by Shaun Harris
He waited for us to ask him what that was. We kept silent. Grady was most likely being obstinate. I was just too damned exhausted to make my tongue work. Time mixed with profuse perspiration had exorcized the sodium pentothal from my system, but it had left me in the throes of a profoundly weird hangover. When it was clear he wasn’t going to get any audience participation, Thandy raised his hands like a pastor about to give a benediction.
“La Bota, Mr. Cooper and Mr. Doyle, is ‘the boot.’ It means, simply, that you are sent to prison. At first this seems like the logical choice, especially compared with the other two, but one must consider the nature of the prisons in Mexico. I understand that the only uncertainty in regard to dying in a Mexican prison is the method in which it will occur. A dull knife to the abdomen coupled with infection is the most common way, but the colonel tells me there are a number of sexual, microbial, and nutritional methods that are much more terrifying. So that’s the first option, la Bota.”
He paused again as if imagining the scenarios in his head and admiring each one as they passed before his mind’s eye. He looked at me, and while his eyes made me doubt his sanity, they also gave me no illusions about his sincerity.
“La Lena is ‘the wood,’” he continued, like a museum docent. “That is, they find a long, solid piece of wood, a two-by-four, or in some instances a lead pipe; these people are not ones to stand on ceremony or get caught up in semantics. They tie you to a stake or a chair, and they beat you until every inch of your body looks like a bunch of ripe grapes. It’s not pleasant, and it goes on forever, but at least you’ll be alive. Which brings us to the next option.”
“Thunderdome?” I said.
“El Plomo, I think, is the most interesting. It means ‘the lead.’ It’s a kind of contest for your life, like playing chess with the Grim Reaper. They stand you about fifty yards away from the woods or brush or whatever cover is around. You get a ten count. After ten, they open fire. If you make it to the tree line, you live and you go free. Some live and some don’t. I suspect it depends less on how fast you are and more on what type of weapon the shooter has, automatic versus revolver and all that.”
“You made that up, right?” I said. There’s a sort of courage that comes with knowing, absolutely, that you are going to die. Courage may not be the right word, perhaps foolhardy disregard would suit it better, but really it’s just a realignment of priorities. Up until then I had been preoccupied with living to see tomorrow. When that ceased to be a viable option, I shifted to just wanting one last tumbler of rum. When that also seemed not to be an option, I shifted again. Now, all I wanted was to wipe that fucking smirk off the old bastard’s face.
“I did not make it up,” Thandy said with a hint of offense.
“Come on, there’s no way that’s a real thing.”
“It is too a real thing, Mr. Cooper,” Thandy said. I glanced at Grady. He had gotten to his feet and was standing tall as a courthouse statue, fists clenched, staring down Andy and the colonel, who stood behind the old man. Silent grit was an admirable way to go down, I suppose. I, on the other hand, did not possess that level of self-control.
“You made it up.”
“I certainly did not.” The first crack in Thandy’s gentleman facade began to show. It wasn’t much, only a slightly higher note in his voice, but it was there, and it was satisfying.
“I’m just saying it reeks of bullshit,” I said.
“They do it all the time,” Thandy said, losing more of his dandified comportment. He looked up at the penumbral twilight climbing down the mountain, and when he looked back at me he was calm again. “I appreciate your spunk, Mr. Cooper.”
“What the fuck is spunk?” I asked Grady with a stage whisper out of the side of my mouth.
“It’s a polite word for ‘balls,’” he whispered back.
“Just say ‘balls,’ then, man,” I said to Thandy. “We’re all adults here.”
“Just fucking pick something,” Grady said, sounding more annoyed than frightened.
“There are a lot variables, you know?” I said, turning to face Grady, showing the rest of them my back. “I mean, how big is the wood? How far do I have to run? Are they good shots? Will they be using automatics? Semiautomatics? Machine guns, for shit’s sake? And will there be more than one shooter? And who will be swinging the wood? Will it be wood? He said something about a pipe. There’s just too many questions to make an informed decision.”
“Do you ever just shut the fuck up?” Grady said. The sudden change in his voice and the disgusted look on his face hit me harder than anything Andy had dished out thus far. “They’re going to kill us. There’s nothing else to it. Be a man and die.” He turned to Andy. “Hey, do me a favor and kill us separately. I don’t want to have to die with this pussy piece of shit.”
“I don’t take requests, asshole,” Andy said, drawing his gun. He stuck it in my back hard enough for me to feel it pressing against my navel. I looked at him over my shoulder.
“You know bullets come out of that thing, right?” I said. “You don’t have to stab me with it.”
“Newton, I’m just gonna pistol whip the little shit-bird to death, okay?”
“No, I want him to choose,” Thandy said, stepping up close to hiss in Andy’s face.
“I don’t care what you do,” Grady said, sneering at me. “Just as long as you don’t do it with me. Shoot me if you want, but take this gutless fuck and kill him out back by the trash cans like the bitch he is. I don’t want to die with him.”
“Hey, Grady” I said, more than a little nonplussed, “You know they’re going to kill us right? This isn’t something you can take back later.”
“Fuck you,” Grady said, and hocked a wet hunk on phlegm the size of a man o’ war jellyfish onto my chest. I looked down more surprised than angry. The day had taken many twists and turns, but somehow digging my own grave had been less mystifying than the fact that my friend’s loogie was soaking into my shirt.
“Jesus, Grady,” I said.
“You see this shit,” Grady said, looking past me at Andy. “Man spits on him and he just takes it. That, friends, is what you call a pussy.”
“That’s enough out of you,” Thandy said. He grabbed Andy’s shoulder and shook him with all the force his rangy frame could manage. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense, Mr. Daniels.”
“You’ve had enough?” Grady bellowed. “I’ve been putting up with this fucking romance author for the last month. You ever meet a man writes romance novels? I never have. He’s the first. You know who would have been cool to die with? You know who would have gone out like a man?”
“Don’t say it,” I growled. Grady narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips like the barrel of a gun.
“John. Fucking. Grisham.”
“Fuck you,” I screamed and launched myself at him. I hit him in the gut with my shoulder and we spun around, my legs twirling in the air. We landed hard in one of the graves, I think it was mine, and the air was pressed out of my lungs with an audible “Oof.” I swung with wild abandon, my eyes closed. Occasionally, my fist would connect with Grady, but with what part of him and to what effect I did not know. Two boots landed next to my head with a heavy thud. There was shouting and I felt another pair of hands grabbing at me. A boot connected with my face, and bright white lights flashed inside my head.
I rolled over onto my stomach and realized I was no longer actually in a fight.
The sun had gone completely behind the mountains during our scuffle, and when I opened my eyes they had to adjust to the darkness. It became clear that a face was very close to mine in the dirt. The eyes were open and unblinking; a small rivulet of blood trickled from a tear duct and over the bridge of the nose. It was Andy.
“You don’t look so good,” I groaned.
“He’s dead, Coop,” Grady said. He was out of the grave, silhouetted by the moonlight. He had a gun—it looked like Andy’s—and held it on the colonel and the old man. The colonel was unstrappin
g his gun belt. Thandy was pulling the leather portfolio containing the manuscript out of a satchel. They tossed both down onto the ground at Grady’s feet. “Get those, would you, Coop?”
“Did we win?” I said. There was a dull ache growing on the side of my head where the unknown boot had kicked me. I wondered if maybe I had been knocked unconscious for a moment or two. Everything, it seemed, had changed.
“If we can get out of here before dinner’s over, yeah,” Grady said, grinning at me. He turned to Thandy. “That’s why you hire pros, schmucko. First thing you learn when transporting prisoners is to secure your gun when you break up a fight.”
I almost tripped over Andy’s corpse as I moved to gather the gun belt and portfolio in my arms. He was lying on his stomach, the head twisted around to face the sky. Broke his damn neck. It took a lot of strength, a lot of anger, and a lot of mean to kill a man that way. I clutched the items to my chest and climbed out of the grave.
“Now, gentlemen,” Grady said, putting emphasis on the formal address. “If you would be so kind as to accompany us to our Hummer.”
The keys were in the ignition. I drove. Grady sat beside me with his gun trained on our prisoners in the backseat. As I pulled onto the road, I caught Grady’s smile in the moonlight reflecting off the rearview mirror.
“Ok, boys. One last thing,” he said as he cocked the gun. “Take your pants off.”
Chapter Nine
We dumped them over the side of a gravel incline a dozen or so miles from the roadblock.
I had never tied anyone up before, either for professional or recreational purposes. I was learning all sorts of new skills out there in the field. I followed Grady’s instructions as best I could, but I’m sure I left both Thandy’s and the colonel’s wrists and ankles cramped and raw. We were without rope so I used their belts and pant legs. We had left them there, gagged with their own socks, staring at us with bitter, hateful contempt. I was back behind the wheel when Grady kicked them over the side. When he returned to the car, he dropped Andy’s gun on the dashboard and grunted.
“You got a problem?”
“We’re just leaving them out here?”
“What should we do, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and put the Hummer in gear.
It was past midnight when we got back to the hotel. The parking lot was empty, save for Grady’s ancient pickup and the rusted compact Milch had arrived in. The wind kicked dust up over the Hummer’s windshield, and the only sounds were the waves crashing against the shore and the birds wailing. The parking lot used to be a courtyard, and in the middle of it stood a three-tiered fountain, long since gone dry. Digby sat on the second tier’s ledge, with his feet crossed at the ankle.
It was a different Digby than I was used to seeing. He wore a brown twill sports jacket worn at the elbows over a dingy oxford shirt with a torn collar. A straw fedora lay next to him on the stone ledge. A beat-to-hell leather gun belt holding a Colt automatic sat next to the hat. He was reading a book by an electric lantern, and he held the pages close to his nose in the small light. The cover was familiar.
“Keeping watch?” I asked, hobbling up to him. The last day and half had left my body functioning, but in protest. Digby looked up from the book.
“Seemed prudent,” he said. Grady slammed the car door. He nodded at Digby and started walking. Digby hopped off the fountain and followed. When they were out of earshot Digby nodded as Grady spoke, but he gave no emotional hint as to their conversation. When Grady was done, he stalked off to the lobby. Digby fiddled with his watch as he came back to the fountain.
“Where did you find that?” I asked, pointing to the copy of MacMerkin’s Folly under his arm.
“It was next to your fingernail clippers,” he said.
“Like it?”
“I remember when vampires used to kill people,” he said, and slid the paperback into his jacket’s frayed pocket.
“He kills people,” I said, wounded by the slight criticism. I was done with MacMerkin, but he was still my darling, my baby. “He kills people who deserve it.”
“The bad guys, huh,” Digby said, and scooped up the holster.
“That’s right.”
“I remember when vampires were the bad guys.” He grinned, tucked his hat onto his head, and touched his thumb and forefinger to the brim. He sauntered back to the hotel and I waited a few minutes, soaking up the ghost-town atmosphere before wandering inside to call Ox.
“N. Thandy is Newton Thandy, and he is what we call in polite society a real motherfucker,” Ox said when I reached him.
“Yeah, no shit,” I said. I’d been using a handkerchief to clean up the wound on my forehead. Disgusted by the blood and grime, I threw it on the bench, where it landed with a sickening squelch. The cut had been minor, but it bled like a bitch. The head bleeds, Grady had said philosophically. I cradled the phone against my shoulder and searched my pockets for a notebook and pencil. For the first time in a decade I had neither.
“I had to do some digging.” Ox said, almost giggling with excitement. He was still in his office. He told me he was working late trying to land a new client, but I knew better. He had a complete set of first edition Hardy Boys novels on the bookshelf behind his desk. An original copy of Beeton’s Christmas Annual in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet first appeared. He kept an extensive file on the Black Dahlia case in a locked drawer. Ox was a mystery junky, and the assignment I gave him was just too irresistible. “On the surface Thandy comes off as just kind of an asshole, but they’re common enough in the rare book business.”
“Which you know all about, right?”
“I have friends who collect,” Ox said. For as long as I’d known him Ox had never once told me he didn’t know someone in whatever business we were talking about. “So, alright, Thandy comes from old money. Old South money too, but the kind that’s more status than actual bank accounts. The Thandy name is on a lot of buildings in their town. His father owned the local branch of the bank, but they’re not the Rockefellers. Most of the family money ran out during the Depression. Newton went to UGA, no military, too young to fight the Nazis, and he was in college for Korea. After UGA he fumbled around in a few businesses and then he went to work for the Jive Cola Company in ’64. He worked there for thirty years. Worked his way up to vice president. Retired about twenty years ago and started collecting books and antiques. I guess he did pretty well with Jive because he’s listed as one of the richest private citizens in the South. He owns a shop on Peach Tree Street.”
“Doesn’t sound too shady,” I said, and leaned my head back against the booth’s cracked plaster wall. Sweat dripped down my neck and the hollow of my back. Thandy had said his previous life and career had been “uncivilized,” even bloody. I doubted running Jive’s bottling company in East Bumblefuck, Arkansas, would qualify as either.
“Personal life was kind of a mess,” Ox said. “Failed marriage. Rumors of an affair, wife supposedly fucked a cousin. I’m not sure if it’s a cousin of his or hers.”
“Jesus, Ox, where’d you get that?”
“I told you, I know people, and Thandy is well-known and not liked. You remember Wanda Coulter over at Hampton House? She remembers everybody. Said he was a real cocksucker.”
“Wanda said that?” I had met Wanda a few times at various writing conventions. She wore a shawl and spoke in hushed tones that would make a dormouse sound like an air horn.
“Her words,” Ox said. “A few other people remembered him too. He’s got a bad rep. He uses his money to bully people out of his way. His specialty is buying up high-profile estate sales and scrounging their collections. There have been rumors of intimidation, but I couldn’t get anybody to give me any specific instances.”
“Has he ever done anything . . .” I searched for a word describing the malevolent and certainly insane man I had met earlier. I arrived at the weak and insufficient, “criminal?”
“Criminal?” Ox said. I heard
papers rustling on the other end of the line. “Well, I’ll tell you this. Jive Cola execs do pretty well, but the money he shells out is ridiculous. Mary Spinnaker—you know Mary, she runs a small imprint over in Brooklyn—she says the guy has a yacht that would make an Arab prince jealous. Nobody knows how he made all of his money. ”
“But I’m sure there are theories, right?” I heard pages flapping on the other end of the line. My head ached something fierce, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. I doubted that was in the cards for a good long while.
“Alright,” Ox said. “You’ve heard about Jive Cola in South America, right?”
“Let’s assume I did,” I said. Ox gave a dramatic sigh. He was always chastising me for my lack of interest in the world around me.
“Suffice it to say there have been some labor disputes in South America,” he said. “And there have been stories about the Jive Cola Company getting involved with some paramilitary types to put down the unions.”
“No shit,” I said. “Good thing I only put lime in my rum. What’s it got to do with Thandy?”
“The rumor is he was the go-between for Jive and the paramilitary guys.” I smiled to myself and almost laughed out loud. This was more in line with the man I had met at the roadblock. Still it didn’t completely add up.
“I can see him making some side cabbage on something like that. But yachts?”