by Eric Beetner
The crystal I’d scored had been cheap rocks. If the good shit is diamonds, these were rhinestones. The high was wearing off before my nose even stopped dripping into the back of my throat. Could have been all the damn thinking I was doing. Working out a new plan, wondering what would happen to the shitheel once I found him. All the shitheels.
I saw a sign for a rest area. At least I think that’s what it was. Damn thing blurred right past me and didn’t have the decency to look in focus. I merged over and took the exit anyway. I’d been right. Rest area to stretch your legs, take a piss, have a picnic or some other shit.
Two Coke machines sat inside the little overhang right outside the shitter. I had to feed a crumpled dollar into the fuckin’ thing six times before it would take, and even then I still owed another seventy-five cents. For a goddamn Coke. Shit.
I flipped open my phone and dialed Evvie, my girlfriend. She was always really cool when I took off for work. Never gave me shit about it, never asked too many questions. But since this trip was dragging into extra days, I figured I’d give her the update.
I don’t keep a calendar or nothing, but I think I caught her on the rag.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
“Workin’, baby. I told you that.”
“You was supposed to be back yesterday. You missed spaghetti night.”
“Shit, darlin’, I’m sorry. Things are gettin’ crazy over here. It’s gonna be another day or so.”
“Another day?”
I worked hard to keep my cool. She had no right to give me shit like that. I tried like hell to take the high road.
“Two tops,” I said.
“Skeeter, I swear you better get one of them iPhones so’s I can text you. Everybody uses texting these days. I wouldn’t have to wait until you think to call me.”
“Them things are, like, four hundred bucks. Fuck that. I’m calling you now, ain’t I? Why do I need to text you?”
“Because that’s what couples do.” She said like she was talking to a real dumb-ass. High road. High. Road.
“Oh, you mean, like, sexy pictures and shit?”
“No goddammit. I want you to tell me where you are, when you’re coming home. Stuff like that. It’s not for taking titty pictures with. It’s called a smart phone, not a dumb-ass phone.”
High road was a dead end.
I sucked in one deep breath and tried not to raise my voice. “Now you listen to me, you stupid cunt, you call me a dumb-ass again and I’ll cut those titties right off your chest and you won’t be taking pictures for no one. I’m fuckin’ callin’ you now. You better like it ’cause that’s all you’re getting. And when I do get home you better shape up your fucking attitude.”
I snapped the phone shut before she could say something stupid to piss me off even more. I wanted like hell to smash the damn phone into pieces and crush it with my boot, but I might still need to call Corgan on it so I held it together. I needed something though, so I took out my gun and shot the Coke machine. Three times. It leaked dark Coke like blood from the three holes. Well, I think one was Mountain Dew.
A mother and her daughter came rushing out of the ladies room and ran to their car. Little girl didn’t even have time to pull up her panties. The mom blocked her like a human shield. Now, that’s a good momma for you. Put yourself in harm’s way for your kids. I respected that. More than my mom ever did for me.
I slurped down the rest of the Coke can in one chug and crushed can underfoot, then I got in the car and kept on for the airport.
51
BRENT
When I got to the shop the car had been pulled out of the hole in the wall. The inside looked like someone’s guts in the middle of a transplant. Like, the new liver hadn’t been put in yet. Just a big empty space and a lot of mess around it. The front (formerly) glass wall was crisscrossed with yellow police tape. Pulling in I saw one cop car left over and, as I got out of my car, I could see a lone cop standing in the rental shop, picking through the rubble.
I stuck a piece of gum in my mouth, chewed it fast for a dozen chews, then spit it out. Best I could do without a toothbrush. My B.O. was unfortunately inoperable. I did my best to smooth down my hair in the side view mirror, but if this cop was worth a damn he’d know I’d been through a rough night and day.
My best bet was to play dumb. Easy enough. I’d been feeling like a right idiot for the past forty-eight hours. I stepped forward and let my jaw drop at the sight of it all.
“Holy hell. What happened to the shop?”
The cop looked up, moved a hand to the pistol on his hip, then relaxed when he saw me. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, I work here.” I looked around at the damage. It wasn’t hard to act stunned. “I guess I used to work here.”
“Are you the owner?”
“No. Just a worker.” I kicked a small pile of glass with the toe of my shoe. “Jesus . . .”
“We’ve been trying to reach the owner all day.”
“Oh, Clyde just had a baby. His wife did, I mean. He hasn’t been around.” I shook my head like it was all too much, which it was. “He isn’t going to like this.” I looked up at the cop. “What happened?”
It was a good chance to see what they knew and didn’t know. If he mentioned Corgan’s name, or Griffin’s, it would only be a matter of time before he got to mine. I started liking the fact that we were standing next to an airport because my next move was to buy a ticket to anywhere and leave this place for good. Let the lovers have Virginia.
“Someone drove an SUV through the front window of the establishment. We’re working on a motive.”
“We don’t keep any cash on hand. Everything is done by credit card these days. Any idea who?”
“It was empty when we got here. Someone from another rental counter called it in.”
I looked around, nodded my head. “Well, I’ll be.”
“Do you have some I.D. on you, sir?”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” I handed over my license. If he didn’t know anything, I had nothing to hide. The thing I did want to keep from him were my car keys, which I’d come back to get. If they started to do any inventory or CSI-type stuff on the rental business they’d see that the Infiniti wasn’t rented to anyone. I didn’t want to get pulled over in a car now associated with a crime scene. So I needed to find a way to dig through the mess and find the ruins of the drawer where I always put my junk when I worked. I hated that Clyde made me wear the pleated Dockers and I hated more the way my keys jangled and rubbed in those knee-deep pockets. I kept too much shit on my key ring, I knew that. Everyone gives out those little plastic cards with the bar codes on them—for the gym, the club at the grocery store, the library. I had too many of those and the little bottle opener I got at the Redskins game that time and then the keys themselves. Car, house, back door to the house, rental shop, some key that used to work in the van I had a few years ago. I never got around to clearing that off. So, yeah, it was a big chunk of noisy metal in my pocket, so I always took them out and put them in the drawer just like how I took them out and tossed them in the same spot on the kitchen counter every time I got home.
Home. A place I couldn’t get to without those keys.
I started shuffling around, moving debris with my shoes as I edged close to where the drawer at least used to be. It also put me closer to the cop. He handed me back my license.
“Sorry I can’t really let you snoop around too much. It’s still a crime scene after all.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, still trying to snoop as much as he’d allow. “What happened to the car? You said a car went through the front?”
“SUV. It’s at impound being swept for prints.”
I toed over a fiberboard hunk of the former counter. The drawer had to be in the pile I was standing on. The one Skeeter had plowed directly into. “Well, you’ll find my prints on pretty much every car in the lot. Hope that doesn’t mean you think I did it.” I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back.
“Should I think you did it?”
My face fell. “No, no. I was just . . . I was kidding. I mean, my prints are probably on all the cars. It’s my job after all. I mean I move them, I clean them out, I do a lot of—”
“Relax.” He looked more closely at my face. “You cut yourself shaving?”
“Huh?” My hand went to my face by instinct. “Oh, yeah. Probably. I use an electric but the battery was dead so I broke out the old twin blade. Guess I’m out of practice.” I smiled and laughed like an insurance salesman. Talking myself into a jail cell.
“Yeah. So out of practice you knicked yourself on the forehead a few times.”
He was matching the tiny cuts and scrapes on my face with the pattern of flying glass and flying SUVs. I didn’t like the math he was calculating.
“Is it true that a criminal returns to the scene of the crime?” My lame idea of changing the subject. I couldn’t do worse if I gave him the license plate of the Tahoe.
“Very rarely,” he said. He squinted at me. “But it does happen.”
52
CLYDE
I tried to speak with a tongue that was stuck to the roof of my mouth. Sweat ran into my eyes, stinging them. Corgan took my baby and held her for a minute. “Here, Paulie,” he said to one of the guys. “You’d better take her because if you don’t . . . if someone doesn’t take this kid from me . . . I AM GOING. TO. CRUSH. HER FUCKING HEAD. WITH MY BOOT.”
The baby screamed and I thought in that second that she had her mother’s lungs, that she was a hell of a yeller. Chip off the old lady. I still couldn’t speak. Corgan didn’t look grandfatherly any more. He looked maniacal. A ball of spit had formed on his lower lip as he screamed and now, as he turned to talk to me, I watched it go from bottom lip to upper lip, a tiny, white spit ball. I fought the urge to giggle.
“I imagine you have something you want to say.” He raised his eyebrows.
“They were gone when I got to the Waffle House. I didn’t know the stash was gone. I didn’t have any idea. I just got the car back and the family . . . the couple . . .” The baby kept screaming. I couldn’t focus on what he was saying, I just kept watching that spit ball.
“Ah yes. This couple I’ve been hearing about.” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I’d really like to meet them.”
Paulie was shushing my daughter, patting her bottom. I wanted to put a bullet in his brain.
“Great. I’ll take you there. We’ll go and get them.”
“Excellent idea. What’s their address?”
“I, well, I don’t have it on me.”
He wrinkled his nose and smiled a little. “I’m sure we can find it. Now,” he clapped his hands once and rubbed them together, “I find a cigar helps to calm me down. If you’ll excuse me, please.”
He accepted a long cigar from one of his men and pulled a cigar clip from his pocket. He cut off the end as he walked a ways in the distance. He motioned for Paulie and the baby to stay back, gesturing to the cigar, like he didn’t want her exposed to the smoke. That was something, right? A guy worried about a baby inhaling smoke couldn’t turn around and murder her, right?
He nodded to the other two and then moved toward me. I was caught between wanting to run, wanting to fight, and just wanting everything to be over. They went for my gut first. It’s always the gut. A guy can’t fight back after getting the wind knocked out of him. It’s all he can do to stand upright. They stayed away from my face, but everything else seemed to be fair game. My bruised ribs broke this time. I tried to breathe in and felt the ends of bone rubbing together. Still they punched me. Back, sides, nuts, sides again. I fell to the ground and curled up as tight as I could. I fell asleep to the sound of my baby crying.
53
SKEETER
Sometimes I’m a goddamn genius.
I pulled into the parking lot past the airport, the one with all the car rental places. Right away I saw the ruined shell of Clyde’s place after I’d destroyed it. Made me grin real wide, I tell you what. Almost as much as when I saw the king shitheel, Brent, standing in the rubble.
As sluggish as I was the last few miles into Richmond, seeing him standing there got my blood moving again. Almost as much as if I’d had a fresh bump up the ol’ snooter.
Like I said, super genius.
Only one problem—a cop standing with him. But like the old philosopher Ice Cube once said—Fuck tha police.
Brent was my ticket. Things had gotten so screwed up in this deal that nothing short of me walking in with all these jerks’ heads on a platter would keep me from losing my job with Corgan. And when you get dismissed from Corgan’s organization there’s no farewell party, no severance package and no gold watch. Just a bullet in the back and don’t let the shovel hit you in the ass on the way into your shallow grave.
No way was I gonna let anyone or anything stop me from getting Brent and keeping him this time. No way.
I parked a safe distance away because I didn’t want them to see me walking up. Not until I wanted them to. I weaved my way through the rows of parked cars and out to the front of the building. I wanted to come in the same way I did when I was driving that big ass SUV through the glass. I had to duck under the yellow tape and my feet crunching over glass let them know I was there. Brent saw me first.
“That’s the guy. He drove through the front.” He pointed at me like he saw a ghost.
The cop had been giving him the business, I think. He had a notebook open and the page was almost full. The pinched furrow of his eyebrows told me the cop wasn’t buying whatever bullshit Brent was shoveling.
“That’s the guy?” the cop asked.
“Yeah. His name is—”
I drew my gun from behind my back and shot the cop between the eyes. Well, okay, it wasn’t dead center or anything. It hit off to the right and took out a big chunk of skull. From right above his arched eyebrow back to where his hairline had receded to.
A good deal of blood got on Brent because he had been moving behind the cop for protection like a little girl who thinks she’s seen the boogeyman.
So I said, “Booo.”
I bent over and took the cop’s handcuffs from him and turned to Brent.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The pussy was still standing there all in shock and totally still. Cop blood dripped down his face and he didn’t even have the sense to wipe it off.
“I said let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“You’re gonna help me out. In case you didn’t notice this whole thing has gone to shit. Finding you here was the best luck I’ve had in a week.”
I pushed on his shoulder to get him moving, motivating him along with the gun. We left the cop in a pile of broken glass and fallen road maps of the greater Richmond area.
I brought Brent to my car, the pussy still too stunned to say anything. I put him in the passenger seat and cuffed his hand to the door handle so he wouldn’t get any ideas of trying to bail out once we got rolling. I was pretty sure he wasn’t gonna try anything after he saw me shoot a cop in the face. What can I say? I was amped up.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“First things first, I need to go see a guy.”
I knew an old dealer in downtown Richmond. Pretty sure he was still in business. We were headed to see him either way. After this little bit of good news, I deserved a reward.
“Okay, wait, wait, wait,” he said.
“No, don’t wait, wait, wait. We finish this now. Shit’s gone on too long.”
“But you don’t understand.”
I backhanded him with the butt of the gun. Missed his nose but cracked his teeth pretty good. That shut him up. I cranked the car to life and realized I’d left the Slayer playing in the CD. Had it turned up pretty fucking loud, too. We both jumped. I smiled, but turned it down a little. I’d see my guy downtown, get a little energy to make it through to the end of this thing. And if shitheel started talking again, I’d just
crank up the metal.
54
SEAN
I stared at Ernie, waiting for him to say something to me. He got up and poured another drink. He tossed it back and his throat worked like he was trying not to gag. Linda sat on the sofa with her hand pressed to her bandaged side. Betty was shaking her head like one of those bobble-head dolls. Back and forth, back and forth, with her lips pursed like she was smelling a fart.
I wanted to go home. To Detroit. I’d rather deal with my brother and his partners than deal with Linda’s father. Married sixteen years and he still made me feel like a pimply teenager caught with my hand up his daughter’s top.
“Come with me,” Ernie said, setting his glass down. When Betty and Linda rose to follow, he held out a hand. “Just Sean. You two stay here.”
We passed through the kitchen where Becky was just unloading a pan of cookies onto a plate. I picked one up as we passed and gave her a wink. She frowned in response.
Ernie led me down the basement stairs. He had to duck his head as he moved, weirdly reiterating how much bigger than me he was. The basement was old and musty, but he kept a desk against the wall in the back. An old green leather recliner sat in the middle of the room with a pedestal-style ashtray beside it. A bin of old magazines sat in one corner. I pegged them for Playboys. A gun rack hung above the desk and he pulled down two of the four rifles that rested there, setting them on the desk.
He opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out a metal box. He unlocked it with a key from his pocket and pulled out the .45 resting inside. He also pulled out spare clips and boxes of cartridges for the rifles.
“What are we doing, Ernie?” I hated the sound of my voice. The bare cement walls made me sound like I was talking in a locker room.
He shoved a clip into the .45 and tucked it in the back of his jeans. Then he picked up a rifle and handed it to me, motioning that I should load it.