by Nick Petrie
Did she want to control the timing, or go for maximum surprise?
She felt like she could decipher the driving patterns now. She could picture the car on the road. A long straight run, then a turn, another long straight run. Slow in places, but the sound of other cars around her. Traffic. They were headed someplace.
The turns came more frequently, with shorter runs between them. Getting closer. Then the shift of weight that meant a long slow sweeping curve, like circling a parking lot.
The sound of rain on the trunk lid. The tires crunching on loose gravel.
Then a definitive, rocking halt.
The end of the line.
Pepper spray in one hand. Knife in the other. Thumb on the trunk release.
Pop the trunk? Or maximum surprise?
Then she heard another car roll up and come to a stop.
She felt the car shift as the driver got out. Footsteps as he walked around toward the back.
Then she heard Peter’s voice.
“Let me see her.”
She pulled the release latch.
But the trunk didn’t open.
45
Lewis ran.
The rain came down hard and fast, and through it, he ran.
Shotgun in his strong right hand, the hog-leg pistol in his left. Without pause or hesitation, without wiping the water from his face, his nose, his eyes.
He figured it was four miles. He already knew the way.
Down long industrial blocks lined with parked semi-trailers, past distribution warehouses and construction sites and parking lots and gas stations and vacant lot after vacant lot, red clay and brown dirt turning to mud in the heavy rain, he ran.
Lewis had run his whole life, ever since he was ten years old. Before that, as a kid so skinny they’d called him Sticks, his prized possession was a bicycle. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t even secondhand, it probably had five or six owners before it got to Lewis. A gift from his auntie for his tenth birthday. Five speeds, only one worked. Lewis didn’t care. One speed was enough.
Until the Center Street Boys took it from him. He’d only had it a week. They were a scruffy bunch, mostly teenagers dealing crack and weed, nothing as fancy as powder or skag. The smallest of small-time, he knew now.s
But where Lewis lived, the Center Street Boys were the warlords. They wanted the bike, so they took it.
What kind of people would take a fucked-up bike from a ten-year-old boy?
Lewis knew, in the way everybody in the neighborhood knew, that if he put up a fight he’d get beat bad, hurt, maybe killed. It happened. So he picked himself up and stepped away, let go of the bike his auntie had given him. His auntie who had nothing.
He couldn’t even steal the bike back, because that would be a challenge to the Center Street Boys. They’d know who’d done it, would catch him and beat him hard for sure. And the next day it didn’t matter anyway, because he found his bike all broken up, wheels bent and frame cracked. ’Cause that’s how they did, those motherfuckers.
After that, Lewis ran everywhere. Training himself.
In his cheap-ass used-up Goodwill kicks, because his auntie didn’t have the money for real sneaks, and she wasn’t dumb, either, knowing the Center Street Boys would take good shoes off him, too. But he ran, and even if he was stuck in that desperate neighborhood, he could run to the library and be free in his own mind, which was the only place that mattered.
He watched those Center Street Boys, too. He watched their corner, he watched who held the dope, he watched the runners who picked it up, he watched the runners who took the money, and where the money went. The cash stash in a plastic bag was held down by a cinder block and guarded by a big guy with a baseball bat named Elliot.
And one day—Lewis was thirteen, he remembered like it was yesterday—he took a gun from one of his auntie’s friends while the man was sleeping, put on clothes he’d never worn before, and he ran up to Elliot with a ski mask over his face and the gun in his hand and took the cash stash and ran. Just like he’d planned it. They never saw him coming.
In the plastic bag was three hundred forty dollars in dirty crumpled fives and tens and twenties.
It seemed like all the money in the world.
Lewis ran two neighborhoods over, being careful, and bought his auntie two fat sacks of groceries. When he walked in the door, she looked at him hard, searched his face like she was trying to find something she’d lost.
But she took the groceries and she took the money. She thanked him.
Lewis never looked back.
When he was fifteen, his auntie died. Lewis was on his own.
He left school to make his way. He survived. Jacking that first money bag, he’d found a blueprint that worked. Hell, he’d made something of himself. Something hollow, something lacking, but something real, which was more than a lot of people got. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t hurting. He wasn’t worried about the Center Street Boys anymore.
Then Peter had brought Dinah back into his life. Dinah and Charlie and little Miles.
Everything had changed.
Lewis wasn’t hollow anymore.
And it wasn’t just Dinah and her two boys.
Lewis had known a lot of people, running his old business. Acquaintances, informants, paid help, eventually a pair of semi-partners, Nino and Ray.
But not since Jimmy, his best friend from school, had Lewis had a real friend.
Not like that goddamn jarhead.
Equals.
And he knew for damn sure Peter had never had anyone like June, who’d become a friend to Lewis, too.
Which is why Lewis was running now.
Like his whole world depended on it.
The road ended and he ran into the greenway and along Sand Creek, the water already rushing full and high from the runoff.
Lightning cracked from low clouds and lit the dark and ragged landscape. Rain, unrelenting.
Lewis’s breath came hard, his heart like thunder in his chest. This was not some training run with a heavy pack along the Milwaukee River trails back home. He watched his feet on the uneven ground, wishing he had the Winchester lever gun, or a scoped deer rifle. He could have shot out the cowboy’s right eye at fifty yards with either weapon. Instead he had this shortened 10-gauge, which was as subtle as a motherfucking hand grenade, and about as accurate.
He sprinted the footbridge in the shadow of the freeway, ran up through the scrub and across that traffic-clogged four-lane with its startled commuters safe and dry looking out at him, then onto the packed gravel of the trash-strewn railyard, looking for the tall fence with green plastic strips woven through the chain link.
Behind the fence would be the stepped sections of a dirty brick building, McSweeney’s second grow.
He was going to have to climb a twelve-foot fence with razor wire on top, carrying the shotgun.
He’d done more than that before.
But he wasn’t going to throw the shotgun over. They’d hear that for sure.
He looked around him at the ground. A stray length of electrical wire would do for a strap.
His leather coat would get him over the wire.
Ain’t no time like right now, his auntie used to say.
He wrapped the wire around the stock and the barrel and took off his soaked coat. He swiped a few handfuls of mud across the front of his bright white shirt to make himself less visible, then tied the arms of the coat loosely around his neck, and began to climb.
46
Peter followed close behind the Kia, gunning the Jeep through the curving streets of this evolving industrial neighborhood once laid out around the diagonal path of the train tracks.
They passed his green 1968 Chevy pickup, left by the towing company in front of the grow facility, and through the open gate to the narrow side lot.
Lewis had been right. The way this was going, he would probably need another set of wheels.
Leonard brought the Kia around in a sweeping arc to come to a stop paralle
l to the building, the driver’s side protected by the solid brick wall, facing out through the gate toward the street. A good spot for a quick getaway, and the building’s secure steel entry door was only ten feet behind his trunk.
Peter eased off on the gas to see where the other car was going, then curved around to block the front of the Kia with the nose of the Jeep. Before the big SUV had stopped rocking on its springs, Peter had snatched up the big Colt revolver, slid out of the Jeep into the rain, and stood behind the open door, the gun hidden in his left hand.
“Let me see her,” he called.
Thunder rolled, loud and metallic. Raindrops banged on the sheet metal. Wide puddles grew on the gravel. McSweeney’s green Volvo wagon was the only other car in the lot, parked ten feet on the far side of the building’s entry. Peter figured McSweeney had sent everyone else home for the day.
It wasn’t a bad position for Leonard. The brick building protected his rear flank, and the body of the Kia and the open driver’s-side door limited what Peter could see. But the thin panels of the car doors wouldn’t stop the Colt Army .45.
Barely slow the slugs a little. Maybe make them tumble. Do more damage.
The static raged.
Fueled by adrenaline and sleep deprivation and a cold, hard fury, Peter was ready to do anything.
Leonard slipped out of his seat and stalked toward the back of the Kia, calling out, “Let’s get this bitch done.”
Peter had no shot. Leonard kept the ugly little machine pistol always pointed toward the trunk, his finger hard on the trigger. At the rear of the car, he leaned on the trunk lid, showing his ownership. The muzzle of his weapon chipping the paint.
“Okay, where’s them seeds?”
Peter wiped his face, using the movement to glance toward the back fence, willing Lewis to arrive. The cold rain beating down. The static and adrenaline alive in him and rising like some second vengeful soul newly arrived in his body. He held the big Colt down along his thigh. He still didn’t know if it would fire in this weather.
He said, “I’ll have to call my guy.” Peter tipped his head toward the green Volvo, a cold runnel of rain ran off his chin. “That’s his car. He must be inside. Now open that fucking trunk and let her go.”
“Everybody stay calm.” Dixon was out of the Jeep on the passenger side. “Nobody needs to die today.” His voice was crisp and full of command, thirty years a Marine officer, standing erect with the Beretta pistol in one hand and the Winchester lever gun in the other. His tan suit soaked through now but still holding its shape. “Let’s take care of this business and get out of here.”
The heavy steel entry door of the grow facility opened six inches. “I’m here,” said a voice. McSweeney. “I have the seeds.”
Dixon was crossing behind the Jeep when Leonard shifted as if to move.
“Stay right where you are, Leonard,” Dixon called out, his voice cutting through the rattle of the rain. “Nobody move. I’ll take those seeds.”
Peter transferred the Colt to his right hand, but Dixon had already known it was there. Coming up behind Peter, Dixon’s automatic was pointed at Peter’s spine. He held the Winchester almost negligently, his hand high on the stock, lower fingers through the cocking lever, but his index finger was on the trigger.
“Drop that horse pistol, Marine.”
This was the calm, capable Dixon that Peter remembered from Iraq. As if he’d made some decision, back in the Jeep. Peter remembered the smile he’d glimpsed for just an instant on Dixon’s face in the rearview mirror. Wondered what had gone through Dixon’s mind at that moment.
Peter hesitated. Dixon was almost within reach.
“Go on, drop it,” Dixon said. “We’re going to do this clean and easy. We all want to go home.”
Peter dropped the big revolver to the gravel.
“Now kick it away, nice and far. See if you can hit the building.”
Peter kicked the Colt. It slid farther across the loose gravel than he’d intended, ending up beneath the Kia. Too far to be of any use to him now.
He was unarmed and unarmored, his naked heart beating out of his chest. Amped on adrenaline, white static rising almost higher than he could bear.
He was helpless, waiting for June.
He would live or die with her.
Dixon walked toward the steel security door, open halfway now.
Leonard still leaned on the lid of the trunk like it was his private possession. That wasn’t good. Nor were the steel rectangular tubes in his back pocket. Spare magazines for the machine pistol.
Dixon caught McSweeney in his line of sight. “Show me your hands. Good. Come over here now, and bring that package.” He gestured with the Beretta. “Come on. Do your part and you’ll be fine.”
McSweeney stepped forward, the technical fabric of his sleek green hoodie somehow shedding rain for a few moments before it began to soak in.
McSweeney carried an oblong rectangle, a folded plastic bag with something dark inside, sized to fit in a shirt pocket.
He glanced at Leonard, then back to Dixon, a pair of professional killers. McSweeney’s familiar air of amused detachment was gone. The pleasurable excitement of his adventure had become deeply unsettling.
“We could have made a fortune, all of us,” McSweeney said, blinking the rain from his eyes. “But your boss decided he wanted everything.”
“He does that,” Dixon acknowledged with a nod. “He’s not an honorable man. We’re all doing our best to make this turn out right today. We’re all going home.”
Peter caught a flash of movement at the back corner of the lot.
A dark figure in a white shirt appeared at the top of the fence, obscured by the silver streaming from the sky. Peter willed himself not to look.
“Okay,” he said. “You guys are getting the seeds. So now June goes free.”
“I been thinking on that,” Leonard said, shifting his balance just slightly. A little less weight on the lid of the trunk, a little more on his feet. “How do we know those are the real seeds?”
“See for yourself.” McSweeney held out the package. “It’s still labeled from yesterday. Henry never picked them up. They never left the facility.”
McSweeney was a pretty good liar, even scared shitless.
Dixon looked at Peter.
Something passed between them, something almost tangible.
Dixon kept his pistol aimed loosely at McSweeney, but raised the Winchester one-handed toward Leonard, his finger on the trigger.
“It’s fine,” he said. “They’re real. We’re done here.”
“We ain’t done,” Leonard said. “We don’t know if they’re real. Seed boy, get over here. I want to see what you got.”
Peter didn’t look toward the fence. He tried to picture where his Colt had ended up. He eased sideways away from the Jeep, trying to get clear of the open door.
McSweeney took two steps toward Leonard, holding out the package. “They’re the real thing,” he said, pleading now. “I promise.”
“Leonard, that’s enough,” Dixon said. “Put down your weapon.”
“But how we gonna know?” Leonard asked, suddenly the voice of reason. “We need some leverage. I think seed boy oughta come with us. The girl, too. I think we keep ’em all until we know those seeds are the real deal.”
McSweeney was desperate now. “Hey, listen, I can give you more than just this. I have a cabin, I have money there. Good product, more seeds, different kinds. They’re worth a lot. I’ll give you directions. You can take everything.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Aw,” Leonard said. “That’s real nice of y’all.” A smile stretched across his face. He pushed himself off the trunk lid, the machine pistol now held in a textbook two-handed grip.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw the dark form leap down from the top of the fence. It landed like a cat, but Peter could hear the crunch of combat boots on gravel. Softened by the sound of the rain but still distinct, m
aybe twelve yards away.
Dixon spun and saw the white-shirted figure silhouetted against the dark fence, arms reaching for something behind his back.
In a hurry, Dixon dropped the Winchester and raised the Beretta, his familiar service weapon, and fired rapidly, a triple-tap.
Lewis staggered as if punched, but he’d already pulled the shotgun around and lifted it to his shoulder. He steadied himself for an instant, taking fluid aim, then fired. Racked the slide, aimed, and fired again.
Four left in the tube, Peter knew without having to think about it. He leaped for the Kia, for the Colt beneath it.
Dixon collapsed in on himself with the first shotgun blast. The second put him down on the ground.
Lewis took a step and his leg gave way beneath him.
“Now it’s a party,” Leonard called, face splitting wide in a grin.
As he raised the ugly little machine pistol toward Dixon and Lewis and McSweeney, the Kia’s trunk lid rose like a ghost behind him.
Peter wasn’t moving fast enough. He was cold and wet and slow.
He saw June lift herself from the compartment, her face pale, arm outstretched.
Something in her hand, something small and red.
A mist flew out from it, touched Leonard on the ear.
He shook his head as if trying to dislodge a fly.
“Hey!” June called. “Asshole!”
Leonard half turned toward her and the mist leaped out again and again, catching him full in the face. The wind had shifted and Peter could smell it, the bright caustic burn of capsicum pepper.
“Fuck,” Leonard shouted, swiping at his eyes, the machine pistol coming around one-handed.
“June, get down,” Peter called, legs pumping, still too far away, “get down and run.”
She dropped like a rock over the lip of the trunk and came up off the ground in a rough roll, coughing, running.
Leonard spun like a ballet dancer and the MAC-10 erupted in a manic purr, thirty rounds sprayed wild in a second and a half.
The machine pistol was notoriously inaccurate at any kind of distance and difficult to control on full auto, especially one-handed. But it threw a lot of lead, and at close quarters it could kill everything in a room.
Peter felt a tug at his sleeve, midair in his dive toward the Kia. He scrambled beneath it now, groping for the Colt on his belly, unable to see much of anything.