by Amy Lane
“Barstow,” he said, because that was in the same general direction. “I’ve got a girl there. No strings, but regular, you know?”
Great. He’d just confessed to sleeping with a prostitute. After hearing about Gonzalez’s arm, he didn’t think he could feel much worse.
“Well, if you’re paying for that, tip her well. You’re always in a much better mood when you get back.” Hamblin nodded, like he hadn’t said anything offensive at all, and turned and left.
Burton could finally get the puke off his shoes, but God, the rancid conversation was going to linger a lot longer.
HE WENT to the coms room to check in on his guys, relieved when all he heard was the ambient sounds of outside traffic. Even the cat had been taken to Jackson’s sister—or the girl he called his sister, whoever she was—and their pricey but cozy house was empty.
Burton felt like he could leave with a good conscience, which was why he wasn’t paying attention as he left the base, a small duffel packed over his shoulder.
But he was angry, running on adrenaline, ready to take someone’s head off.
The first blow against his kidneys pissed him off enough to do just that.
The fight was hard and furious, filled with the thud of flesh against flesh and the crunch of bone, and when it was done, his three opponents were barely able to drag themselves upright.
No-neck Gleeson he’d expected, and Adkins’s giant forehead was not a surprise—although his newly located nose might actually grow bigger before it healed—but Manetti….
“Aw, geez, Manetti,” Burton said, surprisingly disappointed as he kicked the guy in the ribs once for good measure. “What in the fucking hell.”
“They said you turned on your own guy,” Manetti moaned.
“My ‘own’ guy blew the op,” Burton told him, disgusted. “Bunch of fucking amateurs—no wonder Hamblin came to this shithole to find new people. Unfortunately—” Another kick, this one aimed at Gleeson’s kidneys, may the fucker piss blood for another week. “—he found shitty fucking people.”
He was not unscathed. In addition to bruises on his chest and arms, he had a cut under his swelling eye from a well-timed punch, and he’d be pissing his own share of blood from bruised kidneys too. He’d have to stop and clean up, he thought vaguely. He wouldn’t want Ernie to worry.
“Blew the op how?” Manetti panted. Well—professionalism. Of course, Manetti was one of Hamblin’s men—Burton expected it from him.
“Ask him,” Burton told him, tired in his bones. “But wait until he’s done throwing up, and by all means, don’t expect the truth.” They’d jumped him as he’d been walking around his truck, and he looked at them dispassionately as he took the last few steps to the door. “I’m backing out in thirty seconds. If you’re not clear, you’re roadkill.”
He revved the truck loud and obnoxiously so he could watch them scatter from his rearview window.
Ernie was beating like a pulse in his stomach. He needed that purity, that sweetness—even Ernie’s complete understanding of who and what Burton was.
Ernie was the only one who knew.
Halfway to Victoriana he stopped to fill up the truck and remembered to scan for bugs. He found two, at two different frequencies, and was tipped off enough to pull a more sophisticated scanner from his glove compartment and find another one. Goddammit, Lacey kept whining that he couldn’t afford to car-bug Rivers and Cramer, but Burton he could bug?
When he was sure the truck was clean, he walked to the truck stop adjacent to the regular fill-up station and found the biggest, burliest, most pissed-off trucker in the place and asked him if he was going to Vegas. And then told him why he wanted to know.
“You want me to what?” the guy said, smiling through not so many teeth.
“I want you to carry these with you,” Burton told him. “I’ll pay you. When you get to Vegas, I need you to go to the sleaziest joint you know and put them behind the toilet.”
The guy chuckled meanly. “Why not just flush them down?”
“Because I want them to have to reach behind it. They’re not smart enough to wear gloves.”
The trucker guffawed. “That’s beautiful. Who pissed you off enough to do that?”
Burton liked the guy—he hadn’t blinked at Burton’s black face in a mostly white place, and he’d smiled and laughed with his whole heart.
“Bunch of racist assholes who’re supposed to have my back,” Burton said with a sigh.
“They give you that shiner?” And to his credit, the man sounded concerned.
“They did.”
“Don’t worry none. I’ve got the perfect place.”
Burton grinned and put out his hand to shake. “Thank you, sir. Let me buy your gas.”
“I won’t object to that—but trust me on this, kid. I’ll make them sorry they ever came to Vegas.”
Burton handed over a wad of the disposable cash he’d told Ernie about and considered it money well spent.
It wasn’t until he was pulling into the little gas station in Victoriana, making sure to go around the garage to hide the truck, that he remembered he’d been planning to stop to buy presents, and that he’d forgotten to clean up the cut under his eye.
It didn’t matter.
Ernie had burst out the door to the house, Duke at his heels, before Burton turned off the engine.
In the Shade of the Cliff, Beneath the Sky
TWO DAYS before Christmas, Ernie woke up early—still-daylight-in-December early—and tried not to crawl out of his skin. The thing that had woken him up sounded like a shot in his head. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t concentrate. He and Duke took turns pacing around the little house while Ace and Sonny were working when a wave of wrong crashed down on him.
He rushed to the bathroom and lost his breakfast, then cleaned up and tried to pinpoint the wrong.
At first he thought it was Burton—that was always his fear, Burton. But while Burton was angry and unhappy and sad, he wasn’t hurt.
A flush of nausea, a prickle down his spine, sent Ernie out into the midday.
“Alba,” he cried, running for the cashier’s window, “you don’t work today.”
She looked up from her schoolbook and took in his expression, his worry, and the intensity of his eyes. “I don’t work today,” she said decisively, folding up her book. “Ace, I don’t work today.”
She turned on her heel and headed for the little Nissan Sonny had fixed up for her, pausing only to give Duke his customary treat so he’d stay and not follow her to her car.
Ace was under a minivan, changing the oil, and he shoved out on the dolly as Alba got in her car.
“What’s doing?” he asked, serious. Ace did that, took people seriously.
“Bad guys,” Ernie muttered. “Bad fuckin’ guys. They’re—”
“Sonny!” Ace called. “Get your ass in the house with Ernie and the fuckin’ dog. Fuckin’ now!”
“But Ace—” Sonny complained, right up until he saw Ace’s expression and took in Ernie’s flop-sweating body. “Come get your gun,” he said instead.
“Jai?”
“I’ll deal with it until you get back.” Jai smiled, giant teeth gleaming, and unzipped his oil-stained jumpsuit. He reached around the back until he pulled out his own piece and then repositioned it, grip out, in his belt.
Ace nodded and took off at a full sprint for the house, Ernie and Sonny behind him.
He disappeared into his room, and Ernie heard the sound of a lock being turned in a wooden drawer, and then he was back in the kitchen.
“Sonny, take care of Duke,” he said seriously, squeezing Sonny’s shoulder. He winked at Ernie. “Ernie, maybe turn on the TV in Burton’s room and watch it there.”
Ernie nodded like he was reassured, but he and Sonny both jumped as the door slammed behind him.
Sonny was the one who locked it, and then he went to the laundry room to degrease his hands and take off his jumpsuit.
“Anythi
ng good on in the day?” he asked.
“Kids’ cartoons,” Ernie said, thinking. “I used to watch them all the time when I woke up.”
A smile split Sonny’s face. “I like those! Do we have more now that we have some cable?”
“Yeah—Ace got Nick. We’re good.”
“Do they have SpongeBob? And the little fairy guys who grant the wishes and fuck shit up?”
Ernie nodded, bemused. He often forgot how much little things meant to Sonny. “C’mon. We’ll sit and watch cartoons and let the guys work.”
They’d no sooner situated themselves on Burton’s bed—Duke quivering between them—and found something distracting on the television when the wave of nausea swept Ernie again.
Sonny stiffened, and they both heard the whine of an engine badly out of alignment as it thump-putted into the garage.
“Sounds like an SUV,” he muttered. “Been beat to shit. Probably overheating.”
Ernie closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth. “They’re bad,” he whispered. “Bad. Drugs and murder bad.”
Next to him, Sonny started to shake. “Ace is out there,” he whispered back.
Ernie grabbed his hand more to reassure himself than to reassure Sonny. “We gotta trust him,” he said, suddenly thinking about Burton. “Ace and Jai, they’re smart. They’re mean. They’ll take care of us.”
Sonny nodded and squeezed Ernie’s hand. “Ace wouldn’t go down without taking some of ’em out first.”
Ernie focused on the television for a moment—and on Sonny’s hand in his. They were both sweating uncomfortably, but neither of them let go of the other’s cold, clammy hand.
Two hours later the bad was still there, and Ernie took a breath. “I should start dinner.”
“Are the drapes drawn?” Sonny asked. “Did we draw the drapes?”
Ernie stuck his head out of the room and saw that, yeah—in his fit of restlessness before he’d snapped, he’d drawn every drape in the house, including, fortunately, the ones in the bedroom.
“Yeah. If I keep my body away from the window, I can put some water on the stove for spaghetti.”
“Tomorrow we’re having fried chicken,” Sonny said, “and Christmas we’re having ham, which is enough to serve all of us including Alba, who comes over in the afternoon when we sit down to play games. Last year she brought Scattergories, which made me feel dumb as hell, but she also brought Monopoly, and I could play the shit out of that, I tell you. But we got green beans for tomorrow and salad for Christmas and I forget what’s going for today—”
“We’ve got frozen peas, Sonny. It’ll be all right.” Ernie swallowed against impatience because he knew what was going on in Sonny’s head.
Sonny was two people in his head. One of them was in the bottom of a deep well, so far down he almost couldn’t see daylight. And at the top of the well, shining like the sun, was Ace, reaching down to help him out.
The other person was outside the well, holding hands with Ace, rooting him on to save that little kid in the well—but only vaguely aware of his own power to help that little kid.
The thing was, both of those people in his head were dependent on Ace to get him out of the well.
So if Ace was in danger, the bottom of that well went black, and the Sonny at the top of the well had to talk about all things under the sun so the Sonny in the bottom didn’t panic.
All the things that made Sonny’s world normal, all the day-to-day-living things that any regular person would take for granted, were all the things Ace gave Sonny on any given day. Sonny had to talk about them or they’d go away.
“Frozen peas are really good, but I don’t like them as much as corn. Corn is good, especially with butter, but Ace says he can’t have too much butter ’cause he’ll get fat, which I wouldn’t mind ’cause he’s so solid, but he’s really health conscious, says he needs to be around forever. I figure I got white-trash bloodlines, I’ll be here for-fuckin-ever, and he says he needs to keep up with me. I think he’s about three years older than me, maybe two, but I’m not great at math so I don’t know. I figure we won’t never know, but he’s the one that takes care of me so I’m guessing he’ll—”
A noise outside caught Ernie’s attention, and he grabbed Sonny’s elbow to shush him.
And Sonny went limp.
He didn’t sag or lose his knees or anything, but his entire body just relaxed, and the terrified conspicuous chatter came to a standstill.
In Sonny’s head, the little boy at the bottom of the well curled up and dreamed of the day he could live in the sunshine with a lover and a dog and a thing to keep him occupied that he loved to do, and the man at the top of the well calmed down because the boy was safe.
Tentatively, Ernie let go of Sonny’s elbow, relieved when he stayed standing but just looked at Ernie tranquilly, waiting for direction.
“Sit at the counter, Sonny, and I’ll make spaghetti and frozen corn for you.”
“I like the corn,” Sonny said quietly.
“I know you do. Come keep me company until the guys come in. I think Jai’s going to be eating here tonight too.”
The noise that caused Ernie to touch Sonny in the first place sounded again—a car engine, in much better repair.
“They sound about done,” Ernie said softly.
“Yeah. Ace and Jai can work miracles together, I guess.”
Fifteen minutes later they heard the car pull out, and fifteen minutes after that—about the time the spaghetti was done and Ernie had Sonny working on the corn and setting the table, Jai and Ace came inside.
They were grimly quiet as they stripped off their coveralls and unlaced their boots. Jai took Ace’s coverall into the laundry room. “I’ll leave it to soak—plenty of bleach,” he said, and Ace nodded.
Sonny stood, paralyzed, looking at him wistfully, and Ernie realized he wanted to touch Ace—hug him, pat him, something—but they rarely if ever did that when someone else was watching.
“Turn on the Christmas tree lights,” Ace told him quietly. “It’ll be nice to see something cheerful.”
Sonny nodded. “Uh, the, uh, customers are gone?”
“Toward San Diego,” Ace muttered. “Jai, did you write it down?”
Jai rattled off a license plate number casually, like he memorized them all the time. “You think we should call now?”
Ace shook his head. “An hour and a half,” he said, like he was thinking. “Even if they’re driving balls-out for San Diego, they’re not going to get there any sooner—not with this traffic. We’ll call the cops then. You wanna make the call?”
Jai shrugged a massive shoulder. “I have a phone that would work nicely.”
Ace’s mouth twisted. “Of course you do. But good. We’ll eat some dinner, let them get good and far from here, and call it in. You want to shower first?”
Jai nodded. “Da. I’ve got clothes in my car.”
“I’ll get ’em,” Ace said. “You get under the water, ASAP.”
Jai went to do just that, and Sonny looked a little desperately at Ace. “Ace…?”
“They used the bathroom,” Ace said, voice thick with disgust. “We had to power hose it out—which reminds me, we gotta buy some of that good-smelling shit and some flowers, like, tomorrow, or Alba’ll be pissed. But they left drugs and shit—and shit too—in there, and it was gross. We were careful and all, but I’d just as soon not touch anything with that crap on my body.” Ace looked apologetically at Duke, who was whining at his feet. “Not even you, buddy. Sorry. Just can’t take the risk.”
“Then I’ll go get Jai’s clothes,” Ernie offered quietly, stunned from his inaction. “Sonny, keep setting the table.”
Sonny’s eyes went to half-mast again, and some of that frantic need to touch Ace went away. “Sure thing,” he said.
Ace’s eyes widened, and he looked at Ernie askance.
Ernie shrugged. He couldn’t very well say I witched him into submission, but essentially that’s what he’d done.
Ace nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll come with you.”
Sonny looked up and smiled, not exactly happy but calm.
The door shut behind them, and Ace said, “What did you do?”
“I… I touched his arm. I… was thinking he had to hush it, sort of, you know, calmed him down.” It had happened before, when they’d first met, but Ernie hadn’t been aware of what a drastic change he’d made.
Ace frowned. “We… we need to only do this in emergencies,” he said. “And this counted, but….” He took a deep breath. “Sonny… he’s getting better at controlling himself, you understand? If he thinks someone else is doing it for him….”
Ernie thought of those two versions of Sonny. The one on the outside of the well hadn’t been completely passive, and he wondered what Sonny had been like when he hadn’t seen a way to help himself. How much darkness would it take before the child at the bottom of the well turned feral, snarling and scratching, even at the hand reaching into the darkness to help?
“If he can’t help himself, he loses hope,” Ernie said, understanding. “I get it. Emergencies only.”
Ace nodded. “Good. Thanks, Ernie. And thanks for calming him down too. I was worried about him.”
Ernie’s mouth quirked up. “Not me?”
Ace half laughed. “Son, you can take care of yourself. Anybody can see that.”
Ace swaggered off to Jai’s little Toyota, and Ernie thought for the umpteenth time that Ace was, what? Four years older than he was? Maybe? But maybe one man’s years were another man’s decades—or maybe some men were just born old.
ABOUT AN hour and a half after Jai and Ace first came in, Ernie felt a sort of transitory nausea—like what you felt when your bowels hadn’t been working and suddenly you had to go really, really bad.
He’d shuddered and looked at Ace weakly as Ace slouched on the couch, Sonny next to him. “They’re in San Diego County now,” he said, seeing the sign in his head. “You’ve got about an hour before they do something really bad.”
Ace nodded casually, and Jai threw him a burner phone. Ace had already looked up a crime tip line, and he was about to dial when Ernie said, “Give me the phone. You’ve got a twang in your voice, Ace. I sound like a college kid—nobody can pick my voice out of a crowd.”