him wonder.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” he said.

  She nodded. “The money’s a good sign. It’ll be all right,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  He shook his head. “I doubt it. I don’t know how you know my name, let alone how you knew I was here. I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

  “I saw you right off,” she said. He stared at her. “When you fell on your butt outside the window? It’s a wonder the others downstairs didn’t hear you. I was up in my room.” She pointed back toward the house. The room he’d seen the light in. Figured. None of this was going to go his way. “I guessed you’d still be skulking around, which is why I left the door unlocked.” He nodded slowly, realizing he’d walked into a trap. She smiled again. “Hey, I’m used to herding cattle.”

  She seemed to have some plan for him, to have been expecting him. It made no sense. He needed out. He needed Bee — for her to come and get him. Then he needed the police — to tell them what happened. Tell his side of the story — what he could remember.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Could I use your phone?” She shook her head. “Please.”

  “The line’s down, kid.”

  “Don’t you have a cell?”

  She didn’t answer. Stonewalled him. Not so much as a gesture one way or the other. Right. He cleared his throat. He’d have given his right arm for a glass of water. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You want to get home,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said hopefully.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She was frowning now.

  “I’ll do anything.”

  Her frown deepened. He couldn’t bear to lose her now. “Please,” he said. “Whatever it takes, I’ll —”

  “Shut up!” Her face darkened.

  “No, listen —”

  “I said shut up!” Her voice had gone quiet — quiet but sharp. Which is when he heard what she was listening to: the sound of motorbikes. Not just one or two. More like a herd.

  He stood up, petrified, and gazed in the direction of the yard, where they seemed to be gathering.

  “This could get messy,” she said.

  And then there was the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

  The front of the shed faced the yard. It was two garage-doors wide, and there were narrow windows fitted at eye level. Outside, there were at least a dozen bikes — big Harleys, operated by men built with the same kind of dimensions as their rides: large, with a lot of grunt power. They were running this way and that, hiding behind the vehicles in the yard, with guns aimed at the house.

  “Come on,” said the woman, grabbing Donovan by the sleeve of his shirt, pulling him back deeper into the shed toward the side door he’d come through. She locked it and then h
er hand slid down the wall, behind the pile of wooden pallets, where she must have flicked some kind of switch because a motor started up. She grimaced at the noise of the engine, looked anxiously toward the yard, then returned her attention to the pile of pallets.

  Outside there was return fire from the house and shouting and all Donovan could think of was where to hide. He saw a ladder at the back end, near the freezer and the tires and the dead dog. It led up to some kind of a loft. He headed toward it, but the woman grabbed his sleeve again. He tried to tug himself free.

  “When they show up with guns, they don’t plan on anyone getting out alive,” she said.

  “But we’ve got —”

  He stopped, his eyes growing wide. The stack of pallets was rising off the concrete floor. They were piled on some kind of a lift, like in an auto body shop. And just like the pneumatic hoist in a body shop, it was moving way too slowly.

  Bam!

  A bullet smashed through the steel door, ricocheting off the floor not a yard from Donovan’s feet. He backed up then realized he was moving away from the rising pallets, which, he could see now, was their way out, for there was an entrance: a circular hole in the floor just smaller than the size of the pallet, about a yard or so in diameter.

  “Come on!” The woman waved him toward the metal staircase that spiraled down around the oil-slicked central piston. The lifted pile stopped at about four feet and she was already ducking down under it. There was another shot through the door, and again Donovan sidestepped where it had hit and made his way toward the stairs.

  Then he remembered his phone. He raced back to the desk and grabbed it, pulled it free of its cable just as a third shot pierced the metal-clad door.

  The woman’s head was just visible at floor level. She had stopped and was staring at him, astonished. Then she shook her head, and he saw her stab at a red button on the wall and the motor started again. The lift was going down.

  Donovan raced for the stairs. The lift was descending faster than it had risen. Gravity — never gave a guy a break. More gunshots, forcing Donovan to back away.

  “They’re in here, too!” someone shouted from outside the door and then there was nothing for Donovan to do but race to the rapidly diminishing escape route and slide on his belly under the hoist. Grabbing the handrail of the staircase with both hands, he pulled with all his might and his legs followed him in, just as the pallets alighted on the concrete floor with a quiet smack.

  He hustled to his feet and clambered down the stairs, reaching the bottom just as the door to the shed above crashed open, followed by a spray of gunfire.

  He stood at the foot of the staircase next to the woman.

  “Assault rifles,” she said quietly. “Bullpups.”

  Then, placing a finger to her lips and with a nod of her head, she stepped through a door at the bottom of the shaft into a room of brilliant light. Donovan followed, too dazed to do anything else, and she shut the door quickly but quietly behind him. She reached past him and smacked a series of light switches on the wall, pitching them into darkness. But not before Donovan saw where they were. It was a grow room. The giant room, as wide and long as the shed, was a frigging weed operation!

  Above them, men spilled into the shed. He felt the woman’s rough finger touch his lips, reminding him not to make a sound. She needn’t have bothered. He was struck dumb. She leaned in close to his ear.

  “The name’s Jilly,” she said. “Follow me.”

  She took Donovan by the wrist and led him, like a blind man, down the central corridor. There was a tincture of light coming from somewhere, enough to see a forest of marijuana. Which explained the heady aroma up in the shed. But down here, in the belly of the beast, he could feel the cannabinoids really working on him.

  At the north wall of the underground bunker, there was a door Jilly pushed through, dragging Donovan along. She closed the door behind them, sealing off the last little bit of light. She let go of his wrist, leaned against the wall, and took a deep breath.

  “The smell can really get to you,” she said. He nodded. Not that she could see. “It’s the nutrients we feed the plants that’ll kill you, though,” she said. “I don’t work down here without a gas mask.”

  There was another blast of gunfire upstairs. Jilly laughed. The kind of laugh you let out when you’ve bobsledded down an Olympic run for the first time — by mistake. “You know,” she said, “when the cops eventually get here, they’ll survey the wreckage and say the place burned down because of us tampering with the wiring to get enough juice to grow the plants. They won’t say a damn thing about the ten thousand shell casings they find. Just another grow op, up in smoke.” She laughed again. “But, oh my, will Lanark County be feeling good tomorrow!”

  Donovan wasn’t exactly sure if he understood anything she said. What he understood, standing there in this closet, in the darkest darkness yet, was that he had been saved from a bunch of maniacs by a maniac. It was a lose-lose situation.

  “You rested up?” she said.

  The question could not truly be answered.

  “Follow me,” she said. She took his arm, another door opened, and his nose was assaulted by the sweet smell of wet earth. “Duck,” she said, and then he felt her hand pressing down on his head, just in time to avoid a low ceiling. Reaching up protectively, he felt a wooden beam. She closed the door behind them and locked it. Three different locks slammed into place. Then she scrambled about and next thing he knew a flashlight came on. They were in an underground earthen tunnel. There was a locker just inside the steel door through which they’d come, and from it she took a shoulder bag that seemed already partially packed, plus a firearm that looked as if it were straight from Star Wars.

  His eyes must have given away his stunned surprise.

  “Oh, this,” she said, grunting as she swung the strap over her shoulder. She patted the weapon affectionately. “It’s an FN P90. It’s what they’ve got. Gotta fight fire with fire,” she said. Donovan nodded as if he’d been thinking the same thing.

  There was a loud crashing sound from somewhere above and he scrunched his shoulders even more than they already were, standing in a tunnel not quite five feet high. “Shouldn’t we be, you know, going?”

  Jilly was staring up at the ceiling. She nodded. “But only so far,” she said enigmatically, and then started down the tunnel, bending low. Donovan mostly crawled after her, stayed back a few feet just in case the assault weapon dangling from her shoulder went off by mistake. If it did and he was killed, at least he would already be buried. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  In only a few minutes they reached the door at the end of the tunnel, by which time he was desperate to get out. He’d always had a bit of claustrophobia, but until tonight, he’d never realized just how severe it was. There was only compacted dirt above their heads. Dirt — tons of it — held up by thick beams and plywood. His hand reached out for the door, like a runner reaching for the ribbon at the end of the race. She slapped him down.

  “Not yet!” she said. She had gone from a crouch to actually sitting on the smooth dirt floor. “Sit!” she said. He did. He wondered what her next command might be. Roll over? Play dead?

  Donovan stared at the assault rifle, lying across her lap now. It looked futuristic and deeply troublesome.

  “A ‘bullpup’?” he asked.

  She nodded. “You settled yet?” She was shining the flashlight at his face. He shaded his eyes and nodded. Then she turned off the light. “Don’t want to give anybody a clue where we are,” she said.

  Donovan just swallowed, wishing he had a clue. He folded his legs and rested his hands, knotted, in his lap, like a kid in kindergarten at storytime. The door beside them let in dribbles of cold air. He breathed it in hungrily, desperate to push the door open and see the night.

  Where were they? As far as he could reckon they had been moving east, toward the concession road. Leaning toward the door, he could pick up the sounds from back at the farm: gunfire, but
only now and then. More crashing sounds. What he wanted to hear was the roar of motorcycles revving up and leaving, going back to wherever they’d come from. If they were Satan’s Choice, then it was time they went back to Satan’s garage, wherever that was.

  “A bullpup’s what you call an automatic weapon with the action and magazine behind the trigger in the buttstock.”

  Donovan said, “Oh,” and left it at that. Lesson over. She’d said she ran a farm and he couldn’t help wondering how many other farmers kept machine guns in an underground locker. He wasn’t sure how long they were going to be there, but even if it was, say, a few days, he doubted whether his conversational skills were up to actually talking to Jilly. Conversation, when it was any good, usually had to do with having something in common. The only thing he had in common with her, as far as he could tell, was that their lives were equally in danger from a dozen or so gangbangers outfitted with weapons of destruction.

  “I’m trying to figure how I’m going to get you to where you’re going,” said Jilly.

  “Oh,” said Donovan again.

  “After the cops left, I took a little trip up to see the accident on Seven. The car was still there in the ditch, and I’m pretty sure I recognized it.”

  “Really?”

  “This slimeball named Lucan, who’s the dry cleaner for those guys back there destroying my family home.”

  “The dry cleaner?”

  “The one who washes their dirty money.”

  “Oh.”

  “The cops know Lucan, and they know who controls most of the dope sold in this neck of the woods. They also have a pretty good idea that we have our own little operation and that those pagans back there don’t like it.” She chuckled. “We don’t like them, needless to say.”

  Donovan thought suddenly about his English teacher, who would get his shorts in a knot about people saying “needless to say” since if it was, then you shouldn’t be saying it. He didn’t think Jilly would appreciate a grammar lesson, though.

  “This is the way it works,” she said. “There has to be money to pay Charlie. There’s just no way around it. You needed that money and there it was.”