The Fifth Quarter Read online

  After a half hour on Route 10, he turned off onto a secondary road. Fifteen minutes later we were on a rutted dirt track with snow-freighted pines staring at us on either side. Two miles along we turned into a short, trash-littered driveway.

  In the limited sweep of the VW's headlights 1 could make out a rickety backwoods shack with a patched roof and a twisted TV aerial. There was a snow-covered old Ford in a gully to the left. Out in back was an outhouse and a pile of old tires. Hernando's Hideaway.

  "Welcome to Bally's East," Sarge said, and killed the engine.

  "If this is a con, I'll kill you."

  He seemed to fill three-quarters of the tiny vehicle's front seat. "I know that," he said.

  "Get out."

  Sarge led the way up to the front door. "Open it," I said. "Then stand still."

  He opened the door and stood still. I stood still. We stood still for about three minutes, and nothing happened. The only moving thing was a fat gray squirrel that had ventured into the middle of the yard to curse us in lingua rodenta.

  "Okay," I said. "Let's go in."

  Surprise, it was a dump. The one sixty-watt bulb cast a grungy glow over the whole room, leaving shadows like starved bats in the corners. Newspapers were scattered helter-skelter. Drying clothes were hung on a sagging rope. In one corner there was an ancient Zenith TV. In the opposite corner was a rickety sink and a stark, rust-stained bathtub on claw feet. A hunting rifle stood beside it. The predominant odors were feet, farts, and chili.

  "It beats living raw," Sarge said.

  I could have argued the point, but didn't. "Where's your piece of the map?"

  "In the bedroom."

  "Let's go get it."

  "Not yet." He turned around slowly, his dipped-in-concrete face hard. "I want your word you ain't going to kill me when you get it."

  "How you going to make me keep it?"

  "Fuck, I don't know. I guess I'm just gonna hope it was more than the money that got you cranked up. If it was Barney, too -- wanting to clean Barney's slate -- you did it, it's clean. Keenan capped him and now Keenan's dead. If you want the bundle, too, okay. Maybe three-quarters will be enough, and you were right -- my piece has got a great big X on it. But you don't get it unless you promise I get something, too: my life."

  "How do I know you won't come after me?"

  "But I will, sonny," the Sarge said softly.

  I laughed. "All right. Throw in Jagger's address and you've got your promise. I'll keep it, too."

  The Sarge shook his head slowly. "You don't want to play with Jagger, fella, Jagger will eat you up."

  I had dropped the.45 a little. Now I lifted it again.

  "All right. He's in Coleman, Massachusetts. A ski lodge. Is that good enough?''

  "Yes. Let's get your piece, Sarge."

  The Sarge looked me over once more, closely. Then he nodded. We went into the bedroom.

  More Colonial charm. The stained mattress on the floor was littered with stroke-books and the walls were papered with photographs of women who appeared to be wearing nothing but a thin coating of Wesson Oil. One look at this place and Dr. Ruth's head would have exploded.

  The Sarge didn't hesitate. He picked up the lamp on the night-table and pried the base off it. His quarter of the map was neatly rolled up inside; he held it out wordlessly.

  "Throw it," I invited.

  The Sarge smiled thinly. "Cautious little pencil-neck, aren't you?"

  "I find it pays. Give it up, Sarge."

  He tossed it over to me. "Easy come, easy go," he said.

  "I'm going to keep my promise," I said. "Consider yourself lucky. Out in the other room."

  Cold light flickered in his eyes. "What are you going to do?"

  "See that you stay in one place for awhile. Move."

  We went out into the main room, a nifty little parade of two. The Sarge stood underneath the naked lightbulb, back to me, his shoulders hunched, anticipating the gunbarrel that was going to groove his head very shortly. I was just lifting the gun to clout him when the light blinked out.

  The shack was suddenly pitch black.

  I threw myself to the right; Sarge was already gone like a cool breeze. I could hear the thump and tumble of newspapers as he hit the floor in a flat dive. Then silence. Utter and complete.

  I waited for my night vision, but when it came it was no help. The place was a mausoleum in which a thousand dim tombstones loomed. And the Sarge knew every one of them.

  I knew about Sarge; material on him hadn't been hard to spade up. He'd been a Green Beret in Vietnam, and no one even bothered with his real name anymore; he was just the Sarge, big and murderous and tough.

  Somewhere in the dark he was moving in on me. He must have known the place like the back of his hand, because there wasn't a sound, not a squeaking board, not a foot scrape. But I could feel him getting closer and closer, flanking from the left or the right or maybe pulling a tricky one and coming in straight ahead.

  The stock of the gun was very sweaty in my hand, and I had to control the urge to fire it wildly, randomly. I was very aware that I had three-quarters of the pie in my pocket. I didn't bother wondering why the lights had gone out. Not until the powerful flashlight stabbed in through the window, sweeping the floor in a wild, random pattern that just happened to catch the Sarge, frozen in a half-crouch seven feet to my left. His eyes glowed greenly in the bright cone of light, like cat's eyes.

  He had a glinting razor blade in his right hand, and I suddenly remembered the way his hand had been spidering up his coat lapel in Keenan's carport.

  The Sarge said one word into the flash beam. "Jagger?"

  I don't know who got him first. A large-caliber pistol fired once behind the flashlight beam, and I pulled the trigger of Barney's.45 twice -- pure reflex. The Sarge was thrown back against the wall with force enough to knock him out of one of his boots.

  The flashlight snapped off.

  I fired one shot at the window, but hit only glass. I lay on my side in the darkness and realized that I hadn't been the only one waiting around for Keenan's greed to resurface. Jagger had been waiting, too. And, although there were twelve rounds of ammunition back in my car, there was only one left in my gun.

  You don't want to play with Jagger, fella, the Sarge had said, Jagger will eat you up.

  I had a pretty good picture of the room in my head now. I got up in a crouch and ran, stepping over Sarge's sprawled legs and into the corner. I got into the bathtub and poked my eyes up over the edge. There was no sound, none at all. The bottom of the tub was gritty with flaked-off bathtub ring. I waited.

  About five minutes went by. It seemed like five hours.

  Then the light nicked on again, this time in the bedroom window. I ducked my head when it glared through the doorway. It probed briefly and clicked off.

  Silence again. A long, loud silence. On the dirty surface of Sarge's porcelain bathtub I saw everything. Keenan, grinning desperately. Barney, with the clotted hole in his gut, due east of his navel. Sarge, standing frozen in the flashlight beam, holding the razor blade professionally between thumb and first finger. Jagger, the dark shadow with no face. And me. The fifth quarter.

  Suddenly there was a voice, just outside the door. It was soft and cultured, almost womanish, but not effete. It sounded deadly and competent as hell.

  "Hey, beautiful."

  I kept quiet. He wasn't getting my number without dialing a little.

  When the voice came again, it was by the window. "I'm going to kill you, beautiful. I came to kill them, but you'll do fine."

  A pause while he shifted position once more. When the voice came again, it came from the window just over my head -- the one above the bathtub. My guts crawled into my throat. If he flashed that light now...

  "No fifth wheels need apply," Jagger said. "Sorry."

  I could barely hear him moving to his next position. It turned out to be back to the doorway. "I've got my quarter with me. You want to come and take it?"

/>   I felt an urge to cough and repressed it.

  "Come and get it, beautiful." His voice was mocking. "The whole pie. Come and take it away."

  But I didn't have to, and I suppose he knew it. I was holding the chips. I could find the money now. With his single quarter, Jagger had no chance.

  This time the silence really spun out. A half-hour, an hour, forever. Eternity squared. My body started to stiffen. Outside, the wind was tuning up, making it impossible to hear anything but rattling snow against the walls. It was very cold. The tips of my fingers were going numb.

  Then, around one-thirty, a ghostly stirring sound like crawling rats in the darkness. I stopped breathing. Somehow Jagger had got in. He was right in the middle of the room...

  Then I got it. Rigor mortis, hurried by the cold, was rearranging Sarge for the last time, which was all. I relaxed a little.

  That was when the door rammed open and Jagger charged through, ghostly and visible in a mantle of white snow, tall and loose and gangling. I let him have it and the bullet punched a hole through the side of his head. And in the brief gunflash, I saw that what I had holed was a scarecrow with no face, dressed in some farmer's thrown-out pants and shirt. The burlap head fell off the broomstick neck as it hit the floor. Then Jagger was shooting at me.

  He was holding a semi-automatic pistol, and the innards of the bathtub were like a great percussive hollow cymbal. Porcelain flew up, bounced off the wall, struck my face. Wood splinters and a single hot spent slug rained down on me.

  Then he was charging, never letting up. He was going to shoot me in the tub like a fish in a barrel. I couldn't even put my head up.

  It was Sarge who saved me. Jagger stumbled over one big dead foot, staggered, and pumped bullets into the floor instead of over my head. Then I was on my knees. I pretended I was Roger Clemens. I pegged Barney's big.45 at his head.

  The gun hit him but didn't stop him. I stumbled over the rim of the tub getting out to tackle him, and Jagger put two groggy shots to my left.

  The faint silhouette stepped back, trying to get a bead, one hand holding his ear where the gun had hit him. He shot me through the wrist, and his second shot ripped a groove in my neck. Then, incredibly, he stumbled over Sarge's feet again and fell backward. He brought the gun up again and put one through the roof. It was his last chance. I kicked the gun out of his hand, hearing the wet-wood sound of breaking bones. I kicked him in the groin, doubling him up. I kicked him again, this time in the back of the head, and his feet rattled a fast, unconscious tattoo on the floor. He was as good as dead then, but I kicked him again and again, kicked him until there was nothing but pulp and strawberry jam, nothing anyone could ever identify, not by teeth, not by anything. I kicked him until I couldn't swing my leg anymore, and my toes wouldn't move.

  I suddenly realized I was screaming and there was no one to hear me but dead men.

  I wiped my mouth and knelt over Jagger's body.

  He had been lying about his quarter of the map, as it turned out. It didn't surprise me much. No, I take that back. It didn't surprise me at all.

  My heap was just where I had left it, around the block from Keenan's house, but now it was just a ghostly hump of snow. I had left Sarge's VW a mile back. I hoped my heater was still working. I was numb all over. I got the door open and winced a little as I sat down inside. The crease in my neck had already clotted over, but my wrist hurt like hell.

  The starter cranked for a long time, and the motor finally caught. The heater was working, and the one wiper cleared away most of the snow on the driver's side. Jagger had been lying about his quarter, and it hadn't been in the unobtrusive (and probably stolen) Honda Civic he'd come in. But his address had been in his wallet, and if I actually needed his quarter, I thought there was a pretty good chance I could find it. I didn't think I would; three pieces should be enough, especially since Sarge's quarter was the one with the X.

  I pulled out carefully. I was going to be careful for a long time. The Sarge had been right about one thing: Barney had been a dope. The fact that he'd also been my friend didn't matter any­more. The debt had been paid.

  In the meantime, I had a lot to be careful for.

 

 

  Stephen King, The Fifth Quarter

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends