by Matthew Iden
He left a message on Dougie’s answering machine, telling him he’d be gone for a week. Two years of loyal, hard work allowed him to do that. He knew he was a valuable part of the operation and figured he’d earned a bit of vacation time, even if this particular personal matter wasn’t all that different than what he normally did—chase people and scare the hell out of them. And Dougie was a civilized criminal as well as born and bred in the rural South, so he understood the value of family obligations. Like hunting down your sister’s deadbeat boyfriend and bringing his ears back in a bag.
Life had been good working for Dougie and the advancement swift. The switch from collections and strong-arming jerks to more responsibility and danger had come on quickly. He’d been working for Dougie for six months when he got a call, asking him to swing by the office one Wednesday afternoon for a talk. Since most of what Baby Boy did for Dougie started with a simple phone call, he was curious about the summons and got to the office in a hurry. When he walked through the door, Doreen told him to go right back to Dougie’s spacious corner chambers.
Dougie’s private office was one of the few places where the man indulged himself. Far different than the mundane vinyl and plastic of the front room, the boss’s sanctuary was a wood-paneled, carpeted affair that a Rockefeller would’ve admired. There was an enormous banker’s desk, the top of which was said to have been made from the door of Stonewall Jackson’s home. One green-shaded brass lamp and a small humidor were the only stray objects on its surface. Chintz curtains covered the nine-foot-tall windows. Quilted leather chairs, their buttons embedded four inches deep, were scattered around the room. Dougie’s own chair was a mahogany-and-leather throne, subtly raised to improve his height while seated. Fresh-cut flowers were brought in every day, and the air was perfumed with the scent of day lilies and roses.
Little of this registered to Baby Boy on the few occasions he’d been asked to come back to Dougie’s office. It looked rich, the den of a successful businessman, but the leather, prints, and lilies reminded him of a funeral home he’d been to as a kid. The roses made him sneeze and gave him a headache, making him especially mean when he conducted business after a visit to the boss’s office.
When he got there, Dougie was busy writing something down and didn’t look up as Baby Boy walked in, simply holding a finger to indicate he should wait for a moment. Dougie finished what he was scribbling, then motioned Baby Boy to a chair.
“Hello, Russell. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Yes, sir,” Baby Boy said.
“I’ll keep this brief. We might be having some trouble in the next few weeks with a…competitor…of mine who would like to replace me and take over the business, as it were. Roanoke is hardly big enough for one gangster—it certainly can’t stand the presence of two such competing interests. Naturally, I’m not keen on allowing this person to gain a foothold and will resist his efforts. He’s not going to take such a response kindly. In fact, he already hasn’t.”
Dougie stood and began pacing behind his desk, head bent and hands behind his back. “This kind of thing, Russell, is best nipped in the bud. I don’t need to tell you, but you let someone push you around once—even if you hit back twice as hard the next time—you are a target. That kind of action and reaction is not good business. It interrupts the flow of commerce and is, at the end of the day, a royal pain in the ass.”
He turned to Baby Boy and shook a fist for emphasis. “What I need from you, Russell, is something different than what you’ve done to this point. First, I’d like you to be my bodyguard, at least for the duration of this…disturbance. What’s more, I may ask you to take the fight to our enemy from time to time. This is dangerous work and you will be compensated. The problem, Russell, is that I need you to want to do it. I can’t trust these increased responsibilities to someone who might not want to stick his neck out for the organization. It just doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“No, sir,” Baby Boy said, not sure what he meant.
Dougie glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “What I mean is, if I tell you to go and take care of someone, I need to know your heart is in it. If it isn’t, you might lose your nerve or foul it up, or—good God—you might not even do it! Had a boy once, promised me he’d put this cracker in the hospital that was causing us some grief. Later that very same day, the allegedly hospitalized gent was seen eating a burger and some chow-chow at Arlene’s restaurant around the corner. Can’t abide that. So, I need to ask, are you ready for this kind of responsibility?”
Baby Boy simply nodded and said, “You bet, Dougie.”
Dougie clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “Excellent, Russell. I knew I could count on you.” He strode to his desk and ripped off the sheet of paper he’d been writing on when Baby Boy had walked in. “Here is the name and number of a gentleman located just outside of town. Works in a scrap yard. Dreadful job, pulverizing things all day. I wonder what that does to a man’s moral fiber… In any case, he will give you a box. In that box will be the tools you need to undertake your additional duties. You are not to do anything with these tools. Yet.”
“Right.”
“We will let you know what to do and when to do it by phone. Do you understand? Do nothing with them and don’t show them to anyone, either. Not your girlfriend, not your daddy, not your mama, even if she asks.”
“Yes, sir,” Baby Boy said, squinting. “These guns?”
Dougie smiled and said nothing. The silence went on for a full minute before Baby Boy cleared his throat and said, “I’ll be getting on, then.”
“Good boy.” Dougie clapped Baby Boy on the shoulder like he was running for public office. “I’ll see you to the door.”
Baby Boy headed to the scrap yard, cruising out of town on Highway 24 towards Stewartsville until he saw a large sign for the scrap yard. It was like any other trash heap he’d spied from the highway or passed on a backcountry road: rusting car parts, hot water tanks, oil drums, pieces of heavy machinery, and unidentifiable metal bits were shoved into every available corner. Cyclone fencing with plastic drapes walled off the worst of it from the public eye, though the razor wire running along the top ruined the effect somewhat.
He was stymied when he found the front gate locked tight. He rattled it once or twice and went back to the truck. He reached through the window and leaned on the horn for a full minute. The sound died off and he waited for something to happen. He was reaching to do it a second time when he heard the rattle of a chain being undone on the other side. A moment later, the gates rolled back on a track. A man dressed in dirty jeans and an untucked flannel shirt peered around one of the gates. He had a bandanna on his head, tied in the back, and grizzled, gray whiskers sprouting from several spots on his face. He glared at the truck, then waved Baby Boy to bring it on in.
Baby Boy drove through and parked near a massive heap of scrap, careful not to get too close in case the whole thing decided to collapse and take the passenger side of his truck off. The gates rattled back into place and the keeper relocked the chain. Baby Boy stepped out of the truck and walked over to him.
Closer, he could see why the man had such strange facial hair—most of the skin had been burned at one time and the purple-and-red mottled flesh allowed hair to grow in only a few places. The man, who Baby Boy guessed was in his fifties, peered back at him suspiciously.
“You Russell?” His voice was like sandpaper brushed over a stone.
“Yeah,” Baby Boy said. “Dougie sent me.”
“That so?” the man said. “And here I thought I was reading your mind.” Baby Boy stared at the man, hard, but he just said, in a tired voice, “Don’t look at me like that, son. I been through more hell ’n you can dish out.”
He turned to walk away, towards a ramshackle building—a hut, really—with a corrugated tin roof sitting in the middle of the yard. “You got a name?” Baby Boy asked.
The man stopped and looked back. “Call me Brown. That’s a good one.”
<
br /> “What kind of name is that?”
The man turned and headed for the shack, leaving Baby Boy to keep up. “The only one you’re getting, boy,” he said over his shoulder.
Baby Boy followed him and tried to keep his cool. Dougie wouldn’t have sent him here if it weren’t important. The inside of the hut was a spare, neat living space with a cot, a foot locker, and a few military items on the walls. There was no time to look at them closely, though. Brown had only come in to grab a set of keys from the foot locker and head back out, making Baby Boy feel like a little kid, following from place to place.
Brown brushed past him and led the way to the center of the scrap yard, weaving in and out of piles and rusted hulks like he was following a path. It wasn’t long before Baby Boy was lost, but Brown seemed completely comfortable in the place and obviously couldn’t care less if his visitor was keeping pace or not.
After passing a dozen indistinguishable junk piles, Brown told Baby Boy to stop and wait, then he disappeared around a bend. A minute later, Baby Boy heard the screeching of a bent car door opening, followed by a rummaging noise, then clanging metal and the sound of dirt or sand skittering down metal sheets. Then the car door slammed and Brown came back into view, carrying two black fabric cases—one long and broom-shaped, the other about the size of a six-pack. Brown handed both to Baby Boy.
“All right, this is the order from Dougie,” Brown said. “You find your way back to the gate?”
“What are they?” Baby Boy asked, then regretted it. It was a stupid question, but he wanted some details.
Brown passed on the chance to remark and took the question at face value. “That”—he nodded at the long case—“is a Remington 870. Twelve-gauge, six-shot, pump-action, parkerized finish. Country boy like you shouldn’t have any trouble with it. The other is a SIG Sauer P220 Carry. Takes a forty-five round, but with the shortened barrel is small enough to fit under a jacket. ’Specially someone your size. This one has the magazine extension, so you’ve got eight shots. Don’t waste ’em.”
“Are these hot?”
Brown gave him a look, then said, “I keep them here so that I can junk the whole thing if the heat comes down. Just lift the whole car into the sky, drop it in the crusher, and next thing you know it’s just a six-by-two steel box. Waste of good firearms, but better than doing ten to twenty in the pen.”
“You got any more out here?”
“You ask too many questions,” Brown said. “You need more firepower ’n that, I can’t help you. Try the National Guard armory on State Street.”
“Ammo?”
Brown shook his head. “That’s on you. Don’t buy both at the same store, though. You understand why? You shoot both at a scene, cops start looking for somebody dumb enough to buy their twelve-gauge and their forty-five rounds at the same place. Make sense?”
Baby Boy nodded. “I ain’t never shot a pistol.”
Brown shrugged. “Find a field or a quarry somewhere, prop some cans on a fence. Prepare to waste a lot of ammo. Last tip, sport—it ain’t like the movies. Most people can’t hit shit with a handgun and neither will you. If you ain’t twenty feet away then all you’re going to do is scare the guy, ’less you’re lucky. Use the Remington instead. It’s like throwing a handful of rocks at something—you can’t miss.”
Brown led him back to the gate and chased him out of there. Baby Boy put the cases behind the seat of his truck and drove off, a stupid grin on his face. It was a gas beating on people, but he could see himself walking around, the SIG Sauer under his coat, pulling it from its holster and laying it between somebody’s eyes, like in the movies. Maybe he could talk Dougie into getting him another one so he could shoot one in each hand.
Thinking of Dougie, he grabbed his cell phone and called the office. Doreen answered and said Dougie didn’t need him yet, that they’d call him. Baby Boy thought about it for a second, then drove to a Walmart where he bought the shells for the Remington, then grabbed a dozen boxes of .45 ACP ammo for the SIG Sauer at a guns-’n’-ammo store a couple miles down the highway. He had to show ID, which made him nervous, but the clerks at both places acted so bored selling him the stuff that he forgot about it.
Ammo in hand, he drove to a farm half an hour outside of town. One old man kept the place and he was in the bottle half the time, anyway. It would be a miracle if he even noticed gunshots coming from his back forty, and the Second Coming would be upon them if he did anything about it.
It was fun off-roading in his truck, hitting the dirt tracks at forty, fifty miles an hour. When he felt he was far enough from the road, he parked the truck, chose an old oak as his victim, and proceeded to empty round after round from the SIG Sauer into it. By the end, his hand was swollen and aching, but he loaded the Remington anyway and shredded the trunk of the tree with two dozen blasts from the shotgun. He remembered after the first bruising shot to hold the butt of the shotgun tight to his shoulder; he’d nearly broken his collarbone from the kick. At the end of two hours, he felt comfortable enough to quit for the day and headed back to his apartment in Roanoke, fantasizing as he drove about bracing some guy in a restaurant, drawing the SIG Sauer, and holding it on him, point blank. He couldn’t think of anything smart to say that wasn’t already in the movies. He’d have to work on that.
Baby Boy went to the farm every few days after that, though not for as long as his first time—his hand was too cramped and the bruise on his shoulder too sore. But a few weeks after getting the guns from Brown, Baby Boy was feeling comfortable with both and was itching to get a chance to use them.
The call came on a Tuesday night. He’d worked out late at the gym then grabbed a couple of movies at the local rental store, mostly Chinese gangster movies with Chow Yun-Fat in them. He liked the way Fat moved, shooting two .45s at once or yanking a sawed-off shotgun from under his coat and acing a row of bad guys with a double blast. Baby Boy’s cell phone rang at his favorite part of Hard Boiled and he almost didn’t answer, but when he picked it up and saw Dougie’s office number, he took the call, quick.
“Yeah?”
“Russell,” Dougie said without introduction. “It’s time to prove yourself, son. Go to the pay phone at the 7-Eleven by your apartment.” Then the line went dead.
Baby Boy dressed, fumbling a little he was so excited. He slipped the SIG Sauer under his leather coat. He’d bought a shoulder sling for it and had practiced drawing it in front of the mirror. He rushed out the door and got to the pay phone in time to hear it ringing.
He lifted the receiver. “Dougie?”
“No,” said a woman’s voice. He nearly dropped the phone. It was Doreen, the secretary. “Here’re your directions. Ready? Go to 1538 Union Street. It’s a house. Park your truck in the alley behind it. Go to the back. The door will be locked—don’t try it—but the latch on the cellar window has been broken and is loose. The man you want will probably be asleep; might be watching TV on the first floor, though, so don’t make any noise, if you can help it. Drive away slowly when you’re done.”
“Done with what?” Baby Boy wanted to make sure he understood.
There was a pause. “Do him, you goof.”
“What’s his name?” he asked, but Doreen had already hung up.
Baby Boy put the receiver back and thought about it for a second, then shrugged. It was what he’d been waiting for. He jogged back to the house, hopped in the truck, and headed over to Union Street. He cruised slowly. It drove him nuts to do the speed limit, but now would not be a good time to be pulled over. He found the address, then went around the block twice before he saw the entrance to the alley that Doreen had mentioned. It was the lane for the garbage truck and he had to weave his way through the cans left out by their owners. He counted the number of houses from the corner and parked.
After he turned the truck off he sat for a moment, listening. The truck’s engine ticked softly as it cooled. A dog barked; it was inside a house a couple streets away. He checked the SIG Sauer for the se
cond or third time, then slipped it back in the holster. He thought about the Remington for a moment, then decided against it. Maybe with a roomful of people, but tonight was one on one. He got out of the truck, leaving it unlocked, and approached the backyard fence. There was just enough play between the slats of the privacy fence that he could reach through and lift the latch on the door. He opened it slowly and stepped into the yard.
The neighborhood was dark. One or two houses had lights on, back room windows lit by lamps. The house on the corner had a TV on in the bedroom, the rapid flashes of commercials interspersed with the longer blue and red flashes of a show or a movie. His house was dark. Baby Boy moved slowly, watching for toys or garden tools in the yard, and found the window Doreen had told him about. And stopped.
If he were about half his size, with no clothes on—and greased like a pig—he might be able to fit through one of the cellar windows. No other way. He stood there, thinking, remembering Dougie’s comment about some guys not having the nerve to get the job done. He returned to the truck and grabbed some rags under the seat that he used to check the oil, nearly shitting himself when a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench dropped out of the bundle, clattering to the floor of his truck. He slipped the tools back under the seat and then he was back in the yard, tiptoeing up the steps to the back door. He tried the knob to make sure it was locked—it was—then, pressing the rags against the lowest left-hand pane of glass in the door, began leaning all two hundred and ninety pounds against it. Nothing happened for a long moment until, with a snap, the pane broke.