by Brian Hodge
Then again, so what? Even Hitler had loved dogs.
“As big a house as we can afford,” she told him, backing up Jamey’s lie. He wouldn’t have told it for no reason, and it seemed clear now why he had.
“Good. Good.” Cro-Mag looked back over his shoulder at Mickey Coffman’s mansion. “I hope it’s as big as this one here.”
She wanted to ask him more, to keep her hopes alive by feeding into his own, but there was no time for it. With a scrape of shoes on flagstones, they were back, Jordy with two guns now and Jamey trudging ahead of him, the camera case in one hand and Duncan sagging on his other shoulder.
Her eyes welled with tears at the sight of Duncan’s face, so like Jamey’s in so many unexpected ways, and the awful realization that the crusted bloody caul upon it was not fresh, but many hours old.
Oh, Jamey. You’ve done it again, she thought, wondering how he would ever forgive himself this time, and how she had missed seeing within him the capacity for such brutality. You’ve done it again.
****
With every step, Jamey could feel his nerve starting to falter now that things kept slipping further out of control.
The ideal scenario, he supposed, would have been for Jordy to look in the trunk, then shut it again, satisfied, and head back to retrieve Cro-Mag. At which point Dawn could’ve sneaked over to open the trunk again and let him out, the two of them then lying in ambush with the pistol she’d kept with her in Petra’s car.
Or they could’ve watched Jordy drive off with an empty trunk. The license number could then have been phoned to the police.
But with Duncan pulled from the trunk here and now, the remaining outcomes were looking worse and worse. He didn’t even know if Dawn had managed to keep up during the final minutes of the trip, no way for her to know how disorienting The Oaks could be. Lose sight of someone you were following for just a few moments, and they could be gone.
With two guns at their backs, Duncan leaning on him as though he truly needed support, there was nothing left to do but make this charade look good and see if he couldn’t get through to Melissa.
At the car, he’d hit on the idea that Kristophe’s camera bag would be the quickest way to grab her attention. As they crossed the patio like walking wounded, he saw that he’d been right. About this, if nothing else, he was right, Melissa turning by the fence and her eyes zeroing in on the bag. Astute enough not to say anything, but knowing something was very wrong now.
He felt a boot on his ass, Jordy shoving him toward the chair where Samantha sat with her wrist cuffed to her ankle. He sprawled onto the patio at her feet while Duncan swayed in place, their eyes meeting as Jamey glanced up, and he could almost read his mind. Duncan wondering if he should move now, go on the offensive even though he stood in the crossfire of three guns. He tensed…then must have come to the same conclusion: Rush this now and it would turn into a bloodbath.
Jordy called Melissa over—still eyeing the camera bag, she looked eager to comply—and he tossed her a small silver key.
“Take that cuff off her wrist,” he told Melissa, “and latch it onto his.”
She held the key but didn’t move, instead pointed at Duncan. “What’s he doing out here? This wasn’t part of our arrangement.”
Jordy laughed. “Don’t you know the first thing about most guys who end up behind bars? They’ve got a real problem with waiting. Then they get locked up and waiting’s all they do.” He jabbed the revolver’s barrel as if using a pointer. “Ankle. Wrist. It’s not that difficult.”
He supervised as she did it, then slid the Sig Sauer taken from the car into his waistband to free up one hand.
“You came prepared,” Jamey said. Then looked at Melissa, close enough to rip her nose off with his teeth if he lunged. “Or are these cuffs some hobby of yours?”
“They came with the house. You’d be surprised the things you learn about a man when you work for the firm that handles his divorces.”
“You got no reasons for complaint,” Jordy told him. “I’ve spent plenty of time chained to other people.” A nod to Sam. “None of them looked half that good.” Jordy turned to Melissa. “And to answer your question, what’s Duncan doing here? Same thing he looks to have gotten pretty good at already: bleeding.”
With that, he backhanded the big black revolver across Duncan’s face.
****
It came out of nowhere, as sudden as a shooting star, and when it hit, the inside of his skull went white and red, with a thick cracking sound that filled his head and invited him to fall. As he reeled backward, then got his legs beneath him, doubling over to cup both hands before his face, Duncan couldn’t tell where he’d been hit and where he hadn’t. It seemed he’d been hit everywhere at once.
“How’s it feel?” he heard, a muffled shout from out in the haze. “How’s it feel to get blindsided and me be the one doing it this time?”
Another sledgehammer blow, most of it absorbed across the back of his left hand. The hand went numb, and he wondered if he hadn’t heard its small chicken-thin bones go.
“Doesn’t feel very good, does it?”
Duncan’s thoughts bubbled as freely as his blood: Up to you now, Jamey
“Truth is, when you get blindsided by somebody you know—”
because he’s not watching you now
“—somebody you’ve known your whole goddamn life—”
and if you talk fast
“—that’s a whole new level of pain right there—”
maybe I can last this out
“—because nobody knows how to hit you where it hurts like family!”
Then Jordy just kept on proving it.
****
Jamey turned his eyes from what was happening and realized that Melissa had been waiting for the same moment he had. Standing above him, she scowled down and jabbed her finger at the camera case.
“I know whose that is,” she whispered, “but what’s it doing here?”
“I’ll save that for last,” he whispered back. “Now drop that handcuff key and help me stop this.”
“Why? I like you right where you are.”
At last, the words he’d been waiting to say: “Because I’ve already taken away everything you stand to gain from this. If anything happens to me, you’ve got nothing left. You’ve got less than nothing. You’re buried.”
Melissa regarded him with gunslit eyes. “You are so bluffing.”
Jamey tried to block out the slow, relentless sound of the beating. “I signed over all story rights to my agent, in the event of my death. Plus I e-mailed her a complete account of everything that’s happened. You don’t know half of what we’ve done. All you can ever be is one little piece of the whole. Plus…as of half an hour ago, you don’t even have a job.”
A slow shake of her head. “You couldn’t have.”
“I talked to Mickey myself, told him we’ve got a deal, on one condition: He fires you and gets you blackballed. After a year with him, you can’t think he had a problem agreeing to that.”
He watched her struggle, seconds to decide whether or not she believed him. But it was always easier to make someone believe what she dreaded most. To prod her along, he pulled out the cell phone that he’d tucked down the front of his pants and set it on the chair beside Sam’s shackled foot.
“Call him, see for yourself. Just hit redial,” Jamey said. “Or take his word for it, through me. He said by the time he’s finished with you, you won’t be able to get hired as a fluffer on the set of the sleaziest porn shoot in town.”
That did it. She visibly paled, the phrase meaning something to her. Maybe one of Mickey’s stock threats. It sank so deeply into Melissa’s updated frame of reference that her eyes took on the panic of a cornered animal.
“I can put you right with Mickey again,” he said. “If I’m dead, take your chances. But you’ve still got no story rights to deal with.”
Her hands were trembling. “What’s with Kristophe’s camera?”
“He confessed.” Jamey knew he could sell this now. “He lost his nerve the other night and I filmed a confession, what you put him and Blayne up to. I FedExed the tape to the lawyers that Sherry set up to handle my case. That’s two-against-one, state’s evidence against you on conspiracy to solicit murder.”
Melissa was over the disbelief, face gone slack and the spite in her eyes dulled to a stunned resignation.
Jamey nudged the phone. “Either call Mickey, or quit wasting time.”
Because he didn’t know how much more Duncan could take. Jordy had at some point stopped using the revolver, and was simply holding it in one hand while taking swings at Duncan with his fist. A connect, a pause as Duncan wobbled, then another connect, circling him like a boxer so that he always ended up driven back to the same spot. Whenever he fell, Jordy prodded him upright again or kicked him where he lay.
Jamey curled his hand around Samantha’s ankle as he stared his sister down. “Now, Melissa. Decide right now.”
Her breath rushed out in surrender as she slipped the cuffs key into Sam’s hand. Then reached into her back pocket and came out with something the size of an electric shaver. When he saw the stubby electrical prongs at one end, he realized what it was.
Melissa glanced over her shoulder at Cro-Mag, too engrossed now in Jordy’s one-sided fight to be paying attention to her.
“I know just the place to jab him with it, too,” she said.
****
Jordy had to take a breather, leaning forward, braced on his knees. The left hand still clutching the big Magnum, the right aching from use. Never a smart idea to pound your fist on someone’s head, but after using the gun for those first couple of whacks to get Duncan’s attention, it seemed too impersonal, that his was a rage too close to the bone for anything but bare knuckles.
Gulping air, he wiped sweat from his eyes. Duncan had to be out on his feet and still he wouldn’t stay down. Took one beating last night, then rode all those miles in the trunk of a car, only to take another one. Standing up to it with no ability left to even counterpunch. He wasn’t human. Just some leather gym bag with eyes.
“Years ago,” Jordy panted. “You know what it was like? With you?”
Breathing just as hard, but with a wetter sound, Duncan shook his head no.
“First…it was like you were my little brother. And then…for a while…it was kinda like I was your dad, after yours left.” Had to wipe his face with the tail of his unbuttoned, untucked shirt. The corner came away red in his hand. “Finally the years in between didn’t seem like much anymore. You were just my brother. No big or little anymore. Just brothers. I mean…was it anywhere close to being like that for you?”
Duncan rocked on his heels a moment, and then he nodded that it was.
“Then goddamn, why? Why’d you have to do it, Dunk?” He flung aside the left shirttail and slapped his hand over the round, purplish scar that pitted his side. “See this? You did this to me! Got another one on my leg just like it! I can’t go through one day of my life without seeing those and being reminded of it. Hearing that shot and feeling myself hit the floor, and wondering who—who did that? And then I see it was you. Right before you do it again. And then, after you took off, I had six or seven of those people pile on top of me, and they took scissors to me, Duncan! They got halfway through cutting my ear off before the cops showed—because you left me there for them to do it to. Like none of those years mattered anymore.” He started to repeat himself, then let his shoulders sag. The Magnum weighed a ton. “Fuck it. I’m through asking why.”
“I’ll tell you anyway,” Duncan said. “You took it to a place that day where I couldn’t go.”
“Except on me.”
“Jordy…if you think I could’ve stood there and watched you do that…then the years never mattered anyway. Because you never knew me that whole time.”
Couldn’t fault him there. He’d always been a peculiar one growing up, his head somewhere else half the time.
“Maybe not,” Jordy said. “But I know this much: You never once asked me not to load the gun.”
Duncan had no answer for that, standing with the weight of it on his shoulders, and no more comebacks to shift the blame. Jordy began to wonder if, all along, this wasn’t what he’d wanted to see, instead of his cousin’s corpse. Duncan didn’t even have to say he was sorry, just finally admit that he was no better, that they shared the same blood in their veins and if that blood was bad in one, then it had to be bad in the other.
Across the blood-flecked tiles, Jordy could see in his eyes that he knew. He was finally down in that place of shadows and light, where denial could no longer survive.
But as he stared at Duncan’s face, looking over the damage old and new, it came upon him by slow degrees why something about those wounds seemed peculiar now. Fresh cuts had opened and bled, as well they should’ve…
But it was impossible that any of them could have healed.
On Duncan’s cheek there was a smooth spot where minutes earlier, as he’d lain curled in the trunk of the car, a vicious split had oozed pus through its crust of scab. Except it wasn’t there anymore. As if it had never been inflicted.
Jordy flexed fingers and looked at the knuckles of his right hand. Then peeled free what looked like a pale, flattened leech.
****
“This…this is rubber,” Jordy said, moments after Melissa had edged her way over to Cro-Mag, and if she didn’t feel any more cued-in to this new twist than Jordy was, at least it had to be good for a diversion.
Melissa jammed the stun gun’s contacts just south of the dent in Cro-Mag’s head. His reaction was as primal as she’d expected, full-body and deafening. She’d known he would never stand still for the few seconds required for maximum takedown—Jordy had demoed the thing last night in case she needed it to keep Sam in line—but she’d been counting on target zone making up for short duration. That the plate fused to his skull would act as a superconductor to scramble every major circuit.
He roared and he flailed; one thick arm walloped her alongside the head, then they both went tumbling to the tiles. She lost the stun gun, but no matter, because Cro-Mag had lost his ability to grip anything at all. She snatched the revolver while he lay flat on his back, overtaken by live-wire jitters. She swung the gun around, centering on the middle of Jordy’s torso, a dozen feet away.
She watched him over the barrel. He’d forgotten Duncan for the moment, and the way he was now looking at her, she had seen it all before, Jordy reverting to the same hardwired reaction all men had whenever they got dumped. First the disbelief that she’d found something better. Then the rage. If there had been time, he would’ve called her every vile thing in his vocabulary.
Forget the rest—just that look on Jordy’s face was reason enough to pull the trigger. If there was one thing she was tired of being called, it was a fucking bitch.
She never gave him the chance.
****
Duncan saw the splatter from Jordy’s chest and seized the moment—lunged forward and plucked away the pistol that Jordy had tucked into his jeans to free up his fist. Duncan reeled backwards, Jordy’s wild eyes conveying that while he’d just been shot by someone he barely knew, was maybe dying already, these next few seconds were between the two of them alone. No matter where else the bullets came from.
And there was so much time enfolded into a moment like this, aeons, more time than he could possibly fathom, flooded with thoughts of Dawn and what would never be, and of Jordy and what never should have been. Regrets, too, oceans of them, deep enough to drown in, and let the tides bear his body away.
He thought of love, too—not what he had felt for Dawn, but the love of old resentments and deeply-nursed grudges, the love scabbed inside wounds that refused to be healed, the love that began as a bond of blood, then turned inside-out to become a hatred as natural and pure as the territorial hatred between dog and dog.
No matter how much it hurt, Duncan kept his
eyes wide open and his gun arm locked straight, and handled Jordy the only way you could handle any mad dog:
Put him down.
43
WHEN Dawn heard the gunshots—first one, then many—she knew:
Too late, I’m too late…
When she’d lost Jamey’s path, it had turned into a bad dream, driving frantically along streets that all looked the same, that dipped and climbed, curved and rejoined, as if they’d been designed to confuse. She’d abandoned the car and set off in a weak-kneed run to see if the hilltop neighborhood would make more sense on foot.
And when it didn’t, the only thing to give her any sense of direction was the last thing she wanted to hear.
****
By the time the shots died away to a haze of smoke, all six of them were flat out on the tiles. Draped over Sam, Jamey had watched it happen, with terror and sorrow watched the two cousins stagger apart as they blasted each other full of holes. They lay where they fell, and neither moved again.
Jamey was first to rouse, hand cupped around Samantha’s head as he asked if she was all right. He felt her nod, then wobbled to his feet, past Melissa to where Cro-Mag lay groaning with a slick of drool wetting his chin. Sluggish, his dazed eyes tracked the cuffs in Jamey’s hand. While Cro-Mag’s limbs felt stiff, there was little struggle as Jamey latched his ankle to his wrist.
He turned to Melissa next. She hugged the patio with the revolver clenched in both hands. The side of her face was scuffed and red from the swat from Cro-Mag’s arm. When Jamey wrenched the gun away, her finger caught in the trigger guard, and he wasn’t even trying but broke it anyway, with a sharp snap of delicate bone.
She barked with pain, then cut off whatever she was about to say. Reacting, he supposed, to something in his eyes. Jamey couldn’t say he didn’t feel it, that black urge, his hand wrapped around the revolver’s grip and knowing his own finger worked fine.