by Paula Cox
And after five minutes of fiddling around, the Maserati creeps out of the garage, through the gate and down the road. Final stop Sunrise Apartments, but with a short one on the way, just to clear some things up, in Westtown. At the Clubhouse. By now she’s sure as hell thinking of me.
I don’t think even Maya knows why she’s heading our way. I want to believe that it was because she really did want to see me, as she missed me, but it could’ve also been because her intuition had kicked in and made her realize that she needed a bodyguard if she was really planning on making her way alone. Whatever it was she was thinking, it must have distracted her away from seeing the black BMW pull out from behind and start tagging her down the long stretch of windy, snow-sprayed road.
Chapter 21
It’s a shit day for driving. Palmer and I would know. We’re trapped up by the Docks watching the white stuff accumulate, still wondering how much longer we’re gonna have to sit it out for until the action hits.
I don’t know how Maya managed it down the highway driving for the first time, but she did. And with no tails or targets on her path wondering where the little pixie was going ninety miles a minute in a car that looked as least as expensive and rich as she. Turns out, it was the Clubhouse. To me. If I’d have known that then it sure as hell would have saved us a lot of trouble later on, but Maya wasn’t exactly keen on letting anyone else in on her plans. I’m almost sure she surprised herself by coming out to Easttown, or maybe it was the car talking. I didn’t think she was missing me bad enough to drag everything over to surprise me, but I guess that shows what I know.
It’s not hard to see where all of this is leading. Maya winds her way through the snow-clogged streets, and it’s by some kind of sixth sense or crazy intuition or photographic memory I still don’t understand that she manages to find the Clubhouse where I’d driven her the month before. Just one drive was all it took—she’d memorized the address.
She gets out of the car, turns around and takes one look at it. The thing is, over in Easttown, Palmer’s piece-of-shit pickup is just about the best thing you can find, meaning the best the whole place has to offer is a pair of wheels that can still turn and not turn over their own shredded rubber. A Maserati in Portsmouth means Family—but you take it to the backwoods and the people have got no idea it’s a mob man’s car. Why would they when they’ve never so much as heard the names Theo or Ceallaigh or any of that? So knowing how dangerous it is just leaving it in a snowbound parking lot, she rummages through her pack and comes up with this enormous blanket she must have packed for emergencies and drapes it over the car like the thing was an invisibility cloak. That’s it for protection. I don’t know how Maya feels about it, but she must have been satisfied enough because she didn’t move the blanket.
She goes up to the door of the Clubhouse, but there’s no Bolt. No Stitches to be found in the near or far vicinity—everyone’s gone to the Docks. The place looks closed down.
I figure right here Maya weighs her options. The Stitches have disappeared without a trace, and she can either wait in her blanketed Maserati for us to come back, or she can say ‘screw it’ to the whole slapdash plan and continue on to Sunrise Apartments like she was wanting to. Then I imagine a whole cluster of other thoughts descending on her, one after another after another really quick like a meteor shower.
Supposing that she could even make the long snowy and difficult drive along the highway, with the day already beginning to get dark: she couldn’t even hope that she’d be able to get an apartment that night. She would have to book into a hotel, and booking a hotel room required that she not only find one in the next few hours but pay for it, too. But money wasn’t the problem. It was the credit card - Theo’s credit card. The whole point of sneaking out in his car and making sure no one knew where she’d gone was to break free. Once she used the card, it would only be a matter of a few minutes before her father knew exactly where she was and exactly what she’d been doing. She would be back in her room by the next day, and that was if she was lucky.
The two options then quickly became one option, and with no Stitches in sight, that one option was waiting. A lot of waiting.
She gets the other blanket out of her bag (she’d told me once that she was always cold which I had thought then was just an exaggeration—but she really does bring blankets everywhere) and cocoons herself in the covered Maserati and flips off the engine to save gas and waits.
The wind is tearing so hard the blanket flies off, and Maya chases it down and plasters it down with the bricks she can find by the base of the Clubhouse. She works and fights and stretches the fabric over the top for I don’t know how long before asking herself what the point was—she hadn’t seen anyone around the Clubhouse for at least an hour. Plus, with all the new snow accumulating it would hardly even look like a Maserati in the snow. The weather was doing enough to keep her practically invisible.
So she stows the dirty wet blanket and decides to go back inside the car and give it another hour before finding somewhere where she can pick up a cheap dinner, in case she needs to make her cash last, when she hears something. Not something. Even with the wind roaring through her ears and ripping across the street like a snow tornado, there’s no mistaking the blasts.
She freezes. She’s not scared—not scared exactly—but she wants to be sure of what she’s heard, and so she says nothing, makes no movement, becomes as still as a statue and as concentrated as a philosopher on what follows.
And there’s a lot that follows.
***
I’m roping the story back to where I left off, which is with Palmer sitting there next to me as cool as a clam, calculating if he can make it to the shotgun in ten seconds or less: roughly how much time he’ll have before the two guys in red sweaters get wise and start blowing holes.
The guys are about fifty feet away and moving steadily towards us. It’s not shotgun range, but in less than a minute it will be.
“Kirill’s on his way. Bolt too. Ten minutes.” I put down my phone.
“You really wanna wait this out for ten minutes? Ain’t no way we’ll find them again if we let them go now.”
“We’ll tag them.”
“I’m not tagging anyone,” Palmer says. “Look around us. We’re the only motherfuckers in a mile. If those are our guys and this car starts moving, especially if it starts moving straight behind them, they’ll blast us to pieces faster than I can shift to fourth.”
I don’t like this. I thought there were options. Room for delays. Backup plans. Something that wouldn’t involve us jumping out, guns blazing, praying for solid accuracy. I’m a decent shot in a good environment, but I don’t like ambushes, and I don’t like having to concentrate on my fire when I’m nervous. Hand to hand is different. You get a feel for a guy’s strength when you’re the one handling it. But Items are the wild card. I’ve seen too many good guys and good fighters go down just ‘cause the other guy could blast more rounds a second.
“Q? Q?” Palmer’s been calling my name without me realizing it. “We need a decision here.”
“I’ll go.”
“What?”
“The shotgun,” I say. “I’ll get it. I’m faster than you, anyway. You wouldn’t make it there in ten.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t.”
I put my glock in Palmer’s hand. “You’re a better shot with it. But you have to keep them pinned so I can get close enough to unload. Got that?”
“Pinned where?”
“Wherever works for you. Now tell me you got it.”
Twenty feet. Definitely shotguns beneath those sweaters. Christ Christ Christ. When was the last time I’ve been in a firefight? When was the last time I’ve jumped a guy? Have we ever come out of something like this with all our parts still in one place? What the hell were we doing?
Then I think of Miles. Shredded up on his home turf. That could have been any of us not watching where he was going. And by some weird compound division process, I turn myself aw
ay from thinking of Miles and start thinking about Maya. Not at all the same deal with Miles but something close. She wasn’t safe on her home turf. She couldn’t just stay in one place without having to worry about someone else bullying her. These guys had made an attack on the Stitches and on Maya. There’s no way I’m letting them get away with even more.
“Closing in, Q,” Palmer says. “I pop the trunk you run. I fire. You fire. Easy peasy.”
“Easy peasy.”
Ten feet. I can see their faces. Then I run.
Chapter 22
I count in my head. Seven seconds, eight by the time I hear the first two shots. The guy rips them off with a slight delay that, even if I’m not listening for, I know comes from the pump of his shotgun. Both shots explode in little-powdered globes of snow over to my left.
Eleven. Twelve. I get the sawed-off firm in hand and duck as another shot slices the air where my head was. Three, four pops ring in the air from the glock, but no screams. The two sweaters race towards the Docks, to the left.
There’s a smell of burning and gunpowder in the air. The passenger door swings open and out heaves Palmer. I look quickly just to make sure he’s not hurt. Nothing coming from his head.
I do a quick check down the line to make sure I’m not in line with any of the Russians, and then duck behind the makeshift wall of the Chevy, along with Palmer. Just in time, judging from the heavy clunks of bullets sinking into the side of the car.
“Sons of bitches are gonna pay maintenance on this thing,” Palmer says. I crack a grin because I know he wants me to.
“They knew we were there, Q. Whipped those guns out faster than anything I’ve seen. You see where they’ve gone?”
“Left.”
“Canal? Why the hell they going there?”
“Run around and then cut us off from behind.”
“If they wanted to be sneaky why the hell they still in those bright motherfucking sweaters?”
I smile. He smiles, too. “Cover me,” he says, poking his head up from the car. He holds it up there, one second, two, then drops it down.
“Just one. Can’t hardly see him in this goddam snow.”
“Decoy?”
“For what? We’re even. Take him down, and the guy he’s decoying for is left alone.”
“Could be drawing us into a trap.”
“Could be giving us an opportunity.”
I pump two shells into the chambers and stick another six in my pockets from the box I took in the car.
“What’s the plan?”
Palmer chews his cheek and thinks it over real quickly, bowing his head over his weapon. As soon as he does that, I catch something bearing down on us from his right.
“Down!” I scream, shotgun already pivoting over his head. How that big bastard got so close without us noticing anything I don’t know, but suddenly there he is, like he appeared from thin air, shotgun at the ready. He’s already firing.
First shot explodes the side mirror, and there’s a rainstorm of glass. Then in comes the second shot. Palmer goes down screaming.
My first shot gets the big guy in the knees, and he collapses down with a weltering crunch of bones and snow that puts a bad taste in my mouth. No second shots for him. I whirl to the left and prepare to catch the second Russian who’s already booking his way in to clinch the kill. My shot is a spray of fire, and I don’t even know where the bullet goes, but it does the job. The would-be executioner falls on his face, rolls, and pops off both rounds into the windows. It’s a sloppy counter-attack and just what I need. Two shells loaded and pumped. Then he springs away like a deer who has just missed the arrow and disappears through the curtain of snow.
The first Russian is no more than three yards away and trying to reload the gun from the shells spilled out on the snow. I scramble up to my knees, take aim, and pop him in the arm or chest. Blood and shirt and pieces of the gun all get ripped to shreds with the impact, painting an ink print on the new snow. The Russian roars and falls down clutching his side, forgetting the shotgun. I swoop in and scoop it up and toss it back to our miniature shelter.
I haven’t had a second for Palmer. He’s alive, at least judging by his moans. At least there’s that. I’d have killed myself if I got my best friend killed over a couple good for nothing street scumbags. Christ. This whole thing was a mistake. A bloody, painful mistake and the second Russian is nowhere in sight. After seeing his buddy go down and with the weapon lost, there’s no way he’s keeping himself in the fight. I don’t even think about chasing after him. Trying to track in snow like this would be a death trap.
“Palmer.” I lean down and take a look. His right leg is crumpled up around the stomach and peppered with holes like a bloody colander. “Easy, man. Easy.”
His leg is protecting whatever the real fractured area is, and now it’s my job to pull the limb down and take a look. He’s wheezing and gasping through his teeth, spitting out something I don’t understand.
“Go easy on yourself,” I say. “I’m gonna need you to tell me where it hurts.”
Judging from the big black spot like the pit of a huge cherry carved right into his waist, I know exactly where it should hurt. The whole waist is probably fractured, and the bone is the crutch holding the bullet. Shit. I’ve got to get him to the hospital, first thing. Second thing: my eyes peel through snow and find the Russian. He’s passed out in a pile of snow dyed the color of his insides. Time to find out who these bastards are working with and make sure that by the time the next fight comes, the Stitches and I are ready to blast them all away with whatever we’ve got.
A big shadow climbs through the wall of snow. I shield the Item against me and prepare myself to shoot at whatever comes out, but then I see two familiar faces.
“Godammit. Could you have come any later?” It’s Kirill’s car, with Bolt at the helm.
Kirill ignores me. He points to Palmer: “Is it serious?”
“He’s got a goddamn twelve-gauge shell hanging out of his hip.”
“We got to get him to a hospital.”
“You think?”
Bolt and Kirill both take an arm. Gently as we can, trying every step to keep Palmer from swinging, we load him into the backseat. He’ll bleed all over the place, but no one gives a shit.
“He didn’t think the gun was loaded,” I tell Kirill. “That’s your story: everything you say is right there. That clear?”
“How the hell do you accidentally shoot yourself in the hip with a shotgun?”
“Kirill’t know. If they ask, make up something good.”
“Well, where the hell are you going, Q?’
I don’t look at him. I’ve got the Russian by the arms and with a bit of pulling, I stash him onto the backseat of Palmer’s Chevy.
“Q? Christ you gonna answer or not? What the fuck happened here?”
“The hell do you think happened? This guy was on the street with his partner, big Items beneath the sweaters. We did what we were supposed to do, alright?”
“Okay, man,” Kirill says. “Okay. Things are all okay. Take a deep breath. We’re gonna get Palmer to the hospital and—”
“They’re what?” I slam the door shut. My hands—they’re doing what they’re doing again. God—even my lips are twisting on me. I’ve got to get away before I hurt somebody. “They’re what, Kirill? You’re trying to tell me this is all okay? Palmer gets shot by some lame bozo at the Docks who shouldn’t have been here in the first fucking place and you’re saying everything’s alright?”
Kirill’s got his hands up in the air like he’s lifting a weight. “Just—relax, Q.”
“Cause everything’s okay? That what else you want to say? Huh?” If I get close enough, I know I’m going to hit him no matter what he tells me. The worst part is I already know that none of this is his fault. No one could have known these guys would be on the streets when they were. No one could have helped Palmer. But it doesn’t matter—the fact that it’s not his fault but that he’s the one I wan
t to hit doesn’t matter. He’s a target. The closest one.
Luckily at that moment Bolt puts the horn down. Kirill gets back in the car and closes the door. I’m left there, a little confused and not quite sure what I was about to do with my fists, but knowing that whatever it was wouldn’t have turned out well for anyone. Kirill sure as hell isn’t the one I need to revenge myself on for what’s happened to Palmer.
***
Everybody’s got a cap. A certain level of stress or anger that they can take before the top comes soaring off. That’s pretty high for the majority of people I’ve met. Some guys you can fill up with all the lousiest shit in the world, snap the cap back on, shake them around, and when you take the lid back off, all the bad stuff is just gone.