Also: what a shitty little car.
*
At the office later, he pretended to file a report, but really, how likely was that? He hadn’t filed a report in, what, four months now, so why start that shit again? No one was up his ass about it anymore.
His captain had asked a few times for a report on a drunk roughneck because the roughneck was threatening to get a fancy lawyer and prove that he hadn’t been drunk when he ran over that girl’s bike, up in her family’s yard. He did it because of their dog, he said, which he’d also hit. Killed. Didn’t care. Said the dog got in his way, made him swerve off the road into the yard. That would’ve worked better if he’d remembered that he had already killed the dog a quarter-mile before that.
So the drunk driver and his “lawyer” cousin asked him for the report, and asked him again, and asked him again. Then it turned into demanded the report. And one night, when the same son-of-a-bitch was at the casino, still drinking too much, still climbing into his truck for what was sure to be a fucked-up attempt at getting back to his man camp, Slow Bear was waiting.
The roughneck woke up in his truck in neck-deep water a few hours later. After that, he dropped all the complaints and paid his fucking fine.
And no one since had asked Slow Bear for a report. Maybe because they figured someone would sweep in and whoosh his sorry corrupt ass out of here, or because no one cared. Not even one person. All this, the Reservation, the rule of law, the attempt to maintain respect when all anyone cared about was oil money...just a shrug.
He was putting in an appearance, though. He needed to be seen every now and then so that his fellow police couldn’t think the worst about him. He was still showing up, typing with two fingers, asking if there was anything he could help with—a drug raid? A john sting? Anything?
He was really here so he could upload the photos of the Fiesta and the girl it belonged to onto his hard drive. It was an old computer, and he was still running Windows Vista, had never updated his modem, never hooked up to the “cloud.” Password protected, good file shredding software, all that hacker shit, so it was as safe as a vault. All the photos he had put on that thing, enough to get himself and everyone else he’d ever known a life sentence. Photos of drunks, of course, but then there were the drunken sex shots, the POV shots of girls getting out of tickets by getting on their knees. Videos of beatings. Bad beatings. Delivered by him mostly, but sometimes he stumbled across fights in progress and got a bit of footage before someone broke it up. Like the one between Ferret and Glen Ramsey that could’ve gone a lot worse if Gene Handy hadn’t shown up. He also had some video of Ramsey and Ferret and the Russells together not long after, around the chicken joint, but he wasn’t able to get close enough to get more.
And then there were the shots of the dead. Many of them taken in the line of duty, even if he wasn’t on that call or that case. He got around. He heard things. At least fifty or sixty pictures of dead people, as they were found in the wild. At least a dozen of these photos would solve missing persons cases, but Slow Bear had decided the time wasn’t right. Maybe he would take them on a case-by-case basis when his ass was on fire enough that he needed a quick way to put it out.
Because if he had a photo of a dead person—man, woman, child, he had them all—that meant he also knew who damn well did it. They just didn’t know that he knew yet.
So he got those photos safe and encoded on his hard drive. He had a feeling someone would come looking for the girl. Thanksgiving. That’s when she would be missed most. Some of the pictures in his stash, several holidays had come and gone. Years of them. And he could always count on the calls, or the new posters, or milk cartons (did they still do that?): Please, any information. We need closure.
One day, Slow Bear would give it to them, but only when it helped him the most.
He got tired of the burnt popcorn and coffee smell in the office and bounced out, pulled his hat over his eyes so he didn’t have to watch his fellow officers give him a glare and a twisted lip on his way out. Fuck them. They needed a cop like him and they damn well knew it. He was the sort of cop they wished they could be.
Not one of them had clean hands. He had the photos to prove it.
*
That night he kept his options open, but he had one of those tingling moments. His Spidey-senses, let’s say. He had left the squad car on the Rez and headed into Williston, cargo pants and T-shirt, this one really designed to piss off the roughnecks. It was a drawing of one of Columbus’ ships, and written around it, Illegal Immigration started in 1492. He drank Rock Star mixed with tequila and let the wind bounce his truck around some. Might finally be some snow coming in later that night, he thought. Now was the time the women would start wearing boots and jeans and thick jackets. Until April or May, the free show was over. Had to pay up to see more.
He had heard that the Mexican oil workers finally found a bar that didn’t mind them so much like some of these others. Someone who must have figured out that money was money, and the brown-skinned guys were as willing to spend too much of it as the whites. So a handful of Indians had drifted that way, too. They’d set up a little stage and pole in the basement. Topless, bottomless, just keep your hands to yourself or one of the “security guys” would taze your ass. And god forbid what was going on in that back corner by the sump pump, set off with plastic shower curtains.
Worth a visit? Slow Bear thought so.
But now this tingling threw his plans off.
He hadn’t seen the Russells around the last couple of days.
Aw, shit, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Those two. Shit.
The lived out at the camp, but you wouldn’t know it. They were always here, always bothering the strippers, always looking for a fight, checking in on their slingers. Did they even work in the field anymore? So how had he missed them? Unless something had happened while he was off getting the Fiesta. If they’d skipped town already...still, he didn’t need them. Bad pennies like those two weren’t much of a prize anyway.
Still, this tingling. It wasn’t supernatural. None of that Indian mysticism, no spirit animals guiding him, no fucking visions. This was more like Sherlock Holmes, all his deductive reasoning mumbo-jumbo. Another swig of Rock Star and Sauza. Another grimace. Take it apart, Slow Bear. Reason it out.
They were not together right now. After dropping off the Fiesta, one of them had some bad vibes about the whole thing. Which one, he couldn’t say. No, wait, the tingling. He got it. It had just happened a few minutes ago. He rewound the scene. Him driving into town. Bad Russell getting out of a truck. A familiar truck. Glen Ramsey’s truck. The fuck was he doing palling around with Glen Ramsey?
See, it wasn’t mumbo-jumbo at all. It was training. You take it all in passively. Your eyes, your ears, soak it all in. Then after, you keep processing it and processing it some more until the tingling starts. And thus, Bad Russell alone with Glen Ramsey was some first-rate tingly bullshit right there.
He doubled back around the block, going through the slides in his head one more time, trying to match up the background. The truck would be gone by now. He needed the spot where Bad Russell had gotten out. Concentrate. Look past the truck, past that idiot Russell, what corner was it? Which one? The lights. The street name. Anything.
Kum and Go. Gas station, convenience store, stupid name. That was it.
He pulled into the Kum and Go’s lot, sat in the corner near the shell of a pay phone, busted up and covered in dark graffiti. Think, man. Think. Another swig of Rock Star and Sauza. Another grimace. His throat burned and he shook his can. Not much left. He looked at the seat behind him. Three more cans and half a bottle.
Bad Russell liked women, but it wasn’t his thing to gawk at them. A little, same as every other red-blooded man, but it wasn’t like he had a chance with most of them. Even with money in his pocket, the girls knew they could get the same amount from someone a little less smelly. So sure, a nice ass in a thong, swinging around a pole to some old Skid Row s
ong. What he really liked to do was fight, though. A good ol’ throwdown. Nothing personal, no names, no reasons, anonymous drunk pricks checking off that box for the night.
And Bad Russell cared about appearances. Not his own, not on the outside, but still, manners meant something to him. Fake smiles meant something to him. The girls needed to be professionals. He was comfortable around them because they wouldn’t proposition him or try to rip him off. They didn’t need to.
That meant his club of choice was The Tuxedo.
It wasn’t Slow Bear’s—the white boys inside made sure of that—but guess he didn’t have a choice tonight. That tingling wasn’t going away.
*
Fuck yeah, it was crowded. Its slow times were what everyone else would call a real good day, so imagine prime time. Imagine the volume up with the treble high and the bass high and nothing else. Imagine it dark with red lights and lasers and shit. Imagine every third-string white football player you’ve ever known gawking at the cheerleaders who made it on merit and not because they were from rich families.
And imagine Slow Bear’s redskinned ass up in there.
He gave up trying to get a drink, even after he’d worked his way from three back to the rail. Ignored, not surprising. Of course later, they’d start harassing him about there being a two-drink minimum—no, wait, five for him—in order to get him out sooner.
He took a stool as far back against the wall as he could, hoping to stay in the shadows, out of sight, out of mind. He let his eyes do the work. Soak it in. Tits, ass, biceps, lasers, trucker hats. His nose picked up oil, beer, sugar from the drinks, and seventy-one different varieties of Axe body spray. No, he was kidding. They all smelled the same. He wished his ears couldn’t pick up anything. The music was fine. The speakers they were shoving it through, goddamn, not so much.
Then he locked on to Bad Russell, nursing a bottle of beer at the catwalk, all alone. The girl on stage, all over that pole. Blond with streaks of orange and green dye. She looked a bit off-time with the music, like she had no internal beat. Just memorized the moves. Bad Russell had his elbows on the edge of the catwalk, palm over fist, rubbing his mustache with the back of his hand. Slow Bear couldn’t tell if he was even watching the dancer. What was on that boy’s mind?
Then he wondered how many times a night they played “Girls, Girls, Girls.”
Then a girl server got in his way. Not one of the dancers, but still in a thin, low-cut T-shirt—of course, with THE TUXEDO across it and a drawing of a girl in fancy tails bent over—with pig-tails, for fuck’s sake.
“You need something? You know it’s a four-drink minimum.”
Only four tonight. Okay. But he wondered if they were ten bucks each.
“I’m the driver tonight. Sorry.”
That made her frown a bit, like, how many other Indians are here? Then, “A Coke, then? Have to bring you something.”
Whatever. “Sure. Have you guys got Rock Star?”
She went off to get it without a smile, and he turned back to Bad Russell’s place at the bar. Nothing there but a bottle of beer. Shit. He turned on his radar and started sweeping. Soak it in, soak it in. Seriously, he was talking to this chick for, what, ten seconds? Less? But damn, that cat was gone.
He got up and headed for the bathroom. He could already see there was a line twisting out onto the floor. Bad Russell wasn’t in it. But had he ever been the type to wait in line? Didn’t all these boys know him on sight? That meant Slow Bear was going to have to pull his ID and bully a few roughnecks. Jesus, last thing he wanted.
But the girl was back with his Red Bull instead of a Rock Star. “Ten bucks.”
He flicked his eyes from her to the bartender, who was staring right back, waiting, arms crossed. Wasn’t worth it.
“I’ve got to go.”
She chased him back through the crowd. “But there’s a minimum! You have to pay for this one, Chief, if you want to keep your scalp.”
Pigtails. On a fully-grown college dropout. Really. She wasn’t even worth a comeback. He flipped her off over his shoulder and kept on going out the doors.
Score one for Bad Russell. Fuck the tingling. He needed to get drunk. Time to head to Norte Revolucion and be treated like a human being.
Fuck the energy drink. Straight shots, anejo, until he couldn’t stand up anymore.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ferret found Gene Handy leaning against a truck enjoying some coffee while a couple of guys cleaned some tanks, blasting it with chems and hot water, an unholy hiss and mist. Gene Handy watched like he didn’t give a damn. Ferret wondered why he bothered watching at all.
Whatever. It was going down right here and now, noise or no noise, in front of whoever happened to be around. Had to shout a little.
“I’m done. One hundred percent. I’m not doing it anymore.”
Gene Handy nodded. Took a sip of coffee. Waited.
Ferret kept on. “The shit I’ve seen...listen, man, I’m not up to this.” Gave the no mas wave with his hands. “Finished.”
“Okay, I hear you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I mean, I hear you, but it’s all bullshit. You’re going to do this because you don’t have a choice—”
“You know what? Fuck you. I don’t think you’ll say a goddamn thing because then it messes up your bounty. Call the cops, I’ll spill everything I know. I’ll get witness protection.”
Gene Handy knocked on Ferret’s hardhat. “Hello? Any sense left in there?”
“I’m serious.”
“So you got me. Now what? Maybe I go tell Pancrazy you’re a traitor. That you’re skimming.”
“You got no proof.”
“I can make up proof. This ain’t court, buddy.” He tossed the rest of his coffee to the ground, dropped his cup. “I’ll tell him the Sons of Silence are initiating you. He’ll love that.”
He started off in the direction of Pancrazio’s trailer. Ferret shouted at his back, “I’ve already talked to him!”
Gene Handy stopped, turned. “Like fuck.”
“No, I did.”
The big man strolled back over, then bent at the waist, face to face. “What did you tell him?”
“That I quit.”
“That’s it? You quit driving?” Big smile, big smile. “And he let you? That’s even better. Shit, kid, don’t you see that’s why I let him pick you?”
“You didn’t pick shit. You wanted me to steer clear.”
“Because I knew it would make you want to more.”
It was bullshit. Covering his ass. The wind was chapping Ferret’s lips and hands, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and balled them up and wanted to hit Gene Handy. He had an answer for everything now. Ferret liked him better when he didn’t say much of anything. Wouldn’t even laugh at jokes.
“I’m tired of you. If you want that money, work for it. Do it yourself.”
“I’m going to give you fifty fucking thousand, Finn. You know what you can do with that? You can get out of here!”
Ferret was on the retreat, stepping backwards, shouting over the hiss. “I can make that out here in no time! I don’t need your fucking bounty, man!” He spread his hands wide like What you gonna do?
Gene Handy grinned. “See you tomorrow, kid.”
Ferret turned his back to the man and walked on to his next assignment. He felt the rock in his chest soften. Goddamn it if he didn’t have to pee like a motherfucker.
*
The rock in his chest had been harder and heavier talking to Pancrazy earlier. That sauna of an office, the acrid smoke from those fucking menthols, the dull gray eyes that hid a monster, according to Gene Handy. It made sense if you thought about it, but then again any crazy conspiracy makes sense if you think long enough. Dee Dee’s dad was still convinced Obama wasn’t eligible to be president, either, and no amount of truth at any volume was going to change that bastard’s mind.
Ferret didn’t expect any less from Pancrazio.
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But the driller came out from around his desk, sat in the chair beside Ferret, and let out a long sigh. He put his hand on Ferret’s knee. Sweaty palm, soaked right through. “Fine, fine.”
“But you said...last time...”
He shrugged. “What can I do, eh? Beat you? Threaten you? You’re a good kid. You did your job. Someone else can drive.”
Ferret wanted to ask him who he really was and what had he done with the true Pancrazio. Instead, he peeled the wet pants off his leg as Pancrazy got up and wandered back around his desk.
“Thanks, I really...I had hoped...”
“Let the river flow, you know?” Another long sigh, filled with smoke. Pancrazy looked tired. His eyes were puffy. His usually clean-shaven cheeks were shadowed by three days’ stubble. His skin was pale, very pale. Something had happened to him since he’d been attacked by the girl. How could this guy, so rattled by what he’d done to her, be the same cold-blooded guy they called Blagoje the Cock?
Ferret wiped sweat from his eyebrows, the tip of his nose.
Pancrazy stared at the blocked window as if there was still a view. “Used to be easier.”
“What did?”
Like he hadn’t even heard. “Yeah, it used to be.”
The East Coast mobster? The mass-murdering Colonel?
“I don’t think it was ever really easy, sir.”
Pancrazy turned his head. Sir. Ferret hadn’t called him sir before, had he? Being a Southerner and all, he could’ve. It was possible.
When Pancrazy didn’t answer, Ferret stood and said, “I’ve got some work to do. Thank you, again, thank you for everything.”
A side-eyed stare. Then, “Get out of here.”
*
At home, Violet was pissy about being the new girl. They picked on her accent. They didn’t like her clothes. Two girls already wanted to fight her. For fuck’s sake, it was only second grade.
While Dee Dee was on the phone with another teacher, swapping ideas for lesson plans, running down the other teachers, bitch this and whore that, Ferret figured Violet would have no problems getting advice from Mom about what to do, but he wasn’t a slacker in the bully-fighting department either.
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