“I do,” I said.
“It comes from a song titled ‘Life Is Like a Mountain Railway.’ These guys can really do it.”
“Son of a bitch,” Clete said.
“What did you say?” the bartender asked.
“Not you, buddy,” Clete said. He jabbed his finger at the air, indicating the darkened two-story house down the shore. “That’s got to be it, Streak,” he said. “We take these motherfuckers off at the neck, and we do it now. No thinking about it, no looking back. Full-throttle and fuck it, right?”
“Roger that,” I said.
“Who are you guys?” the bartender said.
“The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide,” Clete said. “You didn’t know that?”
“The
what?” the bartender said.
“Hey, handsome?” Gretchen said.
“What?” the bartender said.
“You’re a nice guy,” she said. “You’ve done your part. We’ve got it covered. We’ll take care of the phone calls. Okay?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said.
“I like your muscle tone. Maybe I’ll check back with you later. Keep a good thought,” she said. She winked at him.
He looked at her with his mouth open.
MOLLY AND ALBERT were sitting on the basement floor, their wrists tied behind them with wire twisted around a water pipe. Against the far wall, Molly could see a woman spread-eagled on a box spring, a sheet draped over her body. Behind a boiler, two girls were sitting in a wire cage. They were huddled against each other, their knees drawn up before them. Next to the cage was a ladder extending through a trapdoor in the ceiling. In another corner, she could hear Jack Boyd pouring liquid from a big white plastic jug into one of two washtubs set side by side. When he finished, he set the empty jug on the floor and took another one from a wall shelf. Boyd appeared to be holding his breath while he poured, his face pinched against the acidic stench.
Asa Surrette had come down the stairs twice to look at the woman on the box spring, placing his fingers on her throat to feel her pulse, staring into her face for a long time before returning to the first floor.
Terry came down the wood steps and watched Jack Boyd filling the second washtub. He glanced over his shoulder at Molly and Albert, then looked at Boyd. “Your man up there has a frontal lobe missing,” he said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Boyd replied.
“He just told me what we’re doing.”
“You want to give me a hand here?”
“I got sinus problems.” Terry gazed into the shadows behind the boiler. “Jesus Christ, there’re some kids in a cage back there.”
“Get with the program, Terry. Surrette has his own universe. One day he’ll disappear inside it. In the meantime, keep the lines simple.”
Terry lowered his voice and hunched his shoulders, as stupid people do when they don’t want others to hear them. “He told me to get the electric saw out of the closet.”
“Why don’t you say it a little louder so everybody can hear?”
“If I wanted to join the meat cutters’ union, I’d move to Chicago.”
“You bounce a woman off the gravel on her face and all of a sudden you have standards?”
Terry poked a finger into Jack Boyd’s back. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, what?”