Every Day Above Ground

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  A thump echoed from way off in the mansion, past the staircase. Time for me to vamoose. I slipped into the first room off the entry hall.

  It was some sort of parlor or sitting room or whatever the heck rich people called rooms that were just for show. It had that feel, even though there wasn’t a speck of dust in the air. The sofa and chairs were covered in green velvet and tapestries hung on the walls in between bookshelves with rows of identically bound books. An eight-foot green plastic Christmas tree with white lights and no ornaments glowed in the corner.

  Steps were coming close. I ducked behind the velvet sofa.

  A two-inch opening between the sofa and an octagonal side table let me see the entry hall. I laid my head down on the perfectly clean lavender-colored carpet for a sideways view.

  Trey came through first, carrying a painting in its frame. He wore a dark blue anorak and surgical gloves. Then the vulture man, with a heavy marble something-or-other held close to his chest.

  Art. They were stealing art.

  The men returned quickly and made another pass, this time carrying more paintings. Granddad wasn’t with them. Maybe he was checking each piece in case it had its own alarm, just in case. Always check, that was one of his rules. I bet these people had alarms on their dinner china.

  Trey and the vulture made many trips back and forth. Downstairs, then upstairs. Sometimes they carried blankets, and I realized that was to wrap and protect the breakable pieces in the RV. No one said a word, except when Granddad directed one of them to a room that was ready for looting. I was curious why they weren’t cutting the paintings out of their heavy frames. Were the frames valuable, too? Could picture frames be famous? Soon Granddad joined the loose parade, toting more small sculptures and even something that looked like an African mask. No wonder they needed a whole RV.

  I was going to be left here, I realized. There was no way I was getting back inside the RV, even if it wasn’t wall-to-wall with paintings and vases and other crap. I’d have to lie right here on this stupid plush lavender carpet until they left.

  Don’t panic, I told myself. You’re still somewhere around Seattle. You’ve got some money in your pocket. And you’ve heard of buses, right? Though I doubted if Metro made many stops in a neighborhood where they drove Ferraris.

  Finally Trey came down the stairs, two at a time. “That’s it.”

  Granddad came to the entryway, carrying his toolbox, and the vulture man returned from his last trip to the RV. I slowly withdrew my head out of sight. It made me jumpy, all of them standing just twenty feet away in the quiet house. I tried to breathe extra soft.

  “You got the library?” Granddad said.

  “Which one? These bitches got like three.” Trey laughed and the vulture echoed him. Granddad didn’t. “Yeah, sure. It’s done.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Quincey, you drive,” said Trey. “I’m gonna close up.” Quincey must be the vulture.

  “Leave the alarm be,” Granddad said, in the same kind of tone he used with me when he suspected I might screw up, “but lock the doors.”

  I heard Granddad and Quincey return to the motorhome. Trey busied himself with shutting one of the double doors. I inched my head back where I could see him. He was moving slower than he had to, I thought, throwing the bolts at the top and bottom and checking them multiple times.

  Then he glanced over his shoulder, stepped back inside the entry hall, and removed something from his pocket. He placed it inside the guts of the rewired alarm panel. Then he exited and shut the door. The deadbolt clicked home. I heard the RV’s engine rev, and then retreat, until I couldn’t hear it anymore.

  Just me, and a whole damn mansion. If it was a movie, I’d go nuts and make a roller coaster on the stairs and throw a kegger for all of my friends. But the huge place was empty and eerie, and I wanted the hell away from it.

  After I raided their fridge. I was starving, among other things. I edged my way down the hallway, which had a floor so polished I could see the angels painted on the ceiling, twenty feet up. Found a bathroom and used the toilet, whistling with relief.

  The kitchen—one of the kitchens, I guessed—was farther along the hall. All of the really perishable stuff was missing from the fridge, and I wondered if the owners were out of town for the holidays. Out of the whole country, probably. I bet they went to places like Switzerland and Italy. I wanted to travel outside the U.S. someday. Our trips to Canada didn’t count. Too close.

  Some provolone cheese and Doritos and a bottle of limonata soda fit into the pockets of my coat, and I scurried back to the double doors.

  My hand froze at the doorknob. What was it that Trey had put behind the alarm panel? I swung the panel open to look.

  A screwdriver. With a hard red plastic handle and a dented blunt end.

  I knew that screwdriver. I’d made those dents myself, years ago, driving a picture nail when I didn’t have a hammer. Granddad and I kept it in the kitchen drawer at home.

  Trey must have taken it from our house. Why?

  Fingerprints. The screwdriver would have Granddad’s prints all over it. Holy shit.

  There was a box of Kleenex in the parlor, I grabbed a handful and fished the screwdriver out, very carefully, and wrapped it and buttoned it in my coat pocket.

  I had the cell phone Granddad had given me. But he was with Trey right now. Should I call?

  No. He wasn’t in danger, I figured. Not if Trey was setting him up to get arrested for this burglary. I had to get home and tell him in person. Fast.

  I jammed out the door and used my picks to relock the deadbolt, and then ran across the courtyard to the gate. It was made to keep out cars, not kids, and I climbed over it without even trying.

  If somebody came along now, I was busted. A kid walking around in a neighborhood like this would be suspicious at any time of day. After two in the morning, the cops would probably be called before anyone bothered to ask me what I thought I was doing. I started jogging.

  Half a mile down the long curved road, I came to a big brick-and-capstone sign that marked the entrance to the neighborhood. medina cove, it read in letters illuminated from behind.

  Medina was on the Eastside. Hell, I was all the way across the lake.

  At least I had all night to find my way home.

  Twenty-Two

  Carzell Rock Quarry was about half an hour’s drive northeast of Seattle, off the first winding stretch of Highway 2 that began at I-5 and extended all the way to the far side of Michigan. There was no chance of my missing the quarry. Stadium floodlights created a false sunrise on the eastern side of the access road, just as day surrendered to evening in the rest of the sky.

  I’d mulled over whether Roddy’s sudden invitation could be a setup. None of the Sledge City crew had reason to believe I was anything other than friendly Zack, unemployed construction worker. But it would be an easy job to bury me under a mountain of gravel at a remote mine. They could entomb me in my own truck if they wanted. I had brought Dono’s Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter as insurance. One of his few possessions that hadn’t burned up with the house.

  As I neared the quarry, the knot of tension between my shoulder blades eased up a twist. Upwards of two hundred people, mostly men, milled around parked cars and trucks and herds of motorcycles. I could make out bright red coolers and smoke from hibachis.

  A damned tailgate party.

  The cars crowded into a single paved lot. That was where any adherence to order stopped. Everyone had parked at what seemed like deliberately different angles to one another, the better to sit on hoods and roofs while they mingled.

  Past the parking lot, in increasing size, mounds of topsoil and sand made small hills below the looming quarry walls. The largest mounds topped thirty feet, twice that in diameter. One pile of chip rock had a Caterpillar loader halfway up its impossibly steep incline, waiting for the working week and its driver.

  As I climbed out of the truck, I could smell the tang of raw earth and dust
that never settled, even on a windless day. Faint shouts and cheers echoed off the piles of earth. Either the bouts had already begun, or someone had become impatient and started their own sport. It looked like that kind of crowd.

  Not that I was planning to stick around and watch. I’d find Fekkete and persuade him I was his new best friend, if he wanted to see the gold again. If bracing him at the quarry proved impossible, there was another way. I’d brought one of Corcoran’s little tracker disks in my bag. Slap one on Fekkete’s ride, and follow him to where he and I could have a quiet chat.

  A group of bikers clustered around their softail cruisers. One woman in the group looked me up and down as I passed. I returned the attention. She was little north of thirty, her brown hair still askew from the helmet, wearing black cycle boots and leathers with the top half unzipped and hanging at her waist, revealing a gold tank top with no support underneath. None required.

  “Are you fighting? I think all the guys are over by the machines.” She pointed vaguely toward the quarry walls.

  “Thanks,” I said, starting in that direction.

  “Should I bet on you?” Her lazy gaze as she took a drag said she might not be talking about money.

  I grinned. “Good odds.”

  She exhaled a long coil of sativa smoke. “Come back around if it’s not exciting enough.”

  Motorcycle mamas weren’t usually my thing, I mused while walking away. But then, it had been a while for me. Since Luce, in fact, and that meant over four months. Time flew when you were broke. And committing felonies to fill your nights. I wound through wide dirt roads left between the artificial foothills, following the shouts of excitement.

  The quarry walls defined an immense ninety-degree wedge, as though a skyscraper had once rested within the huge hollow and been suddenly removed. Scars left by the digging machines formed broad horizontal stripes. Despite the man-made precision of the space, it felt primeval, as the sundered mountain dwarfed even the sky above.

  At the base of a massive pile of black basalt, traffic detour barricades had been arranged into a crude square, twenty feet on each side. Two razor-thin Latino kids stood in the center, firing long jabs at each other. Hand wraps only, no gloves. The incandescent lamps overhead heightened the intensity of colors—red wraps, brown skin, yellow paint. In contrast, every hint of gray blended into a uniform deep black. It gave the fighting ring a surreal brightness, like the painter had forgotten to blend his oils into less garish shades.

  Across the ring, dump trucks and other heavy equipment lined the nearest quarry wall. The closest was a yellow crushing machine, a massive snail shape with squat body and long sloped conveyor-belt neck. Men stood in close knots of conversation, ignoring the fight. Money was the real action.

  I spied Bomba first, a head taller than his buddies. Then Roddy’s blond locks bobbing up and down as he nodded to whatever the big man was saying.

  “Hey, Zack.” Roddy shifted the focus of his nods to me. “I was gettin’ worried.”

  “Eight o’clock,” I said.

  “I know, I know. I just stress out. You got your gear?”

  “You got my money?”

  “After the fight,” said Bomba, “same as for every other asshole here.”

  “’Cept I’m not the same. I’m a last-minute sub and I don’t know you for shit.”

  Bomba’s face crushed itself into a furious grimace. He stepped forward. I stayed put. We were nose-to-chin, with Bomba on the high side. It would have been more intimidating if his gut hadn’t touched me first.

  “Take it up with your boss,” I said. “Where is he?”

  Roddy waved his hands frantically. “Save it for the fight, man. Jesus. The money will be here.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Fekkete is driving in with the Canadian dudes. He might be here already. Just chill.” Roddy dashed off in the direction of the ring. Bomba kept up the hard stare.

  “You try running out on us,” he said, “and I got a dozen guys’ll stomp you into a smear.”

  “A dozen might keep you safe.” I followed Roddy.

  Bomba may have been all talk, but my problem could be real. The parking lot was two hundred yards from the bowl of the quarry. No way for me to slip away unnoticed. And too far to see if my truck had become hemmed in with other vehicles in the crazy quilt of tailgaters.

  One of the skinny bantamweights was being picked up off the pebbled ground to howls of encouragement and a few jeers. As I moved along the edge of the crowd, two more fighters were shepherded to the ring. One of them was Wex from the gym. Orville accompanied him, sweat towels slung over his shoulder and a battered orange tackle box of cutman supplies clutched to his chest. He noticed me and raised a hand in greeting. He looked a little disappointed to see me.

  I’d lost Roddy. He could be anywhere in the growing mob, or in the labyrinth of earthen mounds around us. I retraced my steps, guessing that if Fekkete was arriving, he’d be closer to the vehicles.

  Then I saw him. Or more accurately, I noticed the man whose substantial width completely blocked both Fekkete and Roddy from view. Then the beast moved aside, and I spotted Fekkete himself. Bald head, black goatee, and dressed for the event in a red tracksuit with black piping.

  No mystery who the heavyweight ringer was. The two of them were like a child’s picture book of comparisons, Thin and Fat. Fekkete’s waist might have been the same circumference as one of the other man’s thighs. His shoulder muscles looked like partly melted cannonballs extending from out of his black tank top. He swung his huge arms, loosening up.

  I walked toward them. Fekkete glanced up as I approached.

  “Mr. F.?” Roddy said, as breathless as if he’d been running since he left me. “This is Zack, your sub for heavyweight.”

  Fekkete’s pale eyes fixed on mine. He nodded curtly. He wore a gem-encrusted silver ring on almost every one of his fingers, like an especially vain caliph.

  “The deal was five Cs,” I said. “In advance.”

  He looked me over with a promoter’s professional eye. Or maybe a zookeeper’s, given the size of his charge. His blank stare packed far more pressure than Bomba could manage in a month of glowers.

  “In advance,” Fekkete said. He had a strong accent; Lorenzo had thought him Hungarian.

  “Or I can offer you a better deal. If we can talk in private.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “A golden opportunity.”

  His pale eyes flashed. He slowly pulled a roll of bills from his tracksuit pocket with one silver-ringed hand and held it between his fingertips, but his mind was elsewhere.

  There was a roar from the direction of the ring. We all turned to see Bomba giving us a thumbs-up. Wex had apparently redeemed himself after Hinch’s thrashing earlier in the week.

  Fekkete glanced at Roddy. “Are all of the first odds in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are certain?”

  Roddy shuffled. “I got the bets. No problem.”

  Fekkete grunted and peeled bills off the roll. “We start now.”

  “Not until we talk.”

  He gave a dismissive wave. Dammit. I wasn’t going to get even ten seconds to tempt Fekkete with the gold. And it was rapidly looking like that was the least of my troubles.

  “I gotta warm up,” I said.

  “You have so long as Roddy takes to sell you. Get in the fucking ring.” He handed me the bills and walked away.

  I was surrounded. Even without Bomba, who was lurking nearby, and Hinch, who was smirking at me from his vantage point on top of the excavation machine, the crowd had started pressing around the three open sides of the ring in anticipation. Short of climbing over the huge pile of basalt gravel behind the barricade square, there wasn’t a direction I could go that wasn’t already a dozen people thick.

  “All right! We got six-to-one on our boy here. Six-to-one against Rénald. Bet American!” Roddy shouted to the crowd. “That’s serious money to the winner.”
>
  Any serious money would have closed early, betting on their ringer at stronger numbers. Not many watching at ringside were willing to take a flyer on me.

  Their fighter Rénald grinned and threw punches at the air. Most of the hair on his head was devoted to a Wild Bill mustache. He wore brown corduroy trousers instead of jeans. More give in the waist for that big hard-looking gut. He had more than a hundred pounds on me, and a lot less of it was blubber than I would have wanted. Rénald spun easily on his toes, all that weight flowing into each punch until it ended with a wicked snap, electric with power.

  Ah, crap. I was going to die.

  Twenty-Three

  No time to wrap my hands, or to think about anything else but the few minutes ahead. I tossed my bag onto the mound of basalt behind the ring, stripped off my shirt, and started inhaling huge lungfuls. Maybe I could surprise the big fucker with speed. Or maybe I could convince him to stand in front of a dump truck while I ran him over.

  “Okay, we got another hunnerd,” Roddy called. “Anybody else? No? Come on, Rénald ain’t that tough.”

  The crowd laughed. My slaughter was going to be slapstick.

  The warm night would help. I was feeling about as loose as I would get. I didn’t shadow-box. I just took in air and thought very hard about how I might survive.

  My inaction had attracted attention. “You better fucking fight,” Bomba said from his spot at ringside.

  I ducked under the orange barricade. On the opposite side, spectators moved the barrier aside to let big Rénald enter. His grin was still in place, with a touch of anticipation.

  “Going . . . going . . . all right, let’s do this!” Roddy shouted.