Last Call for the Living

by Peter Farris

  Mexican Mafia.

  “Hicklin in the shitter?” Lipscomb said.

  “Your homeboy came by already,” Cueva replied.

  Lipscomb reacted with disbelief.

  “Say again.”

  “Yeah, man. Homeboy, eh, Hudson?”

  “Hicklin.”

  “Yeah, Hicklin. Came by late. Two nights ago. Lucky he found me here. This is just temporary ’cuz all the cholos round here lookin’ for peashooters to avenge the honor of their old ladies or some shit. That’s why I’m relocatin’ up-country, where I can move the heavy shit to all you Aryan militia end-of-the-world pendejos—”

  “What about Hicklin?” Lipscomb said. He was squeezing one hand into a fist like a junkie trying to produce a vein. Flock thought any second Lipscomb would start destroying furniture.

  “Came by early Friday. Said he couldn’t make it today. The score was set up on the inside, so everything was taken care of. I was paid in advance for the steel and ammo, the Kevlar. Everything else is your business, Holmes.”

  Cueva sensed something was seriously wrong, Lipscomb’s eyes betraying any comfort at this recent development. The Mexican looked to Flock, then addressed his confederate on the couch and his female companion.

  “Ustedes me esperen en el cuarto.”

  The woman took her cigarette but left the money orders. She and Cueva’s partner walked down a hall to a bedroom. Flock inched forward but continued standing. Lipscomb lit a cigarette. He couldn’t suppress his anger anymore.

  “You catch the news today, Cueva?”

  “Nah, man. Don’t watch TV.”

  Lipscomb took a couple of deep drags on the cigarette, his mind working to grasp the unbelievable.

  “Give us the rest of our gear and we’ll be on our way,” he finally said.

  Cueva shrugged and without a word gestured to the ammo boxes and rifle cases by the couch.

  “It’s all there, homey. I cleaned the pistols for you, too, ’cause I believe in good customer service.”

  Cueva pointed to the rucksack, said, “Two HK USP .45s. Nylon holsters and extra mags. Kevlar in that black duffel. I stripped the two Mossys so you could get in and out of here without looking like Special Forces.”

  Lipscomb and Flock gathered up the duffel bags and left. Neither of them said a word in parting to Cueva. The Mexican sat back down, watching from the table in the kitchenette as the door shut. He picked up the rifle. Fingered the trigger guard of the A4, stroking it as he would a house cat in his lap.

  “Vayan con dios, Ministro.”

  * * *

  Lipscomb and Nathan loaded the truck and Nathan drove them back to the motel. At a gas station Lipscomb bought a newspaper and a carton of cigarettes. Back in the pickup he flipped through the “State/Metro” section and found what he was looking for.

  “What is it, Preach? Why did Hicklin pick up his guns before us?”

  “Because he jumped the score.”

  “What?”

  Lipscomb folded the paper in half and pointed to the single column of coverage on page 1.

  “He jumped our fucking score.”

  “But we still had a week?”

  Nathan cracked the window and lit a cigarette. Both men were silent for a while, Lipscomb smarting from Hicklin’s betrayal, Flock taking stock of their situation.

  “So what are we going to do?” he finally said to Lipscomb.

  “Hicklin knew better. If that sumbitch don’t smell the blood, he will.”

  * * *

  They ate at a Waffle House, the two men brooding in a corner booth. They took turns reading the newspaper article again, scouring for details that weren’t there. They sipped their coffee and smoked and said little to each other.

  Two police officers came in for refills. Neither man acknowledged the cops, but Lipscomb was acutely aware of their presence, deciding which one he’d shoot first if they attracted unwanted attention. The police left.

  They ate guarding the plates of food with their forearms, a jailhouse habit the server had seen in other customers but had no explanation for.

  In the motel room they took inventory. The six boxes of buckshot, the five hundred rounds of .45-caliber hollow points, the seven 12-shot magazines. Later Lipscomb paid for the room in cash and walked out to the idling pickup. He tucked the handgun under his thigh and studied a road atlas by the dome light.

  Sensing Flock’s confusion, he spoke of Hicklin and his stint. Twelve/twelve, Lipscomb called it. To serve an entire sentence without parole.

  Other stories followed. How Hicklin once made a garrote from his pillowcase and choked an inmate nearly to death. Took two weeks for the broken blood vessels to heal, Hicklin’s victim avoiding mirrors on account of the tomato juice where his eyes had once been.

  Hicklin did things that would have guaranteed an extended sentence, but he slipped by, Lipscomb explained. Unnoticed by everyone except the brothers who mattered. Hicklin was known as far west as Lompoc and Pelican Bay, up the coast to Lewisburg, points in between. A reliable man. Smart. Muscle and brains. Lipscomb did almost eleven years with Hicklin and a lot of convicts talked the talk, but Hicklin had an aura. Lipscomb described it like a great white swimming, always moving. Searching for prey. An animal with no known enemies.

  But the score was set up by brothers inside and it was their money more than Hicklin’s or anyone else’s. Lipscomb told Flock all the shot callers took a percentage. Scores set up all over the country, and more work for Lipscomb and his crew if the North Georgia S&L job went smooth.

  Too fucking late now.

  Lipscomb reminded Flock how they were polishing the rock for the lifers. Like it was a retirement fund. Hicklin had committed more than just a slight against the Brand.

  He had to be found. Things needed to be set right.

  Lipscomb had some ideas where Hicklin might have gone, too. Mentioned a point person on the outside, some tweeker from Jubilation County who went by the name of Hummingbird. She took care of Hicklin’s finances while he was inside, sent him care packages, even muled some contraband on occasion, all in exchange for drugs and play money. If Hicklin wasn’t hiding out with her in the county of his birth, he wasn’t anywhere.

  This thing just got royally fucked.

  Flock listened, his own anger simmering. He merged onto the highway and drove north toward the connector. Brake lights and hyper-color forever circling the big city.

  They hit patches of construction, then a long stretch of interstate that rose and fell and eventually ended in Jubilation County.

  * * *

  Lucy met the man and spent half an hour with him. Then he dropped her off at the intersection. She waited while the traffic coupled up and flowed toward some unremarkable goal.

  After a while Hicklin pulled his truck over and gestured for her to get in. He seemed preoccupied. Lucy was seventeen. She’d known Hicklin three months. She handed the money over to him. He pocketed the cash. Then lit her cigarette like a gentleman and drove toward home.

  Home was Hicklin’s trailer. Nothing to brag about, but his momma had left it to him. Lucy never asked about how his momma died. He parked the truck on the gravel drive. Walked around the pickup to her side and opened the door. Lucy liked to give him money. It was as if “they” earned it. When Hicklin made love to her she thought it was love by the way his face contorted and twisted. He made noises that sounded like love.

  She didn’t know for sure.

  Lucy figured he must love her considering she’d been with men all day with their things between her legs, but he didn’t care one bit. Even with her defect, that eye the boys in school mocked her for, but he said she was beautiful in a unique way. That was the only way to be beautiful. When Hicklin pushed himself up inside her and the way his arms looked bracing themselves and the way he grunted Lucy thought for sure this must be love.

  That’s all that mattered.

  Hicklin got his first tattoo that summer. She washed it for him and when he said he had t
o go to work she believed him. But he made it clear that her day wasn’t done yet and he’d pick her up the same time and just a few more weeks she’d be his and his alone, so she put on makeup and a sexy dress he’d bought for her and walked that familiar route where the trucks slowed and pulled over and she saw brake lights that always looked like a question being asked and when she approached they got their answer. Then the passenger side door would open as if the language they spoke was a nuance of perception and intent and she always expected it, to have to explain her eye to the men, but for the most part they said nothing, not then or after, and she took the days rolling over into each other as some solemn oath to a world not perfect until she could shower and drink coffee and smoke a cigarette while the tractor-trailers pressed on toward their unremarkable destinations.

  * * *

  Charlie raised his head to the sound of grunts. Hicklin had his feet leveraged against the threadbare couch and was pushing his body off the floor. He counted up to fifty before he stopped and righted himself.

  Hummingbird waved a plate of hot dogs under Charlie’s nose.

  “Don’t mind him. Been at it all morning. Is that a thousand, yet, baby cakes?” she said.

  Hicklin didn’t acknowledge either of them. He wore only a pair of white boxer shorts. His torso was slick with sweat, every muscle clearly defined as he walked past them. A trail of nicotine and alcohol seemed to burn off in his wake like a blanket of clouds on a summer morning.

  Hummingbird waved the plate of hot dogs under Charlie’s nose again, scolding him when she said, “You got to eat, Coma.”

  Charlie looked down at his rope-bound wrists. He thought about swinging his fists at Hummingbird, but there had just never been any fight in him. He reached up and took an uncooked hot dog and ate it instead.

  “Want a cigarette? I like to smoke while I eat. Helps the digestion. Did you know that?” Hummingbird said.

  She held a lit cigarette in front of Charlie, but he waved it away. He ate hungrily. When he finished the first hot dog he reached up and grabbed another. Hummingbird stood patiently, holding the plate.

  “This ain’t no way to live,” she said. “But what is?”

  When he’d finished eating he asked for water. Then he started to cry. She tousled his hair playfully, as if smitten with a long-lost nephew.

  “I’ve got to use the bathroom,” Charlie said, embarrassed, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “Number one or number two? Because we shit in the outhouse out back.”

  “I’ve got to pee,” Charlie whimpered.

  “You can’t go alone.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s against the rules.…”

  Hummingbird looked to Hicklin for direction. He nodded. She led Charlie to the bathroom.

  “I can’t go alone?” Charlie asked.

  But she ignored the protest. Ushered Charlie in front of the toilet. She undid his pants and pulled out his penis, watching him with the temperament of someone walking a dog.

  * * *

  Hicklin had bathed himself with a washcloth and changed into fresh clothes. He sat down in the recliner to read a book, one of three or four he’d brought with him along with a dictionary. Tactical Advantage: A Definitive Study of Personal Small-Arms Tactics. A History of the Vikings. A Donald Westlake paperback. The Psychopathic God. Hours reading. Smoking. The shotgun and semiauto always within reach.

  Charlie slept for disorienting stretches.

  Sometimes he could feel Hummingbird running her hands through his hair. Charlie kept his eyes closed, picturing a supersized Estes Interceptor E model rocket, almost forty inches long with laser-cut balsa fins and a parachute recovery. In his mind the rocket was ready to launch, weather conditions ideal, comforting dreams ready to accept him once again …

  … himself in an open field. A slight wind out of the east …

  … awake again. Hummingbird on the couch smoking her drugs, staring at him as though he were an animal at the zoo. A song on the radio was interrupted by static, the signal strength fading, then surging. Hicklin was gone. Charlie closed his eyes and tried like hell to get back to his dream.

  * * *

  Day turned to night. Charlie feigned sleep, always listening, stealing glances when he could. Hummingbird was in the kitchen making sandwiches. He didn’t see Hicklin anywhere.

  Charlie bolted upright and ran toward the door, hobbling, the chair hanging from his waist by a loosened knot. He tried the knob and the door opened. Charlie could feel Hicklin over his shoulder. Hummingbird taunting him, her voice the only one for miles.

  “Git ’im. Git ’im. Git ’im!”

  Charlie made it into the open air. Dense, moonlit woods ahead. He stumbled, icy with alarm.

  Hicklin’s hands were on him in a matter of moments. He was picked up, chair and all, and carried back inside the safe house. Hummingbird clapped her hands, applauding the show. He struggled, but Hicklin was too strong. He punched Charlie in the head and Charlie went limp.

  * * *

  He woke on a bare mattress in one of the cottage’s small bedrooms. A ratty blanket had been thrown over him. His wrists were tied.

  A throbbing headache was accompanied by waves of nausea—pain on par with getting dropped off a roof.

  Hummingbird appeared in the doorway wearing only her underwear and a tank top. She slid under the blanket with Charlie. Undid his pants. Kissed him. Charlie turned his face away and moaned, a sound stifled by the duct tape covering his mouth.

  He felt her sweat and spittle against his cheeks. She reached inside the waistband of his underwear and grabbed him, started tugging. Satisfied with the result of her efforts, she stopped to unbutton his shirt, Charlie thinking, Stop, as if he could will her to consider what she was doing. But there was no reasoning with someone who lived for what was in front of her and nothing more.

  Flush with embarrassment, Charlie pushed his tongue against the tape, but it didn’t budge. He turned his head from side to side. Hummingbird worked at him with her hand. Then she went down and swallowed him.

  She slid up his body until they were face-to-face like lovers. Her breath was fetid. She pulled the tape off his mouth and silenced him with a finger to her lips.

  “Stop,” he said, ignoring the request. “Please stop.”

  Hummingbird adjusted her underwear, then reached down and angled him inside her. She made a sound when she settled her weight on him. He instinctively pushed back, thrusting, ashamed and helpless to the wants of his body.

  His face froze when he ejaculated. Shocked by everything his trembling body was doing.

  “It’s okay, baby cakes. I used to be a schoolteacher,” Hummingbird said, cooing, her movements slowing now. She hunched over and nuzzled Charlie’s cheek.

  A soft kiss on an ear. A caress with a fingertip.

  She whispered something else.

  “He’s watching us.”

  Blood runs black and cold.

  Sirens come to life.

  Search lights blind my eyes.

  The mountains are in sight.

  SIX

  Tommy Lang didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he clasped them behind his back. He looked over the knot of reporters, the two linkup vans. Affiliates from Atlanta, their curt, polished correspondents holding those funny-looking microphones. He said a few words to begin the press conference, answered some preliminary questions and stepped aside. Rain clouds hung low. A rep from the Georgia State Patrol took questions. Then Sallie Crews took over at the steps to the government building.

  She spoke of what they knew, Lang curious if “they” included him. She didn’t elaborate on leads or what the house-to-house searches turned up, or the helo flyovers with their thermal imaging. Crews declined to reveal what suspects, if any, they had.

  Lang thought the same thing as everybody else there.

  This guy’s in the wind. Forever. And Charlie Colquitt is probably dead.

  What’s the point?

  But
Sallie Crews was a commanding presence. Her voice had a practiced authority that let everyone know this wasn’t her first rodeo. A picture of Charlie Colquitt was released to the media in Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga and Asheville. An agency liaison was pushing the story to go national so that a picture of Charlie might appear on a couple of million TV screens. A photograph of a pale, nondescript young man. With a face that unfortunately warranted little compassion.

  In private Crews had shown Lang a list of recent parolees, probationers and absconders who had ties to white supremacist gangs. She had already been in touch with gang units at prisons statewide and as far west as Victorville and Pelican Bay in California. In the Southeast alone the number of potential suspects pushed two hundred.

  The news conference ended. A female reporter in high heels giggled as she botched one take after another. Another reporter checked his hair in the reflection from a van’s side mirror. They were never as impressive in person, Lang thought.

  He hung back a few feet while Crews scrolled through e-mails on her mobile. Always seemed to be something important being messaged to her. Lang studied her and wondered if she took a drink now and then. The fantasy of a boozy night with her occupied him briefly. She turned in his direction.

  “Beer joints?” Crews said, as if she’d read his mind.

  Lang cocked his head. Say again?

  Crews frowned. “You mentioned a pool hall and liquor store where the highway dead-ends,” she explained. “Ten minutes from the bank?”

  “Well, there’s KB’s Billiards and Bird Dog—that’s the package store. Both of ’em right off Route Twenty. That’s the end of Jubilation County, as far as most folks go. Nothing but the national forest and mountains beyond it.”

  “Know those places?”

  “They’re both for the paycheck-to-paycheck, hard-timin’ country folk. Everybody knows everybody in those joints.”

  “Let’s take a ride,” she said.

  They walked to his patrol car. Crews wore a windbreaker despite the August heat, khaki pants, black boots, her hair pulled back smartly. Lang almost opened the door of his cruiser for her and immediately felt like a fool. He radioed Bower and instructed the deputy to meet them.