Warbirds and bolts are all that we think.
In times we turn cold, ruthless and hard,
The price we pay to survive in the yard.
We are peckerwood soldiers down for our cause.
Texas convicts, soldiers, and solid outlaws!
—POPULAR PECKERWOOD POEM, CREDITED TO THE ARYAN BROTHERHOOD OF TEXAS
14
He killed his best friend, his only friend in the world, with fire.
Setting it up had taken months. Gettin’ the matches was easy, but smuggling in the lighter fluid—enough of it—had been the fuckin’ hard part. Sunny had been able to slip some in for him, and Mack Doty’s old lady had as well, passing it to Doty mouth-to-mouth in tiny condom balloons as they swapped hot spit over their one allowed kiss during visitation, which Doty later shit out in his cell. The Family moved all their drugs that way, too, and John Wesley Earl had come to learn there were a lot of things a man could keep hidden up his ass, if he were so inclined or desperate enough. It was like a goddamn magic trick, but instead of pullin’ a rabbit out of a hat, a man could make a six-inch metal shiv appear out of his asshole, almost out of thin air.
Now that was a fuckin’ trick.
After he got the lighter fluid, he stored it all in a tied-off rubber glove he’d pinched from the chow hall. When the time came, he brought Doty with him, and they cruised by George’s cell to find him calmly sitting there—all three hundred pounds of him—knitting. It was George who had shown Earl the value of knitting, almost like meditating; a way of concentrating hard and floating free at the same time, moving past the bars and over the walls into the wide world beyond. Earl had dropped the knitting in favor of his own kind of meditating, the phantom motorcycle rides he’d take in his head, but it was George who had also vouched for him as a prospect nearly twenty years ago, and who’d later made him a general. Together they’d helped run all the activities of the Family—the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas—for over five years. They were two-fifths of the Wheel, the Family’s “steering committee,” and they called the shots over several state prisons and one federal pen and answered to no one but each other. Earl didn’t know how many men’s names they’d put into the hat together, Family slang for ordering a hit, but if all those dead men stood up at one time, there wouldn’t be much elbow room left for a living one. They’d had a helluva ride together, but now it was over.
Blood in. Blood out.
You had to spill blood to earn your patch, and the only way you ever left the Family was in a body bag.
George “Big King” Chives was sitting there, garter stitching a potholder, when Earl sprayed his face full of lighter fluid. He’d punched a hole in the thumb of the rubber glove so it made its own little nozzle, and when he squeezed it one-handed, nearly every bit of that thick fluid hosed down George’s eyes, right into his open mouth and down the front of his shirt. It soaked that shitty potholder that no one was ever going to use, and George was just standing up, about to yell, when Earl hit him with the lit match Doty had handed him. It felt like the very air between them caught fire, and George was suddenly breathing flame as he lunged at the bars, the inside of his skull lit up like a carnival. He tried to say something but his tongue was already melting.
Big King was wearin’ a goddamn crown all right, when the fire circled his head.
Earl tossed the wadded-up glove into George’s face, sparking another dark explosion of embers, and although he’d wanted to stay and see the end of it, he and Doty had kept walking, fast-casual the way only inmates can, as thick smoke started to seep through the bars like blood. In about twenty more seconds the block would be in a full uproar, but by then they’d be down on the next level and would be halfway toward the yard, sharing a cigarette and laughing and cutting up without a care in the world. He’d have to wash the lighter fluid off his hands, but that was just for the guards and all the questions that’d come after. All the true peckerwoods in Walls would know what he’d done, and that was part of the reason for makin’ it so damn hard on himself. It would have been far easier to just stick a shiv or sharpened guitar string or hacksaw into George in the shower and be done with it, but he’d wanted it done this way. It was a statement, a blazing bright show that everyone could see and would never forget, and one of the first things George had taught him, all those years ago.
They have to believe you’ll do anything, JW . . . that there’s no line you won’t cross, because there just is no line. You’re only as strong as how much they fear you, and strength is the only damn thing anyone in here respects. That’s the way you’ll hold on in here, and I reckon that’s the only way to hold on to anything, anywhere.
That had proved true over and over again. George had been a great teacher and a better friend, and if setting that friend (and a high-ranking member of the Family) on fire in the middle of his cell on a fine October afternoon wasn’t a statement—loud and clear—then Earl couldn’t imagine what would be.
If that wasn’t a show of strength, then goddamn nothin’ was.
* * *
• • •
EARL STOOD IN THE ENDLESS SUN, turning Hero’s hand-drawn map of Murfee this way and that, looking it over. It was military precise, the writing neat, which squared with the time Danny Ferro had spent in the army, and Earl hadn’t expected any less. Earl had taken to calling him “Hero” from that first night they met, but the boy had done some serious superhero shit over in Afghanistan or Iraq or some other raghead place, so Earl knew the kid could handle himself. Hell, he’d seen it firsthand in Lubbock, watching him damn near fight that whole skinhead party himself, while his older son, Jesse, had stood and watched with his dick in his hand. Danny had come back from over there not quite right, got himself a head-case discharge or something like that, but had sworn to Jesse he still had plenty of friends in the service that, for the right price, could get their hands on grade-A military weapons, even explosives, so Flowers could arm his goddamn Church of Purity for the comin’ race war. And that truly was serious shit, even if Earl wasn’t convinced Danny really would follow through on all those big promises. Danny was weird in his ways and hard to pin down, always slippin’ and slidin’ around everyone, like he was trying to hide something behind his back (and he wouldn’t be the only one), but he was also whip-smart and there was no hidin’ that. He was smarter than both Jesse and Little B by a country mile, which meant he had far too much sense to ever be sucked in by Flowers and all his bullshit.
But here he was in Killing all the same, talkin’ that nonsense, and why? That was a question worth turnin’ over.
Fortunately, neither Jesse nor Flowers had a pot to piss in or a window to throw out of. Not now, and if Earl kept Jesse out of his business, not ever. But if Danny did get ahold of a bunch of grenades and shit, the best thing to happen for everyone involved would be for Flowers to blow himself sky-fuckin’-high with ’em.
Earl folded the map back up and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke over Killing. He was up on the bluff behind the place Jesse had found for them, high enough that he could pick out the white steeple of the church and all of its little grave markers, and the few roads that spoked out into the scrub behind the town like parts of a broken wagon wheel . . . like a little kid’s drawing in the dirt. He’d come up here where the reception was best to call that half-breed prick Manny Suarez, and the conversation had been short, brutal, simple.
It figured . . . after all of their years of doing the business together, where most of their contact had only been through coded jail letters and passed messages, when they finally could talk openly, there wasn’t a helluva lot to say, anyway.
For more than a decade, they’d made each other rich with only a handful of words.
And now, although Manny and his people were willing to accept a certain amount of responsibility for the current pile of neck-deep shit Earl was standing in, Manny had made it clear—in as few words as possible—they were
n’t gonna help him dig out of it. Not right now and not near fast enough.
So yes (or sí, as Manny that motherfucker put it), although they all could agree that their man (actually Manny’s own boy, Miguel) had fucked up—and royally—it was now only Earl’s problem, since he was the one who’d insisted on this particular godforsaken place to celebrate his Christmas in July. And Manny had warned him again and again about the risks of doing it here, how they’d needed agreements and promises and money to change hands even to consider it, since Manny’s people had no sway in this shitty little corner of Texas, no strength. It wasn’t even like Earl hadn’t understood all the problems, either, because he’d seen that firsthand in prison, where all the gangs—the Black Guerilla Family, the Mexican Mafia, the Texas Syndicate, the ABT—had built their own invisible walls behind the real ones so that everyone had to pay something for the privilege of crossing their little empires. But in the end, since Earl had never really had a choice, neither did Manny or his people, and after a lot of wetback pissin’ and moanin’, Manny had honored the request and come through just like he’d promised, only to find that now he and his boy were the ones paying the price. So there was really nothin’ more Earl could or would ask of him, and it wasn’t like he could honestly explain the real reasons why this fuckin’ flyspeck of a town had been the only choice, and how it had fucked them both.
But none of that mattered anymore, what was done was done. And Manny’s people were now, for the moment, content to let things shake out on their own time, even though time was something John Wesley Earl most certainly did not have. For a man who’d spent so many years locked up, where time itself was near meaningless—where it had no shape and seemed like it could stretch on for a thousand of these hot Texas summers ass-end to ass-end forever—even he had to laugh at his sudden concern over it. But Manny’s last words had been clear: Earl’s present was still wrapped, so far still safe and untouched, and just waitin’ for him where they’d left it. But it wouldn’t stay that way forever. Someone would eventually find it. So if Earl still wanted Christmas to come early, it was all on him now. He should probably start plannin’ to celebrate alone . . .
Otherwise, he could sit tight and go fuck himself.
And that was why Earl was glad he’d sent Danny into town this morning with Jesse and T-Bob: to have someone he could rely on and trust (as much as he trusted anyone) put first eyes on this place Murfee, so Earl could figure out exactly what he was dealing with and where to start.
So he could start that holiday plannin’ . . .
Jesse last told him that worthless snake-handler Flowers was only a week away, maybe not even that long. And Jesse liked to say that when Flowers got to Killing, things were finally gonna change, and fast, making it out like it was some sort of promise, or worse, a goddamn threat. Earl was even fine with some of that smart mouth, if it meant Jesse wasn’t the yellow coward Earl was afraid he was. But Jesse had also been slow-pissin’ on him about what he was due for weeks, as if that was Earl’s concern, and that just showed that his older son didn’t know him at all, not really. In fact, none of them knew John Wesley Earl, not Sunny or T-Bob or the rest; none of them had any idea of what he was truly capable of when his back was against the wall, like it was now. He’d kept that hidden, tucked down deep. He was a shark of a cardplayer, and that was his ace in the hole.
They didn’t know there was no line. But they would if it came to it.
That dead man in Terlingua had brought Earl a whole new set of problems he hadn’t seen comin’ and hadn’t prepared for, and the stink of it was now carryin’ all the way to the sheriff’s department in Murfee. He couldn’t wash it off the way Jesse had tried to with a damn hose. Yep, things were gonna change and change soon, no doubt about that, but not in ways Jesse or any of the others could imagine.
* * *
• • •
HE STAMPED OUT the first cigarette and shook out another. He’d been out of prison for a little while now, but still lived on yard bird time. It’s like the bars and walls and regimen had followed him, stayed with him, everywhere he went. He sometimes sat in his room for the same hours he would have sat in his cell, waiting for an invisible guard to come and tell him it was time for chow or time to walk the yard or time to take a shit or whatever. He was free and still as locked up as he’d ever been. Even Sunny, who’d done a small stint of her own for extortion and passing Family notes, couldn’t understand why he still woke up at four-thirty a.m. every goddamn day when there was no one to order him to do it. But there was somebody, she just didn’t see or hear them.
Some mornings before the sun was fully up, he took his big Harley out on the back roads; the ’87 FXLR Low Rider with the fireball and black candy finish that flashed grinning skulls in the right light, and that Sunny had kept cherry for him while he was locked up. The last time he’d been on it before goin’ up again had been right after the trip to Corpus, and he still didn’t like to think about that much. But he still loved that damn bike, the feel of pushin’ it hard, as fast and far as it could go. He’d fight that bitch through the tightest curves with his eyes closed, just so he wouldn’t have to watch the world go by or face the fact he was still just goin’ around in goddamn circles.
Not really going anywhere at all, no matter how fast he went.
But that was gonna change, too.
He looked south, toward scrub and mesas that reminded him of broken plates, all stacked up; past sawtooth mountains blocking the horizon, where Mexico would be. The land was wide and open and as pale as a skeleton; the dust as dry as ash, as fine and loose as talc. It took nothing for the wind to throw handfuls of it high in the air, where it spun wild like the damn Devil himself.
Free.
His daddy had loved that old Johnny Rodriguez song “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico.” Johnny Rod had sung about headin’ on down to Mexico for a little change of atmosphere, and Earl had sold out everyone and everything he’d ever known for his own change of atmosphere, too; his one good chance. And he’d burned his best friend to death to clear the way. He burned now, too: a fire that’d only been getting more furious by the years, scorching away everything inside him, leaving only scar tissue, twisted and black.
So he had no problem burnin’ down Killing and Murfee and the whole damn world if he had to. Just like the damn Devil himself.
He looked at his watch. It was time to check in again, as bad as the old nightly two a.m. cell checks in Walls, and in some ways, worse. But when all this was finally over, he was gonna take this watch and throw it in the cold deep of the ocean, where maybe the water would finally put out all the fires inside of him, too, and where he was never gonna have to worry about the fuckin’ time for anyone else, ever again.
He bent down and pulled out a second phone from his boot, one none of the others knew about, not even Sunny. Twenty, thirty years ago, he’d have kept a knife down there, five inches of stainless steel; more than enough to get through a man’s ribs and cut deep into something vital behind them. Nowadays, you could hurt a man twice as bad with a simple phone call, or just by talkin’ to the right people. He knew that as well as anyone, and it was one of the few lessons he’d learned beyond what prison or ole Big King or even Manny Suarez had taught him.
He’d truly learned that from FBI Special Agent Austin Nichols, the man he was about to call.
Blood in . . . blood out.
Earl took the phone and turned his face to the desert and dialed.
15
Things were frosty between them for the first part of the drive, but started to thaw somewhere just outside Odessa, where they stopped to grab some coffee and stretch. Chris didn’t say anything about the Earls or Billy Bravo, and Harp didn’t, either. It was like they’d made a silent pact not to discuss any of that again until after their meeting in Lubbock, and Chris was fine with that.
Since Harp didn’t bring it up, Chris figured his chief deputy was ok
ay with it, too.
* * *
• • •
WHEN THEY ARRIVED, no one asked them for their guns, but Chris and Harp had to show a bored security guard their badges and their driver’s licenses. The address Chris had been given was a bank building, a four-story in downtown Lubbock. It was a newer Bank of America, and the lobby was an expanse of black-and-green-veined marble dominated by a pyramid fountain that made the open space smell like a cave. After a twenty-minute wait, they were escorted past the fountain and a glass-walled maze of well-lit suites into a sterile set of offices on the third floor.
There were no books on the shelves, no pictures on the walls. The modular furniture was by and large empty, except for some computer monitors turned away from the windows, feathered in dust. Even the trash cans looked unused.
Chris had no idea if it was a fed or state operation. It didn’t feel like it existed at all.
They finally settled in a conference room that did look used: numerous folders spread out on the table, a few iPads, cups of coffee, and a selection of cell phones from the men who were waiting on them. Major Dyer was a big man, matching his voice on the phone, and same as the lieutenant he introduced as Stackpole, he was dressed in the standard Texas Ranger uniform of white collared shirt, blue tie, khaki pants with Ranger belt, Stetson Rincon Vented straw hat, and boots. They both had their silver stars high up on their shirts, and Dyer’s hair was pushed back even higher on his head, a wave of gray that looked almost blue beneath the overhead lights.
With them was the owner of most of the phones and folders on the table, an African-American man in an expensive lightweight suit named Austin Nichols; an FBI agent out of Dallas. Chris had a hard time imagining Nichols was much older than him, and he had the air of someone who always left everywhere early but still was fifteen minutes late to the next place he had to be. Chris figured he’d been the president of his fraternity at whatever college back East he’d attended. In his life, he’d probably been the president of a lot of things; was used to it. He was slim and good-looking, like someone you might see on TV, and he was on one of his phones and looking at his watch when Chris and Harp walked in.
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