He walked around Burger Barn, looking in the greasy windows. It was half full—old couples pulling the pickles off their Deep-Breaded Bread-o-Filets, and kids shoving fries between vinyl seat cushions, where they would calcify for eternity. Dalton continued down the alley until he found a silver door with EMPLOYEES ONLY stenciled on it, and knocked.
The door immediately opened.
Chance Chugg and another Ball, both in full football uniforms, dragged him in. The door slammed. They were in a storeroom, metal shelving stacked from floor to ceiling with twenty-gallon mayo jugs and industrial-sized tubes of Flavor Flavah. On one wall was a bunch of coat hangers and employee lockers. Dalton pretended to trip, falling toward the lockers, landing between 8 and 10. He slipped the silver key into number 9’s lock. It fit but didn’t turn. While he was leaning there, the Balls took the opportunity to frisk him. “No cheater this time, huh?” Chance Chugg said, in his neck-free way. “Well, you’re learning.”
“I am a sponge for knowledge,” Dalton agreed, slipping the key back into his pocket. Chugg punched Dalton hard in the stomach, then shoved him into a smaller room behind a wall of deep freezers. Jeff Chuff, QB, was lying on a throne made of burlap sacks. Around him, various Balls were doing push-ups or lifting gigantic pickle tubs like barbells. In the corner, several of them were running through plays and formations, using a frozen ham as a football.
“New guy!” Chuff called. “Take off your dress and stay awhile!”
The Balls all laughed, while Dalton stood against the wall, taking stock. There were ten of them, sweaty and worked up. Lousy odds. He’d been expecting just Chuff, which was bad enough, but half the team was ridiculous.
“Truth be told, I never thought you’d come.”
“Wasn’t sure it was that smart a play myself.”
“Took a lot of stones. I mean, after this morning? Whew, crackstar, you made me look bad!”
Dalton nodded, kept an eye open for something heavy and swingable, just in case. He’d need something capable of doing major damage. Like a grenade. It wasn’t there.
“Yeah, it’s all good, though. You coming here without my having to waste time finding you, that tells me you’re a man who understands how things work. And, hey, the deal with the pistol? Very clever, Dick. Bravo.” Chuff clapped longer than his sarcasm required. “So, okay, we put on a little theater this morning. The aggro routine keeps student body knees quaking, lets the other cliques think we’re real hard cases. The way I see it, it’s good for the image.”
Dalton, surprised, nodded. Chuff rubbed his huge belly counterclockwise as the players continued to practice formations around him.
“But running through King Lear is one thing. Actual fights and shooting? Uh-uh. No sir. That gets in the way of business. And that’s bad for everyone. You feeling me, Dick?”
“If I have to.”
Chuff frowned, his ape-face looking tired. “Okay, here’s a for instance. Say I went ahead and took your earlier behavior, provocative as it was, personally? And then say, as a matter of revenge, I beat you half to death with a frozen T-bone instead of having this adult discussion. It’s tempting, sure. But where’s my percentage?”
“Let alone mine.”
“Exactly. So, in place of a well-deserved bludgeoning with zero profit to be found, I have a proposal.”
“I’m listening,” Dalton said as the inside door banged open. He could see through the Burger Barn kitchen, all the way out to the front counter, where lines of people were waiting impatiently to place their orders.
“Mr. Chuff?” came a quivery voice. It was a bald guy Dalton figured was the manager, not only because he had a thin mustache, but because he was wearing a name tag that said NED WHIMPLE, MANAGER. “Mr. Chuff, your break ended one hour ago. Are you ready to come run the deep fryer? There is no one presently manning the deep fryer, despite multiple orders for both fries and onion rings.”
“Onion rings,” Chuff said, shaking his head with disbelief. “Who actually likes onion rings?”
“Are you working or not, Mr. Chuff? Do I need to call your parents and ask their opinion of your job performance?”
Chuff didn’t get up, but he did start to tie on a red Burger Barn apron with a name tag that said JEFFREY pinned to it. The manager shook his head with exasperation. He mimed dialing a phone and talking into it. Then his heels clacked down the hall.
“Close the door!” Chuff roared.
The clacks came back. The door gently closed, and the clacks went away again.
Chuff looked at Dalton with an apologetic smirk. “The things a man has to put up with for a halfway believable cover, huh?”
“Not to mention easy access to registers with which to launder clique money.”
Chuff smiled, touching his finger to the tip of his nose. “Anyway, the main reason I haven’t stomped you to jelly yet, fish, is that I want to ask you a favor.”
“You’re about to go to war with Caskets. Meanwhile, profits are flagging. You want to take out Tarot first, and you think you can use me to do it.”
“Damn, you’re sharp! Hey, Chuggster, you hear that? Is this guy sharp, or what?”
“Yeah, totally,” Chance Chugg said, practicing snaps with a bag of frozen buns.
“Why not just roll the dice? You’ve got the manpower for a frontal assault.”
Chuff raised an eyebrow. “No, sir. That would not be a smart play.”
Dalton raised an eyebrow back. “Why not?”
“What we have at Salt River is managed anarchy. The big cliques? Despite our ideological differences, we need to work together to survive. Or at least profit. Used to be Pinker Casket understood that. Used to be they provided a balance. East and West. Russians and Americans. Siegfried and Roy. It kept the small animals distracted. But Tarot? Tarot has forgotten the framework. Tarot has gone Caesar, taken his troops across the Rubicon and started fomenting insurrection. So our anarchy is no longer managed. We are on the verge of war. And it’s one we will all lose.”
“Right, because there isn’t any profit in war, is there?”
“War’s a racket,” Chuff agreed. “No doubt. But it’s a racket for the politicians, not the soldiers. You and me? We’re soldiers. And during war, you tend to get paid like a grunt.”
Dalton didn’t feel like a soldier. He felt like a punching bag. A punching bag aware of exactly how scared Chuff was of Kurt Tarot. And how he was probably smart to be.
“So, here you come on the scene, right on time. A free-floating antibody who doesn’t mind stirring the shite. A fresh thinker to inject insulin into the vein of this stalemate. I’m thinking to myself, Jeffrey, can that be a coincidence? And further, Jeffrey, would it be a smart play to ignore this coincidence in exchange for the simple pleasures of revenge?”
“As long as it’s a coincidence that doesn’t have your fingerprints on it.”
Chuff touched the tip of his nose again.
“Dangerous assignment.”
“True. But not as dangerous as saying no.”
The Balls stopped practicing. They turned toward Dalton, chests heaving. Sweat trickled. Pipes ticked. In the distance, registers banged open.
“I’ll need a healthy down payment. Also, five hundred a day, plus expenses.”
“NO WAY!” Chance Chugg said, clenching his fists. “I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll do nothing,” Chuff said, reaching under the burlap and lobbing a stack of bills. Dalton caught it with two hands, resisting the urge to whistle. Chugg’s neck was purple as he turned in furious circles.
“I want a plan by Friday night. Big party at Yearbook’s house. I want you there, telling me what it is my money just bought. I want it all laid out, line by line. Playoffs start next weekend, so that’s when Tarot will make his move, when he thinks we’re distracted. We need to make our move first.”
“Got it.”
“Good.” Chuff got up and put his mainsail arm around Dalton’s shoulders. “But you decide to get cute, crackstar
, and I’m going to chisel Roman numerals across your face. I’ll make you look like a walking tombstone.”
“Fair enough,” Dalton said. “By the way, who was Wesley Payne’s girlfriend?”
Chuff licked his lips. “No idea. You’re speaking Korean.”
“You found him, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“Was he hanging by the neck or ankles?”
“None of his BUSINESS!” Chance Chugg screamed. Chuff swung his leg backward in a vicious mule-kick. Chugg’s eyes rolled sideways and he fell, holding his belly. Chuff snapped his fingers, and some Balls lifted Chugg onto the burlap sacks.
“Neck or ankles?” Dalton asked again.
Chuff sighed deeply, rubbing his Pliocene forehead. “Crackstar, crackstar, crackstar.”
Dalton waited, saying nothing.
“Ankles.”
“You call the Snouts?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Never called any Snouts in my life, not about to start now.”
“You cut Payne down?”
Chuff frowned. His eyes were yellowed. His breath was atrocious. “You think I’m stupid?”
“Way I hear it, Payne was a bigger player than people are letting on. But no one wants to say peep about the guy. The Balls never had cause to work with him? A little side business?”
“Payne was a Samaritan. A true believer. There was no money in what he was selling.”
Dalton nodded, turning to leave.
“One last thing,” Chuff said, reknotting his apron. “My girl wasn’t on campus when I went to see her. She usually drops by during my shift, but she hasn’t been here either. Why do you think that is?”
Um, how would I know? I haven’t kissed her in at least an hour.
“Am I stuttering? Am I speaking Chinese?”
“No.”
Chuff pulled an entire side of beef out of one of the freezers and began doing presses with it over his head. “See, the thing is (whuf), me and her? We’re entrenched. Fully. And if she’s hanging around with some probe (uhh), I’m gonna buy a mallet and (rrrgh) play his head like a two-dollar gong.” Chuff dropped the beef, balancing it at his side. “So I’m asking again. You haven’t seen Macy around, have you, new guy?”
“No, I haven’t seen her.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
“There’s two things I can smell a mile away. One is burning hamburger and the other’s bloshite.”
“It’s the hamburger.”
Chuff nodded, then punched clear through the ribs of the beef. It was an amazing feat of strength. Dalton stared at the shattered marrow-hole in the frozen cow.
“You can go.”
Chuff snapped his fingers again. Chance Chugg stood up, still green and bent over. He grabbed Dalton by the shoulders and escorted him out the back, tossing him into a pile of wrappers and empty MassiveGulp containers in the alley. “Chuff to Chugg… touchdown!” he yelled, before slamming the door.
Dalton brushed ketchup from his chin, then got up and walked out to the highway, sticking out his thumb.
CHAPTER 11
KNEE-DEEP IN NURTURE, NATURE TAKES A WALK
It took two rides before an ice-cream truck dropped him in front of Macy’s house. Dalton worked on his explanation for a while and then knocked. No answer. There were lights on in the basement, but not on the upper floors. He walked around to his scooter, which started on the third try, and let the engine idle for a few minutes, hoping if Macy was inside she’d hear it and come down. He knew she was probably furious. No one likes to be run out on, no matter what your excuse is. A furious woman was a bad thing. A furious client was even worse. A furious client could mean late, or even delinquent, payments. Could she really be up in her room, hiding in the dark? Dalton revved the engine and left it keening at a high whine. Nothing. As he went to put on his helmet, a note fell out. An index card. The same handwriting as before:
RUMORS ABOUT WHO KILLED WESLEY PAYNE:
1. THEY DRAINED HIM FOR HIS BLOOD.
2. INFERENCE ORDERED THE HIT.
3. PAYNE AND CHUFF WERE PLANNING A TAKEOVER.
4. PAYNE AND TAROT WERE PLANNING A TAKEOVER.
5. THE FACK CULT KNEW PAYNE WAS GOING TO PART THE SALT RIVER AND THEN LEAD HIS PEOPLE TO THE PROMISED LAND.
6. PAYNE FOUND JIMMY HOFFA BURIED IN HIS DAD’S AZALEAS, RIGHT BENEATH O.J.
LOOK AT LEE HARVIES. THEN LOOK EVEN CLOSER. A GUN CLIQUE. A MURDER. SEE A LINK? CLIQUE, CLICK, BANG.
DUH.
Dalton put the note in his pocket, then pulled a U-turn, gunning across town.
His parents’ house, unlike Macy’s, was lit up like a film premiere. Even though he was almost nine, Turd Unit was going through a phase where he was scared of the dark. Or, more likely, he was just pretending to be because he was bored. Either way, neither of Dalton’s parents complained, even when the bill came every month and was sixty dollars more than they could spare. Dalton had been paying it himself for almost a year. He also covered part of the rent. Neither of his parents ever asked where the money came from, but they knew he wasn’t doing lawns. Even before BoxxMart, Mom’s paralegal salary wasn’t cutting it.
“Hi, honey,” Sherry Rev called as Dalton came in the door off the kitchen. She was in an apron, making dinner, frayed perm all over the place as usual, a food smudge on her forehead. She gave him a big hug, her elaborate braces gleaming. Dalton loosened his tie and sat down.
“Tough day?” Sherry asked, not seeming to notice the bruises on his face.
“Not too bad.”
Turd Unit immediately started playing with Dalton’s helmet, making faces at Voltaire.
“Don’t play with my helmet.”
Turd Unit swept back his lanky red hair. He was the only person on either side of the family, as far as anyone knew, going back many generations, to have red hair. He was a skinny, cane-hyper, crooked-smiling anomaly. It was as if a drunken Irish stork had been blown off course and dropped a four-foot insult-bomb into their laps.
“Where’s Dad?”
Sherry Rev rolled her eyes, which meant On the La-Z-Boy, where else? Then she took a bowl out of the microwave. “Would you take him dessert?”
“Dad doesn’t need any more of that pudding, Mom.”
“How interesting,” Sherry said, “that your new school has made you an expert on what Dad needs. What a diverse curriculum. I can’t believe you didn’t transfer earlier.”
There was no point in arguing with Sherry Rev, who, despite her surface ditziness, had a tongue like a sassy prosecutor on a show where male lawyers were regularly sacrificed at the altar of her oh-no-you-didn’t legal opinions. Dalton picked up the hot bowl, stopping at the doorway. “Tell Turd Unit if he messes up my helmet, he’s going to wish he’d lived to see puberty.”
“Eat it,” Dalton’s little brother said, putting the helmet on and scooping a spoonful of mac and cheese through the visor.
“Kirkland!” Sherry scolded. “Language!”
“Sorry,” Turd Unit said, then gave Dalton a Velveeta smile.
Dalton’s father sat in a back brace almost the size of his chair, watching the news. He watched about six hours a night, flipping channels, hoping for a clip from the Middle East Front, where Landon had been stationed for the last two years. A week after he was deployed, Dalton’s father had been convinced he’d seen footage of Landon crouched behind a low brick wall, loading his rifle. Since then he’d been flipping around every night, hoping for another glimpse. Dalton was working on an illegal deal to buy body armor. Mostly because Landon wrote letters about once a month complaining about how bad the food was, but also how President Forehead was spending a million dollars a day to keep them in some other people’s country—and making a billion dollars a day selling that country’s oil to the rest of the world—but he couldn’t be bothered to cut a check for Kevlar.
“You don’t go to wa
r with what you want, you go with what you have,” President Forehead’s advisor had insisted at a news conference.
“Yeah!” Dalton’s father barked, almost throwing the remote at the screen. “And you don’t stay home and get fat with what you have, you buy all the Hummers and Big Macs and Italian wing tips you want!”
The day Landon was promoted to leader of Alpha Unit, Kirkland proclaimed himself leader of Turd Unit and started conducting raids in the backyard. Sherry Rev printed up shirts that said TEAM LANDON and joined a Moms of Middle East Front Vets support group. Dalton started cramming cash away, taking any job he could get his hands on—from stolen bicycles to lost cats to the disappearance of a local ombudsman and a van full of municipal bonds. It had taken him over a week to figure out what an ombudsman even was, but he’d eventually found the guy holed up in a motel one town over. Even so, he was nowhere close to having enough to order a full set. So he came up with a website, making himself sound a lot more experienced than he was, and downloaded a fake Dick’s license for a hundred bucks. Chuff’s money would help. So would Macy’s. But the real stuff, the triple-lined Kevlar with trauma plates and heat vents and spinal protection, wasn’t cheap. Or easy to find. And now the dealer in Ukraine he’d been negotiating with for months said if Dalton didn’t pay by Saturday night, they were selling his order to someone else. It would take forever to line up another deal, if he could even find a new seller willing to ship to the Middle East Front. Dalton had originally planned to get a jacket just for Landon, but he realized Landon would refuse to wear the thing if the rest of his unit didn’t have one too. Landon was like that. Dalton wanted to be like that.
“Hey, Dad, here’s your pudding.”
You Killed Wesley Payne Page 7