by Nick Petrie
“There,” Peter said, pointing. The brown Dodge flew away from them on the cart path, farther ahead now. Lewis launched the Jeep forward, leaving behind a four-wheel divot.
They roared down the narrow asphalt, past trees and bushes and too-green grass, gaining ground while golfers shook their fists. The pickup veered left and disappeared behind a screen of trees, where there must have been more dry ground, because another dust cloud rose up higher than the treetops.
Lewis didn’t slow, just kept the pedal down. “I got your tracks now, motherfucker.” The dust rose higher and thicker, and then they were in it.
The tracks were clear in the scrub, twin trails where the tires had run. Straight ahead, then curving hard left, the tracks getting wide and sloppy where the Dodge had circled in the dust to raise a thicker cloud. Lewis followed behind.
Was the guy waiting somewhere? Had he gotten behind them? Peter thought of the little submachine gun from the night before. Imagined the guy crouched now behind the cover of his engine block, taking aim, while he and Lewis still had their windows up to keep the dust out of the Jeep.
He hit the button and the glass slid down. Everything got much louder, the engine and the noise of the tires scraping at the ground. Peter set the shotgun butt to his shoulder, the barrel out the window as the roiling dust filled the car.
This was all a bad idea.
“Get us out of here,” he called.
Eyes slitted against the airborne dirt, Lewis brought the wheel around and the Jeep straightened. He hit the gas and they shot forward across a cart path, slid between two trees, and came to a rocking halt on a tee mown within an inch of its life. The cloud behind them rose like a thunderhead in the still morning air.
Lewis dropped his own window and killed the engine. They listened.
To the left, in the middle distance, a big engine revved high.
From behind a small building, bathrooms or something, where cart paths came together.
Lewis cranked the engine and threw it into drive. He headed left around the back of the building, hustling past four elderly women in white visors and bright prints who scooted toward the safety of the structure while Peter scanned ahead.
“There he is.” Peter pointed down a long narrow path, the brown tailgate with DODGE in dusty white letters far out ahead of them, following the curve behind a row of trees.
Lewis put the pedal down, wiping the grit from his eyes. The acceleration pushed Peter back in his seat.
They rocketed forward and around the curve. The path continued down a long lane of trees, but there was no brown pickup in sight.
A soft haze hung thin in the air. “Stop,” Peter called.
Lewis stood on the brakes.
Peter craned his neck out the window and saw faint tire tracks leaving the path on the right, headed back toward Twenty-third. A narrow passage between two trees. They’d come almost full circle. “That way.”
“I see it,” said Lewis, already palming the wheel.
They bounced out over the grass to a bus stop, sign mown flat by a passing vehicle, their heads on a swivel, searching for the brown tailgate with the white letters. Left or right?
“Straight ahead,” Peter said. “The parking lot.”
Lewis punched it and roared through traffic into the parking area for the Denver Zoo. He cruised the long curves, almost empty at this time of day, while Peter looked at the map on his phone and tried to game it.
The Dodge driver could have circled right and headed back through the lot to Twenty-third. He could have gone to the end of the lot and turned right, toward the museum, or left to circle between the zoo and the lake and into City Park. He could have done anything. And he was too far ahead of them.
Lewis stopped at the end of the lot, looked around, and made a face. “Too many exits.”
Peter popped the door and climbed up to stand with one boot on the leather seat and the other on the armrest, shotgun in his hand, breathing deeply, scanning for something, anything, that might be their guy.
Nothing.
“Well, hell,” he said.
Behind them, the rising song of sirens.
“Time to go, Jarhead,” Lewis called. “Get that shotgun out of sight.”
Peter climbed back in the Jeep and Lewis drove calmly off into the park.
23
Peter and Lewis sat outside an upscale coffee shop in Cap Hill.
The sun was bright, the day starting to heat up, and Peter was glad their table was still in the shade on the west side of the building. But in the distance he could see dark clouds gathering over the Front Range, angled tendrils of falling rain visible through the thin, clear air. The weather could change fast at the edge of the mountains.
After the adrenaline rush of a ten-mile run and a high-speed drive through the golf course, Peter was starting to come down, and it wasn’t pretty. The events of the last eighteen hours, not to mention his shortage of sleep for the last few nights, were starting to catch up to him.
He’d already wolfed down a pair of breakfast burritos from a taco truck in the park, which helped with the growl in his stomach. Now he sipped his coffee and felt himself coming back to life.
Lewis slurped loudly at a triple mocha with extra whip. It had given him a little whipped-cream mustache, but it didn’t begin to hide his nature. He watched Peter thoughtfully across the table. As always, the force of his gaze was substantial, like a hot desert wind.
“What?” said Peter.
“Maybe you better fill me in,” Lewis said. “About who’s trying to kill you. And why.”
Peter shook his head. “I wish to hell I knew,” he said. “I got nothing to grab on to here. Everybody’s dead but me.”
“There it is,” Lewis said, nodding once. “Why you’re so damn exercised about this.”
“What are you talking about?” Peter asked.
As if he didn’t know.
“You lost a lot of guys over there, more than most,” Lewis said. “It’s burned into you. That need to take care of your people. Even if they were just randomly assigned to your damn platoon. They still your people.”
Peter sighed. “Henry was my friend. You’d do the same thing.” He looked at Lewis. “You already have,” he said. “It’s why you’re here.”
“Man, don’t embarrass me.” Lewis made a show of glancing around as if someone might overhear. “That sentimental shit bad for my reputation.”
Lewis the career criminal with the mercenary soul, who’d refused to take his full share of their unexpected Milwaukee windfall because their little adventure had reconnected him with Dinah, his first love. Lewis was raising her two boys as his own. Plus there was a lot more money than any of them had expected.
“Sorry,” Peter said. “I forgot. You’re a heartless bastard.”
Lewis lifted his mocha in a salute. “Likewise, motherfucker.” He took a sip, then patted his lips with a napkin. “Any word from June?”
Now it was Peter’s turn to look down the street.
“I think she’s a little pissed,” he said. “I’m supposed to be learning how to sleep inside, not getting shot at, or chasing assholes around the city with you.”
Lewis smiled his tilted smile.
“You remember that time in Milwaukee, when I asked if you really thought you could go back to being a citizen? Get a job, swing a hammer all day?”
Lewis smiled wider. “That was right after you sent my two guys to the ER. You had that same damn look on your face this morning, sprinting your ass up to the Jeep. Alive for real. ’Cause the sun never shines brighter than when somebody shooting at you.”
He sat forward in his chair, effortlessly balanced, eternally ready, his mocha cradled gently in one big hand. Watching Peter with that implacable stare.
“You think June doesn’t know who you really are?”
Peter thought about the letters he’d written her over the summer.
“She says she does.” He swiped his hand across his face. He
was still tired. Coffee did only so much. “But I don’t know how that’ll go when she sees it up close.”
“She’s already seen it,” Lewis said. “Up close and personal. And she’s still talking to you. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Her life was on the line,” Peter said. “She might feel differently when I’m doing it for a stranger.”
Lewis looked at him. “Give the girl some credit. You’re not just some asshole looking for a fight. If that’s all you were, she wouldn’t be interested. But you stand for something. For somebody. That’s what makes you worth talking to.”
“What about Dinah?” Peter asked. “What’s her take on all this shit?”
“Hey, I start to get itchy, Dinah tells me to go find you.” He put on a screechy voice that sounded nothing like the proud, regal woman Peter knew. “‘Where that jarhead Peter Ash? Go find that motherfucker and get yourself into some righteous trouble. Go save lives, baby.’”
Peter said, “Dinah Johnson never said ‘motherfucker’ in her whole entire life.”
“You know,” Lewis said thoughtfully, “I don’t b’lieve she has.”
“She doesn’t want to know, is that it?”
Lewis shrugged. “What she knows is I’d go apeshit if all I did was make lunches for the boys, walk that damn dog, and babysit the money. I got to stretch it out sometime, use those old muscles. And she’d rather I roll with you, ’cause she trusts you to keep me on the right side of things.” He flashed the tilted smile. “She did give me a little lecture this morning. ‘Don’t end up in the hospital, don’t get on the news, and don’t touch another woman or I’ll cut it clean off.’”
Peter snorted. “I know she didn’t say that.”
The tilted smile got wider. “She got access to nice sharp scalpels in the hospital, but she told me she’d use a spork.” The shrug got more elaborate. “She seemed pretty serious about it.”
“Anyway,” said Peter, “I actually did talk to June this morning. She did some digging into the guys I used to work with.”
“Told you,” Lewis said. “That girl sweet on you.”
“Shut up.” Peter told Lewis what he’d learned about the men he’d worked with, Deacon and Banjo. “This Leonard Wallis character is a little interesting, though. Maybe he was some kind of special forces or something. June said his service record is all blank. Wiped clean.”
“Anyone involved who has the juice to do something like that?”
“Nobody I’ve found yet. I’m still trying to figure out who benefits.”
“This got to be about the money,” Lewis said. “We know whose money got stolen?”
“That would be a place to start,” Peter said. “I’ll call Elle in a minute.”
“But why they still after you? The cops have the money now, right? Seems like a lot of work for no profit.”
“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Peter said. “I can’t even identify the last remaining guy. I never saw his face. And as far as he knows, I’ve already told the cops everything, so where’s the percentage in chasing me down? Unless it’s retaliation, like a gang thing.”
“Maybe that part is personal,” Lewis said. “That last guy, you killed his partners. Messed up his game.”
“It’s the only way it makes sense,” Peter said. “Sure as hell is personal for me. But here’s the other thing. These guys were total pros. Maybe ex-military, definitely experienced, this was not their first rodeo. The planning and execution were excellent.”
“Except for you,” Lewis said. “The walking monkey wrench.”
“My point,” Peter said, “is for people like this, I don’t think there’s enough money to justify the risk. Would you hijack a car and kill two guys for three hundred grand split five ways?”
“Not split no five ways,” Lewis said. “Sixty apiece less expenses?”
“Fifty apiece on the second one,” Peter said. “If you live to collect.”
Lewis shook his head. “That thing with the tow truck and ambulance, that’s a great idea. Money and evidence all vanish, right? But you can’t hide the disappearance, the fact of it. So how many of these can you really do? Once the cops and the protection companies see a pattern, it only gets harder.”
“And once you make the news,” Peter said, “citizens get scared. This isn’t like robbing a bank. This is robbing a bank and killing all the tellers. You do five or six, the police response is going to be huge.”
Lewis nodded. “And you do it in more than one state, you got the feds on your ass. That’s no kind of business model.”
“Not like your business model,” said Peter. “Back in the day.”
“Never robbed nobody who could call the cops, never hurt nobody who didn’t deserve it.”
“You’re never going to tell me, are you? How you used to make your living?”
“Don’t want to lead you into temptation,” Lewis said. “Nice young man like you? I fear for your immortal soul.”
He considered his coffee cup, turning it in his hand. Still perfectly balanced in his chair, effortlessly ready.
“So the hijackings aren’t personal,” he said. “And the money’s not worth the risk. So it’s about something else. Something worth more money. Or worth more than money.”
He looked up at Peter.
“What’s worth more than money?”
24
First, they needed to know whose money it was.
Peter called Elle Hansen and asked her. She didn’t even have to think about it.
“Zig McSweeney,” she said. “One of our first big customers. He runs two grow facilities. It was his money in both shipments.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Of course,” she said. “I told them after Randy and Leonard disappeared, and again last night. Why do you want to know?”
“Do you happen to have his cell number?”
“It’s in Henry’s phone,” she said. “Which I’m going to need back, by the way, it’s a company phone. But I already talked to Zig last night. It’s complicated. Don’t go muddying the waters.”
Peter said, “If I’m going to be your new head of operations, I should be looking into what went wrong.”
“Just come to the office. We have things to discuss.”
“I’ll call you after I meet with the police.”
—
They found Zig McSweeney leaning against the hood of a curvy new green Volvo wagon. He was parked outside the gate of the same concrete-block building where the Heavy Metal team had gotten behind schedule the day before, the grow facility with the employees napping in the sun.
When the breeze picked up, Peter could smell the heady, distinctive funk of healthy cannabis plants. To the west, the clouds were moving in from the Front Range and getting darker.
McSweeney was a wiry guy in his mid-to late-thirties. He had a clean shave and a crisp, blond, chamber-of-commerce haircut, but he was dressed like a Colorado slacker in a green athletic hoodie, minimalist cargo shorts in some new synthetic fabric, and trail runners. Lean and sleek as a greyhound.
“Would you guys care for something to smoke?” McSweeney asked after shaking hands with Peter and Lewis. “Fresh sticky bud? Or maybe one of our gift samplers, to help you relax after work.”
His grip was strong but not obnoxious, and his sun-browned face held an expression of perpetual amusement. Like he was having fun just standing there.
It was hard not to like the man.
“No, thanks,” Peter said. “We’re working. As I said on the phone, we’re looking into the hijackings. You lost quite a bit of money.”
“Yeah.” McSweeney sighed, the amusement falling away for a moment. “But it’s only money, and you recovered part of it. I’m more sorry about your people.”
It was the right thing to say, and Peter was glad he said it. “Why would someone want to rob you?”
“For the money,” McSweeney said. “Isn’t that why people do things?”
“So
metimes,” Peter said. “What do the police think?”
“They think it’s about the money,” McSweeney said. The amusement had crept back onto his face.
“Do you find it strange that both these robberies hit your business? What do you make of that?”
“Actually, they hit your business,” McSweeney said pleasantly. “It just happened to be my money. Like a bank robbery. The police don’t investigate the customers, they investigate the robbers.”
“Unless the bank has only one customer,” Peter said. “And the bank is insured. I wonder if the police have thought about that idea? Or maybe you’d rather not talk to the police again.”
McSweeney looked at Peter.
At Lewis, standing dark and silent beside him.
Then he glanced up at the broad sky, which had been blue a half hour before.
The heavy weather over the Front Range was moving down toward the Plains, leaching the color from the land. Bright flashes lit up the foothills to the west, and gray streaks hung from the clouds like thin penciled lines.
“Three hundred days of sunshine my ass,” McSweeney said, watching the rain to the west. “We didn’t have to worry about lightning storms in California.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe what it cost to have this building grounded.” He turned back to Peter. “Why don’t you come inside? I’ll give you the tour.”
He pulled out his phone and hit a few buttons and climbed into his car. A moment later the chain-link gate rolled open. Peter and Lewis got in the Jeep and followed the green Volvo inside the fence.
—
The building was concrete block painted white with a high flat roof. The big windows and front loading dock had been filled in with bricks, although a section of the back wall, inside the fence, had been replaced with a heavy steel rollup big enough for a box truck.
McSweeney led them to a set of steel double doors with a single knob. A camera perched in a metal cage far above. McSweeney waved at the camera. There was a buzzing sound as the lock released. McSweeney turned the knob and pushed the door open.