Chub was on a brown Naugahyde couch with orange throw pillows, and he was dying. One look told me he wouldn’t last another hour. He lay half covered by a too-small comforter, coughing and shuddering with his shirt off, his chest much whiter than the seeping bandages wrapped around his stomach, lathered in a viscous ashen sweat. His lips and nostrils were caked with blood.
He gave me a cockeyed grin.
He said, “Hey.”
My mind was filled with so much that I wasn’t thinking about anything anymore. I held my ground for a second. Dunbar crowded me and I fell back against him. He shoved me off. Scooter’s smiling dog ran past in my mind, and in my mind I named him FDR.
I kneeled at Chub’s side, peeled his bandages back while he moaned, and tried not to vomit at the smell. The bullet had torn a jagged chunk from his lower belly, leaving a runny hole the size of my fist. It was badly infected and oozing pus and bile. There was no exit wound. They’d found him some bent doctor, but the butcher must’ve been like most underworld docs: disgraced, drunk, and ambivalent. There were hesitation cuts. The incisions were amateurish. Some halfhearted attempt at suturing had been made but the stitches had pulled. Chub’s skin had started to go citrus yellow.
“Which one of these pricks shot you?” I asked him.
Wagstaff said, “Us? We didn’t do it. A trigger-happy armored car guard pulled his pistol and started the ball rolling.”
I hissed at Chub, “Why for fuck’s sake did you go on the job?”
“I wanted a bigger cut.”
“Why?”
He grinned stupidly. It seemed a point of pride with him not to answer me.
“The doc wasn’t sure if the bullet nicked his liver,” Edwardson said. “We’re pretty sure now.”
“Antibiotics?” I asked.
“He’s taken them all.”
“You guys couldn’t have broken into a pharmacy and picked him up something else to try to hold off infection?”
“We couldn’t leave. That was the whole point of locking down in here.”
“You could’ve called me.”
“We wanted to,” Wagstaff said, which surprised the hell out of me. “But he told us no. He’s a stubborn son of a bitch, same as you.”
That made Chub chuckle a little, followed by a wave of agony rolling through him. He shuddered and tried to keep from screaming. The concern on my face made him laugh even more, which caused him greater distre">“Yes, she is,” I agreed.tpss. He leaned aside and spit red-flaked phlegm into a wastebasket set near his head. He huffed for air but couldn’t seem to catch his breath. I put my hand on his bare back and rubbed and patted.
“The doc gave him something for the pain,” Edwardson said.
“Where?”
“End table.”
The freshly polished tabletop smelled of pine. They probably cleaned every couple of hours to sweep prints and strands of hair away. They weren’t just pros, they were fastidious, obsessive fuckers who’d been crawling all over each other for days. I looked for prescription bottles. It took me a second to realize that wasn’t the kind of painkiller he’d been given.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, lifting a baggie of white powder. “This is heroin.”
“It’s done the job,” Dunbar said. “He’s not feeling much. Don’t let him have any more right now or he’ll OD.”
I pulled out my phone and all three of them said, “No,” and pointed their .44s loosely at me. They were starting to look exactly alike again. I drew the Sig Sauer. I’d plucked it from Dunbar when I’d fallen against him. I pointed it at Edwardson’s chest because he happened to be standing in the middle of the trio.
“You let me call,” I said, “or this situation goes into meltdown.”
“Then that’s what happens,” Wagstaff told me. “Give up the phone and the piece.”
“No.”
I was close. I was on the edge. I’d been there for a while. The underneath called to me and begged me to fire, to murder, to die. It promised me the end of anguish and a proper understanding of purpose.
Chub said, “Terry, don’t be a moron.” He giggled. The H had him out of his head, but it didn’t seem to be helping much with his pain. He held his hand out to me but I was standing just beyond his reach. He tried to grab me again. “Forget it.”
“You need a hospital.”
“No hospital.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“Now’s not the time to be obstinate, you asshole.”
“Would you go?”
I would go. I would run. I would push little old ladies out of the way. I wouldn’t die on Naugahyde, coughing up my yellow guts. But I didn’t have a wife and child to share in my stupidity and terror and humiliation. If I did, I’d probably die quietly alone like Chub wanted to, if I could find the courage.
I snapped my phone shut. The three of them jammed their guns in my face and grabbed the phone and the Sig Sauer. This time Dunbar sneered and tucked the piece in his inside pocket.
They saw in my eyes that I wasn’t going to do anything else. That there wasn’t anything else to do.
“You should pack faster,” I said. “You need to get out of here now.”
“Why is that?” Dunbar asked.
“Some very bad people are after you. If I can find you, so can they.”
“We’ll be gone in fifteen minutes.”
“Go faster.” the only one I had left aplas
They left me there with Chub and gave the place one last quick spiff job, wiping all surfaces down, before heading to the bedrooms to pack up. The hideout was blown. Even if they killed me, what were they going to do? Hide both our bodies in the bathtub? Bury us in a back lawn that didn’t even have grass or leaf cover? The crew gathered their guns and satchels and luggage.
I sat on the edge of the couch and took Chub’s hand.
“You watched me come and go,” I said.
“They saw you and told me.”
I grabbed a pillow, tore off the outer lining, and ripped it into rags. I soaked them in the sink and washed his face down. I dabbed his forehead and wiped his mouth. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“I wasn’t sure if you would help or not.”
I couldn’t blame him for that. “So why was my number in your phone?”
His organs and nerve endings were shutting down. The pain seemed to ease. He spoke more clearly. “In case anything happened to me, Kim would give you a call and you’d look out for her.”
The crew came out carrying their bundles. They paused in the doorway but had nothing to say. Chub gave a nod in their direction.
“Watch out for a handsome guy with perfect teeth,” I said. “He’ll ice you with a needle, if you’re lucky. If you’re not, he’ll just scramble your prefrontal lobe.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Wagstaff asked.
“Just keep an eye out for him.”
Then they were gone. I didn’t know where they had stashed a new car, but they’d have one. I didn’t hear them walk away. I didn’t hear a car engine start. They stepped into the darkness and disappeared along the path of their plan, one that Chub had helped set up. He had organized a hundred escape routes before, but now when he needed only one more, there weren’t any left for him.
Not even thirty seconds later, a sound. I heard a heavy, blunt noise like a wet cough. It was a grunt of pain. It was the unmistakable sound of instant, traumatic death.
Then, from the doorway. “Terrier?”
“Hello, Walton.”
He stepped into the living room. He stood there being beautiful and merciless, with three more lives added to his score sheet. His hands were in his pockets. I still didn’t see the needle, wherever it was, whatever it was. He beamed at me.
“Who’s this?” Chub whispered.
Endicott said, “I was hired to kill you.”
“Too late.”
“I see that. I can smell the sepsis from here. I’m sorry.”
“If you were just going to kill
me anyway then why are you sorry?”
“I would have made it painless. I would’ve answered your call. I would have fulfilled your purpose.”
“My call?” Chub asked. “My purpose?” He looked at me.
“Walton talks like that,” I said.
“Oh.”
Endicott watched me, smiling, his brash good looks almost daring me to jump forward and meet my own death head-on, his will drawing the mongoose forward to the serpent. Except he wasn’t the fulfillment to my purpose and he wasn’t getting paid to dispose of me.
“Who hired you to kill Danny? Was it Haggert o>“Of co
r Wes Zek?”
“I hope we meet again soon, Terrier.”
“Pardon me if I say that I hope we don’t.”
He smiled at me once more and was gone.
“Weird,” Chub whispered.
I fought to keep my voice steady. I tried not to let the rage out. But just as with all the times it had counted before, I cocontrol myself when it mattered most.
“What the hell were you doing?” I asked. “Why did you go with them on the score? And a bank heist? An armored car heist? Why?”
His teeth and lips were red but he managed another laugh. “It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud. But I wanted to make one final big score.”
“Why? You didn’t need it. You had plenty stashed. The garage was doing good business. I saw your books. Both sets of them. You could’ve given your family everything. What did you uldn’t
want more for?”
He sucked air and just looked at me. “I had to keep my girls.”
“They’re your girls.”
“And I had to keep them.” He sank deeper into the couch. I mopped his face. “It’s always been you, Terry. She still loves you.”
“You ass. I ran out on her. I during the worst time of her life. She hates my guts.”
“You’ve always had your head screwed on wrong. She loves you. She’s always loved you. It’s always been you. When you came back … the clock started. It was just a matter of time before she went back to you. I had to make one good score. I had to sell the shop. I had to move her away someplace safe. I needed to give her whatever she wanted.”
“All she wants is you, Chub.”
His own insecurities has been growing worse since I came home. I wasn’t the only one who was jealous and defensive. All this time I’d thought I was protecting him, saving him, and instead I’d been pushing him into making the biggest mistake o abandoned her
f his life.
“You are not laying this on me, you selfish prick.”
“My cut’s in the back bedroom, top of the closet, stashed in a kind of vent. Get it to Kim.” He tried to grab the bag of heroin, but he couldn’t reach it. “Here, give me another tap of that.”
I handed it to him. He took a pinch, raised his fingers to his nostrils, and had a snort. “Nbefore,” he said. “Think I could develop a taste.” His eyes started to roll. He swallowed thickly. He cleared his throat. He was panting heavily. “Open a window, would you?”
I did. An icy breeze hurtled across the room.
“Is it snowing yet?” he asked.
“No.”
“Feels like it. Got that heaviness in the air, you know?”
The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel Page 22