Only the Rain(48)

“I gotta go spend some time with Pops,” I told Cindy after I tucked the phone back in my pocket.

And it was like she had already read my mind. “It’s Vietnam again, isn’t it?” she said.

“He didn’t say as much but . . . yeah. That’s probably what it is.”

“Bring him back here if you want,” she said.

“Yeah, I think he probably wouldn’t want you or the girls to see him that way. You be okay for a few hours?”

She nodded. “I’m awfully glad you got over yours,” she said. “You have, right?”

“For the most part,” I said.

We hugged for a minute in the kitchen, then I went out to the garage. She watched me driving away. I could picture her walking through the house then, making sure all the doors and windows were locked, probably taking a cover off the bed so she could sit bundled up on the couch with her phone, the flashlights, and a big-ass butcher knife lined up on the coffee table.



The first thing Pops said to me was, “It’s about those McClaine boys, isn’t it?” He was fully dressed and ready to go, and he didn’t even know yet what was waiting for us. Still tough as nails after all these years. I filled him in on everything that had happened that week, and he kept getting madder and madder. “Let’s go,” he finally said.

“Pops, I’m doing this alone. I’m only telling you this so that, I don’t know, you can give me some advice or something. I felt like you should know about this in case things go bad for me.”

What I was really hoping for was that he would have some kind of miracle solution to everything. He didn’t.

“Things already went bad,” he said, and then he walked right out of his little apartment and into the hallway. “Pull the door shut,” he said.

I followed him to the front desk, where he signed himself out. “My son’s taking me out for some Chinese food and fast women,” he told the attendant. “Don’t wait up for me.”

She chuckled and gave me a wink. “Make sure you use a condom,” she said.

As soon as we were in the truck, Pops said, “Where you keeping my .30-30? Is it at your place?”

“It’s at your storage unit.”

“Let’s go then,” he said.

“I already been there, Pops. To get the money in that shoebox.” He looked down at it on the floor by his feet.

He gave it a little nudge with his foot. “You say it’s short?”

“I took some out to pay my ER bill.”

“Why in the world didn’t you come to me for a loan?”

“I should’ve, I know. I didn’t want you to know I was in trouble.”

“Let’s find us an ATM then.”

“It won’t be enough, Pops. There’s a limit on how much you can take out in one day.”

He sat there thinking for a minute. Gave the shoebox another nudge. “Money’s not all they’re going to be looking for tonight.”

“I know that,” I said.

He looked at me then—a long, hard look. “Take me to the storage unit. We’re not meeting those fellas unarmed.”

“I already told you, Pops. I don’t want you getting hurt. You can wait for me out in the truck while I deal with them.”

He wasn’t going to hear it. “You can get yourself that old revolver of mine too. “You’ll need something you can keep out of sight.”

I pointed at the glove box. “It’s in there.”

He opened the glove box, took out the .22 and checked to see it was fully loaded. “You bring extra ammo?”

“I forgot and left it at home.”

He shook his head, and I knew he was right. I’d stopped thinking straight the moment I decided to go back to that damn shower stall. And tonight I hadn’t planned anything beyond me either walking back out of the crusher building, or crawling out all busted up, or trying to take both of the McClaines down with me before I bled out on the concrete floor.

I should’ve been more like you, Spence, the way you always laid out all the possibilities before a mission, the way you looked at all the angles. “This is what’s probably going to happen,” you’d say, and then you’d tell us how to play it out. But then you’d run through all the other possibles too, and tell us what to do in every case, Scenarios A, B, C and D. Most likely to least likely. High percentage to low.

Me, I’d only been thinking what I was going to do. What I should’ve been thinking was what the McClaines were most likely to do. Scenario A, B and C at least. Then how I could keep them from doing any of it in the first place. Or how I’d better react when they actually did it.

That’s the way Pops was thinking. He tapped his finger against the face of the dash clock. 9:17. “Quit driving like an old lady and step on it,” he said. “You think they’ll come waltzing in at ten on the button? They’re going to be early. They’re going to assume you weren’t stupid enough to come alone, and they’ll want to pick their own best spots in case they’re right. So we got to be earlier. Now punch that fucking gas.”

I drove as fast as I could without spinning out on the wet roads. Pops sat hunched forward, keeping his face close to the windshield like he was searching for something in every flash of lightning. The only other thing he said before we got to the storage unit was, “You need to replace those wipers. They’re about as useful as tits on a rooster.”