Warpath

by Ryan Sayles

  The gang unit’s ears were to the ground the moment the 9-1-1 call came out. They heard one thing. Thuggie himself pulled that trigger.

  I go to a greasy spoon and sit at the counter, rub the bridge of my nose. Ponder how exactly those turds went from me at Moss’s to this. But that lone dude at Eudora’s funeral, studying faces, he keeps coming back to my mind.

  Abe Baldwin: my main man. He failed himself, his over-bearing mother and the community at large with how terrible he was at being an assistant district attorney. Now he practices privately and sends clients my way. I dial is number. It’s seven in the morning, so no doubt he’s swaddled in a towel, the youngest man by thirty years sitting in a sauna over at the country club up north in Gravel County.

  He always has his cellular leash on him, in case his never-gonna-die mother or his needs-to-die-tomorrow wife calls. He answers before the second ring expires.

  “Hello?”

  “Morning, Abe. Taking a steam?”

  “It’s seven in the morning, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. I need something.”

  “Speak, my friend.”

  “You remember that shit bird gangbanger you defended on the weapons charge?”

  “Buster Ford? Great kid,” Abe says and I can hear the smile on his face. That’s one of the reasons why Abe was so terrible at being an ADA. Abe only sees the good in people, even when they’re standing before him covered in blood and carrying the severed head of their latest victim. Although, that trait worked out well for his wife. No one else would have married such a troll.

  Buster is not a great kid. He might be keeping his nose relatively clean now, but that’s only because he’s had to flee the city lest he be gutted and eaten in front of his family.

  Buster was known to the gang world as Raptor. Now he’s known as Snitch. Apparently in his Raptor days he was one mean motherfucker. He’d been in the clink twice, almost right in a row. He was imprisoned on a count of aggravated battery against a law enforcement officer, released on parole and put right back in on a domestic violence charge for putting his brother through a wall.

  Buster got out a second time and was pulled over by a patrolman for running a red light. In plain sight, lying across the back seat of the car were two AK-47 knock-offs Buster was delivering to a rival gang. Seems intelligence and loyalties were lost on him.

  Buster knew if this hit the light of day or worse, if he went back in the pen, both his ass virginity and his life would be taken from him faster than he could say “plea bargain.” Abe was his court-appointed lawyer. Buster turned state’s evidence bigger than shit to make sure he got parole instead of hard time.

  He now lives in Three Mile High working at a yuppie sports bar where they serve beer and specialize in chicken wings. Buster and his ankle bracelet monitor are cautiously avoiding anything that resembles Saint Ansgar nowadays.

  “I need to meet with Buster,” I say.

  “How about a phone call? I’m fairly certain I can get him to agree—”

  “No. Face to face. Here, in the city. Today. Tell him if he says yes we’ll meet on his terms. If he says no, we meet on my terms.”

  I crack the knuckles on one hand. “He’ll want to say yes.”

  “Let me see what I can do,” Abe says.

  “We can meet somewhere right off of the rail line so he’s not too inconvenienced. He’s not getting any money or favors. What I’ll do in return is not sell him out to the two gangs he screwed or the six bangers who got hard time over his testimony.”

  Abe laughs. Again, with some mirth this time: “Let me see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  Abe calls while I’m driving.

  That shitbag Buster Ford can meet after dinner at the Cake Hole, a donut shop a block off of the rail. Fine.

  “Buster wants you to bring him a gift,” Abe says.

  “I’ll think of something,” I say. I hang up, immediately see what I’m looking for and pull off into a strip mall parking lot. I walk into a low-rent hip-hop clothing store. Above the door in colorful, graffiti-influenced script a sign reads: Saint Ansgar Phat Urban Styles. So be it. The few patrons and the clerk eyeball me as I come inside. I sift through the racks and pull out my phone.

  The clerk steps over to a spot at the counter that effectively shields his waist and hands from me. He keeps looking down at the glass-top counter and the items inside on display as if that’s fooling me at all. With his head tilted down, his eyes continue to roll up, snatching glances my way. Maybe he saw my iron under the jacket. Might be a bulge. Even with my wingspan it’s hard to tuck a large frame Magnum caliber revolver into a shoulder holster. Oh well.

  If he gives some kind of signal to the other patrons then I’ll know it’s time to take aim and back out of the store slowly. I turn one eye to the clerk. He knows I’m watching him.

  A patron stops browsing and walks towards the door. He shoots eyeball glances to the clerk. The more I think about how that guy was looking at merchandise the more I think he wasn’t looking at all. As if he knows the racks inside and out because he’s been studying them for hours and hours while he waits for a guy like me—a guy who don’t belong in these parts—to come inside and shop.

  As he walks to the door he’s got his left hand holding his pants up. As he browsed he was using his right hand to shift through the clothing. I’m guessing that’s his dominant hand. He might need to hold his pants up because the goddamn things are strung so low his belt is cinched around the knees. Or it might be because tucked away inside there is a firearm he’ll want to grab with his dominant hand.

  When the time comes. Which, my piggy sense tells me, is coming fast.

  Another patron steps off the floor and through a backdoor. Gone. I look around openly. It’s now just the clerk, the doorman and I. Doorman moving to my back. The clerk waiting for me to walk up to buy something.

  I select a T-shirt. Look out to the street. The road outside is busy enough with daytime traffic that, in this part of town, only looks ahead. Some of that is because there is nothing of value to look at roadside unless iron bars, graffiti and the homeless are captivating.

  The other reason no one looks around is because, quite simply, they don’t want to see what’s happening.

  I walk to the counter. Toss the T-Shirt on it. Look at the clerk, who has a barely perceptible sheen of sweat across his brow. His eyes go from me to the door. Me to the door. He doesn’t notice it but he shifts his weight from one foot to the next, back and forth. Nerves. Maybe he’s new to the game. Maybe the last time they did this it went south. Maybe he doesn’t want me to be the target. Let me see what I can do to further that notion.

  “I see the price tag says fifteen bucks,” I say. “I’d like to make a deal with you.”

  “No deal, bro,” the clerk says. “Fifteen dollars is fifteen dollars. Plus tax. Then you leave.”

  “Hold on, now. How about I walk away with the T-shirt and in exchange for that, I don’t disarm your friend at the door and beat him ugly with his own gun. Sound good?”

  “Price just went up to twenty. Pay up or get out.” His voice trembles in a way that most folks wouldn’t pick up. This kid is nervous, but barely. What he wants is for me to go to the door. The doorman must be the alpha male here. Probably why, in this little strong-arm racket these punks are running, he’s the doorman. He must be the stone cold one. The clerk here, he’s a tagalong.

  “Okay.” I leave the shirt on the counter and walk towards the entrance. The doorman is nowhere to be found. I step outside and as soon as I do a voice from behind me says, “Hands out. Go back in.”

  I stop. My hands go out. The traffic across the street has a red light. My car is twenty feet away. I don’t move to go back in and I hear the doorman step forward. One big, close-the-gap step. The gun touches my back just enough to say hello and then disappears. Doorman steps away. Opens up. Out of reach.

  “Folks down here know better than to get involved,” he says. “You shout
for help, I hit you. You wave your arms, I hit you. You waste more time out here, I hit you. Getting hit with a gun hurts, bitch.”

  Tell me about it.

  “Now, what you’re gonna do is what I told you to do. Turn around, and go back inside. If we stay out here any longer, I’m gonna get mad.”

  “Okay.”

  I turn around to the front door and walk very slowly. I’m sure the doorman thinks I’m scared shitless. And while he’s thinking he’s got the upper hand, smiling like a self-gratified idiot, I’m studying him in the reflection, moving at a crawl towards where I’m going to teach him a lesson about fucking with me.

  He’s got a grill. Loose, extra-long shirt and pants so baggy there’s more fabric piling up on his shoes than anywhere else. He’s holding a beefy semi-auto in his right hand, left hand still on those damn ridiculous pants. Finger on the trigger, gun canted thug-style.

  The door opens inward. I look at the clerk. Still at the counter. He peers over my shoulder at the doorman and smiles. My left hand still on the door as I step in past it. The clerk looks to me. I wink.

  Blast off.

  Swing the door as hard as I can and the doorman either has to get clocked by it, drop his pants to catch it with his left hand or take the gun off of me to catch it with his right. Right hand dominant. He reaches with the gun hand to stop the thing. And I turn around. One hand clamps the gun and hand together. The other hand peels that trigger finger back with a crisp snap. I take one huge step inside. Right hook to his glass jaw and that fucking grill flies out of his mouth and sails across the room, trailing saliva and fresh blood. Snatch the semi-auto from his paw and swing. Right between the eyes. Once, twice, three times. I get up to six and then grab him by his unconscious neck and hurl him at the register.

  The clerk dives for something. The doorman crashes into the counter and crumbles down. I get to it, look over the top. See the clerk’s foot-long braids as he’s down on one knee digging for something. Grab a handful of his hair. Pull. Squeals as he launches up and over. He comes with me at a sprint across the room. Feet dragging, arms uselessly flailing, forehead predestined to kiss the stud behind the drywall. Kaboom. Wall, meet face. He drops to his knees and keels over to the side. Hard. The head-sized crevice in the dry wall has a comical wet red dot in the middle.

  I walk to the back wall, stand next to the door the third dude disappeared into. I breathe deep and try and calm the rage setting me on fire. They’re just punks running a scam in a part of town where this shit sometimes happens. Don’t kill anybody. Give them some help. Give them some help, as Clevenger and I used to say. Count to seven before the door opens. The third dude steps into the fray, muzzle first. He never sees me. Just my bare knuckles swinging a haymaker at his nose. A satisfying crunch and lights out.

  The guy is armed with another semi-auto. I take it. I take the doorman’s piece as well. A quick glance behind the counter and see a sawed off shotgun the clerk was trying to dig out. Two more seconds at best and he would have had it pointed at little ol’ RDB. Mine, now. One can never have too many drop-guns. For as much as I love my .44, I don’t want its bullets getting traced back to me.

  The T-shirt is on the counter. It joins me as we go outside. Guns in the seat next to me, shirt on top. I leave. Think about where I’m going to have lunch.

  19

  1804 hours

  The Cake Hole.

  The Cake Hole is a donut shop on the platform with enough seating for twenty people or so. It’s reminiscent of an airport food court place. I bet this shop makes a killing around the morning commute. The commuter rail train between Three Mile High and Saint Ansgar arrived at 1802 hours by the official rail platform clock. Buster should be on his way here.

  In one hand I have Buster’s T-shirt neatly folded into a wad with a piece of Scotch tape wrapped around it. In the other hand I have a printout of his mug shot from the county jail’s website. I study the picture; look up into the crowd as it disgorges. Human cattle all mooing in unison as they do their zombie walk towards the parking lot.

  Cutting through the crowd comes Buster. He’s wearing a long sleeve jean jacket unbuttoned. It’s three sizes too big. Better to hide a firearm that way. His matching pants sag. His belt buckle is an absurdly large oval with a marijuana leaf on it. The buckle is big enough to serve as a sheath for a palm dagger. He’s got the waist of his pants buckled mid-thigh.

  He walks with the pimp limp. In his mug shot he has cornrows and an unkempt, patchy beard. Now his head is shaved clean and he has a mustache with some kind of beard hair art. Meticulous.

  Buster walks up. No hesitation. Looks me up and down. Sets his jaw off to one side in that thug tough guy look. He just his chin out and nods his head in one quick fashion.

  “What’s up,” he says. “You Buckner?”

  “Yes. And you must be Buster.”

  “They call me Raptor. You can too.”

  “They call you Snitch, but if you prefer Raptor I’ll go the extra mile for you.”

  “Yeah. Do that. I’ll call you Dick.”

  “You’ll call me Dick once.”

  Buster smirks but he must tell from the sound of my voice I’m serious. “All right. I get it.” He looks around. “So what’s up? My train leaves in eight minutes.”

  “I brought you the gift Abe said you wanted.” I hand him the wad.

  He smirks again and opens it up. Reads the T-shirt. In the donut shop, in front of a crowd of dulled mid-level management, cubicle dwellers and people who need things like Friday night poker games with nickel buy-ins to bring excitement to their lives, Buster, a guy who couldn’t look more gangbanger if he tried, looks at a shirt which reads SNITCHES WIND UP IN DITCHES. Standing in front of me, a guy who couldn’t look more rogue cop if he tried.

  “I hope you like it,” I say. “I went through a lot of trouble to get that shirt.”

  “I bet you did. Anyways, I meant cash.”

  “This is better than cash,” I say. “I got it from a store in a strip mall off of MLK Boulevard and Seventeenth.”

  “Phat Urban?”

  “Yeah. That’s the one.”

  “Shit. I hope not.” Buster shakes his head dismissively. “I hope it wasn’t Phat Urban. They hustle fools like you. Straight up rob.”

  “I doubt they will anymore.”

  “What’s that mean?” His eyes keep darting to the Official Rail Station Clock. Seven minutes until he thinks his train is leaving.

  “Change of subject,” I say. “Tell me about the Carnivore Messiahs. Specifically a guy named LaTrell they call Thuggie.”

  “No.” Firm. “I ain’t snitchin’ on the mother fuckin’ Carnivores. No.”

  “Listen to me. Over the weekend, members of the Carnivore Messiahs did a drive-by on the wrong house. They killed the grandmother of a cop—”

  “Yeah.” Buster interrupts. I despise that. “They blasted some old white woman. Tryin’ to cap some guy called Green Fro. I live in Three Mile and I know that shit.”

  Andre Moss. Green Fro. I get it.

  “Yup. Now this Fro goofball is dead.”

  “Yeah. They get it right.” Six minutes.

  “The gunman is dead. His buddies in the car were arrested.”

  “So you don’t need me. Later.”

  He turns and I catch him by the shoulder. Yank him back. Gun barrel to his sternum. We’re so tightly pressed together I can smell his sour breath. People looking at us might think we’re embracing. He tries to shrug away. I mash the gun in more.

  “I’m through fucking with you,” I say, close enough for the heat from my breath to dry out his eyes. “You’ve got no problems selling your friends up the river to save your own ass. Now you’ll do it to these guys or I’ll go right back to the Phat Urban store and tell them I took that shirt for you as payment for information you gave me about the Carnivore Messiahs.”

  “You did do that—”

  “Yes, Captain Obvious, I did. But the difference here is I wasn’t plan
ning on telling them that. But now, I’ll just stuff you inside the rail—which doesn’t stop between here and Three Mile High—and speed back to the store. Think I’ll get there first? I do. I’ll walk in, kill one of them, announce to the world it was all for you, the known snitch.”

  His eyes begin to register what it is I’m saying.

  “Of course, I’ll be sure to tell them you live in Three Mile High and work at that chicken shack. Shit, Phat Urban will tell somebody who will tell somebody who will tell somebody in the Carnivores. Does that gang have a set in Three Mile High? How far you think you’ll make it before they find you? Do you think they’ll just execute you in some alley, or do you think they’ll take the Mexican approach and stuff you in an oil drum and set you on fire?”

  Buster stares at me for a second. That second stretches out into an ugly eternity as he calculates what he thinks he can do. A lot of gangs branch out like chain restaurants. The chains are called sets. I’m sure there are a few goofballs up in Three Mile High who think they’re Carnivore Messiahs. They’ll be more than happy to wait on the platform as Buster gets off there.

  “What you want?” he asks. Eyeballs the Official Rail Station Clock. Four minutes.

  “Info.”

  “Look. Thuggie just rose up out of the ashes from the ’hood. Word is that one day, back when he was just a punk named LaTrell, a high-rankin’ member of a Crip set just walked up to him to start a fight. I forget what they say about the Crip ’cept he was known for just fuckin’ up fools. Just found some guy, rival gang or not, and threw down. But that day he walked up to Thuggie, got in his space, and wanted to brawl. And Thuggie straight up just jacked the dude right then and there in the throat with a knife. The Crip never saw it comin’. One second he’s picking a fight with some stranger, next second he’s stabbed in his neck. Dead.

  “Word is that Crip’s name was Thuggie. And when LaTrell found out his name, he took it as his own. Just to show everybody what’s what. And he does shit like that. No one love him, not even his mama. No one like him, not even his mama. Everybody fear him, including his mama.