The Last Second Chance: An Ed Earl Burch Novel

by Jim Nesbitt

  “How the fuck could Uncle Harlan be fond of someone who’d have his nephew killed?”

  She was screeching now. Eldon was scrunching his shoulders, grimacing at the sound of her voice. He held his hand up, palm toward her.

  “I know, it’s twisted, true enough. But Mac and Unc’ have been foxin’ with each other for damn near thirty years. They hate each other, they’ve ripped each other off, but they been dancin’ this dance so long, I’m not sure Unc’ will know what to do with Mac gone and nobody to go up against. I think Unc’ actually likes the ol’ boy.”

  “Too damn late for that. He’ll be pissed, right?”

  “Yeah, but he’ll take it out on me. You’re his shinin’ pride and can’t do no wrong. Just keep your mouth shut and let me tell it this way -- Mac pulled a double-cross, I smelled it coming and Mac got killed in the crossfire. You weren’t even in the bar. You weren’t part of the deal. You were sitting in the car, listenin’ to the radio, keepin’ the engine runnin’, gettin’ us gone when things went crazy.”

  They rode on in silence. The thunderheads were gone. So was the lightning. The worn mountain peaks were out there in the darkness, black bulks felt rather than seen.

  She shivered, her mind replaying the images of slugs from her gun slamming into Bear’s back and skull and the third eye popping into the forehead of Mac Bodine, centered just below the crest of his gray pompadour.

  She didn’t try to lock these visions out of her mind; she forced herself to watch them roll across like some grainy Super Eight snuff loop. No tits or cocks. None of her screams, either. Just two men dying at her hand. And just one thought rolling along with the images.

  This is what it’s like. This is killing. I did it. I’d do it again to anybody who tried to kill me and mine.

  It made her feel sharp and cold, like an ice pick left in the snow.

  When they finally ground through the last of the rutted gravel switchbacks in the half-mile road to Uncle Harlan’s house, it was four in the morning and he was standing on the porch, a pump shotgun cradled in his arms and a Colt stuffed down his trousers. About a dozen other men, carrying shotguns and Ruger Mini-14s, the famous long-gun of the Ku Klux Klan, milled about in the front yard, smoking and talking in low voices.

  “Where you two been?”

  Eldon told it the way he said he would. Harlan said nothing and looked down at the worn slats of the porch, worrying splits in the wood with the toe of his left boot. He looked up.

  “They was here. About ten of ‘em. Dogs got wind of ‘em comin’ up the holler. Had to bust up my poker game. Joe Pride got killed but we got seven of theirs. Sorry bastards.”

  She could see the front windows had been blown out and the big wooden door kicked in. She walked over to feel the bright yellow splinters that marked where the hinges had popped free of the door frame. Harlan walked over and stared into her eyes.

  “You done the killin’, didn’t you, girl?”

  She was afraid to answer. He kept staring.

  “You killed Mac.”

  “Yessir. He tried to kill Eldon.”

  Her voice was filled with dread and pride.

  “Good. He tried to kill me. Glad you did it. Saves me the trouble.”

  Harlan leaned his shotgun against the porch railing. He walked over to Eldon and knocked him down the steps with one punch.

  “You know what that’s for.”

  Her uncle turned and walked into his dark, slug-scarred house.

  Eldon had expectations. Once, they were vague. Now, with blood on her hands, they were concrete and certain. Carla Sue had other ideas.

  A cherry-red Cutlass caught her eye one night while she and Eldon were cruising through Mousy’s, a drive-in that served up death dogs, fat cheeseburgers and pit barbecue. So did the car’s owner, Buddy Deal, a 28-year-old garage mechanic with curly blond hair and a chipped front tooth, a layabout who lived to run hard and trade paint and dented sheet metal on short track Saturday nights.

  “That thing drive as good as it looks, or is it like you, all show and no go?”

  Buddy’s friends hooted.

  “Better check yourself for a suckin’ chest wound, Buddy-row, that sassy thing done sent a round clean through you.”

  Buddy walked up to the side of Eldon’s car.

  “Only one way to find out, little sister.”

  He tossed her the keys. She fishtailed out of Mousy’s lot and headed out a wicked road with a two-mile straightaway and a sudden hairpin turn, followed by a slalom run up the side of Flat Top Mountain. Buddy draped himself into the corner of the passenger side bucket, lazily smoking a Camel as she banged through the gears and slammed the Cutlass hard through the curves.

  They pulled onto an overlook at the top of the mountain. She sat on the warm hood of the Cutlass, legs dangling over the grille. He stood in front of her, leaning close, resting a hand on either side of her hips.

  “I got one question, little sister -- do you fuck as good as you drive?”

  She didn’t answer. She unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly and wrapped her hand around his cock.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  His hard hands cupped her ass. The belt buckle felt cold as it whisked along the side of her bare thigh. She could feel the heat of the engine through the back of her open blouse.

  Eldon felt cheated. He broke into her room one night, his words rushed by the meth and roughened by the whiskey. He started to climb into her bed but was stopped by a cocked Colt jammed into his right nostril.

  “You’re about to be deader than hell if you don’t put your ass in reverse.”

  “Aw, you wouldn’t shoot your cousin. Now, put that thing away.”

  “You got three options and only one of them leaves you alive -- I scream and Uncle Harlan comes in here and kills you, I pull this trigger and splatter what few brains you got, or you get gone.”

  She backed him out of her bed and right out the open window he climbed in through. But not before he made a promise she never thought he’d have the guts to keep.

  Her next summer at Harlan’s was her last. Two bikers boomed up the holler. Low-slung Harleys with bright chrome and Fat Bob gas tanks in deeply lacquered black. The lead rider was tall, with ropy muscles, a handlebar moustache, swept-back hair that fell to his shoulders like a black mane and eyebrows that slashed across his face like a single stroke of grease pencil.

  His second was short and fat, with a belly that rolled out between the flaps of his leather vest, kinky brown hair topped by a bandana tied Aunt Jemima style and piggish eyes that hid behind sweaty flesh that looked like it had been dipped in bacon fat.

  They weren’t part of Mac Bodine’s old outfit. They were from an East Coast gang that bought crystal meth from Harlan’s lab, two outsiders who drifted through mountain towns in summer and down to Florida when it got cold. June could find them in Blowing Rock; December in Daytona Beach.

  “Can we talk to you, Mr. Cantrell? Got some business to discuss.”

  “You talkin’ to me now.”

  “Some place private.”

  “Boys, ain’t nothin’ more private than these hills. Don’t mind the girl. She’s quiet as a tomb.”

  They were standing on the porch. The two bikers were at the bottom of four framed railroad ties that served as steps. Harlan was cupping a hand-rolled cigarette in his left hand. Carla Sue stood to her uncle’s left and slightly behind him, the Colt in her right hand, cocked and unlocked, hidden by his back.

  The bikers had a proposition; a cut of the profits on heroin and coke shipped wholesale from a Texas outfit in return for the use of his many mountain safehavens.

  The Texans would move the stuff north to the hideaways. The bikers would pick it up.

  “It’s a stretch for me, boys. Lemme think on it. Give you an answer in the mornin.’ Stayin’ at the
same place as always?”

  Pig Eyes stepped up on the second railroad tie.

  “What the fuck is there to think about? It’s a no-brainer. You’ll be gettin’ a shitload of jack just for lettin’ us use your hideouts. C’mon, man. Roll with it.”

  “Can it, Dirt. We’re strangers here and this is Mister Cantrell’s house.”

  “The fuck you talkin’ ‘bout? We’re offerin’ a sweet deal if this country puke can see it. You gone soft, or what?”

  The tall biker grabbed Pig Eyes by the hair and threw him into the dirt. When the fat biker tried to get up, he got a boot to the belly, then a gloved fist to the jaw.

  “Mr. Cantrell, I apologize. Dirt here’s a shithead and I’m sorry he had to open his yap. I hope you won’t let him sour you on the deal. It’s a good one and you know we’re good people to do business with. ‘Ceptin’ Dirt.”

  “Don’t know that, don’t know much ‘bout you at all. Like what I see even less. Now get that sorry sack of puss off my land. You come back here tomorrow for coffee. Alone. We’ll hash it out then.”

  She waited until the Harleys faded from earshot. She eased down the hammer on the Colt and looked her uncle in the eye.

  “I say fuck ‘em. Bad enough you’re already dealing with these sorry needledicks. What happens when you bring in these jokers from Texas? They’ll gang up on you sure as shit. Start runnin’ you out of your own hideouts. Take that lab of yours too.”

  “Enough, girl.”

  “Might kill you along the way. You know they might. Get in here, learn what’s what. Try to take you down.”

  “Might do that anyway, girl. Gettin’ a mouth on you, know that? Been hangin’ round that Eldon too much. Or is it Buddy Deal? Didn’t think I knowed about that, did you?”

  “Don’t shift gears, Unc’. You know I’m right. And Eldon’s too gutless to teach me to cuss.”

  Harlan cut the deal. With one proviso. He set the schedule. He arranged for his drivers to meet the Texans east of Knoxville and drive the loads to the hideaways. His boys would drive the loads to the bikers.

  The Texans squawked. So did the bikers. They wanted more volume. And more control. But they did business.

  Carla Sue was wrong about Eldon. On the morning after the tenth run from Texas, Harlan sat over his morning coffee. Eldon walked in with a Remington pump and scattered her uncle’s brains across the kitchen table.

  “Old man doin’ things the old way. Thought you was still runnin’ shine, didn’t you? Dotin’ on that girl and treatin’ me like a sorry old mule. Wouldn’t listen to a thing I had to say. Let’s see what that cunt has to say about this.”

  The Colt was upstairs. She was in the living room. Eldon was between her and the stairs. She could hear him slipping fresh shells into the shotgun as he walked through the dining room. She flattened herself next to the doorway nearest to him, gripping an iron shovel from the fireplace set.

  As he stepped through the doorway, she smacked him in the face, breaking his nose with the flat blade of the shovel, feeling the hit vibrate through her forearms, hearing the metal strike bone like a muffled gong.

  He went down like a deer taking a slug. She grabbed the shotgun and made sure the safety was off.

  “You gonna tell me who set you to this, cuz.”

  “Go to hell, bitch.”

  “You gonna die right now, Eldon. But you gonna tell.”

  His nose was bloody and flat. He was sprawled on his back, his feet in the living room, his head and torso in the dining room. She stood near his feet and aimed at his left knee.

  The boom and his scream filled the room. She smelled the burnt powder. He vomited a thin ribbon of white gruel on a shirt of red and green plaid.

  “You gonna tell me what I want to know. Which of them bikers?”

  She was wrong about that, too. Eldon gave her two names. And a reason to head back to Texas. Maybe Mexico. She let him bleed to death on the floor.

  Chapter 11

  Cider Jones stared into the eyes of a woman who would see no more.

  He did this with all his murder cases. He would sit on his heels, leaning over their faces, ignoring the bustle of the evidence techs, ignoring the gore of a knife or bullet wound, ignoring the stench of days-old death, carrying on a silent conversation with the dead.

  They never answered. It didn’t matter. With this quiet act of communion, his eyes drank in the soul of the victim and gave him answers to questions he had yet to ask. When the time was right, they would rise to the surface, dark and fast, like fish from the bottom of a deep pool.

  His grandmother, the daughter of a Comanche medicine man, taught him this. The redneck in him, from a father who was an Odessa roustabout, lounged in the back of his mind with a thick wad of Redman bulging his cheek, spitting dark jets of juice at such mysticism.

  Cider Jones did it anyway.

  Her eyes were green, flecked with bronze. Her hair was full and frizzy, tinted a reddish blond. Her nose was wide and flat, her lips fleshy and flared, her brown skin deeply tanned. Cruise-ship, yacht or island dark. Not Houston poolside.

  Someone got close enough to pump four heavy-caliber bullets into her chest. Close enough for powder burns to blacken a wheat-colored sun dress. Close enough to make her back look like somebody had gouged out the flesh with an ice cream scoop.

  The shoot took place in the living room. Two, maybe three days ago. The shooter was in a hurry, taking only enough time to drag her into the dining room, away from prying eyes and the chance parting of heavy drapes drawn across the front window, but rippled by a stream of cold from the air conditioning vents.

  No signs of a struggle. No signs that the place had been stripped. That made it a hit. By a killer she knew. Maybe.

  They were in a town house off San Felipe, near Post Oak. Upscale Anglo turf. Young bankers, brokers and oil traders on the come. Not a tall Hispanic looker with muscular legs, hair colored by somebody far cheaper than Lady Clairol, a rose tattooed along her ankle and skin that looked like charred mahogany.

  The kept talent in this neighborhood had a silken finish and styles so carefully colored the hair never looked like it got touched by a bottle. This one took her tequila straight and raw. Other things, too.

  On her left wrist, there was a bracelet of coiled copper. At the break, two sculpted heads with screaming mouths, glaring eyes and flowing hair faced each other. Medusas, maybe.

  He eased out of his crouch, hearing the cartilage chips in his left knee pop and crack. His sacrifice to the god-a-mighty of Texas, that high altar, high school football. One last look at her eyes as he rubbed the gimpy joint, his fingers feeling the zipper scars through light poplin pants and the chips that floated like pebbles just under the rubbery skin that covered his kneecap.

  The bedroom didn’t tell him much. Just that she didn’t live here. The closet held three blouses, two pairs of slacks and the loud print of an off-the-shoulder number his girlfriend called a ya-ya dress. Two pairs of sandals were on the floor.

  In the dresser were bras, panties and two pairs of well-worn jeans. Some jewelry scattered on top.

  The living room told him more. Dried and blackened blood on the carpet. Her pocketbook, twenty-five hundred dollars in cash, a Smith & Wesson Model 459 in matte chrome, a passport and an international driver’s license. Astrid Quinones. From Matamoros.

  One of those high-dollar metal briefcases in gunmetal gray sat beside a couch covered in sea-green print. Triple scales were on the coffee table. A scratch pad sat beside scales. A 214 telephone number and the letters EEB were scrawled in pencil on the top sheet.

  By their threesome, on a small table next to an overstuffed chair covered in the same print as the couch, sat an empty shot glass and two juice glasses -- one half-filled with water, the other with two fingers of Coke and melted ice.

  Just like you might see at Louie’s.
On a Tuesday or Thursday night. And sometimes Fridays.

  Chapter 12

  T-Roy backhanded the man across the face, starting the blow from his knees, driving the man toward the wall, following with a forearm chop to the windpipe, screaming as the man slid to the floor coughing and gagging.

  “¡Cono! ¡Eres mierda!”

  A boot to the man’s face.

  “I give you a job, all the money and weapons in the world and you still fuck it up!”

  A boot to his ribs.

  “I wanted Ross here! Not there. Not dead. He’s no fuckin’ good to me dead. Not right now.”

  A boot to his crotch.

  “You had an in! I got you through his front fuckin’ door! An easy fuckin’ snatch, you said. No problema, you said. Well my friend, you’ve got a big problem now. Me!”

  He was bending over the man, yelling into his pain-creased face, spittle flying across the few inches that separated them. He straightened up, running the fingers of his left hand through his coarse red hair.

  With his right hand, he pulled a chrome-plated .357 Colt Python from his waistband, jammed the barrel in the man’s mouth and pulled the trigger six times.

  “Get that worm meat off my damn floor! Get a bucket and mop! And get me another fuckin’ shirt!”

  Mano and El Gordo moved in and grabbed the body. T-Roy looked down at the toes of his caramel-colored, lizard-skin boots. A stain of blood and brains spread across the tops. His jeans were also splattered.

  “Boots and jeans, goddamit!”

  He stripped off his shirt, a bone-white rancher with real pearl snaps, letting it drop at his feet. He kicked off his boots, scaling them across the room, causing the two men to duck. He whipped the tooled belt with the silver bullrider’s buckle through the loops and shucked his jeans.

  Standing next to his desk in navy silk bikini briefs, T-Roy flipped open the Colt, pushed the ejector rod and shook spent brass onto the floor with a brassy clatter and threaded fresh hollow points into the cylinder, snapping it back in place. He paced the floor, slapping his bare leg with the belt, raising small red welts on freckled flesh with every stroke.