Hogdoggin'

by Anthony Neil Smith

  Perry got in her face. “It’s all your fault, and if anyone finds out, I’ll pin it all on you.”

  She bumped his chest. “Wow, I’m scared. You try to threaten me, and you might wake up with your balls in your mouth. Or you might not wake up at all. You want me to call my dad again? Remember what he did to you last time?”

  “Bring him on. Just a lucky sucker punch was all.”

  “It’ll always be a sucker punch. That’s all you ever deserve.”

  Perry retreated, paced. Lafitte guessed they’d sent Goof home. They probably weren’t far from where he’d first encountered the whole fucking bunch in the parking lot. Smooth move, Billy. Trade in your bike. Probably would’ve been easier to outrun cops on it than try to outthink them.

  Fawn stood with her hip cocked out. Her cheeks were flushed, like she’d been hitting the booze hard, but she was wide awake, not slurring. Chick could hold her liquor.

  Lafitte spit out some more, couldn’t get the nasty stringy stuff off his lips. He croaked, “Please, help.” Gagged again. “Don’t…I didn’t mean…”

  “Shut up!” It was Fawn. “You deserved all of it, and you know why. You know what you did. Just lost your nerve was all. You were going to kill me.”

  “No, I swear…no. No killing.” Thinking, what the fuck did he ever do to give her that idea? Liquored-up chick also had an active imagination. “No…”

  Fawn rolled her eyes, then searched around the basement, found a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey. She had the top off before Perry figured it out and tried to stop her, but he didn’t grab her wrist until the bottle was already tipped over and raining down on Lafitte’s chest.

  Now, that woke his ass up. Like a nest full of wasps ripping into all those cuts at once. He let out a scream and choked himself again. More steaming acid erupted from his mouth and splashed down everywhere. Fawn let out a “Son of a bitch!” when it got on her sandals. Perry dragged her away by the arm. She fought him and was probably strong enough to break free, but he held tight. She whined.

  Through the pain and adrenaline white noise, Lafitte remembered bar brawls the Steel God’s MC had provoked, the way Steel God trained them to be so ferocious and give back tenfold what was brought against them that word spread far and fast. The only people who tried to take them on any more were guys who had practiced, prepared, studied. No one-offs. The prize for taking down God’s cult was huge, a community pot that even brought enemies together for a common cause. And not one of those challengers ever took down the Cult. Why? Like God had told them: “You act weak, then you are weak. If you feel pain and can’t laugh at it, go shoot yourself in the head and get it over with. This life ain’t for you.”

  Lafitte would’ve loved a gun to his head right then. What a fucking failure.

  He did his best to overcome the pain, swallow it down. Concentrate on these two morons. Listen. They might say something to save your life.

  Perry was one loud motherfucker, but he didn’t faze Fawn. Lafitte figured they used to date or something.

  “Stop it, all right! Could you leave the guy alone? It’s bad enough you’ve fucked us out of the reward already.”

  “Would you chill?” She was smiling. “Get him cleaned up so we can kill him. In a few days, we’ll claim we found the body while we were out looking for a place to fuck. They won’t care. He’ll be half eaten by then and we still get the money, if there is any. I still don’t think he’s wanted or anything. Worth about ten cents.”

  Perry stuttered and puffed and fidgeted until he finally said, “Fine, we need that stuff. You know, you pour it on and it soaks up the puke.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s like fucking wood chips or something. Shit. There’s probably some down here. I know Granddad uses it for the drunks. Go get a bucket and water and…and towels. See if there are some towels up there.”

  “Fuck you. Why don’t you get it?”

  Perry shook his head. “I’m not leaving you alone with him any more. Already enough to clean up.”

  Fawn didn’t move.

  “Hurry the fuck up, will you? For shit’s sake, woman!”

  She bared her teeth at him and growled, but stomped up the stairs hard enough to shake them, every tremble biting into Lafitte’s back.

  Perry yelled after her, “And get some pop! Like, Sprite.” Then to Lafitte, “It’ll help settle your stomach.”

  The door at the top of the stairs opened, then slammed loud. More shaking. More splinters digging deeper.

  Lafitte cleared his throat as much as possible. The key was to keep the air moving in and out through your mouth. Don’t even think of trying through your nose, a surefire path to retching. Cleared the thick from his throat and said, “Why? Why’d you let her do this to me?”

  Perry. “Aw, man, shut up, okay?”

  “Why’d you let her fuck me up…” Had to stop and swallow. It burned. “…if you wanted a reward so bad?”

  The guy shrugged. “I had to drive the kid home. It’s, like, twenty minutes there and back. I figured she’d tease you or something. Goddamn, I had no idea.” He took another look at Lafitte and winced. “No idea.”

  Twenty minutes. There twenty and back twenty? Or is that the total? Lafitte couldn’t ask or Perry would know what he was up to. Still, that gave Lafitte enough to draw the map in his head. If he could somehow get Perry to give him a break, a little sympathy move or something before Fawn got back, well, okay.

  “Man,” Lafitte said. “My back is on fire, and I can’t get all this…guh…shit out of my throat…” He let out a wet cough to make the point.

  “Just shut up, okay? All I wanted was a reward. That’s all. Fuck. Fuck. Don’t talk to me.” Pacing, pacing, erratic, like a lone ant on the bathroom tile.

  “I know, I know, listen…you can still have it. I mean, there’s a reward on me so big you wouldn’t believe it. Probably set you up for a good long time.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “Serious, man. I’m telling you…” The ropes of spit kept getting in the way, and Lafitte fought to not puke again. Get this asshole on board. Come on. “Keep that crazy bitch away from me and don’t kill me yet. You got an internet connection?”

  “Internet?”

  “Do you?”

  Perry nodded. “My stepmom does.”

  “Okay. Okay. I want you to look up ‘Billy Lafitte’. L-A-F-I..guh…um, T-T-E. Got it?”

  “I need to write it down.”

  “Fuck writing! It’s L-A-F-I-T-T-E. Easy fucking name, right? Come on. It’s worth it.”

  More pacing, glancing up at the top of the stairs. Some noise overhead, footsteps on the floor of the bar. Fawn getting a move on.

  Perry said, “It’s, like, five in the morning. I can’t go to my stepmom’s right now. She would kill me.”

  “Then give her some of the reward…hold up…wait.” He couldn’t hold back any more. The stream this time was thinner, but it burned ten times worse. He pushed out a mighty breath, let the mucus drip. “I’m telling you, I’m fucking famous, man. I’m a goddamn traitor to the country, and I’m worth a helluva lot more alive than dead. Would you wake her up for that?”

  That just seemed to agitate Perry more. Jesus, and Lafitte had thought this was some sort of badass last night when they ambushed him. Guy was falling apart now, a total pushover.

  “It’s either that or wake up screaming from the nightmares.”

  Perry said, “Oh God, oh God, oh God. It was supposed to be easy.”

  “It still is.”

  Perry shook his head. “You don’t know Fawn.”

  He rolled up his sleeve and bent over to show Lafitte his forearm, where the word “PUSSY” had been carved from the crook of his elbow to his wrist, scarred over, must’ve been a while.

  “Holy shit, man. What did you do?”

  “Slept with her niece. Thing is, I kept dating her a while after she cut me. That’s fucked up, right?”

&n
bsp; The door at the top of the stairs opened, banged into the wall, and heavy steps shook the stairs. Fawn again, humming some sort of pop hook you heard all over the radio in eight different songs. She came into view, looked over at Perry, who had yanked his sleeve back down.

  “Here you go.” She carried a tube of the vomit soaker-upper, a bucket full of water, and a couple of rolls of rough-looking paper towels. Held them out to Perry. “Just like you wanted. Get to work.”

  He reached over and took the tube. “You going to help?”

  What a smile, a giant beaming, “Eat Shit” sort of smile. She set the rest on the floor and said, “You’re the one who’s scared of a little puke and blood.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “Okay, then let’s just do this.” She pulled up her shirt and pulled a pistol from her waistband. Lafitte pegged it—his own Glock. She had taken it from him while he was spaced. “Let’s kill him already.”

  Perry made a sound like a wounded hawk when she whipped that gun out, and now he was easing towards her, hands wide and steady. “We can’t kill him here. My Granddad’s bar!”

  “Shit, you keep telling me what we can’t do. What the fuck can we do?”

  Perry was now between her and Lafitte, so Lafitte couldn’t see her reactions. Maybe she’d fire right through Perry, get them both at once.

  “Look, babe—”

  “Babe? You’re fucking with me now?”

  “Just, just, listen, okay?” Perry looked at his watch. “We’ve still got a few hours before we need him out of here. So we need to see how much he’s really worth.”

  “You don’t even know his fucking name!”

  “No, he told me. Okay? I got him to tell me. Says he’s wanted big time.”

  Fawn’s head peaked around Perry. Lafitte played too sick to care. Her mouth was open, dumb look on her face while Perry kept on.

  “We go look him up and see if it matches. Maybe they want him alive.”

  She said, “He’s probably lying. You’d believe anything.”

  “Well, shit, if we know his name, we might be able to find a photo, too. Think about it.”

  Her head disappeared again. “How big is big time?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you we need to find out.” Boy was almost whining at her now.

  There was her head again. Pretty much blank, lost all its cartoon evilness. “Like, on the internet?”

  “Like I’ve been telling you. We’ve got to hurry.”

  “Alright,” Fawn said. “Just going to leave him here?”

  “He can’t go anywhere, and he’s pretty fucked up. If you want, I can get him to huff some more gold.”

  Fawn stepped over to Lafitte, gun still raised, wrist flopped back but finger on the trigger. He looked up at her through his one opened eye, blurry and out of focus. The sour smell of the vomit seemed to hit them both at the same time as Lafitte gagged and Fawn wrinkled up her face.

  She said, “Fuck the paint. I’ve always wanted to try this.”

  Took her gun arm back and swung, the frame smashing into his temple. Fraction of a blackout, sort of. Goddamn gun was mostly plastic anyway, but it still fucking hurt. A shockwave of pain starting at impact and spreading all over Lafitte’s head and back again, rippling back and forth and in and out and it was dark and he wasn’t conscious or unconscious either.

  But he saw colors and for some reason had an image of Steel God’s club out on the open road, Kristal behind him on the hog, gripping his chest, while he hummed that same goddamned hook Fawn had been humming.

  Before the stairs shook and vibrated against his back again, Lafitte was pretty sure he heard Fawn say, “That was cool.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Desiree missed her husband’s call because she had fallen asleep at the desk in his office, where she’d looked up everything she could on Ginny Lafitte and whatever it was Franklin had gotten himself into. Once she saw a photo of Ginny, Desiree cooled a bit. Yeah, a pretty white woman, but kind of frail. Maybe Franklin liked the thrill of being able to lord some power over some weakling, but she was pretty damned sure a girl like that wasn’t what got his cock up.

  If she had to worry about anyone taking Franklin away from her, it was the other Lafitte—Billy.

  Breaking through his passwords had been easy enough. Desiree knew his birthday, their anniversary, his favorite music, his mother’s middle name, and about a hundred other likes and dislikes that popped up in the course of spending so many years together. Only took her six tries. But what she found…wow.

  Mostly, she pieced it together through following the trail of his requested documents, expenses, and cell phone records. All this time that Franklin had been trying to redeem himself in her eyes, he’d also been looking for a way to flush out Lafitte. On his own, vigilante style.

  “Well, I’ll be fucked,” she mumbled after getting through it all to find that he’d actually done it. Lafitte was already on the road, heading south, straight into Franklin’s net.

  But something must’ve gone wrong. If he was using the ex-wife as bait of some sort, and there had been an emergency involving her, then what?

  Next thing Desiree knew, she was in a hotel lobby full of finely dressed people milling around, all carrying little plates full of hors’ doeurves. Ginny Lafitte was there, too, tinier than Desiree expected, but that was her mind drawing the woman in the way she’d expect was least attractive to Franklin. It was Desiree’s dream, so it was Desiree’s rules.

  “You’re not messing around with my husband, are you?” Direct was usually best.

  Ginny smiled politely. A shrinking violet, but no homewrecker. “He loves you.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “That’s all. It’s not about you or me. It’s about my ex-husband.”

  Desiree sighed. “Just another case, though, wasn’t it?”

  The second she said it, she knew that wasn’t true. Franklin had been wrong about Lafitte, but he couldn’t accept that. He had to find something to pin on the guy. Should have been easy, right? Lafitte was like Pig-Pen from Peanuts—walked around in a cloud of dirt. That’s why Franklin came home so defeated, distant, violent. Whatever had made her husband excited about his job—the same thing that had him coming home to her grinning and joking like a teenager in love way back in the day. Desiree wished she could bring him back all on her own, but it struck her now just how unrealistic that was and how it seemed like neither one of them could fix this until Franklin had dealt with Lafitte. And goddamn it if that wouldn’t put an end to him, too.

  Dream Ginny shrugged, then lifted her glass of wine. “To Franklin.”

  Desiree wanted to snap the stem off the bitch’s glass and stab her in the eye with it. Like getting to Lafitte by proxy through his wife. Anything to help Franklin so he would come home again.

  She woke because she thought the phone had been ringing. Yawned herself awake and stared at the screen, a PDF of a court document she had opened but forgotten why, then felt the chill you feel when waking up in the middle of the night, hours before sunrise, knowing this wasn’t normal. A few stretches later, she wandered downstairs, saw the blinking light on the answering machine, pressed the button.

  Franklin. Not coming home. Emergency led to being called out of town. Will let you know more in the morning.

  “Oh, you fucking liar.”

  Called out of town? The man was calling his own shots. She immediately picked up the phone, dialed Franklin’s cell. Straight to voicemail. Tried again. Same thing.

  She threw the handset across the living room. It put a dent in the wall, bounced onto the hardwood floor. She almost started breaking more things, but she caught herself, sank into the love seat. Remember, it’s going to be okay. She would talk him down later. He had the whole FBI behind him if he needed help.

  Or did he? Wasn’t he told to leave Lafitte alone? Who was working with him on this? Some young flunkies looking for a quick trip up the ladder?

  Desiree remembered
that young man who had called a few times over the past several weeks. What was his name? Ken? No, she never got a first name. It sounded Scottish or something. McKen?

  She finally caught a glimpse of the time on the wall clock. 3:28 in the morning. Well, she wasn’t going back to bed, so might as well put on some coffee and get to work.

  *

  The caller ID wasn’t helpful. The agent’s phone number wasn’t anywhere. Must be blocked. So it was back upstairs to Franklin’s computer. Mc Something. Mc Something. Needed to check his email.

  Once again, no problem with the password, and there she had it. A whole slew of them: MCKEOWN, JOSHUA. His go-to guy, obviously.

  A couple of the shorter emails were tagged with “Sent via BlackBerry”. Must be on that thing all the time, like Franklin with his cell. Maybe she could use that, then. No harm now. She hit COMPOSE and marked it “High Priority”. Wrote, “Urgent, call me at home ASAP.” Typed in the home phone number, wondered if maybe that was a mistake—he clearly had the number, so repeating it might seem weird to him. But if not, he might call the cell anyway (or he might still call it), so she left the number and added: “Cell’s recharging, turned off.”

  SEND.

  Desiree crossed her arms, swung the office chair left and right with her foot. Thinking, aren’t these FBI guys on call all the time? Should only be a few minutes.

  After a few minutes plus five or six more, plus dinking around on Franklin’s spider solitaire, Desiree went downstairs to pack. She didn’t know where she was going yet, but hoped to by sunrise. If this McKeown hadn’t called back by then, she’d try one of the others on Franklin’s contact list, or maybe ask for Franklin through the main office. Or why not just take her own cell phone and start out already before her husband made it too far away?

  No, if it looked like she was way behind, she would book a flight and rent a car. Anything she could to keep him from marching straight into…into…whatever was going to happen.

  A few changes of clothes. Some basic toiletries, make-up. Sneakers, just the one pair would do. She pulled on some jeans and a sweater. Her cell. Last but not least, the little .38 S&W Franklin had given to her. She’d shot it a few times at the range to make him happy, but she probably hadn’t touched it once in the last few years. Except that one night, the time he hit her, when she opened the nightstand drawer and picked it up and thought terrible thoughts for a few minutes before slipping it into the back of the drawer and choosing that other option—to make his life a living hell.