And who among us ever knows the secrets of the heart?
While still holding his brother, Tony lifted his chin and stared at me, his own eyes wet. “Get the hell out of here,” he said.
I was standing now, and I backed away, unsure of what I should do.
“Just get the hell out,” he said.
“With you,” I said.
“Alone. And fast, before it all goes to hell.”
“They’re going to kill Derek.”
“They’re going to try. Now go. Run. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“That’s twice,” I said to Tony.
“Two times too many.”
I rushed forward, kneeled over the prostate Clevenger, reached around into his pockets with my tied hands until I found his BlackBerry, shoved it in a pocket of my own. Then I turned from the brothers and their embrace, ran like a frightened house cat through the front room, and scrabbled at the doorknob with my still-bound hands.
49. Spark
I RAN FROM that house with my bound hands high, like a plucked turkey scuttling out of a Thanksgiving kitchen.
The sun now had set; the sky now was a dusky gray. The air was filled with bike exhaust, and under the exhaust the smell of something deeper and more acrid, as if the gasoline from the tanks had started spilling. Once I realized I wasn’t going to be mowed down like Jim Brown in The Dirty Dozen, I slowed my step as I headed toward a singular presence in the middle of the gang, the unlikeliest savior I could ever have imagined.
Billie Flynn leaned insouciantly on her Harley, her arms crossed, her mien as fearsome as Grendel’s mother. She was flanked on one side by her old man, Stoner, and on the other by Corky and his knife. “What happened to Clevenger?” she said.
“Tony took out his men,” I said. “Derek did the rest.”
“My daddy always said Derek Grubbins was as hardy as a cockroach. Where the hell are they?”
“Still inside.”
“A little family reunion, is that it?”
“They hadn’t seen each other in a while.”
“They better catch up quick,” said Billie, before pushing herself off her bike and lumbering over to me. “So it was you, hey, tan pants? That’s what Tony told us. It was you that stole our money.”
“I told him to tell you,” I said. And then, out of habit, and without any conviction, I added, “And it was drug money, so it wasn’t your money.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
I shut the fuck up.
She took another two steps until she was standing right in front of me. My God, she was something. So big, I could feel her gravitational pull. Her face was streaked with dirt from a hard ride, her pores were huge, her jaw solid as a fist, and she smelled like a bad day at the abattoir. She looked me up and down with a countenance as hard as a set of brass knuckles. And then she slugged me in the jaw.
“That felt fucking great,” said Billie Flynn as I rolled on the ground in a strangely delicious sort of agony. “That felt almost as great as fucking.”
I had been wondering what I would get when I finally faced my most deep-seated demons: a knife in the throat, a chain around the neck, a dragging across a graveled road with my legs tied to the frame of a Harley. Compared with all that, and after my bout of Clevenger torture, a sock on the jaw seemed almost neighborly.
“That’s all,” said Ben, who was suddenly standing between Billie and me.
“I don’t have Derek’s throat in my fist yet, you fat black bastard,” said Billie.
“Not our fault,” said Ben. “Tony brokered the deal and we’re keeping to it. We were off the hook so long as we told you where Derek was. Well, he’s in there, like we said. If you can’t get hold of him with all these gearheads, that’s your problem.”
“Our problem is your problem, big stuff,” said Billie.
I sat up on the ground, my legs in front of me, and thought of things for a moment. And then I said to Ben, “Give her the toolbox.”
“What?”
“You were going to give it to Clevenger in exchange for me, now give it to her.”
“What’s this bullshit?” said Billie.
“You told Tony he could buy his brother’s safety for a hundred thousand dollars. That’s what’s in the box. I’m buying Derek’s life. Take the money and leave him be, like you promised.”
“What the hell are you doing?” said Ben. “He set you up, he tried to kill you, and you’re saving him.”
“I’m not doing it for Derek, I’m doing it for Tony. He saved my life twice. I owe him. And I’m doing it for us, too. A hundred thousand to bury the past for good.”
“But I don’t want to bury the past,” said Billie. “I want to fuck it hard and make its ears bleed.”
“That’s why you have Stoner,” I said. “Ben, get her the toolbox.”
Ben looked at me like I was the village idiot throwing dollar bills into the air, and then he shambled over to the truck bed and lifted out the rusted green metal box. When he offered it to Billie, she just stared at it for a moment.
“I sure would rather kill him,” said Billie.
“The chase is over. A deal’s a deal, even for you,” I said. “You saved my life, even if you didn’t intend to, for which I am grateful. And we took the money long ago, for which we don’t offer any apologies. You take this offering, and all of us, for ever after, are square.”
“We’ll never be square.”
“As soon as you take the money we are.”
“Maybe we’ll just take it anyway.”
“And maybe we’ll just take it back,” I said. “We did it once, we can do it again.”
She shook her head and blinked down at me as I sat on the ground, helpless as a chipmunk. She stared at me as if she was seeing me for the first time. Then she laughed, a laugh as big as her shoulders and as hearty as a keg of Guinness.
“A deal’s a deal,” she said as she took the box from Ben. “We’re done chasing.” She opened the toolbox on her bike. Ten bundles of bills, their wrappers browned and aged. “Hello, babies,” she said. “I been looking for you.”
“Gimme some of that,” said Corky.
“When we split it with everyone else, you old cocksucker,” she said as one by one she started stuffing the bundles into her saddlebag. “You’re a hell of gutsy son of a bitch, tan pants, ain’t you?”
“I was,” I said.
“I underestimated your bony little ass.” When she had emptied out the tool case, she tossed it to the ground behind her. It landed with a clank and a sputter, ending splayed open on the mud in a way that bothered me. “Can’t imagine a guy with pants like that having the balls for it.”
“I wore jeans when I was seventeen.”
“And that scar on the neck?”
“Corky,” I said, scrambling to stand with my hands still bound. “He came to my house with your father, looking for the money.”
“I knowed I knowed him,” said Corky.
“You want to use that knife again to cut me loose?”
Corky came over, started sawing at the ropes with that buck knife of his. “How much you guys really get all those years ago?”
“Over a mil.”
“Shit,” said Corky, as my hands suddenly burst free. “I could have gotten drunk and laid for a whole year with that much money.”
“That would be a hell of a year.” As I rubbed my wrists, I turned to Billie. “You mind if I take the toolbox back?”
“Take whatever the fuck you want, as long as you take them pants.”
“The box was my dad’s.”
“Fuck your daddy,” said Billie.
“Yeah, you said that already.” I stepped over to the box, picked it up, closed it, and snapped the latches, gave it a little rub like it was a genie’s lamp. Just then there was a great thump, like a huge foot stamping down on the earth, and suddenly everything in front of me was lit with a flickering light. A cheer rose up from the bikers all about me. I turned around and the Everfair
model home was sheathed in great walls of orange-blue fire. I took a step forward, thought of Tony and Derek and that sad hug, thought of Clevenger lying unconscious on the floor, took another step, and was stopped by a wave of heat that slapped me smack in the face.
The flames blew out windows and chewed at the roof. And as the fire raged, one after another of the gang members started shooting at the burning house, pistols firing, assault rifles, sawed-off scatterguns unloading barrel after barrel, the whole orgy of violence speeding the destruction and sending sparks flying. Whatever was inside that house was a lost cause. And walking toward us in a slouch, outlined by the flames, was a skinny kid with lank blond hair flicking a lighter on and off, on and off.
“I guess that settles that,” said Billie with a cackle before hopping on her Harley.
“But we had…had…” I stammered and sputtered at the unfairness of it all, and then, even as I remembered something Tony had said inside, I kept the sputtering, for effect if for nothing else. “But we had a deal. You weren’t going to kill Derek.”
“I just said I wasn’t going to chase him no more. And I’m not. It’s over, like I promised. I won’t dig up his charred dead body just to piss on it. So at least you got that out of it. Now it’s quitting time. It won’t be long before someone calls in the fire and the cops show.”
“You’re a nasty piece of work,” I said.
“Don’t start sweet-talking me, tan pants,” she said. “I’d rut you into dust, but you sure as hell would enjoy it.”
She let out a yelp that would have made a rebel wilt, hopped her Harley to a start, and charged out of Everfair. The Devil Rams holstered their guns, revved their engines, and, like a pack of dragons roaring and belching, followed.
With the toolbox in my hand, I walked over to Ben and Harry, standing now by the truck. “Let’s go.”
“Where’s that Clevenger?” said Harry.
“Inside,” I said, gesturing toward the burning house. “Out cold.”
“He ain’t cold no more,” said Harry, with a crotchety laugh. “How about that Derek?”
“Last I saw he was inside, too. With his brother.”
“Shame about the brother,” said Harry. “And what about your daughter, Johnny?”
“She’s on her way down.” I reached in my pocket, pulled out Clevenger’s phone. “They’re going to give me a call when they get in.”
50. Lurch
I BARELY FELT the lurch.
It happened when we slowed to make the sharp left out of the Everfair exit. We could already hear the sirens, it wouldn’t be long before the fire trucks and the police poured into the failed development. In my hand I held Clevenger’s BlackBerry, the simplest way for me to get in touch with my daughter. Back in the hotel room was the rest of the money, the simplest way for me to buy her safety from the bastards who had taken her in North Carolina. Anything that complicated things endangered my daughter, and the police, with the remains of the model home still burning, were a complication I couldn’t afford. So we were rushing the hell out of there. And the road was bumpy from the mud and the pits created by the construction vehicles. And I already mentioned that Harry’s truck was a suspension-free zone, which meant every gully and rut was transmitted in vivid Technicolor to our bones. So when I felt the lurch it registered enough for me to turn around and check the rear window, but not enough for me to do anything when the cursory glance picked up nothing unusual in the bed. I just turned around again and let it pass. From such slight failures, corpses are made.
Back at the motel, we laid out the remaining cash on the bed, right next to the toolbox, the false floor, and the pile of tools. Ben had hidden the bills in a bag taped to the top of the toilet’s tank. That, two more days’ advance in cash at the office, and a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door had been the sum total of his precautions.
“The first spot they ever check,” I said as I pulled off the duct tape, “is the toilet tank.”
“We didn’t have much time,” said Ben. “When we got nervous at not hearing from you, we called you at Derek’s house and got no answer. I knew something was rotten then. I figured he’d taken you to Everfair since it’s all he ever talks about, so we made our call to Tony. By then it was hide it in the tank or take it with us.”
“Good choice,” I said.
Laid out on the bedspread now was $140,000, give or take a few hundred snapped out of the bundles for expenses. I took four of the bundles and tossed them to Ben.
“What’s that for?” he said.
“Half of what I found at Augie’s place.”
“What about your daughter?”
“What I have left is more than enough.”
“But over the years I borrowed more than forty from you.”
“Keep it,” I said. “That was between you and me, this is between you and Augie. It cost him his life not giving this up. He would have wanted you to have half.”
Ben looked at the money for a long moment, and then his face slowly collapsed into a death mask of misery.
“Stop it,” I said. “That’s not what Augie would have wanted. Augie would have wanted you to laugh at his grave and then blow his money on booze and girls.”
“That’s what he would have done, all right.”
“He just would have done it better than us. But don’t ever forget that when I was in trouble you came for me. When I saw you and Harry out there with the truck, it felt as good as coming home.”
“Still here, right?” said Ben.
“Still here,” I said.
The rest of the money I put in the tool case, a cool hundred thou. All that was left for me from my brutal misadventure of a quarter century ago, and now all of it earmarked to buy Shelby’s freedom. As I thought of her, lying in the back of the car, barreling south, scared and vulnerable, my teeth ached. And I knew the number of the bastards who took her, it was clear as neon on the BlackBerry’s recent call list, but it wasn’t the right thing to call them. They were bringing her here, to me; there was no reason to stop them. When they arrived they’d place a call and tell me where they were. If I played it right, I could show up without their being any the wiser.
I was just putting the false floor and tools back into the case when we heard a knock at the door. And I remembered the lurch.
I closed the case and latched it shut.
Harry pulled out Holmes’s gun.
Ben jammed his bundles into his pockets and slid over to the door.
“What do you want?” called out Ben.
“I need to piss,” came a voice, harsh and low.
“Get lost,” said Ben.
“Open up, you pisshead, or I’ll piss on your head.”
“Let him in,” I said, the smile threatening to break my face in two. “It’s Tony Grubbins.”
And Tony wasn’t lying about having to pee. As soon as the door opened, with barely a nod in either of our directions, he stomped straight for the piss pot. It sounded like there was a sturgeon splashing around in there.
“How’d he find us?” whispered Ben.
“He jumped into the truck when we left Everfair,” I said. “I thought I felt something lurch.”
“I just supposed he was burned to a crisp with his brother.”
“The way he spoke inside, it sounded like he knew something bad was going to happen and he had a way of getting out. I suppose while I went out the front, keeping everyone busy, he found a way out the back with Derek. Those Grubbinses are like genital herpes—nothing gets rid of them.”
“Is he going to beat us up like old times?” said Ben.
“He never beat you up.”
“True.”
Tony let out a relieved “Ahhhhh” as he came back into the room, fastening up his pants. “I needed that.” He stopped, looked around. “What?”
“We’re just glad to see you still alive,” I said.
“There you stand, Moretti, lying straight to my face. At least some things don’t change.” Tony dropped do
wn on one of the beds, his hands beneath his head, making himself perfectly at home.
“Tony, not that I’m not glad to see you alive and all,” I said, “but what the hell are you doing here?”
“I need a ride north,” he said.
“How’d you get down?”
“My bike. But when we were out of the house, I gave it to Derek. He needed it more than I did.”
“Not really,” I said. “I gave Billie the hundred thousand she wanted. I bought your brother’s life.”
“Why the hell would you do something like that?”
“I figured I owed you.”
“Then you should have given the money to me,” said Tony. “I would have taken it and let the bastard fend for himself. He’s on the run from Clevenger’s people anyway, and I could sure use a new truck.”
“Too late.” Pause. “So how was it, seeing him again?”
“It was full, man, that’s all I can tell you. Full. And you want to know what I did?”
“What?”
“I apologized. Just like I said I wanted to in that bar. I apologized—I don’t even know what for—but I felt suddenly lighter. Like I had let go of another one. You ought to try it, man.”
“Apologize to Derek?”
“To whoever.”
“But I don’t have anyone left to apologize to.”
“Find someone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“See, is that so hard?”
“Sure, you can hitch a ride with us. We’ll take you as far as Virginia. And maybe on the way up you can apologize to me for throwing that football in my face.”
“Are you sure I did that?”
“I’ve been carrying it a long time.”
“Let it go, dude, that’s my advice. Let it go.” Tony looked around a bit. “So this is what it’s like to hang out with you guys. I always wondered. Pretty damn lame.”
“It was better when we were sixteen,” said Ben. “And when Augie was still around. And when we were getting high.”
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