The Famous and the Dead Read Free Page B

a beating and an abortion might in the long run be a fair trade for escaping a life tied to Lyle Scully. The womenfolk in her part of the world tended to bear the brunt of things, or so he’d read and seen in movies. But Mary Kate would have to stay escaped, of course. Would have to
want
to stay escaped. People had surprising needs and default settings.
    â€œWhat happened to the fourth guy?” asked Bly.
    â€œWent missing three months back. Not a trace. Disappearo.”
    â€œDo you know what contraband they have to sell?” Yorth asked.
    â€œNot exactly. But there’s plenty of crank since a lot of it’s cooked up right there in Russell County. It’s high-grade stuff so far as that kinda thing goes. I tried it once and didn’t like it. Then there’s always plenty of bud to be smoked. Heroin’s still pretty popular but the pharmaceuticals are taking it over. Two guys broke into, like, four Jefferson pharmacies in one weekend, helped themselves, but the state police sent the videos around and guess what? The crooks were from our own neck of the woods. So the Russell County boys busted their butts. Skull and his team grabbed most of the evidence when no one was looking and him and his crew sold almost all of it. Right out of Skull’s truck, he said, like a roach coach for drugs. Also I know they got lots of guns. Most of them were stored in the property room, some for years. I know this from Skull. And a course they’re supposed to destroy the guns once the trial’s over but Skull worked it so the paperwork for destroyal got sent but he took the guns himself. Don’t ask me what kind or how many. Except once we all went out the woods so they could try out this new gun they got, and it was a big honkin’ thing that had legs on one end and a big round doughnutlike thing on the top. Loud. And heavy, even for Skull, who is approximately two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He laid on the ground and fired. Then he got up and braced it on his hip and had to put some back into it. Shot up a bunch of watermelons. I don’t like guns any more than I like crank, though I don’t see any harm in putting food on a table, which a course ain’t what a gun like that gets used for.”
    â€œLegs on the end?” asked Hood. “A bipod?”
    â€œYeah, the far end, like two legs. For when he laid down and shot.”
    â€œAnd a black doughnut? Do you mean a drum attached on top, flat to the frame of the gun?”
    â€œThat’s what I mean, valentine.” She smiled, then winced and brought the tissue back to her mouth. “Ouch. That’s what I get for funnin’. Story of my life.”
    He smiled back and shook his head. And thought,
An old Lewis Gun?
Not exactly state-of-the-art weaponry, though it was a bruiser. It was the only machine gun that he could think of with an ammo pan on top. Belgian. It was a popular machine gun in World War I, and into World War II, but they hadn’t made one in seventy-something years. Of course, if Pace Arms could make a thousand Love 32s in Orange County, anything could happen. He’d seen pictures of the Lewis Mark I, and a total of one in the flesh, in his entire life.
    â€œWhere do you think they’ll go when they get here?” asked Velasquez. He was the youngest of this team and the only one with a master’s degree, which was in economics.
    â€œTo a motel, I guess,” said Mary Kate Boyle.
    â€œAnd to get the best burritos in the world,” said Hood.
    Yorth leaned back and set his hands behind his head. He was a big man with short yellow hair that was dark at the roots. “You know the name of the restaurant?”
    â€œI’da told you if I did. How many burrito restaurants can there be in El Central?”
    â€œProbably twenty Mexican restaurants,” said Hood. “That’s just a guess.”
    â€œCall Skull and ask him which restaurant, Mary Kate,” said