by Sean Black
Satisfied that she’d gathered everything they’d need, she exited the house, placed the key back under the plant pot and walked casually back to the car. This time she got in the front and drove off. She’d return later when it was time to move on to the next stage of the plan.
‘Damn, man, does this guy ever leave the house?’
Cowboy drummed his fingers on the steering column. Next to him, Trooper kept his head in his copy of Sports Illustrated.
‘He’s probably not even awake yet.’
‘It’s nine thirty,’ Cowboy said, staring across the road at the ivy-clad New England colonial which was the boyhood home and California residence of Supreme Court Justice Junius Holmes.
‘So? He’s old. He’s probably in bed by nine.’
‘Which means he should be up early. Old people need less sleep, don’t they?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
Cowboy started to open his door. ‘I’m gonna go take a peek.’
Just then a figure appeared at the gates. A man wearing tennis shorts, sneakers and a Harvard alumni T-shirt.
‘See,’ said Trooper. ‘Patience.’
The man broke into a slow jog on spindly legs that looked barely able to support the rest of him.
‘Holy shit, he might not live long enough for us to kill him.’
Trooper studied him from behind his magazine. ‘You think he jogs this time every morning?’
‘Guess so. Why, what are you thinking?’
‘Well, we were planning on shooting him, right?’
Cowboy shrugged. ‘That’s usually the quickest, most efficient way of killing someone.’
‘Draws a lot of attention too. Which, if you think about it, is something we don’t necessarily need.’
‘Where you taking this?’
Trooper grinned. ‘You’ll see.’
49
‘Hey, I’ve heard about deep cover, but that’s something else. You sure?’ Ty asked, maneuvering the Lincoln down another street of shattered sub-prime dreams.
‘That’s what she said Janet told her.’
Lock was finding it hard to reconcile the neighbour’s revelation with what he remembered about Ken and Janet’s marriage. They’d always seemed like such a solid couple. He guessed you never really knew what went on behind closed doors.
‘Kind of explains one thing,’ Ty said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why there’s no mention of this chick in any of Prager’s reports back to his bosses. I mean, you go undercover and fall into bed with a suspect, that’s one thing, might even be taken that you’re taking the job seriously. But then you go and get her pregnant? Damn! You imagine the kind of fun a defense attorney would have with that?’
‘You’d be lucky to keep your badge,’ Lock said.
‘And your pension.’
Lock stared out of the window. By the looks of where Aaron’s friends were living, they were surrounded by people clinging on by their fingernails.
‘That’s not the full explanation though, it can’t be,’ said Lock. Something about the whole scenario was chewing away at him.
Ty pulled on to a wider street, this one with more commercial property. On their left was a gas station, on their right a couple of fast-food joints. One of them was the one mentioned by the neighbour as a favorite hang-out for one of the local skinhead gangs. They’d head back here after visiting the school.
Lock rubbed his eyes, wishing that his lack of sleep wasn’t making it so hard for him to think clearly.
‘You know, at Pelican Bay I got a glimpse of how seductive the whole white supremacist rap could be.’
Ty sideways-glanced at Lock as he drove. ‘You got something you want to tell me?’
A pick-up truck pulled up alongside with two middle-aged white guys in it. They stared menacingly at Ty until Lock glared over at them.
‘It’s almost like a cult,’ he continued. ‘They have a way of seeing the world. They have a purpose. An ideology. And it’s a powerful one. Otherwise how would a whole country have been sucked in back in the 1930s, so much so that they were prepared to slaughter millions of innocent people, women and children, pack them into gas chambers?’
‘You don’t think Ken went over to the dark side, do you?’
‘No, otherwise why would they have killed him? An inside man with the ATF would have been a wet dream for them. But what if he was conflicted about the whole deal?’
‘So he was giving his bosses some of it, but not all of it,’ Ty said slowly.
‘Maybe.’
‘I still don’t buy it, Ryan.’
Lock looked out at the down-at-heel blue-collar neighbourhood. Even with crisp blue California skies overhead there was something depressing about it.
‘Ken was a veteran agent, right?’
Ty nodded.
‘Yet here he was still out in the field, while his bosses were all cosy back at base. Ken was taking all the risks and getting what in return?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ty slowly. ‘You’re reaching.’
‘The Aryan Brotherhood are great at telling people that they deserve better, that somehow they’re being cheated. All it needed was for a couple of seeds to be planted. Then Ken falls for this woman. Hard.’ Lock rubbed at his face again, closing his eyes for a second. ‘I’d say that’s all any man would need to start questioning where his loyalties lay.’
They pulled into the entrance of the local high school. Kids were streaming out, the older ones heading to their cars. A few were checking out the Lincoln 66. A fat white kid sporting a do-rag and a soul patch stopped in his tracks as Ty lowered the window.
‘Sweet ride,’ he said.
Ty beamed. ‘Kid’s got taste.’
‘See what I mean about people getting confused?’ Lock said. ‘He’s white, but he thinks he’s Snoop Dog.’
‘We have the more interesting culture, that’s all.’ Ty leaned out of the window towards the teenager. ‘Yo! Where’s the principal’s office?’
The kid pointed to a side entrance.
Over in a corner of the parking lot, Lock spotted a bunch of other youths. Hair cut short and wearing English Doc Marten boots, they were scowling at the car and, in particular, Ty.
50
They stood outside the principal’s office, unable to escape that sense of being back at high school themselves.
‘Bet this takes you back,’ Lock said to Ty.
‘Deja vu all over again, baby.’
‘Me too. I spent more time here than in class.’
The door opened and a severe-looking African-American woman in female school principal uniform of long heavy skirt and ruffled blouse stepped out. A brief thought crossed Lock’s mind, that he’d rather go back to the SHU at Pelican Bay than spend too much time in her office.
Her opening line didn’t exactly fill him with joy either: ‘I have three and a half thousand young people to look after, so would you gentlemen kindly explain what you want?’
‘May we step into your office, ma’am?’ Lock asked.
Ty shot him one of his trademarked ‘Are you out of your freakin’ mind?’ looks.
The principal stood aside.
‘Nice move,’ Ty whispered as they stepped inside. ‘Who knows if we’ll ever get out alive again?’
She gestured for them to sit. They did. She didn’t say anything, just stared at them — a tactic beloved of salesmen, interrogators and school principals. When neither Lock nor Ty said anything, she looked at her watch.
Lock swallowed. Yup, definitely worse than the SHU at Pelican Bay.
‘Aaron Prager was a student at your school,’ he said at last.
She didn’t give any of the standard responses, or at least any of the responses Lock had anticipated. She didn’t say, ‘I can’t discuss current or former students.’ She didn’t say, ‘What’s your interest in Aaron Prager?’ She didn’t even say, ‘Yes, it was a terrible tragedy, he was a fine young man.’ What she did first was stare at
Lock’s right hip, where his 226 bulged under his jacket. Then she picked up her phone.
‘Yes, Jessica, could you call 911 and ask them to respond to the school?’
Then she calmly put the receiver down.
‘Now, unless you gentlemen can show me some bona fide credentials, which doesn’t mean some private investigator’s certificate you scammed off the internet, I’d like you to not only leave my office, but to leave school property immediately, and never return. Nor should you contact either me or anyone else at this school by any other means. Do you understand me?’
Lock nodded. Ty nodded. They both rose, and almost in a daze walked swiftly out of her office, down several corridors and out of the school gates.
Back in her office, the principal lifted her phone once more.
‘Jessica, you may call the police back and assure them that it was a false alarm.’
Out in the parking lot, Ty turned to Lock. ‘What was that?’
‘I don’t know, but if I ever land a job which requires the ability to garner total cooperation, I’m kicking you to the kerb and hiring her.’
Ty opened the driver’s door, then stopped. ‘Goddammit.’
‘What is it?’
Ty hunkered down and rubbed at the paintwork. Someone had taken something sharp, keys probably, down the side of the Continental, leaving a thin grey scar.
Lock looked up to see the white Snoop-wannabe staring at them.
‘It was some of those Hammer Skin kids,’ he told them. ‘They give everyone a hard time.’
‘You saw them?’ Lock asked.
The boy shrugged. ‘Wasn’t like they were trying to hide doing it.’
‘The cops are on their way,’ Lock said. ‘Will you tell them what you told us?’
The boy smiled. ‘Are you out of your mind? I like having my teeth in my head. Listen, bro, I got three more years in this dump, then I’m outta here. Anyways, what are the cops gonna do when the Hammer Skins are their own kids?’ The boy looked beyond Lock to the school. ‘What did the principal say?’
‘Nada.’
‘That figures. She’s scared of them too. She tried to make a stand a few years back and they put a pipe-bomb under her car.’
Lock saw Ty perk up to the extent that he lost interest in the damage to his car. He stepped towards the boy. ‘The cops investigate?’
‘What did I just say? No one wants any trouble.’ The boy air-quoted the last three words.
‘So the skinheads do what they want?’
‘If you don’t mess with ’em, they leave you alone. For the most part.’
‘What grade you in?’
‘Ninth.’
Same as Aaron. Even in a school with such a large number of students, Lock knew that they’d just caught a break. Rather than go the direct route, he took a different approach.
‘I guess some of the kids hang out with these skinhead gangs to stop themselves getting picked on.’
‘Some, yeah.’
‘You friends with any of those kids?’
‘Not once they join up,’ the boy said, spitting on the ground and jamming his hands into his pockets. ‘Man, why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask me?’
‘We’re trying to find out what happened to Aaron Prager.’
The boy choked back a grin. ‘I can help you with that. Bitch got shot.’
Ty moved in on the boy. ‘Have a little bit of respect. You wanna be ghetto, you’d better understand, you step to us wrong and you know what’s gonna happen.’
The kid’s eyes fell back to the sidewalk. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.’
Lock could see that what the boy aspired to, Ty simply was, with all that entailed. He decided to let Ty handle him.
‘Did you ever speak to Aaron after he hooked up with this gang?’ Ty asked.
The boy’s smirk was back, but there was a touch of something else there too. Lock guessed at a creeping understanding of how people could change, and not always for the better.
‘The only time he spoke to me was to call me a wigger.’ The boy kicked at the ground. ‘He used to be a nice guy.’
‘Do they have a leader?’
‘Roach, I guess.’
‘What’s he look like?’
‘Big sucker. Shaves twice a day. You’ll know him when you see him.’
‘He a student here too?’
‘No, he got kicked out last year.’
‘Where can we find him?’
The boy gave Ty the name of the same fast-food restaurant as the one provided by the Pragers’ neighbour.
‘Thanks for your help, bro,’ Ty said, bumping fists with the boy.
‘Just don’t mention my name, OK?’
Lock and Ty got back into the Lincoln, leaving the kid on the sidewalk. Lock waved a thanks but the kid was too busy jamming his headphones into his ears. Lock didn’t blame him. If he’d grown up here, he’d have wanted to shut out the world too.
As they pulled away from the school, Ty sideways-glanced at Lock. ‘This Roach kid sounds like a real charmer.’
Lock puffed out his cheeks. ‘Big fish in a small pond. Maybe if we drain the water a little we can get him flapping.’
‘You think he’s caught up in this?’ Ty asked.
‘I can definitely see him giving up Aaron. I’m not so sure about anything else. Although, if he wanted to make a name for himself, then who knows.’
Lock fell silent for a moment, his jaw clenched tight.
‘I’ll promise you one thing though, Tyrone.’
‘What’s that, brother?’
‘He’s gonna tell us everything he knows about what went down.’
51
The boy they’d spoken to at the school was right, Roach was hard to miss. Six foot plus and maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. He wasn’t up there with Reaper or the other members of the AB, but he would hold his own in most prisons, which in Lock’s view was exactly where he was heading.
He greeted Tyrone with a faux-menacing ‘What you looking at, nigger?’
Tyrone’s expression read mock-offended but he kept his hands by his side as Roach’s compatriots snickered. He and Lock hadn’t exactly expected a ticker-tape parade, and they weren’t going to be disappointed.
‘I get it,’ said Ty. ‘This is the part where I say, “Who you callin’ a nigger?” And then you say, “I’m callin’ you a nigger, nigger.” And then I throw a punch at you. And that gives you and your cronies here the perfect excuse to triple-team me and beat me to a pulp.’
Ty’s speech seemed to throw Roach. He looked to his fellow skinheads for a reaction, but they seemed equally perplexed.
‘Except,’ Ty went on, ‘there’s a couple of problems. One, I’ve been called all kinds of names. And you know that saying about sticks and stones…’ He pulled down his T-shirt to expose the fresh wound on his shoulder. ‘And I been shot too. Recently. You ever been shot?’
Roach looked at his cheerleaders. ‘Nigger’s crazy.’
Lock eyeballed Roach. ‘Answer the man’s question.’ He parted his jacket just enough that the butt of his 226 was on view. ‘You ever been shot?’
Roach backed up a step. ‘Screw you, nigger-lover.’
Before anyone had a chance to react, Lock’s gun was in Roach’s face. Roach’s mouth shaped to say something, then he changed his mind.
‘Get in the car,’ Lock whispered to him.
Roach’s bravado was very slowly ebbing away. Easy to be top dog in a town like this, thought Lock, especially when you were big and stupid.
‘You’re playing in the big leagues now, Roach.’
Roach reacted to hearing his name. ‘Who are you?’
The longer the delay, the more chance someone would call the cops, Lock knew, smashing his gun into the side of Roach’s face. His buddies did some sidewalk dancing and shouting, but none of them made a move to help their fallen leader.
Ty grabbed Roach, dug both thumbs under his jaw and propelled him tow
ards the Lincoln. Together, he and Lock bundled him into the back. Lock climbed in with him, giving Roach a few digs of his elbow for good measure.
‘You guys are dead!’ Roach shouted.
Ty caught Lock’s eye. This was going to be fun.
They drove for more than an hour in total, heading due east towards the desert. The longer they drove, the more Roach’s self-confidence peeled away in layers. He quickly moved from threats to a sullen silence, finally settling on a couple of half-hearted pleas for leniency, all of which were met with studied silence by Lock and Ty.
As the traffic on the highway thinned out, Lock finally spoke.
‘You bring the shovel?’
Ty glanced in the rear-view for the briefest of seconds.
‘In the trunk with the quicklime.’
Five minutes later, Ty pulled the Lincoln off the road and they hauled an unwilling Roach out. They walked him for ten minutes, hitting a rise and putting them all out of sight of the highway. Every time Roach tried to look over his shoulder, Lock prodded him with the gun.
‘This looks as good a spot as any,’ Ty said.
‘Get down on your knees,’ Lock ordered.
Roach was crying now. Big mucus-filled sobs. Just like Aaron Prager. Lock contemplated starting out by cutting off one of Roach’s many Nazi-themed tattoos. He jammed his gun into the back of Roach’s neck.
‘This is bullshit, man. You’re going to kill me because I called someone a name?’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ve done a lot worse. Sure there’s been more than a few blacks, or Hispanics, or gay folk, or people who just looked different, who’ve run into you and your little jerk-off crew. Haven’t there?’ The SIG was ready to fire. He withdrew it from Roach’s neck. ‘I’m going to use this, but I don’t want any contact burns. It makes the gun easier to trace if they find you.’