Free Fire - C. J. Box [59]
She had curlers in her hair and was wearing an oversized parka. There was a cigarette in the stubby fingers of her free hand, and she waved it around her head as she talked. Her pickup was twenty years old, the bed filled with junk, the cab windows smeared opaque by the three big dogs inside, all of them with their paws on the glass and their tongues hanging out. He was vaguely familiar with her and had seen her death trap of a pickup rattling through town before. She collected and sold junk and hides. She had a sign on a muddy two-track west of town that offered $10 apiece for elk hides, $7.50 for deer. Her name, he thought, was Marge.
When she saw McCann standing there, obviously waiting for her and checking his wristwatch, she flicked her fingers at him. “It’ll be a while,” she said. “There’s a phone down the street outside the gas station.”
“No, I need this phone.”
Marge looked at him like he was crazy. “I told you it’ll be a while, mister. The phone service is out at my place. I got a bunch of business calls to make.”
She turned away from him. “I’m on hold.”
In a minute, Barron would call.
“Look,” McCann said to her back, “I’m expecting a really important call on this number. Right here, right now. You can call whoever it is you’re waiting for right back. Hell, I’ll give you the money. In fact, if you want to sit in my office and use the phone there, you can make calls all day.”
She turned slightly and peered over her massive shoulder with one eye closed. “If you’ve got a phone in your office, mister,why don’t you use it?”
He couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Lady . . . Marge . . .”
She ignored him.
Furious, he reached out to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention when the dogs went off furiously, barking and snarling, gobs of saliva spattering the inside of the cab window inches from his arm. He recoiled in panic, and she yelled for her dogs to shut the hell up.
Then she turned on him. “What the hell is wrong with you, mister? I’m on the phone.”
“I’m a lawyer,” he said, his heart racing in his chest from the shock of the barking and the flash of teeth. “I’m expecting an important call. It’s a matter of life and death. I need that phone.”
She assessed him coolly. “I know who you are, Clay McCann.I don’t think much of you. And you’re not getting it.”
He shot a glance at his watch. Past time. He prayed Barron would be a few minutes late. Or call back if it was busy the first time. But what if he didn’t?
The .38 was out before she could say another word. McCann tapped the muzzle against the glass of the passenger window in the drooling face of a dog. “Hang up now,” he said.
“You’re threatening my dogs,” she said, eyes wide. “Nobody threatens my dogs.”
Then she stepped back and jerked the telephone cord from the wall with a mighty tug.
“There!” she yelled at him. “Now nobody can use it!”
“Jesus! What did you do?”
“I just got started,” she said, swinging the phone through the air at him by holding the severed metal cord. The receiver hit him hard on the crown of his head.
McCann staggered back, tears in his eyes, his vision blurred. But not blurred enough that he couldn’t see her whipping the phone back and swinging it around her head like a lariat, lookingfor another opening.
He turned and ran across the street, hoping she wouldn’t follow.On the other sidewalk, he wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, stunned. Marge glared at him, as if contemplating whether or not to give chase.
“Don’t ever threaten my dogs!” she hollered.
Then she jammed the useless receiver back on the cradle, lumbered into her pickup, which sagged as she climbed in, and drove down the street, leaving a cloud of acrid blue smoke.
Before reaching up and touching the lump forming beneath his scalp, McCann put the gun back in his pocket so no one would see it. He hoped she wasn’t headed for the sheriff’s department.
On the wall of the supermarket, the telephone box rang.
He closed his eyes, leaned back against the front of a motel that was closed for the season, and slowly sank until he was