Hawke's Target

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  It made sense. The FBI had dozens of cases in their files of plots against refineries. They were batting a thousand right then, but no streak goes on forever.

  I shivered, suddenly chilled in my wet clothes. “We’ve put out an APB on this guy, but it took so long for me to do it that he could be anywhere. I’d be willing to bet he’ll change rides before he gets there.”

  “Why’d you take so long to put out the APB?” Yolanda asked.

  I threw a glance at Jefferson, who looked like a whipped dog. “I’ll explain it later.”

  Chapter 34

  Tanner lay on top of Shi’Ann LeBleu’s chenille bedspread, but for the first time since he’d known her, it wasn’t for pleasure. Wind pushed through the screens and caressed Tanner’s damaged face. The humidity was high, but it was pleasant in the quiet house built to breathe in the swampland.

  She half-sat on the side, leaning toward him with her hand lightly brushing his bruised and swollen face. Crusty blood still remained inside his nose. “Je suis tellement desolé, mon amour.”

  He took her hand. One eye was swollen shut, and he had to turn his head to see. “Speak English. You know I can’t tell what you’re saying in French. I barely understand any of those words you use.”

  She displayed bright teeth in her light brown face. Her Acadian accent was soft, her voice and tone mellowed by a short lifetime of sadness. “I said I’m sorry, my love.”

  He reached up with a forefinger and softly touched the deep dimple at the lower corner of her mouth. “You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “But I’m truly sorry that you have such a family.”

  “Ain’t we both. But you’re married to that mean ol’ bastard, so we have such a family.”

  “Only on paper. Sha-bébé, I’m yours.”

  He smiled at the Cajun-French slang most would spell and pronounce chere-baby as a term of endearment. Many people both young and old in that region of Louisiana that shared a common border with Texas used the common phrase in everyday conversation.

  Tanner closed his eye, wondering how he’d gotten himself into such a mess. “Yeah, well, that ain’t doin’ us no good right now. I’m like, trapped with Donine and ever-body in the house wants her around but me.”

  Here he was with the woman he loved, girl actually, who was married to his grandfather of all people, while Tanner was living in a common-law relationship with a woman who’d gotten pregnant on their first date in the back of his truck parked down on the bank of the Sabine. She came to him two months later, after the one-night-stand that went bad.

  By the time he fessed up to his dad out in the backyard, it was too late. Jimmy Don suggested an abortion, which neither Donine or Tanner would agree to, so Jimmy Don threw up his hands and was done with it.

  Donine’s mother threw her out of the house when she found out her daughter was pregnant, and the only thing Tanner could do was let her live with all of them in their old house that was getting dangerously crowded.

  What he really wanted was Shi’Ann, who was with Daddy Frank at a street dance over in DeRidder, Louisiana, when he met her, about three days after he and Donine spent the night in his truck on the Sabine riverbank. He didn’t know Shi’Ann’s entire background, but she told him enough to know her sorry-ass daddy ran off when she was thirteen, after she finally told her mama what he’d been doing to her since she was ten. Her mama drank herself to death when Shi’Ann was fifteen, and the girl did whatever she could to stay alive until she met Daddy Frank, who offered protection and money, along with a glittering diamond ring that she suspected was glass.

  “But you will leave her soon, no?” Shi’Ann tilted her head to look at Tanner the way he loved. Her hair fell long on one side, and every time it did, that dimple appeared.

  “I’m gonna leave the whole damn family. I’ve had enough and cain’t take no more.”

  “What about the bébé?”

  “There’s enough of them on her mama’s side to raise it.”

  “Let’s run away right now, then. You have the new car. We can go wherever we want.”

  He almost groaned at the thought. Leased cars were a sure way to get found, even he knew that, and it was in Shi’Ann’s name from the money Daddy Frank deposited every month in her account. It was for the rent on the little house they were in, but the joke was on the old man. Shi’Ann paid it off a year earlier, from cash she got from other older men who liked the attention of young ladies. It was a lucrative business that she traded in whenever the old man was out of town.

  Tanner opened his eye and blinked it clear. “Yeah, and the minute you stop paying the lease, they’ll track it down. When they do that, Daddy Frank’ll find out and we’ll be done.”

  “Fine, we take a bus. I’m ready to get loose of this place and this life. We can make it, just you and me. Let’s go to Dallas, or better than that, San Diego! We can leave tomorrow. Himself is gone off with that couyon Boone.” She never spoke Daddy Frank’s name. “He gives me the frissons.”

  At the mention of crazy Boone, Tanner’s one good eye roamed the room, as if he was hidden in the closet, or just outside the door. He checked the window, half expecting the strange man to be lurking beside the pier-and-beam house standing nearly four feet off the ground.

  Outside, heavy dark clouds rested on the pine and cypress trees lining the nearby bayou. There wasn’t as much Spanish moss draping the cypress limbs as most people expected in that part of the state, but it was enough to give the woods a distinct southern flavor. Crows called in the distance, anticipating the coming storm. The humidity was heavy, but the strong wind pushed through the screens, creating a cross-breeze inside the house that kept the temperature pleasant.

  “He gives me the chills, too.” Tanner gingerly touched his broken nose with the tip of a finger and winced. “We need to wait until tomorrow after the bank opens. By then I think it’ll all be over. Uncle Alonzo put some money in my account this morning. As soon as it posts, we’re gone.” Tanner finally relaxed, enjoying the feel of her soft hand running up and down his arm.

  “I still think we should leave right now, tonight.”

  “You don’t know my family.”

  “I know dat old man and his ways.”

  “You do, that.”

  “But what are y’all doing? What is this thing he’s so excited ’bout, that all y’all are working on?”

  “They’re trying to get rich and change the world. I’m just trying to get off.”

  Her soft accent became thicker with concern. “Look at you, down in the bed. What you gonna do?”

  Tanner had an idea. He rolled toward Shi’Ann with a groan and reached for the pink Princess phone on the table beside the bed. Daddy Frank insisted on a landline and paid for it. She’d chosen the antique because her favorite color was pink.

  “Who you gonna call on dat landline?”

  He thumbed his cell phone alive, and swiped for a moment to find a phone number. “The sheriff of Comanche, Texas, where Uncle Alonzo is. I’m gonna call again and tell him everything else. He can pass the word to whoever can do something about it.”

  “You gotta tell him about Buck, so they don’t get waylaid when they get here, but you can’t call on my phone. They can trace it, you know.”

  He dropped back onto the pillow. “Dammit. I’ll have to use the drop phone in the car again.”

  Shi’Ann stroked his arm. “Den what?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out, and pretty quick, too, ’cause we’re ’bout outta time.”

  Feeling slightly better, Tanner wanted to grin, because the longer he was with her, the more his speech patterns changed. His lips were split, and it hurt every time he moved them. He forced his facial muscles to relax and pushed at a loose tooth with the tip of his tongue. The hole from the knocked-out front tooth seeped, and he still tasted blood.

  “Va cooshay for a little bit, then make your call.”

  “A nap sounds good. I could use one, catin, but do
n’t let me sleep too long.”

  She kissed his forehead for calling her a pretty girl. “I won’t, T-Tanner. That cochon’s gonna be here in a little while.”

  Tanner would have enjoyed the Cajun endearment she used when she put the T in front of his name, but he jerked upright when she pronounced cochon, calling Daddy Frank a pig. “No, then. We can’t take the chance at getting caught. Boone’s gone with Mike, so that old bastard might show up early.”

  Shi’Ann gave a start, her voice full of fear. “I didn’t know dat he was alone.” She rose and went to the window to make sure he wasn’t coming down the dirt lane.

  “See, this is how we get in trouble.”

  “We been in trouble since the first time you bed me, sha-bebe.”

  He groaned upright. “I gotta make that call. You pack a bag and hide it till we’re ready. You got something to carry clothes in?”

  She pointed toward the closet. “I gotta backpack over in dere.”

  “Good. Get it ready. I can’t rest yet. Gotta go. I’ll call you in a little while, and then we’re gone.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and held him. He kissed her lightly with his split lips and left to make his call, but not to the Comanche sheriff.

  He hit Daddy Frank’s name on the scroll list as soon as he got in the car. Making a three-point turn, he counted the rings all the way up to a dozen before the old man answered. “What?”

  You mean old bastard. You and Daddy’re gonna pay for what y’all’ve done to us all.

  “I just talked to Uncle Alonzo. He said he’s getting close and wants to meet all of us at the fertilizer barn tonight at six.”

  There was a three-beat pause. “Why’d he call you for?”

  “Said he had a truckload a money, and it was a lot more’n what you expected. Said he wanted to divvy the extra up between us all.”

  “Then why didn’t he call me?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t ask him.”

  “That boy don’t make those kind of decisions, and neither do you. I do.”

  “I’m just tellin’ you what he said.”

  “Why were you talking to him?”

  Tanner’s head spun. He hadn’t thought that far enough ahead, not enough to make up why Alonzo wanted to speak with him. He passed a rural cemetery and it gave him an idea. “Because he was feeling down about Aunt Betty and wanted to talk. He knew I thought a lot of her.”

  Daddy Frank grunted. The deep sound reminded Tanner of a hog. “All right then. We’ll all be there.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  He drove down the pine-lined highway, remembering Shi’Ann’s good-bye kiss because it was so light and soft, the sweetest one they’d ever shared.

  Chapter 35

  Boone drove with two hands on the wheel of Mike’s truck, placed correctly at ten and two. He’d already left the mesquite-covered landscape of central Texas behind and now passed through the rolling hill country on back roads, and into the piney woods. Only highway sounds filled the cab. He despised music.

  He’d failed once again. An occasional sob erupted from his chest as he looped over and over through the out-of-control scene back at the campground. Mike’s plan went awry from the moment they pulled up. Boone didn’t want to simply drive up and get out of the truck. He always expected the worst and, following his own experiences in life, convinced Mike to let him out as soon as they passed the office and camp store.

  He expected Alonzo to be concentrating on the pickup and its driver as he circled the trailer. Neither of them had any idea the man would be ready to fight at the drop of a hat. Boone wiped a tear that leaked down his unlined cheek.

  He’d failed again.

  A car approached on the two-lane and he quickly replaced the hand at the ten-o’clock position, in case it was a highway patrol. The sedan passed with a little old lady with big knuckles at the wheel.

  He caught up with the cold front, passing through the leading edge of rain that shook the truck like a terrier with a rat. Less than ten minutes later, he was back into a dreary world of dark clouds preceding the storm.

  As speed forced rivulets of rain up the windshield, he was back where he belonged. East of I-45 was home, if he ever truly embraced that idea. Despite everything he could do not to look, he threw a glance toward Freestone County, far to the north and just west of Fairfield and the Boyd Unit, a Texas Correctional Institution where he’d spent five years as a G-5 prisoner.

  It was a trail of teeth he’d collected during younger years that had been the prosecution’s damning piece of evidence that put him there. One tiny self-administered tattoo was the only thing that he took from that place of Texas-authorized punishment for his crimes. A small, winking smiley face on his hairless pubic bone.

  Ahead, two slow-moving eighteen-wheelers had traffic stacked behind them. There was no way to pass on the curved road, and he took the opportunity to calm himself by slipping one hand into the pocket of his baggy cargo shorts to withdraw his ever-present antique straight razor. The white bone handle fit comfortably in his fingers, and a great relief washed down his back. Boone shivered in ecstasy. His trembling eased and muscles relaxed.

  It was the perfect device to release blood.

  Boone loved blood, the sight of it, the feel of the warm, red liquid, both his and others, that sometimes seeped, sometimes pulsed, and often spurted in glorious, vivid fountains when his blade flashed. He especially liked how it felt as it dried, first tacky, then sticky and crusty. He enjoyed flaking it off his skin with the long fingernails he maintained for just that purpose.

  He also enjoyed collecting his victims’ teeth and was saddened that he hadn’t been able to take one of Mike’s incisors to replace the pint jar full that the state had taken when he was twenty-one.

  The line of cars following him ran bumper to bumper as they progressed another mile at thirty-five miles per hour, passing a speed-limit sign proclaiming that fifty-five miles per hour was the appropriate speed.

  He rubbed his thumb against the bone handle. Need to read. I need to sit in the shade and read.

  More socially acceptable, reading was his calming influence. He recalled the scene in the campground.

  Need to practice with a handgun. Have to ask Daddy Frank for some ammunition so I can practice.

  I promised I’d call Daddy Frank when I got close to Gunn. It’s been too long. He knows I’ve been bad. He knows I failed. He’s going to run me off. Say I’m useless. Say he can find someone else to do the work.

  His anxiety rose.

  He should spank me hard with that big ol’ belt he keeps hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

  Daddy Frank had only used it on him once, when he’d caught Boone listening to him and Shi’Ann through the window of her house. Daddy Frank had ordered him to remain in the car with his book by the German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers. The book had been slow reading, and he’d grown bored with the doctor’s theories as he sometimes did in the early afternoon.

  Daddy Frank beat him like a dog after they got home, so much so that the last several lashes landed on the unfeeling flesh of his legs. When Daddy Frank finally tired of swinging the belt, he sat on the blue velvet sofa in his living room and called Boone to his side. Whimpering, Boone crawled across the floor and waited for permission to get on the couch. There, he laid his bare head on Daddy Frank’s leg, and the old man caressed the tattooed web on his skull and forgave him.

  Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, Boone returned the razor to his pocket. They were going so slow, it was finally safe to make the phone call.

  Heart in his throat, he dialed Daddy Frank’s number and prepared himself to admit failure, and to face the punishment that was sure to come. Then the shame would pass and it would be glorious when Daddy Frank unleashed him the next time on the next person who failed their cause. He was confident how it would happen, because he was like one of Daddy Frank’s fighting dogs, and you never killed your champion.
/>   Chapter 36

  Late afternoon humidity compressed by thick clouds weighed like a wet wool blanket in the damp woods, drawing sweat on everyone. Even the blue jays were miserable in the still, breathless Sabine River bottoms. Only crows cawed from the treetops.

  Daddy Frank and Brother Holmes, the Pentecostal preacher, were standing behind a chain-link fence that enclosed the dogfighting ring behind one of the old man’s many barns. They’d been using it for the past several weeks and would continue until Buck told them the location was becoming common knowledge.

  Daddy Frank had barns on properties he owned throughout the county. He alternated his dogfights with occasional bare-knuckle fights between younger Big Thicket citizens who didn’t mind beating the holy shit out of each other for money.

  One barn, though, would remain out of the rotation. It was the one built deep in the backwoods by men who wielded axes in the mid-1800s. Surrounded by a mix of ancient hardwoods and pines not far from the Sabine River, the hand-riven barn was filled with more than ten thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer he’d skimmed from his farming supplies and logging business, and what was stolen from other logging companies in the region. It was the same material Tim McVeigh used to bomb the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

  He’d purchased it in volume when he heard that a Canadian manufacturer had created a new fertilizer called ammonium sulfate nitrate that contained so much less sulfur it couldn’t be used as an explosive.

  The ingredients in his stockpile represented his first pass at creating a volatile substance that would become useful at some point. Once anything potentially dangerous was banned or phased out, its price dramatically rose. It was one more product in his diversified portfolio.

  Two exhausted and bloody pit bulls snarled and twisted on the blood-soaked ground in a macabre dance that would end in death. The old man was bored and frustrated that his own dog was losing, but Brother Holmes’s eyes were bright with the knowledge that the dog he’d bet on was winning.

  Brother Holmes often used what he called “plate money” from his congregation to bet the dogs, but it was always when he put one of his own animals into the ring. Most of the spectators and gamblers trusted that a preacher wouldn’t cheat, but he was human. Despite working closely with Brother Holmes, Daddy Frank didn’t trust any man, or woman for that matter.