It is UNLAWFUL
for Anyone to Sell, Use, or Possess
any Controlled Substances
NARCOTICS
Except as Otherwise Provided by Law
Abatangelo drove on. Just beyond the streetwalkers lay a strip of seedy bars: The Spirit Club, Earth Angel, Cinnabar, The New Déjà Vu. Above an empty lot, a spotlit billboard read: CALIFORNIA LOTTO: YOU’RE ONLY SIX NUMBERS AWAY.
CHAPTER
8
As the twins sat side by side on a sagging couch, passing the pipe back and forth, Frank kept reminding himself: You’re almost there. He pictured Shel in the guest room by herself, moody, smoking, staring out the window at the sodden pasture. No more of that, he thought. She’s gonna be standing on a beach in Baja, walking along the surf, wind in that long red hair. The money’s downstairs, stay calm, do it right—you and your shiny white nurse can put a world of distance between you and Felix Randall’s redneck mafia. Get gone, vanish, start over. Be happy. He liked the sound of that. Happy.
“Yo, Frank,” Mooch said. “Bring the fire.”
Snapping to, Frank held a flaming rum-soaked cotton ball in a set of tongs beneath the bowl as first Mooch then Chewy drew deep and long from the pipe. Chewy had set the Ruger on the floor. From time to time he stared at it, puzzled, rubbing his knees. Frank picked it up and ran his finger down the slide chamfer. “What’s to be scared of, Chew?”
From his pocket he withdrew the hollow-points and fitted them one by one into the magazine’s viewing port. He pulled back the breech to load a round into the firing chamber, put the safety on, then removed the magazine and added an extra round. He shoved the clip home, released the safety and held the gun out for Chewy to take.
“It’s not alive,” Frank said. “It only does what you want it to do.”
“I don’t want it to do anything,” Chewy said.
Frank tucked it in his waistband and pulled his shirttail over it. “Then we’ll keep it out of sight. Feel better?”
“Yeah,” Chewy said. “Sure.”
Mooch eyed the bottle of petroleum ether on the bedstand, then turned his stare toward his arm, running his fingers over the skin. Chewy elbowed him.
“Stop it.”
“What?”
Chewy sighed. His face darkened into a frown, only to soften a moment later. His eyes warmed. Frank inferred from this that the kid had lost track of what he was thinking.
“Can we get more of this?” Chewy asked eventually.
Frank shrugged. “Sure. Maybe. I can find out,” he said, improvising. He felt angry, for reasons he couldn’t quite place. Looking around the room, he took comfort in the fact it wasn’t pale blue. Robin’s egg blue, he remembered, thinking of the tool wagon, the suggestion of children’s things the color called to mind. Then despite himself, the other memory—deeper, sadder, more horrible—it started moving. Sliding along the floor of his mind, it dragged after it a slag of cold blood. The monster was coming out now. The monster with a boy’s face, it was here. Again.
Mooch looked up wearily from his arm, looking ready to cry. He put his hands to his temples and squeezed.
“Goddamn,” he said quietly.
“This is dangerous,” Chewy agreed.
“What’s dangerous?” Frank asked, snapping to.
“Too much candy in the house,” Chewy said, staring at what remained of the eight ball on the bedstand.
“You gotta know how to handle your drugs,” Mooch agreed. He’d begun fingering his arm again.
Frank nodded toward the pipe. “Another go?” He wanted something to do with his hands, something else to think about. His heart was pumping like mad but his skin felt clammy. He dampened another cotton ball in rum and gripped it with the tongs, lit it with his cigarette lighter and held it out. Chewy put his lips to the pipe stem and inhaled heavily, closing his eyes.
“How’s Shel doin’?” Mooch asked.
Frank froze. Kill him, a voice said. No, hey, don’t. He waved the tongs until the cotton ball went out.
“She’s hit middle age,” he said finally. “She’s depressed.”
In unison the twins nodded their comprehension.
“Hope I look that good,” Mooch said. He looked up from his arm. “I don’t mean, you know, look good, like … I’m not out to bone her or nothing. Not that I wouldn’t, I mean, she’s a fox, Frank, an ace old lady, no fooling, but …” He sighed from the effort of getting his thoughts in order.
“State your business, Mooch,” Frank said.
“He didn’t mean anything, Frank,” Chewy said. “Don’t get mad, all right?” Trying to move things along, he added, “Can we get more of this?”
Frank turned his attention from the one to the other. He was sweating. “Keep the rest,” he said. “You can do me back.”
Chewy looked at Frank as though trying to discern him across a distance. “Sure,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I remember,” Mooch murmured, scrunching his face, “the first time I met Shel. Up at the house. She’s got a killer smile. I mean, a nice smile.” He waved his hands, to dispel a confusion. “Kinda smile that makes you feel wanted. Wanted as in ‘liked,’ I mean. Not wanted as in ‘by the FBI.’” He squeezed his temples again, to unscramble his thought pattern, then sighed. “You got a first-rate old lady, Frank.”
Chewy elbowed his brother again and whispered, “Shut … up.”
Frank said, “Yeah. Almost perfect.”
“Perfect,” Mooch repeated. “Dead on.”
Chewy licked his lips and said for the third time, “We’ll probably want to buy some more of this.” It came out very loud.
Mooch stood up, wavering on his feet. “I gotta pee.”
He shuffled from the room like a ghost. It’s no longer in your hands, Frank thought, remembering his flash of insight at the marina. What happens, happens. Do it right. Frank turned to Chewy. Something must have shown in his eyes. As soon as Chewy looked up, he said, “Don’t be mad. Okay?”
“Who says I’m mad?”
Chewy chuckled miserably and gestured as though to say, Get real.
Frank nodded toward the stereo. “How about some tunes?”
“Don’t be mad.”
“Stop saying that.”
Frank got up and went to the cassette rack, checking for anything loud. Finding a tape by a group called Stick, he slipped it in and jacked the volume on a tune called “No Groovy.” A spoon in a water glass rattled clear across the room.
Chewy shouted, “Hey …”
Frank drew the Ruger from his waistband, bracing his right hand with his left. He shot three quick rounds. Chewy lunged back into the couch, legs twisting up. He got fish-mouthed, sucking for air. His chest convulsed. The gun turned warm in Frank’s hands, which were shaking. He expected more blood.
Mooch hit the doorway yelling, “What the …”
Frank pivoted, charging at him. The next four rounds in the clip caught the boy point-blank. Mooch spun back trying to grip the door frame, hit the wall, then slid down. Frank noticed there was more blood this time.
He turned down the stereo. The gun was hot, he set it on the floor to cool. Don’t be mad, he thought. I didn’t mean anything.
Chewy’s body stopped twitching. To force back his vomit, Frank held his breath, held it till his head ached. It’s not like I had a choice, he thought. Out of my hands.
The next thing he knew he lay curled in a ball on the living room floor. His skin was cold with sweat. How much time had passed? It was still dark outside. He looked up at the furniture with something like envy. It sat there in the room so peacefully.
A nameless pressure lifted him to his feet and guided him back upstairs where, in a state of abstracted terror, he looked at what he’d done. This is not the beach at Baja, he thought.
Move, a voice said. Finish it.
Inspired by an impulse he’d not foreseen, he dug a pair of socks out of a drawer and put one on each hand. He went around wiping everything, even the
door downstairs, the banister, then went back to the bedroom and trashed it. Make it look like a burn, he told himself, an inner voice he barely recognized as his own. Do it right.
Look for money.
The twins weren’t all that clever. They kept their stash in a wad, stuffed inside a throw pillow. Thirteen hundred and change. Finish it. He went through the rest of the house, throwing down every picture, dumping out baskets, checking the flour tins, cereal boxes, the bread hamper. He was light-headed and crying. In a pickle jar he found another grand wrapped inside a condom. He broke the jar on the floor, pocketed the money and left the fridge door open. He found scattered bills in their wallets, a few more in a magazine, an envelope, a hatband. It has to be thorough, he realized, to be convincing. He found two quarter-gram bindles stashed in an empty cassette case; he dusted the bodies with the powder. Make it look like honest-to-God revenge, he thought.
Too much candy in the house.
He picked up the gun, put it away, and collected all seven spent shell casings, reaching far beneath the couch to claim the last. Chewy’s body lay there, face to the ceiling, one leg tucked under. Blood caked most of his T-shirt now, the sofa cushion had soaked up the rest. The dusting of cocaine resembled sugar. Frank pulled the socks off his hands and crossed the room, reaching out to touch Chewy’s eye with his fingertip.
He thought of a boy. Not a monster, a boy not yet three years old, a precious boy, murdered by a drug-crazed half-wit.
Frank withdrew his finger. He’d already been planning to cut the twins’ share down, whittle it to zip, and though he expected them to whine, he doubted they’d have made enough noise to squirrel the plan. He could have strung them along, told them another deal was on the way, bigger, fatter, they were his favorite boys. Then poof, gone, with Shel beside him, the twins wondering where their money went. It could’ve worked. There was no need to do this. But it just took on a life of its own, not some wild improvisation but more the work of some invisible hand: the gun in the trunk, the eight ball, the constant niggling horseshit about Shel.
I’m only human, he thought.
He wiped his face with his sleeve and turned away, thinking: Fitting and fair. Everything, absolutely everything, is fitting and fair. Even this.
He went out to the garage, got behind the wheel of the four-by-four then found himself unable to move. He had no idea what to do. The plan he’d devised, it didn’t include a pair of dead twins. Think, he told himself. Think.
As his terror mounted, it occurred to him that maybe he should just pretend that nothing had happened. Stick to the plan, a voice said. Instantly he felt better. That’s it, he thought, backing the truck out of the garage. When in doubt, stick to the plan.
He returned to Oakley, heading for a remote entrance to the Akers property, about a mile from the house. This entrance led to an abandoned tract of pasture, separated from the rest of the Akers property by a walnut grove and a series of low hills. No one ever came back here anymore, not since half the Akers herd died in the drought.
He pulled in beyond the gate then sat for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness so he could drive without headlights. Beyond the first hill, out of sight of the road, he parked the four-by-four near a deserted milking shed. He’d readied the place for use the previous week and checked on it every day since then, to be sure no one came nosing around. Outside the truck, he peered in every direction, through the walnut trees, across the hills. He cocked an ear, listening. Confident no one was coming, he went to the back of the truck, opened the tailgate and unloaded the money.
Inside the milking shed, he kicked aside the hay he’d spread across the floor as camouflage. Two days earlier, he’d torn a hole in the concrete floor with a pickax. He emptied the money into a Halburton case he’d stowed there, then buried it beneath a small sheet of plywood. Using equipment he’d lifted from a construction site in East Antioch, he mixed a fresh batch of Quickrete in a slurry boat. After wetting down the wood and the jagged edges of the hole, he worked in the Quickrete, sealing the plywood and smoothing the top with a planing trowel. He shoveled dirt across the entire floor, kicking it helter-skelter to suggest a natural state. He ripped more hay from a wormy bale still sitting in the corner from years ago and scattered it around. He tossed his tools and leftover materials out the door then locked it shut from inside.
From equipment he’d stashed the same night he’d dug the hole, he fashioned a trap from filament wire, a blasting cap and a jar of ether, triggering it to the door. If anybody thought to come out here, peer in the windows, he’d see nothing worth his trouble. If that didn’t satisfy him, if he got curious enough to barge on in, he’d get ripped to shreds or burn to death. Frank had seen Lyle rig a meth lab this way, when they had to leave it unattended for a few days. That’s the beauty of it, Frank thought. Booby trap’s got Lyle’s signature on it, not mine.
Stick to the plan.
He went to the downhill wall and crawled out through a hole near the floor. The hole had been put there when the shed was built, a way to pass waste water whenever the inside of the shed got hosed down. Once outside, he lodged a cinder block into the hole, sealed it in place with the last of the Quickrete and piled rocks around it.
He gathered up his tools and the slurry boat and threw them in the back of the truck. Turning the truck around, he headed back out to the road and drove toward a strip mall in Antioch where he tossed his tools and all the rest in a Dumpster. Next he drove to a multiplex, wiped down the inside of the four-by-four, and left it in the lot, walking the half mile to where he’d left his own truck the night before.
During the walk, he kept telling himself, over and over, It never happened. You were never there. He repeated these words like a mantra, till flickerings of conviction calmed his mood. Drive it from the mind, he told himself. Where the mind leads, the body follows, and the body tells all.
As he sat inside his own truck again, he took in its smell and feel as though it were God’s own hideaway. You’re almost home, he thought, inserting the key into the ignition.
Looking up, he saw the twins’ car parked in the next aisle over. Grabbing the wheel with both hands he settled forward a little, then hurriedly opened the door to vomit onto the pavement.
Stick to the plan, he thought. Are you nuts?
He’d devised the plan when all he thought he’d have to worry about was Felix discovering his stuff was gone. Everybody’d swagger around, trying to ID who did it, but Frank figured nobody’d think he had the spine. That was the plan’s perfection. Not even Shel thought he could pull it off. If he ran too quick it’d only blow his cover. That’s why he’d buried the money. He’d need time to play it cool. Wait it out. He’d sat through four days of questioning from homicide dicks, he was a veteran of the hostile face-off, he could do it. Sooner or later the thing would blow over, at which point he and Shel could just say, “Hey, later.” Vanish.
That was before he’d lost his head and greased the twins. Now playing it cool seemed crazy. No, he thought, this is all wrong, it won’t work, what the fuck were you thinking?
He put a cigarette to his lips and let it hang there unlit. He was shaking. The body tells all. He had to drive back now, before anybody knew the stuff was gone, grab Shel. They’d head right back out to the shed, dig up the money and be gone by daylight.
There, he thought. See? You can do this.
He started the truck, put it in gear and roared from the parking lot toward home. Don’t think, he told himself, just go. Get Shel. Tell her you’ll explain everything later.
Shortly a flickering darkness swirled in the corner of his eye. He batted at it, jerking the wheel. The truck fishtailed, skidding onto the shoulder as he slammed on the brake and counter-steered. The truck righted finally, lurching to a stop in the middle of the road.
The engine stalled. He sat there a moment in the ensuing quiet, breathing hard.
It wasn’t real, he realized. Nothing was there.
Frank turned off t
he county road down the access lane toward home. Maybe Shel’s awake already, he thought. His clothes were sticky with sweat. If I’m lucky, she’ll hear me out, stay calm. The more he pictured it, the more the scenario acquired the tang of possibility. Two steps away from home free, he reminded himself. Everything I do, baby, I do for you.
He parked the truck beyond the gateyard and hurried up the back steps through the door and into the kitchen. Hitting the light, he instantly felt the cold hard steel of a double-barreled shotgun, pressed against his face.
“Hey, buddy,” Lyle Akers said, pushing him against the wall with the gun. Roy, Snuff and Hack all sat in the kitchen nook, waiting, armed. “What took ya?”
Shortly Frank was on his knees, bound hand and foot, a lanyard made of white plastic clothesline circling his neck. Then the brothers brought in Shel, tied her to a chair so she faced him, and circled her head with duct tape, gagging her.
Frank sobbed, “I’m sorry please Christ believe me I’m so fucking sorry please …” He said it, or things much like it, over and over, his voice acquiring a manic pitch, a sound not wholly his own. Shel found herself wanting to get away from it. All she could do, however, was close her eyes.
It made her think of Jesse, of course, the way Jesse died. She couldn’t look at Frank, not here, not like this, and not bring all that to mind. Like everything was happening all over again, just a slightly different way, to slightly different people. But the same twisted story, the same awful end. She almost felt grateful when, after less than a half hour, Felix’s enforcers, Lonnie Dayball and Rick Tully, arrived.
Tully came in first, ducking to get through the door. He was a lumbering, bearded man with wild black hair. His face made little impression, except for the small dark eyes. Basically, the thing you noticed about Tully was how big he was.
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