Browning bent over him, felt for a pulse at his throat. He kept his hand there for half a minute, staring up at the ceiling. The governor and Antwan Shelton emerged from behind the couch.
“Holy Jesus,” Sanchez said.
Browning removed his hand from his grandfather’s throat. He straightened and looked at the governor and Antwan.
“Aw, shit,” said Sanchez. “Mary mother of God.”
Antwan was holding himself erect, eyeing Claire with a grim fascination, like one gladiator marveling at another’s deadly skills.
Browning walked over to Gustavo’s body, glared down at it for a moment, then drew back his boot and kicked the small man in the ribs. Gustavo’s limp body rose from the floor and flopped back down, his arms slinging loose. The front of his blue cowboy shirt was ripped open, exposing a meaty mess.
Browning stood above the body and raised his hands to his head and slicked his fingers through his brown hair, once, twice, a third time. Eyes closed, blue veins rising at his temple. A moment later, he turned his eyes to the ceiling and howled till his lungs were empty.
When he’d gathered himself, he wiped his lips on his sleeve. Looking at Claire, his face was pale and shrunken, but his eyes had the fierce glimmer from his football days when he trotted through the stadium tunnel onto the field, readying himself for the clash of bodies, the bruising hits.
Claire came to him and he opened his arms mechanically. Pressing into his warmth, she felt his massive body tremble with such force it seemed the house was quaking around them.
In that moment, in her husband’s shuddering embrace, Claire felt an ache of dread and desolation as the enormity of the moment settled. Because she had been the instrument of Earl Hammond’s death, however justified her slowness to act might have been, it was very likely she had committed the one unpardonable act that would forever alter her marriage and her life at the ranch.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive me please. Oh, God.”
Gradually his trembling subsided, and with a long sigh, he released her from his arms. She reached up and smeared the tears from his cheek. With dawning recognition, he stared at her as if she were just now emerging from a heavy mist.
“Call Frisco,” he said. Nothing in his voice she could read.
“What?”
“Call my brother. He should hear it from family.”
“Frisco?”
“We’ll need him out here. A cop talking to cops, it’ll go better.”
Claire swallowed but found no words.
“He can run interference. Do his cop thing. Give us advice.”
“What kind of interference?” she said.
Browning didn’t reply. His eyes had come unmoored from the moment.
“Where’s Saperstein?” the governor said.
“Outside,” Claire said. “He’s dead.”
The governor winced and flipped open his phone and began to punch, calling in the rest of the FDLE eight-man security detail stationed at the eastern perimeter of the ranch in compliance with Earl’s one-bodyguard rule.
“Call Frisco, Claire.”
He flexed his jaw. Those brown eyes she’d fallen in love with, so boyishly adoring, so simple and kind, had narrowed to slits, as though a vengeful resolve had taken possession of him, his mouth assuming a scowl so fearsome, so devoid of mercy it seemed the very act of gazing upon the world had become all but unbearable.
“All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll call him.”
She glanced past Browning at the bodies of the two dead men. One, a trusted friend, the other, her surrogate father, a man of such quiet dignity he’d been Claire’s inspiration and her lifeline these last six years.
More glass tinkled against the stone floor. Claire looked up at the high sill where the last shards were breaking loose and dropping like sleet from an unearthly sky.
SIX
* * *
“THORN? WHAT KIND OF GODDAMN name is that?”
“It’s his name. His last name. What difference does it make what his name is? The other one’s named Rusty. That bother you, too? They cohabitate.”
“She’s a girl?”
“A woman, forty-five. Middle-aged.”
“Rusty’s a boy’s name,” Jonah said. “A girl with a boy’s name—I hate that kind of freaky shit. It’s aberrant. Rusty and Thorn. I don’t like these two already. They piss me off, names like that.”
Three in the morning, Jonah and Moses Faust were in the Prius rolling onto the last exit ramp as the turnpike petered out and dumped them in tiny, redneck Florida City, a good hour’s drive from their base at Coquina Ranch.
Moses drove. Jonah had his hand out the window, doing wing-dips with his Glock as they passed through the franchise strip. McDonald’s, Burger King, all closed up, the gas stations dark and shuttered. He’d been plugging away at speed signs, mile markers, and billboards whenever one flashed into view. Hitting about as many as he missed, which was damn fine shooting at seventy-five miles per hour.
His iPod was connected to the sound system, pumping out a Navajo death chant, the kind of transcendental eerie shit he listened to after a kill.
“That’s inviting trouble,” Moses said. “State trooper sees the muzzle flash, we’re busted.”
“Like I’m afraid of some hick cop? Bring him on. Let’s see what he’s made of.”
Jonah let off two more rounds at a Budweiser billboard. Drilled the top of the twenty-foot bottle. Two other bullet holes already marked the sign from some rival sharpshooter.
Moses snapped up the phone, the silver one with international coverage. Pressing it to his ear with his left shoulder, using both hands to scribble on the pad that was clipped to the dash, steering with his knee.
“Too low,” Moses said. “The Danny Rollin is already at three hundred.” He waited while the client weighed the new price. Then Moses said, “Okay, you’re down for three seventy-five. Bidding’s over at noon tomorrow. Check in around ten.”
Six phones in all. Five items being auctioned at any given time. Most of the bidding happened on their website, new offers streaming in all day and night from keyboards around the world. But there were some clients too paranoid to trust the Internet. Nut jobs who favored the phone. So Moses accommodated them. As it turned out, a lot of the phone freaks were their biggest buyers.
The MoJo brothers made their living purveying murder memorabilia. Specializing in Oldie Goldie shit, like the Danny Rollin item, a crime-scene photo smuggled out of the police files up in Gainesville. Color shot of one of the decapitated coeds, her head posed in front of three mirrors, syrupy goo dripping down the front of the dressing table. A twisted smile on her dead lips.
In all, Rollin, the sick fuck, confessed to killing and mutilating eight victims. Probably there were more, hacked-up scraps of them buried in the Florida woods.
The Faust boys paid two-fifty for the photo from a crime-scene technician who was funding his meth habit by stealing photos from case files. They had a dozen sources like that spread around the United States and Canada. The rest of their product arrived word-of-mouth, people calling at all hours. “Hey, dude, you want to buy an unedited video of the cops at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue, prying up the floorboards and digging in the crawl space beneath the house of John Wayne Gacy?” Moses and Jonah sold that video last month, $284 to some waitress in Omaha. She was a phone-in. Kept yacking away like she thought Moses and Jonah shared her twisted addiction for serial-killer paraphernalia.
Just because they sold gruesome shit didn’t mean they were whackjobs. It was a business, like collecting garbage, hosing out Port-o-Johns. Didn’t mean you wallowed in the product. Yeah, okay, now and then Jonah glanced at the photos and shit that passed through his hands, purely professional curiosity, trying to see what the clients got all hot about. And yeah, it happened once or twice, his fantasies kicking in, he found himself looking at a photo, wondering how it felt, cutting off a cute blonde’s head, placing it neatly in front of
those mirrors.
Jonah didn’t see how it automatically made you a twisted fuck if you wondered a little, let your imagination play.
Business kills, like the one Jonah did earlier in the evening, that was different. Nothing psycho about it. Bang, it’s over, collect your pay. Quick and slick. None of that creepy weirdo shit, playing with the bodies, having sex with corpses. Jonah was a straight-ahead bad boy, certified outlaw, nothing twisted about it.
Moses ended the silver phone call, dropped it in the cup holder, got the blue phone to his ear, scribbled on the pad some more, taking down the new bid.
Twenty-eight years old, two older than Jonah, Moses Faust was a fine-looking man in the classic GQ mode. He went six-one, one-ninety. On that score, Jonah got shorted by a few inches and fifty pounds. Moses was ripped from pumping iron in their home gym. He had the abs, the biceps, the quads. Not Jonah. No matter how many protein shakes he guzzled, how much iron he cranked, he stayed slinky as a coyote.
Cool Moses got his thick black hair styled. While Jonah went with the shaved, Dalai Lama, end-of-days look. A minute with the razor, he was done, ready to roll. No shampoo, no comb. Bing-bing-bing.
All right, so Jonah didn’t have the slick-cool thing going on like Moses, and dammit, he didn’t have the gaunt, weathered tough-guy face he truly, deep down craved. Newman, McQueen, Eastwood, one of those. What he had was his dead mother’s bone structure, way too delicate. Narrow face. Lips puffy and red. So puffy, he’d once investigated lip-reduction surgery to bring his mouth in line with his straight nose, sharp cheekbones, the Aryan ideal. But after he saw the medical brochure, he dropped it. Jonah Faust was not into pain.
Not like Moses. Hell, you could drive nails into his brother’s fingers and the guy wouldn’t flinch. Hang him on a cross, go ahead, crucify his ass, he’d just look at you with those quiet blue eyes and be like, “What’s the big deal? How’s this make you a god, hanging on a cross?”
Absorbing punishment was a skill Moses acquired as a kid from standing up to their old man. Putting his body out there to protect Jonah from the drunken abusive prick. Moses, the shield, getting thumped and bloodied so Jonah didn’t have to.
Moses, Moses, Moses. Total opposite of Jonah. The guy was deep down tranquil and unruffled as a stoner on a bong full of hash. He never sweated or fretted, just breezed along with a free-flowing, untroubled cool. Today on their mission of homicide, Moses had on a blue button-down no-iron shirt, creased khakis, woven leather belt, and shiny loafers like here he was, some stockbroker driving to a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont for the long weekend.
Moses Faust was the dapper ying to Jonah’s rat-fuck yang.
Jonah dressed like a scumbag. Wore the same black jeans day in, day out, till they got crusty and impossible. Same gray sweatshirt with the arms hacked off. Bought a fresh one when the armpits went rank. White high-tops, no socks, a long green bungee cord for a belt. His fashion statement to the world: Fuck if I care.
As the car zipped south into the Keys, Jonah drew the Glock inside, reloaded from the ammo box between his legs. Barely got it out in time to blast at a couple of speed signs. Missed the first, clipped the second.
“I didn’t tell you,” Moses said. “We can’t just drill these two and walk off. Thorn and the lady, they’ve got to evaporate. Can’t have a crime scene, a big investigation. Keep this one below the radar.”
“Thorn and Rusty—just saying their names makes my stomach go nasty.”
Moses looked his way, eyes calm, staying in the zone.
Jonah said, “Please tell me this doesn’t involves digging graves, ’cause I hate to break it to you, dude, you can’t bury bodies in the Keys. The ground, it’s coral rock. There’s no fucking dirt.”
“Yeah, but there’s boats,” Moses said. “Lots of deep water.”
Jonah leaned forward to see if Moses was yanking his leash, but no, he was serious.
“Get real, Mo. I’m not taking any boat ride. That’s the end of that story.”
Jonah was cursed by his name, its Biblical aspects. Since he was five and first discovered he was named for a guy famous for being trapped inside a stink-ass whale, Jonah’d been having nightmares, waking up gasping, clawing at the air.
A name could fuck you up. It was predestination. Nothing you did to deserve it. You just got up one morning when you were an innocent kid, and you discovered this weird-ass name stuck to you forever. Shaping your fate.
That name was why he stayed away from the ocean, boats, all that nautical bullshit. If you didn’t go near the water, you stayed out of the whale.
Moses scribbled down the bid he’d taken on the blue phone, and dropped that one in the ashtray.
The red phone warbled. The badass phone, a text message coming in. The guy loved texting.
Jonah picked it up.
“Let me guess,” Moses said, “ ‘WTFUB’?”
“Yeah,” Jonah said. “You want me to hit him back?”
Moses nodded, and Jonah shot him a “Jstaboutthr.”
The phone trilled and another message sprang up.
“What now?”
Jonah had to squint in the bad light. “Says skip the woman, just do the guy. Thorn only.”
Jonah thumbed him back: “Ys dat?”
Waited for a minute, then the phone warbled.
“What’d he say?”
“ ‘FAF.’ That’s a new one. You know it?”
“Fire and forget,” Moses said. “It’s military. Refers to one of the new missiles. Damn thing’s so accurate you press the button, send it on its way, get back to your bowl of cereal. He’s telling us to do the job, stay out of his business.”
“I like that. FAF.”
The phone trilled again.
“ ‘MOS,’ ” Jonah said. “Mom over shoulder. He’s got to go.”
“Now he’s fucking with you. He’s not going to tell you anything.”
Another warble and he signed off with his usual: “BEG.”
“We work for one pissed-off primate,” Jonah said. “Fucker has blood-pressure issues, needs some good Navajo flute music to calm his ass down.”
“It’s his deal, Jonah. We’re just his crew. That’s how he works.”
“It’s bullshit. Treating us like punks. We need to tell the asshole we want to see the big picture or no job.”
“Oh, yeah? You want to negotiate? Go in the man’s house, have a face-off? That man’s tough enough to wear pink.”
Jonah thought about that. Picturing a showdown, Jonah muscling up close, getting into the guy’s breath. But he had to close his eyes and shake off the image because the man’s giant hands were reaching out to wrap around Jonah’s throat, lifting him off the floor.
To clear his mind, Jonah aimed out the window, fired twice into the darkness. That fucking goliath was cold and cruel. A big evil fuck with the morals of a zombie.
The silver phone rang again and Moses nabbed it, flipped it open, got the bid down on the pad, and snapped it shut.
“Offered six-fifty for the Manson drawing,” he said. “Wants the prison envelope, too.”
“What do we have in it?”
“Paid a hundred.” Moses shook his head. “These people continually amaze me. Charlie Manson, that soda’s lost its fizz. Hippies, dopers, bunch of Hollywood bimbos. Cobwebs all over that shit.”
“No, man, you’re missing the point here. Manson is fucking Elvis. Guy never goes out of style. Those eyes, hell, nobody has eyes like that anymore. Not Dahmer, Bundy, Speck, Berkowitz, Hannibal Lechter. They’re all putzes. One look at their gummy eyes, Jesus, they’re not in Manson’s league.”
Moses glanced over at him.
“Hannibal Lechter is fiction,” he said. “You know that, right? You know the difference between real people and people in movies?”
“I was talking about their eyes, man. Their freaking eyes.”
“You’re still wired, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little, sure. Whacking cops, that cranks me up. Cop
s, all big and tough. I didn’t like that guy’s name either. Saperstein.”
“You didn’t need to empty the clip. That was excessive.”
“I was making sure. Little gun like that, big FDLE man, coming on so bad.”
“I worry about you, Jonah. The way you are after. Like you dig it. It lights you up.”
“No worries, man. It’s work, that’s all. I take pride in it.” Jonah looked out his window for a few seconds, then turned to his brother. “Okay, maybe there’s some afterglow. But it’s like Shaq post-game. He takes a while to come back to Earth. Hits the bars, chills with his boys, has some pussy. I’m like the Shaq of whack.”
“Don’t start enjoying it. That’s all I’m saying.”
Then Moses went silent. That’s what he did sometimes. It used to drive Jonah nuts, the way he’d pull the plug and go quiet. Now when he did it, Jonah pretended to zone out, too, like he was doing the same thing, going off into a cloud of nothingness. Except he wasn’t. It was fake. Jonah didn’t have an off button. He couldn’t do the calm thing. Hell, he could barely do the sleep thing. He was wired funny. It was next to impossible to shut down the turbine inside him.
A couple of miles blew past, with the GPS speaking in a woman’s voice, guiding them through the darkness. Jonah did banks and dives with his Glock, getting off a few fruitless shots. Blowing the bark off some mangrove bushes out in the dark.
“How much we getting for this?”
“Two thousand.”
“You’re kidding me,” Jonah said. “The FDLE guy, too?”
“Two thousand for the whole thing.”
“That’s piss poor.”
“People do worse shit for free every day of the week.”
“Yeah, but Moses, we need to get our asses into the entrepreneurial mind-set. Been like five years the man’s stringing us along. We do his heavy lifting, take the risks, and we’re still a couple of dumbass wage slaves. Guy’s taking advantage. Team MoJo deserves better.”
“That two thousand will buy some groceries.”
Jonah curved the wing of his hand so it came skidding back into the car. He upped the window.
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