Bull Mountain

by Brian Panowich

  Pepé looked up. “His name is Wilcombe. Oscar Wilcombe.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “I don’t know the motherfucker,” Pepé said. “He just a rich white dude that threw me a lot of business. He was always using my girls for parties. Entertaining other rich white dudes. The dude that cut up your girl was a VIP for Wilcombe.”

  “Wilcombe.” Holly let the name roll around on his tongue. “Did Wilcombe make it right?”

  “What you mean, man? I told you what happened. Call your boy off my nephew.”

  “I mean, did he pay you for the damage?”

  “I don’t remember, homes.”

  “Yes, you do. Did he pay you or not?”

  “Shit, man, yeah. Yeah. He paid me twenty-five bills.”

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars to write it off? You let the john skate for twenty-five hundred bucks?”

  “Yeah, man. It was business. That’s all. Now call your boy. Let my nephew go.”

  “I’ll ask you one more time: What was the john’s name?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember.”

  “No, you didn’t. You said you didn’t know who he was. Now you’re saying you don’t remember. There’s a difference.”

  “What the fuck, man. It was a long time ago. Just make the call.”

  “No. Not yet. Something still doesn’t add up. If this Wilcombe only paid you two and a half grand to walk away, then there’s more to the story. That kind of money would cover one of your bottom bitches, maybe, but not someone like this.” Holly tapped the barrel of the Glock on the photo of his mother. “This one would have cleared that much in a few weeks. She was an earner, fresh off the bus. You hadn’t even begun to spin her out when some asshole in a motel cuts into your profits and gets to walk away for under three grand? No way. Why did you let this Englishman off so cheap?”

  “You and me got different ideas about cheap, white boy.”

  Holly jabbed the gun barrel in Pepé’s eye, and the Mexican shrieked in pain. “I’m not in the mood for glib, Pepé. Now, again, why so cheap?”

  Pepé wiped at the streak of blood coming from his eye.

  “Okay,” Holly said, “allow me. I’m just spitballing here, so you feel free to jump in and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking maybe this guy in the motel was a bigger deal than you let on, maybe too big a fish for you to fry, and this English fuck knew it, so he gave you whatever he wanted you to have, and you were happy to get it. Is that what happened?”

  Pepé sat silent.

  “This is your last chance to tell me everything, Pepé, or I’m going to smash that phone, and little Carlos—”

  “Burroughs,” Pepé said.

  Holly repeated it slowly. “Burroughs?”

  “Yeah. Some baller from up in Georgia. I didn’t even know they had ballers in Georgia. Backwoods motherfucker. He was too well protected for my boys to get involved, so I walked. Cut my losses.”

  “And his name was Burroughs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m fucking sure, and that’s all I know.”

  The two men sat across from each other in the breakfast nook for a long minute as Holly studied the bloodied gangster for any signs that he may have more to share. “I think I believe you, Pops,” Holly finally said. Pepé closed his eyes, lowered his head, and appeared to start praying.

  Holly shook his head slowly from side to side and picked up the phone. He hit redial and held it to his ear. “Take the boy back to his mother,” he said, then ended the call and slid the phone back into his pocket.

  “Now do it,” Pepé said without opening his eyes. He didn’t have to ask again. Holly lifted the Glock and shot him once in the chest, and again in the neck.

  CHAPTER

  20

  OSCAR WILCOMBE

  JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA

  2015

  1.

  The office was small, smaller than Agent Holly expected it to be. Motorcycle-enthusiast magazines and paraphernalia were scattered throughout the room. The furniture was nice but not too nice. The paintings on the wall were cheap lithographs of much pricier real-deals, and the coffee at the self-serve station by the door was no better than that at any quick-stop—worse, maybe. Holly set the coffee on the waiting room table and thumbed through a copy of Cycle World, pretending not to stare at the only thing worth looking at in the room, the raven-haired beauty behind the reception desk. He pegged her to be in her mid-thirties, closer to six than four, but not a sign of road wear on her face. Huge lips, painted the color of a shiny candy apple, pouted below a sharp nose and dark, almost navy-blue eyes. He had pictures of this one in the file he was putting together on Wilcombe, but to see her in person was breathtaking.

  A bald tree trunk of a man decked out in denim from head to toe walked out of the office behind Bianca Wilcombe and whispered something in her ear. They smiled politely at each other, and the man left the office, giving Holly the stink-eye all the way out the door. Holly winked at him, taking in the details. Committing the man’s face to memory.

  “Mr. Holly?” Bianca said. “Mr. Wilcombe will see you now.”

  “Thanks.” Holly laid the magazine back down on the table, stood, and walked past Bianca to the office door. He hoped she would give him the same smile she’d given the blue-jean giant a moment ago. She didn’t. She didn’t even look.

  2.

  “Agent Holly. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. If I’d known you were coming, I would have cleared my calendar.” Oscar Wilcombe was pushing seventy and looked every bit of it. His small frame hunched over as he walked and, at some point over the past few years, he’d lost anything that resembled a neck. His head looked more like it sprouted directly from the middle of his shoulders, like he was a human/turtle hybrid. His gray flannel suit hung off him like it was still on the hanger, and his hair had been reduced to a few gray survivors stretched out over his bald head in a comb-over that even he had to know looked ridiculous. He reached out a delicate, thin hand and Holly shook it, careful not to break it.

  “Well, you know us federal-agent types. We like to keep people guessing. If we told you we were coming, you’d have time to prepare.”

  Wilcombe squinted over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Do I need time to prepare?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  Wilcombe walked back around his desk and took a seat. He motioned for Holly to do the same in the armchair across from him. “What is this about, Mr. Holly?”

  “Agent.”

  “Huh?” The old man squinted again.

  “It’s Agent Holly. Not Mister. You need to remember that, because I don’t want any confusion about how important this conversation is going to be to you.”

  “Umm, okay.” Wilcombe sat back and steepled his fingers in his lap.

  “See, me being a federal agent lends a little more weight to what I’m about to tell you. You know what I mean?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “I hate that word.”

  “What word?”

  “Suppose. You either do or you don’t. It’s just an unnecessary word people throw in to sound pretentious. Are you trying to sound pretentious, Mr. Wilcombe?”

  Wilcombe shifted in his seat and pushed up his glasses. “Agent Holly, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you again, what this is about.”

  “That’s good,” Holly said, and smiled his shark smile.

  Wilcombe was confused. “What’s good?”

  “That you’re afraid. I would be, too, if I were in your position.”

  “And what position is that?”

  Holly took his badge out of the breast pocket of his blazer and set it on Wilcombe’s desk. He opened the leather bifold and turned the ID to face the old man.

  “Can you read that?”


  Wilcombe leaned in and examined the credentials but didn’t touch them.

  “That says ATF,” Holly said, “which stands for Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. So it’s understandable for you to be pissing into your Depends having me sitting in your little office here. I mean, seeing that you make your money selling illegal firearms.” Holly tapped the big letter F on his ID.

  Wilcombe did his best to look indignant. “I have no idea what you’re—”

  “Stop, old man. Don’t give me the I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about speech. I know everything—ev-ery-thing.”

  “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Holly shook his head and took a deep breath. He let it out slowly.

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. That sentence, the very sentence I told you not to say, is the last lie you get to tell me. From here on out, you and me are going to talk openly, and more important, honestly, or I’m going to get up, thank you for your time, go outside, and give my people the go-ahead to rush the factory here in Jacksonville and have them take a good look at the east building. Then I’ll call my teams waiting in Tampa at 1121 Maple Springs to have them raid that gun plant, too. The other one in Pensacola isn’t active right now, but I bet the storage facilities are packed to the gills with assault rifles in boxes waiting to be shipped out to Atlanta.”

  Wilcombe’s indignation vanished, but Holly kept going. “The seven whorehouses you have scattered throughout this fine state and the shipments of gun parts and raw methylamine you receive at your warehouse at the port of Tampa will have to wait, but I bet my boys with Customs and the FBI are gonna have a fucking field day with them.”

  Wilcombe’s face was pale now, and a light sheen of sweat broke out on the paper-thin skin of his forehead. Holly smiled.

  “Clearly this is a misunderstanding,” Wilcombe said.

  “Ah-ah-ah,” Holly said, waving one finger in the air. “What did I just say about lying to me?”

  Wilcombe collected himself and thought before he spoke another word. “Why are you here?”

  “I thought that we’d established that already. You’re an asshole gun dealer. I bust asshole gun dealers. We’re a perfect fit.”

  “Allow me to rephrase. If you know all of this about me—about my business—and the ATF is set up outside all of these places you’ve mentioned, then again I ask, why are you here? Why isn’t this office being flooded with more of your people to take me into custody? What are you waiting for?”

  “You are a smart one, ain’t you? But I guess you’d have to be, to keep this racket up as long as you have without ever bringing the heat down on you. But that’s all over now.”

  “I assume there’s a deal to be made?”

  “Look at you. You really are a thinker, aren’t you?”

  “What do you want, Agent Holly?”

  Holly’s smile vanished. He pulled his wallet from his pants and opened it. He took out a tattered photograph of a young woman hiding one side of her face and sitting in the grass with a dark-haired little boy. He briefly stared at the picture, then laid it down on the desk next to his badge and ID.

  Wilcombe looked at the photograph. “What is that?” he asked.

  “It’s a picture.”

  Wilcombe winced. “I can see that. Am I supposed to know who’s in the picture?”

  “You’re supposed to, but I’m sure you don’t. People like you take a shit on so many lives, it’s probably easier to forget them than to keep track.”

  Wilcombe’s face hardened as if he’d just been slapped. He wasn’t used to being the one without leverage. He didn’t look at the picture again.

  “You asked me what I want,” Holly said. “That’s what I want.” He tapped a finger on the photograph. “But I’ll never get to have it back because of you and those fucking animals you work with in the Peach State.”

  Wilcombe squinted again, then removed his glasses and put them on the desk. He waited for the rest.

  “I want to know everything you know about the Burroughs family. I know a lot already, but I want to compare notes. I want to know every detail about your business with them. Times. Dates. Money. All of it. I want to know which brother you have the most direct contact with, Grizzly Adams or the crooked cop. I want you to spill your guts about every little dirty deal you’ve made with them over the past forty years, and I’m not leaving until I’ve heard it all.”

  “Then what do you plan to do with the information?”

  “Really, am I supposed to answer your questions? You got a set of balls on you.”

  Wilcombe picked up the photograph and studied it closer. His face softened. “This is personal to you.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “The boy in this photo is you, yes?”

  “Ain’t I cute?”

  “And this woman sitting with you. She is your mother?”

  “She was. She’s dead now.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I understand the bonds of family, Agent Holly.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like the bond you got with your daughter out there?” Holly pointed a thumb toward the lobby. Wilcombe looked mildly surprised. “After everything else I told you, you’re surprised about me knowing something as common knowledge as that hot piece of ass outside being your daughter?”

  “I would ask that you watch how you speak of my daughter, Agent Holly.”

  “I would ask that you go fuck yourself. You’re not in the position to ask me to do anything. Maybe I should go out there and tell your darling Bianca about how her daddy dearest is a gun-peddling scumbag. I bet she’d love to find out how you pimp women to your criminal butt buddies. I wonder what kind of family bond you’d have then. No, wait.” Holly paused and scratched his head. “Doesn’t she do all your bookkeeping, too? I wonder how she could not know something was fishy after all this time. Right? She must be in on it. I wonder how that fine ass will look in an orange jumpsuit.”

  “She has nothing to do with any of this. Leave her out of it.”

  “That’s up to you. Do what I tell you from here on out, and she’ll be none the wiser. She’ll get to go on thinking her daddy is a sweet old man who loves motorcycles, and you can just go die of old age somewhere, holding her hand. Which, for the record, is something my mother didn’t get to do.”

  “I do not know her, your mother.”

  “Not directly. You gave her as a gift to Gareth Burroughs on the night you met him. You called a lowlife wetback by the name of Pepé Ramirez, who, in turn, fed her to that hillbilly. He then proceeded to rape and beat her before mutilating her face.” Holly was standing now, but Wilcombe couldn’t meet his eyes. Righteous indignation had that effect.

  “I . . . did not know.”

  Simon felt the sting of that lie burn the entirety of his face but didn’t show it. He wasn’t ready to play that card yet. He let Wilcombe believe he was a fool. “And that’s the reason you’re still alive. Which is more than I can say for Pepé.”

  “You do know that Gareth Burroughs died several years ago?” Wilcombe said.

  “And good riddance to him. I wish it could have been my bullet that killed him, but sins of the father run deep. Family bonds, right? I want them all.”

  “And if I tell you everything you want to know, what happens to me?”

  “You get to go home and not to a federal prison. Retire. You’re done. You’re going to sever all ties to the Burroughs clan. Nothing goes in or out. No guns. No dope. No money. Not even a Christmas card. Then you can go play shuffleboard, for all I care.”

  “And that’s it?” Wilcombe began to get a little color back in his clammy, pale skin.

  “Well, there is one more thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “When’s your next cash run to Georgia? I need every detail. I’ll be running it.”

  CHAPTER

&nbs
p; 21

  HALFORD BURROUGHS

  2015

  1.

  “Boss, Scabby Mike just checked in. Two bikes are coming up the east bend, five minutes out.”

  “Good,” Halford said. He sat in the great room of the main house on the compound, at a huge oak table made from a tree he’d cut down himself. It used to serve as a drying room back when weed was the family’s largest cash crop, but the meth industry required much less space. These days, Halford used it more as an armory. The place was fully stocked with loaded gun racks and metal cabinets lining the walls for the assault weapons and long guns. Military-grade footlockers stacked up on the floor were all full of handguns and ammo. A thin yellow blanket was spread out over the table, and shotgun parts sprawled across it. The room smelled rich of gun oil.

  “Why don’t you come in here for a second?” Halford said to the scruffy messenger lingering outside the door.

  “Uh, yessir.” The young man snapped to attention and walked in, his rifle slung over his shoulder. The screen door slammed behind him.

  “Sit down,” Halford said.

  The young man did.

  “You’re Rabbit, right? Holland’s boy?”

  “Yessir.”

  “How long you been workin’ for me, son?” Halford picked up the blued steel barrel of the 12-gauge, looked down it, then blew through it.

  “Going on my first year, I reckon.”

  “You reckon, or you know?”

  The boy was nervous. He was aware of his hands shaking so he kept them out of sight, but he couldn’t keep his knee from bouncing spastically under the table. “I know, sir. Next month will be a year.”

  “And how long you been on the shit?”

  The boy said nothing. His throat was suddenly frozen shut.

  “Did you hear what I asked you, Rabbit?” Halford took a long hooked piece of wire from the table, attached a bit of oiled cloth to the tip, and fished it down the gun barrel.

  “Yessir.”

  “Then answer me.”