by John Hart
“I don’t care about that.”
“You should.”
“After dinner,” I said. “After dinner, we figure this thing out.”
* * *
In the subbasement beneath death row, X ate and drank, but tasted little beyond the salt of disappointment and the sweetness of his pride. He saw so much of himself in Jason. Did that make his feelings venal in some way? It felt profounder than that. There was compassion in Jason’s fierceness, and pity, even when he loathed. Such contradictions were rare in fighters so attuned, and X struggled to understand how Jason could be so vicious and tactically brilliant, yet remain a man of such deep feeling. Pushing away his plate, X replayed the first time he’d forced Jason to fight. He’d not expected much. Jason had appeared more or less as they all had. He’d been leaner perhaps, and sad somehow, though X admitted the impression of sadness might be revisionist.
Why? he’d asked.
Why are we doing this?
Why me?
Had X cared enough to explain, he might have used words like dominion, distraction, mechanical release. But there’d been so many fights and fighters, so many conflicts that left him empty.
Jason’s skill had been obvious in the first seconds, and X remembered feeling mild interest. There was some talent. He saw no fear. True understanding came later, as X stood bloodied and awed and nearly beaten. Even now, he could feel that sense of near-religious awakening. Fighting Jason made X want to be more, and X had not wished to be more for a very long time.
“Guard!” he called out, impatient. “Take this away.” X meant the remnants of his dinner. Normally, it was a quick and silent affair. This time the guard lingered. “What?” X could not hide the impatience.
“I’m sorry to bother you…”
“Speak.”
“Your lawyer is here. He’s been waiting.”
X frowned. He’d not summoned Reece, and Reece would not come without reason. “Very well. Send him down.” The guard scurried away, then returned with Reece, and left. “Sit.” Reece looked nervous. That was rare. “Speak, for God’s sake.”
Reece gathered himself, then spoke softly, as if to do otherwise might trap the words in his throat. “I’ve been watching the girl. I know I shouldn’t be. I know that, I do, not without talking to you first. It’s just that I saw her, and she has this look, and she’s stuck in my head, stuck there, and spinning…”
“Just a moment.” X raised a hand, stopping him. “What girl?”
“Um, you know, from the car, the blonde, the other one.”
“The one you didn’t kill? The one I specifically instructed you to leave alone?”
“The blonde, yes, sir. Her name is Sara…”
X stopped him again. Reece was his right hand, one of his many extensions into the outside world. In exchange for his service, X provided money and lawyers and quiet places for Reece to do unspeakable things. Such were the rewards, but there were expectations, too, and penalties should Reece fail. “I find this development troubling,” X said.
“I knew you would. I’m sorry.”
“And you’ve come to me because…?”
“I want your permission.”
That meant permission to take her, to take his time with her. There was need in Reece’s eyes, but a real fear, too. He was not the only fixer, and knew it. X could kill Reece with a phone call, and it would not be an easy death. “This must be important to you.”
“I can’t explain it.”
He didn’t need to explain. X remembered how it felt to be triggered. A glance on the street. The way a woman walked or smelled or how she twisted her hair. X had once tracked and killed a man for whistling a tune reminiscent of a ferry ride X had taken with his grandfather, as a child. He couldn’t say why that had triggered him. It simply had. “What’s your timeline?”
“Now,” Reece said. “Yesterday, if I could.”
X saw all the ways it could play out: the levers and the pieces, strategic moves that went beyond the purely tactical. “I would need something first, and there’s a condition attached.”
“Anything. Name it.”
“Jason has a brother. He was in the car with your blonde.”
Reece nodded, his eyes predatory. “Gibson French. Eighteen years of age. The Mustang is his. I saw him at Sara’s condo, too. It’s possible they’re together.”
“Bring me pictures,” X said.
“Of the brother? Doing what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” X shrugged to make the point. “Reading a book. Walking the dog. What I require is a current photograph of good quality.”
“That’s it?”
“Bring me that, and the blonde is yours.”
Reece licked dry lips, nodding in ill-concealed eagerness. “You said there was a condition.”
“There is, and it’s important.” X leaned closer, so there would be no mistake. “You’ll take the girl after I’m dead, and not before.”
Sudden emotion flared in Reece’s eyes, panic first, then disappointment and anger, his need for the girl as great as any junkie’s need for a fix. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”
“If you think about it, you will. Take a moment.” X studied Reece’s face as the wheels turned. The man’s need was a living thing, and it warred with his very legitimate fear of retribution. He’d seen what happened to men who crossed X—Reece had killed a few himself—and none of those deaths had been slow or easy. X repeated his condition. “After I’m gone, and only then.”
“Yes, sir. It makes sense.”
“Explain it to me so I know you understand.”
“Umm, you want Jason French to remain here at Lanesworth. That means there can be no doubts about who killed the brunette.”
“And if the blonde turns up dead?”
“People might wonder if Jason really is the killer.”
“Police.” X stressed the word. “Prosecutors.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you understand how unhappy I would be if something like that happened?”
“I do.”
“So tell me the terms of our agreement.”
“Bring pictures of the brother. Wait for the girl until after you’re dead.”
“It’s very simple.”
Reece nodded a final time, and stood. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Just the pictures, please.”
Reece said he would handle it, and X knew he would do it quickly. Calling the guard, X waited as he led Reece to the world outside. When the guard returned, X was pacing restlessly. He felt better with Jason inside, not alive but close enough to remember how it felt; and right now, it felt good.
“I want a fighter,” he said. “Now. Tonight.”
The guard asked for a preference, and X thought for a moment. He knew everything about Jason French, and much about the doings of the prison.
“A Pagan,” he said at last. “The biggest one you can find.”
22
Dinner at Chance’s house was simple and pleasant. His mother told jokes, and asked about his day. When the meal was finished, they argued over who would do the dishes. “Don’t be silly.” His mother stood, gathering plates. “Be with your friend.”
In Chance’s room, he hooked a thumb at the kitchen. “Sorry about that.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but thought he was embarrassed by the small portions and his mother’s talk of overtime. “Dude, it was great. Your mom’s as cool as they come.”
“So. Your brother.” Chance turned a chair backward, and sat. “We’re only talking, right? If I come up with the perfect plan, you won’t go off and do something stupid?”
“We’re just spitballing.”
“Purely hypothetical.”
I put a hand on my heart, another lie. I felt bad about the deception, but Chance was the smartest person I knew, and likely to see things I’d missed. That said, he was his mother’s entire world, and I didn’t know how far this thing would go.
What I knew was that Jason needed help, and there was no middle ground. He didn’t kill Tyra, end of story. I just needed to prove it.
So we brainstormed like we did on Saturday mornings with nothing to do, only the questions were more life-and-death than what movie to see or whether hoops in the driveway made more sense than sandlot ball with the Miller kids down the street. I told Chance everything I knew about Tyra and Jason, beginning with our day at the lake, and ending with a prison bus on a stretch of empty road, and Tyra falling drunk from the car at her condo on the rich side of downtown. He listened without interruption, then asked me to repeat the story.
“To be clear,” he said. “You’re saying she was naked in the Mustang?”
“Topless,” I replied. “She was naked at the lake. Can we focus now?”
“A grown woman, though. Come on…”
In other circumstances, I might agree. This was not the time.
“Did she have a job?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Family in town? Other friends?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“We should ask Sara.”
“Definitely.”
“She really screwed your brother right in front of you?”
“In the flowers, dude. Deep in the flowers.”
“What about enemies?” Chance asked, serious again.
“Probably a few. The lady had a streak.”
“What do you mean? How so?”
“A streak, man, this unpredictable wildness, like she could be playful one minute, and nasty the next. We know she dragged Jason into a bar fight, and I told you about the prison bus. She was shameless. Maybe she flirted with the wrong guy at the wrong place, or said the wrong thing at the wrong time. She was capable of anything. She crashed a car. She pulled a gun…”
“So she’s crazy.”
“Also selfish, provocative, and stupid drunk.”
Chance shook his head, unhappy. “I don’t see how any of this helps. It’s vague. There’s barely a place to start.”
“Somewhere, she met the wrong person.” I said it with a little heat. “At the Carriage Room, or at work. Maybe somewhere with Sara…”
“Maybe Jason didn’t like a gun shoved in his face.”
“Don’t joke like that.”
“Maybe I’m not joking.”
“Come on, Chance. Now you’re pissing me off.”
“Truth, then, the deepest kind. Your brother scares me, all right? He’s a dead-eyed, hard-core, scary motherfucker, and you need to think about that. Three years in Vietnam, two and a half in prison. You don’t even know him.”
“I know enough.”
“Do you, really?”
“This is what happened.” I raised my voice, but otherwise ignored the bait. “Sometime, somewhere, Tyra Norris met the wrong person or did the wrong thing. She made someone angry or stole something or screwed the wrong guy. We need to find out who and what and when. It’s that simple.”
“Simple? Really?” Chance frowned, looking washed-out, jaded, and afraid. “It’s a big world, man.”
“A big world,” I agreed.
But a fairly small city …
* * *
When we ran out of things to talk about, Chance walked me to the car, and tried to sum up the ideas we’d scraped together, the places we could theoretically start. “Bikers. Carriage Room. Sara.”
“Jason’s housemates.” I opened the driver’s-side door. “A job, if she had one. Old boyfriends. Any other places Jason might have taken her.”
“It’s not enough,” Chance said.
“It’s a start.”
We’d argued this point for a while. Swinging blind was dangerous.
“This whole thing,” Chance said. “It’s not hypothetical, is it?”
He leaned on the car, and I cranked the engine, gunning it hard to pretend I hadn’t heard.
“Look at me, dude.” He waited for my foot to come off the gas. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know you’re lying to me. Do you think I’m afraid to go with you?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because things have been different between us,” Chance said. “Since the other day, I mean. We were in the car, coming back from Becky’s street, and we saw that billboard about the draft and all. You asked if I’d registered, and I said no, and I saw the way you looked at me.” Chance held my eyes, but swallowed hard. “Your brothers fought, and your father fought. I know you think about enlisting.”
“That doesn’t mean I think you’re afraid.”
“Do you remember the letter?” Chance asked. “The one requiring you to register for the Selective Service? I burned mine in the backyard. I’ve had two more since then, and I burned them, too. When I check the mail now, I want to vomit.” He looked away, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be afraid, but I don’t want to die, either.”
What I was hearing made a sudden kind of sense. Chance and I used to follow the war together. We tracked the battles, the politics. We knew what carrier groups were deployed, and where. Lately, that had changed, and the more time passed, the starker those changes seemed to be. If I brought up the war, Chance got quiet. My talk of enlisting made him increasingly nervous.
“It’s Vietnam,” I said. “Everyone feels that way.”
Chance nodded once, but this was a hard thing between us. “So you’re going home?”
“It’s getting late.”
It wasn’t an answer, and Chance knew it. “Call me later?”
“Sure. Course.”
* * *
When his friend was gone, Chance stood long in the twilight, thinking about the parts of his soul he’d just laid bare. It didn’t matter what Gibby had said or how calm he’d kept his features. A new doubt was in his friend. And it should be, Chance thought. The war was real. People like them were dying.
Inside the house, Chance knelt at the bed, and dragged out a box of magazines he’d collected about the war in Vietnam. The photographs were graphic. On one page, thirteen bodies were trampled into the mud, a soldier in the ditch with his jaw shot off. Another page showed a blinded marine no older than Chance and a North Vietnamese soldier trapped in a burning tank, bubble-skinned and screaming as his face melted and flames danced from the crown of his head. There were a thousand images just as bad, and Chance could spend all night with them.
He spent an hour this time, then tucked it all beneath the bed: the magazines he hid like pornography, the secret of his schoolboy shame.
* * *
I thought of Chance as I worked the car south. I didn’t know what he needed or what to tell him, but it was true I didn’t want him involved. As the Carriage Room drew closer, I thought less of my friend and more about what might happen next. When people got murdered in Charlotte, odds were pretty good they’d die within a two-mile radius of the Carriage Room. Drugs. Gangs. Pick your poison.
The bar was redbrick and narrow, a single story surrounded by cracked tarmac. Motorcycles and pickups filled the lot. The women going in and out showed mostly skin, and the men, mostly leather. I stood in the lot, and came very close to changing my mind. The sun was falling, darkness rolling out. I took a deep breath, and started walking, three men staring hard when they saw me. Patches on their vests said HELLS ANGELS instead of PAGANS, but no one stopped me, so I wedged myself at the bar, and waited for the bartender to notice me. A tall man with a towel on his shoulder, he said, “I think you’re in the wrong place, kid.”
I flashed a fifty. “It’s yours if you help me.”
“All right.” He made the money disappear. “Tell me what you need.”
I opened my mouth, ready to save my brother’s life.
I had no idea what to say.
At first, the bartender seemed amused. It didn’t last. “Fifty bucks is a lot of money, but it’s not that much. I’ll give you ten more seconds.”
“My brother is Jason French.”
“Yeah. So?”
“
Um, do you know him?”
“Maybe.”
“He was here a while back. He got into a fight with some bikers.”
“Look around. We have lots of fights and lots of bikers.”
“He was with Tyra Norris.”
“Oh, that one.”
He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. It could mean anything, so I tried again. “She may have started the fight. Does that help?”
“Tyra Norris and a fight with some bikers.” The bartender’s face shut down, a cold, blank slate. “We’re done now.”
“If it’s about more money…” I emptied my wallet, and spread bills on the bar. “Sixty-three dollars. It’s all I have.”
He looked at the money, but didn’t touch it. “You don’t want to go this way, kid. Trust me.”
“Take the money. Please.”
The bartender took another look around the room, then pocketed the bills with a world-weary shrug. “I know your brother, and I know Tyra, too, tart little sex pistol that she was. And yeah, I was here when the fight went down, five on one against your brother. It cost me two busted tables and about thirty broken glasses. It started here, and spilled outside when they tossed your brother through that window.”
“What was the fight about?”
“What I told you is all I know.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Jesus, kid…”
“Tyra’s dead and my brother’s in prison. What would you do if you were me?”
“Look, I’m trying to save your ass.”
“So give me back the money.”
I held out my hand, but he didn’t reach for any bills. With another I-don’t-care-about-this-anyway kind of shrug, he said, “All right, tough guy. It’s your funeral. Wait here.”
He slid a bottle of beer into my hand, then ambled to the end of the bar where an older man hunched above a glass of brown liquor, four other bikers sharing the same corner. The bartender whispered a few words and then returned. “I told him you want to talk, and what about.”