B009XDDVN8 EBOK

by Lashner, William

  “Yes you did,” I said. “After all these years I forgot to listen.”

  “You look like you been rode hard, Johnny,” said Harry. “What happened to you, son?”

  “I was overcharged,” I said.

  “You couldn’t help yourself, hey, Derek?” said Ben. “Had to get your licks in?”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Derek. “Clevenger’s calling the shots now, and he’s a beast. He’s in the house with his men and his guns, so don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Too late for that,” said Harry.

  “What do you got in the toolbox?”

  “Money,” said Ben.

  “How much?”

  “How much did he offer you?”

  “A hundred thou.”

  “That’s exactly what we got,” said Harry. “Just like Johnny told us you would agree to.”

  “Where’s the rest?” called out Clevenger from the house.

  “Who’s that?” said Ben.

  “Clevenger.”

  “You’re the one who killed Augie,” shouted Ben to the house.

  “We would have come for you first, boy,” said Clevenger, “but the only thing you got of worth are your kidneys, and they’re not in A-one shape anymore. So we went after your friend instead. How does that make you feel?”

  “Cold,” said Ben.

  “Your hundred isn’t enough,” shouted Clevenger. “There’s at least another hundred in cash somewhere. Leave us what you got, get me the rest, and then we’ll talk about letting your friend go.”

  “We’re not leaving here without Johnny,” said Harry. “No, sir. That’s just the way of it. And he’s not leaving without his daughter, so there we are.”

  “Just do what he says,” I said. “It’s over, I’ve given up. Leave the money and get the hell out of here.”

  “Not without you.”

  “Ain’t you nursemaids a little overmatched?” said Derek.

  “Mebbe so,” said Harry. “But there’s a fight here to be had and I never sidesteps a fight. And when I’m in a fight…” He reached into his belt and pulled out a gun, Holmes’s gun. “I’m in it to win.”

  As soon as he saw the gun, Derek yanked me in front of him and grabbed me around my neck with a sweaty forearm. I could smell the stink of the liquor floating on his breath and oozing out his pores.

  “Calm down, old man,” said Derek. “Put that little pistol away before someone gets hurt.”

  “Someone getting hurt is the point of it,” said Harry.

  “They have more firepower and fewer scruples,” I said.

  “Shut up, J.J.,” said Ben.

  “They’re going to kill you.”

  “They’re going to try,” said Harry.

  Suddenly Derek tightened his grip on my neck and yanked me back. “What’s that?” he said.

  I listened and didn’t hear anything other than the ringing in my ears. Until I did. A soft rent in the drumming silence, a rumble from far off, an ever-louder growl rising from the swamp surrounding us. I looked up for a helicopter, saw nothing but the deep blue of the darkening sky, as the rumble grew sharper, deeper, more insistent. When my eyes snapped down I saw the lone motorcyclist leaning into the curve that led to the model home.

  And then a second.

  And then a fourth.

  “What?” said Derek. “Wait. What did you do, Ben?”

  “What did you think we were going to do if you acted like a fool?” said Ben.

  “I saved your financial ass,” said Derek.

  “You beat the crap out of me, set Clevenger on my friend Augie, and took J.J.’s daughter.”

  “What’s that noise?” called out Clevenger from the house.

  “It’s them,” said Derek.

  “Who?”

  “Them,” said Derek, and immediately, using me as a shield, he began dragging me back to the house.

  “What the hell did you do, boy?” yelled Clevenger.

  “We didn’t trust Derek,” said Ben, “and we sure as hell didn’t trust you. So we called in backup.”

  “You know what you just did,” called out Clevenger as Derek kept dragging me back to the house. “You just killed yourself a second friend.”

  I tried to break away. Out of that house was now the safest place to be. I struggled to loose my bonds and run toward Harry and Ben, but my hands still were tied and Derek’s grip was iron as it dragged me back, dragged me back. My bare feet couldn’t get purchase as he dragged me back, even as the rumble grew louder, grew deafening, even as by twos and threes and tens the roads of Everfair filled with Devil Rams.

  48. Jacob and Esau

  THE DEVIL RAMS alighted onto the street in front of the model house like a murder of crows on an electric cable. Almost forty in all, they lined their bikes along the curb and stood in pecks of trouble, knives bared, chains wrapped around fists, shotguns unsheathed from saddlebags, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  What have you come to kill, Billie Flynn?

  Whaddya got?

  Inside, Derek took a double swig from his bottle while Clevenger and the two collection agents kept uneasy tabs on what was going on outside the broad picture windows. I had been thrown harshly on the leather couch and told to keep quiet while they figured out their next move. There was fear in that house, and a sweaty panic, and the sulfur scent of some inevitable betrayal, though no one yet knew which way it would turn. But in the midst of my violent captivity, I alone felt a decided calm as the motorcycle gang congregated outside the door. I was the one who had brought the Devil Rams to Fort Lauderdale, after all. This was my plan B, my nuclear option. Now all I had to do was figure out how to turn the fear and the sweat and the betrayal in that room toward my daughter’s favor.

  “How many bullets you got?” said Derek.

  “Not enough,” said Clevenger.

  “Bad planning. Maybe we can scare them off.”

  “They don’t look like the scare-off type, do they? Gaines, check and see if there’s anyone out back.”

  Short-and-stocky shot out of the front room, through the dining room, and headed for the kitchen and great room at the back of the model house. “They’re all over the place,” he said when he returned. “Bikers leaning against the rear development wall, bikers on either side of the house. There’s an army out there.”

  “I’ve seen less animals in a zoo,” said tall-and-morose, standing at the front window, swishing the curtain with the muzzle of his automatic.

  “What are we waiting for?” said Derek. “They’re not here to look at the tract map, they’re here for blood. Hell, give me a gun. If we don’t start the shooting soon, they will.”

  “They’re going to feed us to the crocs,” said tall-and-morose.

  “Quit your bellyaching,” said Clevenger.

  “It’s a tight spot, boss,” said short-and-squat. “You got to admit.”

  “I’ve been in tighter,” said Clevenger calmly, before taking a slow drag from his cigarette. “So let’s figure some things out before we go off half-cocked. In these kinds of situations, there are only two questions: What do they want, and how do we get it to them?”

  “You want I should ask them?” said tall-and-morose.

  “Don’t need to,” said Clevenger. “The answer to the first part is sitting right there on that couch.”

  “Him?” said tall-and-morose.

  “Me?” I said.

  “The money you stole all that time ago belonged to that gang out there. They want you and they want the money.”

  “And they want Derek,” I said.

  “Shut him up, please,” said Derek.

  “Your head should satisfy them, Frenchy,” said Clevenger. “And we’ll throw in your cash if we need to. Gaines, watch the rear.”

  Short-and-stocky headed back into the kitchen.

  “Now, fire a shot,” said Clevenger.

  “Boss?” said the tall collection agent.

  “Aim for the fat one,” said Derek. “He
seems to be in charge.”

  “It’s a she,” I said.

  “That’s just a tragedy,” said Clevenger.

  “It’s Flynn’s daughter,” I said.

  “Christ, she’s as ugly as her father,” said Derek. “Put it between her eyes.”

  “Over her head,” said Clevenger, “but close enough to put a scare into her. She’s having fun playing her little biker games. Let’s let her know we’re serious as a bullet in the head.”

  Tall-and-morose smashed a window with the butt of his gun and fired into the sky.

  From the street, a harsh call fired back, like the mating cry of the Bornean orangutan. “You missed me,” shouted Billie Flynn.

  “It wasn’t easy, the size of you,” shouted back Clevenger. “And we won’t miss again. Let’s talk before this gets out of hand.”

  “That’s not how we work,” said Billie. “First we let it get out of hand, and then we talk. Is that fucking traitor Derek Grubbins in there?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell him he murdered my daddy and it’s time to pay the price.”

  “So it’s Derek you’re after,” said Clevenger.

  “We didn’t come down for the mosquitoes.”

  “Give us a minute,” said Clevenger, before turning from the window and looking at Derek. Derek backed away until he backed into tall-and-morose’s gun.

  “What did you do to them?” said Clevenger.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t lie to me, boy.”

  “I might have testified against some of them back in the day,” said Derek. “But I only told the truth.”

  “Only the truth,” said Clevenger with a sneer. “What do you think, Henry?”

  “I’d trade my mother to get out of here,” said tall-and-morose.

  “I’d trade your mother, too,” said Clevenger. He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, gave a little shrug. “I guess we’re going to have to give up Derek here along with Frenchy.”

  “You can’t,” said Derek. “They’ll tear me apart.”

  “And that’s my problem how?”

  “Because, what? But…” Derek sputtered. “But then I won’t be able to pay the rest of what I owe.”

  “You weren’t going to pay anyway.”

  “I’m working on some things that—”

  “You’ve got nothing,” said Clevenger. “Other than the boat, you’re worth less than a pile of manure. You’re only still alive because of what you told me about Frenchy here and the stolen cash. That was a bargain I could keep off the books, keep for myself. But I don’t see a reason to delay the inevitable regarding you any further.”

  “We had a deal,” said Derek.

  “And now I’m breaking it,” said Clevenger, flicking his glowing cigarette right at Derek’s face.

  “You lay down with dogs, dude,” I said to Derek.

  “Shut up, pal,” said Clevenger. “No matter what we do, you’re already dead. Which is fine, because we don’t need you anymore. With your daughter in hand, we can still get what we’re owed from your wife.”

  “You were never going to give her up,” I said, not a question but a statement of fact.

  “You shouldn’t have taken his daughter,” said Derek.

  Clevenger made a gesture with his hand and tall-and-morose pistol-whipped Derek so hard Derek fell to his knees and then collapsed to the floor, blood welling into his hair before leaking onto the Brazilian-cherry floor. Clevenger watched all this with satisfaction and then turned back to the window.

  “You want to kill Grubbins or should we?” called out Clevenger.

  “You’re offering him up?” said Billie Flynn. “Just like that?”

  “Sure we are,” said Clevenger. “And we have something else to sweeten the package. J.J. Moretti. You want him, too?”

  “Who the hell is Moretti?”

  “The cluck who took your money all those years ago.”

  “What color are his pants?”

  Clevenger gave me a quick once-over. “Tan.”

  “Christ, he deserves what he’s getting just for them pants. What do you want in return for all your goodies?”

  “All we want is a route out. And one other thing.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The two guys who called you in? The big black guy and the old man? We want them dead and the toolbox they’re carrying.”

  “You’re negotiating for a toolbox?”

  “They’re good tools. Craftsman.”

  “Those two called us in. You want us to betray them for their tools?”

  “Now you’ve got it.”

  “I like the way you think,” shouted Billie. “Deal.”

  “Grand,” said Clevenger.

  “With one more condition.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Is there a Clevenger in there?”

  Pause. “Maybe. What about him?”

  “We want him, too. The only way any of you get out of that house alive is with Clevenger’s head on a pike and his prick stuffed in his mouth. How do you like them fucking apples?”

  Clevenger stepped away from the window, turned to tall-and-morose. “Shoot the bitch,” he said.

  But before tall-and-morose could get back to the window, a howl arose from the rear of the house, followed by the sound of something cracking, something like a thick tree branch or a bone. And then another howl.

  Clevenger wheeled and fired three times through the dining room, into the swinging door to the kitchen. Something fell with a thud.

  “Finish him off,” said Clevenger.

  With his gun leading, tall-and-morose made his way to the back of the house. Derek, still on the floor and only barely conscious, slowly turned his bloodied head toward the kitchen door, uncertain what was happening.

  “They won’t get him,” I said softly to Derek.

  “What?”

  “They’re not good enough.”

  Clevenger, while still staring at the back of the house, said, “Shut up, both of you,” before taking a step into the dining room.

  “Who’s back there?” whispered Derek.

  “Your brother.”

  Derek’s dull eyes brightened. “Tony?”

  “If anything happened to me,” I said, “I told Ben to call your brother first. There’s no way that gang is here and he’s not. And there’s no way he’d let someone like Clevenger threaten to kill you without his doing something about it.”

  “Tony hates my guts.”

  “Sure he does, but you’re still his brother. How sweet is this, Derek? Even though you’re an asshole, your brother has come to save your life.”

  There was a shot, two quick cracks, and a long, morose howl before Clevenger put two more bullets through the door.

  “Come on out, friend,” said Clevenger, stepping farther into the dining room, gun trained now on the door, waiting for it to swing open so he could kill whoever was standing behind it. “Show yourself and we’ll do this right, mano a mano.”

  The door shivered, then opened just wide enough for someone to burst through the opening, and someone did, leaping through the gap as if hurled. Clevenger put two slugs into him. Quick as that, he ejected the clip, banged in another, and fired two more at the now-prone figure lying in a growing pool of blood.

  He stepped up to it and kicked it over. Tall-and-morose stared dead up at him, blood smeared across his horrid yellow grimace.

  “You’re a clever one, aren’t you?” called Clevenger into the dining room, backing up as he aimed once again at the door. “Don’t be shy. Come out, come out, whoever you—”

  He didn’t finish his sentence because, like a dead man come to life, the bloodied body of Derek Grubbins rose off the floor, lifted the low coffee table with both hands, took two steps forward, and slammed the table flush into Clevenger’s back. Clevenger dropped as if from a hangman’s scaffold.

  Derek, a whole side of his face smeared red, stood hunched and ruined over the still form of Clevenger. He
turned his bloodied face to me. “He shouldn’t have done what he done to your daughter,” he said, before leaning over and picking up Clevenger’s gun.

  “Tony?” he called out. “Is that you?”

  “Who’s asking?” came Tony’s hoarse voice from behind the door.

  “It’s me. It’s Derek.”

  “He’s got a gun,” I said loudly.

  “Are you going to shoot me?” said Tony.

  “Why would I shoot you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tony. “Who the hell knows what you’re going to do? You’re a maniac.”

  “You’re right,” said Derek. “I am. The worst kind. But I ain’t going to shoot you.”

  “Who else is out there?”

  “Just Frenchy. You want me to shoot him?”

  “No, he’s all right, the same little dork as always, but all right. Okay, I’m coming out,” he said, and the door swung open to show an empty entranceway before it swung shut again. Then it swung open once more and there, standing in the doorway, was Tony Grubbins.

  They stared at each other for a moment, two brothers, long estranged. There was electricity between them, but I couldn’t tell if it was violence or compassion, bitterness or love, I couldn’t tell if they were contemplating warm family memories or great family slights. Whatever was between them was as much a mystery to me as had been the Grubbins house all those years ago.

  “You got big,” said Derek.

  “You got old,” said Tony. “What’d you do to Clevenger?”

  “I clocked him with the coffee table.”

  “I ought to clock you.”

  “I know.”

  “What are you going to do with that gun?”

  “I don’t know.” Derek looked at it for a bit and then dropped it.

  Tony took a step forward and stared a bit more, before jumping and grabbing his brother by the neck, as if he were about to wrestle him to the ground. But he didn’t wrestle him to the ground, instead he pulled his brother close and embraced him, hugging his brother tight, so tight the breath was forced out. Or was Derek gasping from something else? And were the tears from the pain of the brutal embrace or something else? I remembered the way Derek had thrown his brother out of the house that afternoon so long ago when we were flipping cards on my stoop, and Derek had kicked his brother in the side as if Tony were a mangy dog. There had been utter brutality between them then, and now there were tears as they hugged like two little boys still missing their dead mother and father.