Rough Men

by Aric Davis

  “Fuck you,” said Jason in a contented voice before closing his eyes and leaning against the window.

  “I’m serious,” said Will. “Get up.”

  Jason shook himself awake and gave Will a fresh dirty look.

  “Alison will be back any second. If you guys have to talk to the cops, just say you got hurt in the storm. Listen to what Alison says and stick to that story. Deny knowing one another, just take as many easy questions as possible, don’t get frustrated, and act as medicated as possible. Got it?”

  They both bobbled their heads at him, and then Alison and four orderlies were there to unload his brother and friend. Before Will knew it, they were out of the car, and Alison was waving to him in the rearview mirror.

  Will drove himself toward Lou’s office and, as an afterthought, took the cell phone from his pocket. Momentarily confused when he flipped it open and stared at the unfamiliar controls, he couldn’t help but laugh when he realized his problem. As helpful as it would have been for the person most likely to carry a burner to have a lawyer like Lou’s on their contact list, this particular phone was not so equipped. This is the stupidest thing in the world, Will thought. I don’t know any phone numbers off of the top of my head. Making a mental note to go to his cell phone provider to see about a replacement phone at some point in the near future, he drove the rest of the way to Lou’s office in silence. It was wonderful.

  Will pulled in next to Lou’s black Cadillac Escalade, parked in its usual spot in the lot. He got out, closing Alison’s car door, and then walked around the rear of the car to open the front passenger door and retrieve his backpack, still full with three horrible pictures and the loaded rifle. Will hefted the bag, briefly considering offloading the rifle and then reconsidering the idea. Lou would be as good a person as any to ask what he should do with the stolen and likely illegal weapon. Crossing the parking lot, Will caught himself smiling. This was almost over.

  The door to the office was open, even though the sign said they wouldn’t be open until 9:00 a.m., and it was barely 8:00. Will walked past the always-empty secretary’s desk and knocked on Lou’s office door.

  “Hello?” Will called. “Lou, this is Will Daniels. I have some stuff I need to run by you, if you’re not too busy.”

  “C’mon in, Will,” called Lou from behind the door.

  Will opened the door. The office was immaculate, but Lou looked awful behind his desk. The lawyer was disheveled, suit in disarray, hair every which way—not at all like Lou, or at least the Lou that Will knew. What the hell, he figured, last night had been a rough night all around the city. He walked and slid into one of Lou’s comfortable chairs.

  “Everything OK, Lou? You’re here awful early.”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Lou said. “You look like you got run over by a truck, and half of your hair’s been burnt off. I’ve been here all night, as it happens. Tell the truth, I hardly ever leave these days.” Lou pinched his nose shut and chuckled. “And I didn’t mention the smell yet. Shit, Will, what the hell happened?”

  “Long story,” said Will, sighing. “A very long story. But here’s the short of it: I’ve got some pictures I need you to look at. I think it’s in your best interests that you not know how I got them or who I took them from.”

  Lou gave him a long look. “These don’t sound like they’re going to be pictures of a trip to Disney World, Will. Hell, they don’t sound like pictures from a trip to anywhere somebody might like to go at all. What are they of?”

  “I’d rather not say,” said Will, his stomach rolling at the thought of them. “Honestly, I’m not going to look at them again, either. I imagine that you’ll feel the same way when you see them.”

  Will opened the backpack between his legs, moved the short rifle from atop the pictures, took the photos from the bag, and slid them facedown across the table. Lou picked the first one off of the stack, his eyes bugging out of his head and then relaxing. He set the photo down and picked up the second one.

  “Is this who I think it is?” Lou asked, and Will just nodded. Lou set the picture down and picked up the third photo, shaking his head. “It’s enough to make you want to puke. What do you expect me to do with these, Will?”

  “Honestly, Lou, I have no idea. I suppose what ought to happen is they wind up with the police, but I’ve been through enough trouble to come by them that I can see how that might not be a safe option. There seem to be a number of people who have invested a great deal of time and energy into getting these, or getting rid of them, and I want my involvement with them to cease. I think it would be best for the community if the mayor saw prison over this, but I have no idea if that’s even possible.”

  “You let me worry about that, Will. I can handle all the details; that’s what I’m here for. Let me make some phone calls, fish around a little bit. Could be the police cannot be trusted in this matter, either. I do know a couple of guys on the force. I got a captain that I go way back with. Maybe I’ll see what he has to say. I think the play here is to insinuate, not offer. Suggest that I heard something instead of saying, ‘Look what I got.’ Even with all the corruption I’ve seen in local government, this one takes the cake. It’s a new level, even for our mayor.”

  “Thanks, Lou. This really helps, man. With everything else going on, all the stuff with Alex, this mess was the last thing I needed to be involved with. I just wanted some answers, but the shit got too deep for me, too deep by a long shot.”

  “Rest easy, buddy, this is easy from here on out. I make some calls, and this either disappears or a real fucking mess hits this town. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

  Lou stood, extending a hand, and Will stood as well, taking Lou’s hand into his own and shaking it. They released the grip, and Will knelt, zipped the bag up, and stood.

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Lou. “Count on it.”

  “I am, but if you hear from me first, come running. I stirred up some shit last night. I think I’m good on most of it, but if I do call, it’s going to be with a real mess stuck to my shoes.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Let it all go. Shit, go write. I’m sure they’ll release Alex soon, so you’ll be busy enough to avoid worrying too much. Besides, the cops aren’t exactly knocking down your door, are they?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So forget about them. Take care of your family. Go live. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Will felt good leaving Lou’s office. The man might not be the best lawyer, but a guy could sure as hell do worse. Leaving the pictures with him felt good. If Lou trashed them, that just meant that there was no possibility of redemption for that poor little girl, nor was there a possibility of punishment for the man who had killed her. Still, handing it over to Lou gave it a chance that it wouldn’t have had relying on Will’s abilities alone. All he would have done was fumble things, make it worse for himself and his family, and still done nothing for the girl.

  Will took the cell phone from his pocket, slowly dialing Alison’s number as he walked past Lou’s SUV. Hers was one of the few that he knew by heart. She answered on the third ring, and he stopped walking.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, babe, it’s me. Weird number, remember?”

  “That phone sounds like crap.”

  “Well, I did steal it from a gas station. If anything, it’s amazing that the battery is still kicking. When you really think about it, you’re lucky to be talking to me.”

  “Believe me, I’m counting my blessings about that.”

  “Good, I’m glad. How are the boys?”

  “Isaac is OK. His right arm is broken in at least two spots, and the doctor said that before the X-ray.”

  “He call Daisy yet?”

  “No, and he forbid me from calling her. I’m still obeying the ruling, but my resolve is cracking.”

  “Do your best. How’s Jason?”

  Will could hear her take a deep breath, then let it out slowly, trying to make it so he couldn’t hear it. “He�
��s not good. From what I could gather as a nonfamily member, he’s in really bad shape. His rib cage is basically shattered on one side, and he’s got a ton of damage to the lung, multiple perforations. I’m pretty sure he was shot, too, but they don’t talk about that.”

  “He was shot? Do you know where?”

  “No, but I assume lower body. I heard a doctor talking about his leg.”

  “Hell, I guess we’re all lucky we got out of there at all.” He sighed, finding he’d made a decision to tell her a little more. “Babe, don’t tell those guys, but I lied a little bit to them. They thought I got rid of some stuff we found, but I brought it to Lou, to see if he couldn’t make heads or tails of it, anyways—”

  Will had turned in the parking lot as he’d spoken, but now his words stuck in his throat. His eyes were locked onto Lou’s SUV. There was no snow on Lou’s Escalade, not a drop of ice, yet he said he’d been there all night. More than that, three bullet holes were visible in the tailgate.

  “Oh fuck,” said Will, remembering Jason firing after the fleeing black Cadillac SUV the night before, four shots. Jason had missed once, it seemed.

  Will looked up. Lou was walking toward him, struggling with a jacket pocket, arguing with the fabric for something that he seemed to need very badly.

  “I have to go,” said Will, watching a nickel-plated wheel gun pull free from Lou’s coat, then turning away from his lawyer, speaking loudly. “We need to go over my new contract.”

  “What new contract?” Alison said, puzzled, as Lou pushed the revolver against the back of his head.

  “My new book and the new contract Jack got for me,” said Will, the gun against his skull, the phone feeling like a piece of dust in his fingers, the rifle in the backpack a weight, but a million miles away. “I told you about that.”

  “Hang up now,” said Lou. “Right now.”

  “All right, Lou’s off the horn now. We’ll see what Terri had to say.”

  Will was able to hear one word as the burner came off of his ear, and it was, “Cops?”

  “Yes, baby,” said Will as Lou pushed the gun into his head. “Love you, too.” He closed the phone and tucked it into his pocket, then let Lou push him inside.

  “Goddamn it, Will,” said Lou as he walked Will back into the office, “you were never supposed to be involved. This is all just a damn mess now. What in the fuck were you thinking?”

  “I just wanted to see some justice for Alex, that was it. But the more I dug, the worse it got.”

  Lou shoved Will roughly into the chair he’d been in earlier, and then Lou sat in his own chair across from him, keeping his gun on Will as he moved. Will took the backpack off, watching the revolver barrel the whole time and thinking about the gun inside the bag, the AR-15 as far away as a well-meaning buddy stuck in Timbuktu. Lou shook his head as though he’d heard a funny joke, then frowned.

  “So what now, Will?” Lou asked. “What in the hell am I supposed to do with you? These pictures were supposed to be sold, and you went and fucked everything up. It’s bad enough nothing like this turned up before the election, when my guy, the fucking idiot, could’ve used the help. Now you fucked up the deal I was able to manage. All you had to do was just let it go. This was finished. It was over. And don’t think I’m such a bad guy, either.”

  “Oh, no, Lou. You’re a prince.”

  “Shut the fuck up. All I did was get the word that there were some pictures out there and made some calls. Carlos and his nasty little buddies came through. MS-Thirteen gets a bad rap, the way he tells it. Other gangs will unite just to try and get rid of them, but that’s like putting out a fire by filling your dick with gas and commencing to piss on the flames—it doesn’t even sound good in theory. These people are not to be fucked with, not with their money and especially not personally. You’ve done both.”

  “I know that. How do we make this right?”

  “We don’t, Will. Or at least, we don’t for you. I tend to land on my feet. You look to be on life numero nueve, as our friends from El Salvador might say. Come on now, stand up. And leave that fucking backpack where it is. I can tell by the way you’re hanging onto it that you’ve got a piece in there.”

  Will stood, casting a brief, mournful look at the backpack. It was his last link to survival; he was losing the strings that connected him with life by the second. Lou slid open a pocket door that Will had often noticed but never seen the other side of, and Lou ushered him in with his left arm, the one without the heater. Will walked through the door and stopped, almost falling backward.

  The room had no windows, but did have a second door. That one wore a padlock. There was a sink, a toilet, and a man lying on a Murphy bed on the far side of the room. The man had tattoos all over his face, and he wore a very well-tailored suit, the right side of the coat soiled with a round, red spot the size of a small pizza. It was no longer very wet, so maybe he was no longer bleeding. But the man’s ochre pallor told the tale—gut shot, and badly.

  The wounded man barked something in Spanish, and Lou pulled off his second trick of the day, responding in kind before turning to Will.

  “Your friend shot this man,” he said. “I’m guessing it happened when we were driving away. I saw you admiring the scars on the Caddy out front, putting the pieces together. One of those bullets drove through my friend, my partner on this deal. He lost a stable manufacturing business, a lot of friends, and he’s at least a day away from the sort of doctor he needs.”

  “That’s a tough spot. Can’t say I’ll lose sleep over it, though. That’s the asshole that got my son killed.”

  “No,” said Lou, “your son came in on a job and got nosy, that’s why he’s got a toe tag. You came looking for what happened, but your ego never let you see that everything around you was bigger than your want to see justice. Your son killed people, he robbed people—he got what he gave to another man just minutes before. He made you into a lunatic.”

  Will considered that, giving a look to the waiting-to-die MS-13 leader and then back to Lou and his gun.

  “How long have you been living here, Lou?”

  “A long time, Will. A very long time. That last divorce destroyed me. I tried to hint around about that, but you never seemed too interested. This was a way out of that, a perfect one. Crack the mayor open on the street like a rotten egg and get paid for doing it.”

  “Lou, you were fucking her best friend. What was she supposed to do?”

  “An affair should have nothing to do with alimony. No judge could ever make me believe otherwise, and you won’t, either. Not that it matters. I’m broke, and what can you do about that?”

  “You heard me talking to Alison, about a new contract?”

  “Yes. So what? You were just bullshitting me. You’re a two-time lucky hack that managed to get off the sauce long enough to write the denouement of your own life. Nothing more.”

  “Yeah, OK. Maybe. So you’re fucked on money. I guess this is just the end of it.”

  The man on the foldout bed groaned loudly and began to piss blood onto the floor, the moan turning high-pitched, and as Lou lowered the gun to frown in disgust at the smell of urine and death, Will charged him, all fear gone. The revolver barked once as Will hit him.

  Will landed with Lou under him and began smashing his fists against him as fast as he was able. Lou had fired once, and Will hadn’t felt anything, at least not yet. The wounded man on the foldout was screaming in a language that Will wasn’t sure he would’ve understood even with a fluency in Spanish.

  Will connected with Lou’s nose, hard enough to feel the cartilage shift under his hand and to force a high-pitched squeal from his attorney. Will could feel Lou trying to turn under him, and he brought his elbow down in a point to attack Lou’s ribs, eliciting more pained noises.

  He rose up to punch Lou again. He was starting to like the way using his hands on the lawyer felt; it was an adrenaline dump strong enough to make him forget that he was exhausted. He cocked his fist, and somethi
ng smashed into the back of his head, toppling him, and the world faded from gray to black, then drifted back to gray.

  Will was on his hands and knees. He could see Lou next to him, slowly attempting to stand, the revolver blindly menacing the room as he wobbled. The MS-13 leader was staggering across the room, hanging onto a piece of the chair he’d used to smash Will with before collapsing next to the Murphy, the wound to his side more than doubled now and leaking blood so congealed that it had the consistency of strawberry jam. Will watched Lou stand, slowly, the pistol rising, and Will drove his body into his legs, the gun going off again.

  Will assumed that the second shot from the revolver must have hit the banger, because he still felt no gunshot wound, but the gangster was screaming. Not the whimpering that he was doing when his bladder loosed itself, but really howling now. Will wanted to tell him to stop, to please just shut up, to ask Lou to stop, that they could work something out. He knew that was impossible, though, so instead of holding up a white handkerchief, Will held Lou’s right wrist with his left, the revolver moving back and forth, up and down, over his face and then away from it. Will slipped his right fist past Lou’s left to try and punch him again, but the lawyer saw it coming, and when Will shifted his weight to add leverage to the shot, Lou bucked his hips. Will fell off of him, and Lou stood. Blood was dripping from his mouth, and he started to raise the revolver. If there was a soul behind Lou’s eyes, Will couldn’t see it.

  “You fuck! You broke my nose!” Lou shouted, barely loud enough to be heard over the screaming from the dying man. Lou walked over to the banger, seeming to consider the screaming man, and shot him in the head. The gunshot was deafening, but then the room was silent. Then he turned back to Will. “I wish I could let you walk away, Will, but you know I can’t.”

  Will watched from ten feet away as the revolver was pointed at his legs, chest, and finally, his face. There was an explosion, and the world went to black and stayed there this time.