“Uh-huh, sure. But it really was gonna be a great disguise.”
“I have no doubt.”
CHAPTER 14
We turned Shamu down an alley just beyond a huge, electric-blue boom lift they were using to work on the phone lines. Some people call them cherry pickers, but I call them by their proper name: boom lifts. I’m a little like the character Karl in Slingblade in that respect. Hondo, when he’s grumpy says for me not to sell myself short, that I have a lot more than that in common with Karl.
I maneuvered the big Ford 250 around what seemed like twenty dumpsters in the alley, and I parked near the other end so Jett and I could use our binoculars to scope out the bus station. We watched the TV crew go inside, then five minutes later, we hit pay dirt.
Three men left the bus station as three other men approached. All six looked like they could be a group of inbred cousins. The three going into the station nodded at the others as they passed. Bad Guy shift change. “There are our three bozos from the other day, going inside,” I said.
“Good to see two of them still limping,” Jett said. Yes sir, I liked this girl.
I said, “I’m surprised they aren’t in a wheelchair as hard as Magilla hit them.”
Jett put down her binoculars and said, “That’s the big guy you were telling me about, right?”
“Yeah, about the size of a rhino, but faster and meaner.”
Jett said, “I remember once when I was about fourteen or so, Dad met some really big man one night. I’d been asleep but woke up and heard them talking, so I went to the living room and peeked in. They were mostly in shadow, but the big man caught my movement. He looked at me a second, then smiled.”
“I’d have wet my pants about then,” I said.
“I was scared when I saw how big he was, but when he smiled, it was warm, you know?”
“What did you do?”
“I went back to bed.”
“Ever see him again?”
“Yeah, every once in a while, but we never talked or anything, just him and Dad.”
“Did you ask your Dad about him?”
“Uh-huh. Dad said he was a young kid, an orphan that was lonely and he’d helped him out a few times.”
“A young kid?”
“Dad said he suffered from pituitary gigantism and acromegaly, the same diseases as the wrestler Andre the Giant. Dad said he was only a few years older than me.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Maybe two years ago. But Dad mentioned him about six months ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the boy was in with some bad people.”
“Did your dad call him Magilla?”
“No, he never told me the boy’s name. He’d say, ‘Remember that big boy?’ and I’d know who he was talking about.”
There was movement at the bus station so I raised my binoculars. Hondo and Emma went inside the station. I talked into Hondo’s earphone, “Three bogeys twelve o’clock high.”
Hondo’s voice came out of the speaker I’d
put on the dash, “Things copacetic in your location?”