by Jim Heskett
“Ma’am, whatever it is… you can say anything to me and it never goes beyond this room, if you don’t want it to. I swear it.”
Her face jittered like a cartoon character powering up to sprint. “The Big Cat Sanctuary has their boot on our throat. We can’t continue on this path forever. It’s just too expensive.”
Jordan nodded. “I’m sure that’s their plan. Sit on us until we can’t afford it anymore.”
“I’ve had enough,” she said, her eyes flaring to show the first signs of life this morning. “It can’t continue. We do something, now, or the town dies. It’s as simple as that, and I can’t believe it’s taken me this much pain and deliberation to arrive here.”
“What is it you wanted to ask me?”
Winne steeled herself and sucked in a deep breath. “You know people, right? Guys your own age, who you could maybe round up together?”
Jordan had to hide a smile, since the mayor had no idea who he was. Yes, Jordan had some guys he could round up. And now he knew exactly where the mayor was headed with this.
“I do have a few friends I can call, yes. Are you looking for a posse?”
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this.”
He scooted closer to the edge of the loveseat, catching her eye. “Anything you need, ma’am. I know I haven’t been here as long as you, but Shotgun is my town, too. Now please, tell me what you want.”
“I want you to go to BCS and scare them. Make them think if they don’t drop the lawsuit, something bad is going to happen.”
“Bad like what?”
Her face slipped down, tears streaming down her cheeks. He knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her say it. He wanted her to be clear.
“I can’t believe It’s come to this… I’m asking you to threaten them. If you can bring along five or six of your friends. I don’t want violence. But this has to stop. We have to make them think we could do anything. Maybe just a show of force is enough to change the balance, you know? Or, secretly, maybe they want this to stop, too.”
“I doubt that.”
“I know they have armed security there. Maybe a show of force is the only thing they’ll respect.”
He stood. “I understand, Winnie.”
She looked up at him. He’d never called her by her first name before. But, if she were going to ask him to extort the owners of the Big Cat Sanctuary, he figured that entitled them to be on a first-name basis.
“And if they meet our show of force?” he asked. “What if it actually does become violent?”
She raised her palms in a shrug, a hopeless look on her face. “The town has to survive. Whatever you have to do to make that happen…” Her eyes drifted down yet again. “Please, go. Please, just do whatever you have to do and don’t even tell me until it’s done. I can’t debate this any longer. I can’t think about this any more today.”
He nodded and then turned on his heels to leave. No point in torturing the poor woman. No point in making her wallow in the guilt of the criminal activity she had ordered him to do.
He grinned to himself as he walked out the front of the building. With his phone up to his ear, he called his number two.
“Hey, Roscoe, wake your ass up,” Jordan Beckett said. “We have work to do this morning.”
22
Two cars drove toward the Western Slope Big Cat Sanctuary. Jordan Beckett drove the lead car, with his assistant Roscoe in the passenger seat. The second car contained five more Disciples, trailing behind them. He’d made sure neither was a personal car, and also one not commonly seen in town.
Remaining low-key in Shotgun had been a strange affair. Many in town knew Jordan Beckett’s face, and he had no problem walking the streets without suspicion. But whenever he visited the shuttered climbing school building, he took extra care to make sure no one saw him enter. If anyone tied him or that building to the Disciples, then that would cause serious problems for his double life.
“I don’t know why you keep on helping that Black bitch,” Roscoe said. “Walking behind her, calling her ma’am.”
“Because she’s the town’s mayor. Don’t you think it’s beneficial to us to have someone on the inside? She has no idea who I am. As far as I know, that woman has no idea who the Disciples of the True America are.”
Roscoe pressed his lips together and made no reply. Beckett didn’t feel the need to press the point any further. “You don’t worry about the mayor. I’ll keep her dumb and angry.”
“But then why are we doing her this favor?”
Beckett gritted his teeth. “Because I finally realized she’s right about what happens if they win. If the big cat people starve the town with this legal battle, then where are we supposed to go, huh? All our plans, everything coming in the next couple days, it all falls to dust. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yes, Roscoe, she’s Black, and I understand why teaming up with her looks problematic. I’m not worried about what the troops think, because right now, we need her. This isn’t a favor for her. This is for us.”
“But is this the right time to stir things up? Do we need this attention right now? I mean, couldn’t it wait until next week?”
“Next week, we’re going to be too busy to deal with shit like this. Plus, don’t you think we should at least visit to take a look around ourselves? Maybe the mayor is right and these people are bad news. That’s something we should handle as soon as possible, don’t you think?”
Roscoe chewed on this for a few seconds, then said, “Yeah. Makes sense.”
“Plus, Winnie Caldwell is a pretty big wildcard all on her own. There’s a good chance she’s going to do something stupid, because she’s one bad day away from going to pieces. She hates them more and more every day. So, say we do nothing, and Mayor Winnie gets all full of rage and bourbon and drives to the sanctuary herself. Then she starts ranting, and one of them catches it on video. Shit like that goes viral… people love to see small town politicians behaving badly. How do you think that level of attention would play out in our invisible town?”
“I see your point, boss. It’s better if we’re in control of the situation.”
The two cars continued on, past the hill to the north, and then through the pass toward the sanctuary. Beckett had actually never seen it before up close. A large chain-link cage surrounded a set of buildings nestled thick in the pine trees, with razor wire atop the fence. It looked like a prison, but with a better view.
Beckett had never seen a prison with a drive-up entrance flanked by colorful billboards spaced amid the trees. They advertised close-up big cat encounters. Feed a jaguar. Pet a baby tiger. Hear a lion roar. Watch a leopard hunt a bunny in her enclosure.
As they slowed to enter the facility, Beckett noted an extensive series of surveillance cameras on the fencing. Also, he saw two guards standing near the front office, both of them armed only with revolvers. No ballistic vests, no coils from their ears. They looked like pros, but not at all prepared for a surprise attack.
A few of the cats strolled over toward the fence to see the new arrivals. This early in the morning, there were few vehicles in the lot. Probably only the employees were here. Even better. Beckett hated doing business in front of civilians. He might someday have to return with the mayor, and it would be better if there weren’t public evidence of this visit. After all, the mayor would expect him to keep anything illegal quiet. Especially the stuff that she herself wouldn’t want to hear about.
They parked in the circle drive in front of the office, and all seven members of the Disciple of the True America exited their cars. Beckett had made sure all of them had covered up any incriminating tattoos. They were supposed to look like townspeople, not a mob.
No one brought out any guns yet, but they stood in a line next to the cars, facing the office. The two security guards stared, but they didn’t draw guns.
So far, everyone was being cordial. Tense, shifty, and alert, but cordial.
A woman who couldn’t have been much beyond
high school age unlocked the front office door and then came outside.
“Good morning!” she said. “Welcome to CWSBCS! But, I’m afraid the park’s closed right now, guys. We’re cleaning today and tomorrow, so the campus is not available for visits. It was on the website.”
“We’re not here to see the cats,” Beckett said.
Her head cocked. “Do you have an appointment or something? I didn’t see anything on the whiteboard.”
“We would like to speak with the owner. Not next week, not tomorrow, but now.”
The girl shook her head. “He lives in Tampa, so I’m not sure what to tell you. My manager is here. How about that?”
“That’ll be fine. We’ll wait right here.”
“Sure,” she said with a level of annoyed irony that only a teenager could pull off. Beckett wasn’t that much older than her, and he found it amusing. He’d worked at a fast-food restaurant in high school and had been as constantly annoyed as this chick.
She went inside and then, two minutes later, returned with another woman. This other woman was much older, in her fifties. She had stringy grayish blonde hair that jutted out from her head at odd angles. With a wiry and pale frame, she topped off the look with a hemp necklace bearing a purple crystal at the center. This woman looked like the sort of person who sold driftwood art to tourists in Vail.
“How can I help you, gentlemen?” she said, wariness on her face.
Beckett cleared his throat and attempted a charming smile. “We’re a concerned citizens group from the town of Shotgun. We’ve come to ask you to drop your suit against the town.”
“You shouldn’t be here. This should all be done through the lawyers.”
Beckett inched toward the front steps, mostly to see how the two security guards would react. They moved their hands toward their holsters, but did not draw their weapons.
“But I am here,” Beckett said. “I’ve asked you nicely, once. I’m not going to ask as nicely the second time.”
Beckett watched the manager woman’s eyes crawl across the seven members of his squad. Her mouth hung open, shoulders slightly rising and falling. Beckett assumed she was doing an internal threat assessment.
“You need to go,” she said. “This is your only warning.”
Beckett chuckled. “Is that a fact?”
The woman’s lip quivered, then she unclipped a walkie talkie from her belt. “Get everyone out to the front,” she said in a rapid and hushed voice to the walkie. “Right now.”
“Good,” Beckett said. “I was wondering if you’ve been holding out on us.”
“Turn around and leave, kid. You’re on private property and this could get ugly.”
The reference to his age made him bristle, but he pushed through it. “It’s as ugly as you want it to be, lady. We just want you to stop bleeding the town. Didn’t you ever think about what happens to your ticket sales if there're no rooms in the closest town for people to rent?” Beckett paused as an idea occurred to him. “Or, maybe that’s part of your plan: building a resort-hotel over Shotgun’s decaying husk.”
She eyed him as new arrivals came pouring out of the office building. Fifteen seconds later, once they had all filed out, Beckett found himself staring at a dozen armed men. Not armed with revolvers like the initial guards. These “tier 2” men carried assault rifles, wore tac vests, and they were all draped in camo. Fingers off triggers, though.
Once all these armed men arrived, Beckett’s guys started pulling out their guns. Metal scratched against leather holsters. Beckett held up his hands to order his men to halt.
In this moment, staring at this little big cat militia, Beckett knew these people were going to be a serious problem. The sort of problem that—left unchecked—would result in him failing this mountain operation. The sort of problem that would result in him receiving a bullet to the back of his head from his superiors in Denver.
On the drive here, he’d made that argument to Roscoe, and now he fully believed it.
“You guys probably get audited by the IRS a lot, right?” Beckett said.
The woman sneered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, just trying to make a joke to dial back the tension. As I’m standing here, getting a sense of how you run things, I’m wondering if we actually have more in common than we don’t.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know who you are, or what your game is, but I’ve had enough of this.”
Several of her security team shifted their fingers closer to their triggers.
“Nobody has to die today,” Beckett said, which prompted a few raised eyebrows from his men.
“I agree,” said the manager. She stood in place, smiling her smug smile, and Beckett hesitated a second trying to come up with a great line, but he couldn’t think of anything. Eventually, he twirled a finger in the air to tell his men to round up.
Beckett’s side snapped to attention and holstered their weapons, as ordered. The sanctuary people lingered on full alert a while longer, but eventually dispersed and then only the two previous guards and the manager remained.
Once they were back in the cars and headed toward the exit, Roscoe looked at Beckett with imploring eyes. “What the hell was that? Were you trying to form an alliance with them or something?”
Beckett shrugged. “I was feeling out the possibility. She shot that down pretty quick, though.”
“We looked like idiots back there.”
“Numbers, Roscoe. Numbers matter.”
“What does that mean?”
“Those extra guys from Denver arriving today?”
“Yessir. This afternoon, I think.”
Beckett nodded as he navigated the car onto the road back to town. “Good. These people are in our way.”
“What about your whole speech on not attracting attention?”
“It’s become clear to me that these sanctuary people are a much bigger threat than I ever considered before. And I don’t think we can stay quiet, to be honest. Once we have the numbers, we go back and make sure they’re not going to be a problem. And, if necessary, we kill every last one of those assholes.”
23
The indoor shooting range that Molly Waffles owned was on 3rd Street, near the west end of town. Layne knew the location well, because a friend used to live close to this area. The indoor shooting range was new, so it stuck out and looked like nothing else in town.
But first, Layne had to arrive there without finding himself on the wrong end of a bullet. He’d crashed on Molly’s couch and she'd been gone when he’d woken up. And while she’d left her old truck for him to drive around, Layne didn’t feel good about it. Moving through the town of Shotgun in the full light of day held too much danger.
But, since Shotgun didn’t have a subway system, he didn’t have much choice. As soon as he started driving through town, he discovered he’d been right.
He spotted several members of the Disciples in town. Two of them had been stationary, and another roving, probably looking for Layne. And where Layne saw one, he had to assume there were others.
He drove with a baseball cap pulled low and with large, mirrored sunglasses Keegan had bought for him at Shotgun Thrift yesterday. If this were Denver or Houston or NYC, Layne could vanish among the traffic and the crowds. But in Shotgun, there wasn't much traffic of any kind. So he stayed to the furthest backstreets and pulled over often to check for eyes on him.
Eventually, he stopped about a block to the east of the range, when he spotted a collection of junked cars behind the shoe store. He nestled between an old El Camino on one side and a Dodge Charger on the other. Molly’s aging F150 looked right at home there.
Layne exchanged the cap for one of a different color, then also changed his jacket. He pulled the collar close and the hat low, then he ventured from behind the shop, out to the street. No pedestrians walked on this side street, and he counted three on the street ahead. No one suspicious. There were a few parked cars, but no one sitting in the
m.
He paused at the corner of the building, eyes trailing up and down. He noted one man who actually did seem a little suspicious. Shotgun had a handful of bus stops, and even though the bus route had stopped running years before, they left the covered stops to act as urban park benches. Layne watched a shifty guy sitting at one, reading a paper copy of The Denver Post. He didn’t seem like the type to read the paper. A tattoo of a rattlesnake coiled around his neck.
Layne doubled back and around the other side of the shoe shop to get a better look at the guy. Layne suspected he might have a mirror hidden in the paper to see behind him, but there was nothing like that. So, Layne skirted half a block to the south before he made his way west, keeping far out of range of this man.
He approached the indoor shooting range carefully, eyes alert in every direction. Cars with tinted windows drove up and down the streets every few minutes, and Layne kept his head down and moved quickly, always keeping an object nearby for cover.
Layne entered the back entrance by rounding the building and coming back from the southeast. He slid down the edge of the barrier into the rear parking lot. His feet had barely touched the ground when he launched at a sprint for the back door.
Keegan waited for him there, holding it open with one hand and beckoning Layne with the other. He darted across the lot and into the door, yanking it closed behind him. While there seemed to be no one in the back parking lot, it was better to be sure.
He did take a moment to study the VFW building next to the abandoned ice climbing school building.
“Hey,” Layne said. “What’s the story at the VFW?”
Keegan ushered him into a small anteroom. “Nothing, really. Just a bunch of old guys throwing darts, or whatever they do. I’ve never seen anything weird in the area, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“What about the climbing school? I know it’s closed, but maybe it’s worth a look.”
Keegan shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s boarded up pretty tight.”