Bagby hit the lights after they passed, swung into a driveway ending in a gate.
“He’s not here,” Zef said.
“Island time, dummy,” Bagby said. “We set up the flips as lookouts and we go inside and lie in wait. He comes in, we take his picture. Everybody gets paid.”
Hard to argue with that. “He better show up.”
Bagby looked wounded. “Would I lie to you?”
Ringworm and Earwig stayed in the minivan. Bagby and Zef went up the road to the opening in the hedges. Even over the black noise of the deluge, Zef could hear the booming artillery barrage of the waves.
He snagged a poncho from the van, but the wind blew tepid rain up under it and plastered his hood to his face so he tore it off. He cradled the fancy Italian shotgun—Benelli M4 with a collapsible stock—and touched the Glock tucked in his waistband, two extra clips in the pouch of his hoodie. He followed the gun like he was walking a big dog.
He didn’t doubt that he could shoot whoever and whenever he had to. What he feared was shooting the wrong person, or a lampshade instead of the guy about to shoot him. It didn’t take guts to start a gunfight. It took nerve to function in one. Shit didn’t slow down like in the movies; it happened and you were in it and ninety-and-some people out of a hundred didn’t even realize the shit hit the fan until it was over. Zef had always fancied himself one of those people.
The floor-to-ceiling windows were blacked out by curtains, but weak yellow light seeped out through the cracks. Straining through the sound of the rain, the faint throb and wobble of dub reggae. And cutting through the rain like the spoor of a skunk orgy, the bittersweet perfume of weed in industrial quantities.
“Cover me.” Bagby shook water off the AK and ran across the yard to the porch. Zef watched him give some of those stupid hand signals commandos did in movies. Was he supposed to watch him, or follow him?
“Over here, fuckhead!” Bagby shouted. Zef ran up to the porch and hit the doorframe opposite him.
Bagby set the AK against the wall and dug into his knapsack, came out with the tequila and a short pistol with a fat barrel.
“A flare gun?” Zef asked. “The fok—”
“Shock and awe, dude.” Bagby unscrewed the lid on the tequila bottle. It wasn’t tequila. Probably gas siphoned from the minivan. “Shock and—”
Raising his leg to kick the door, he did an awkward two-step when the door opened on its own.
Dim inside. A purple curtain blocked most of the view, but Zef saw three young dumb surf punks with the obligatory sunkissed, shaggy blonde manes and stoned, expressionless faces. Their vacancy was taxed to its limit at the moment, perhaps because of Bagby’s unexpected appearance, or perhaps because of the pound or two of freshly trimmed and bagged purple buds in front of them. Their eyes were cast not on the open door, but on whatever lay behind the purple curtain, which, upon second glance, proved not to be a curtain at all, but a bedspread draped over a gigantic Hawaiian whose face, way up there in the smoky shadows of the cavernous living room, became more than half teeth at the sight of Zef and Bagby.
“Haole boy,” said Peapea.
Whatever plan Bagby may have had for storming Nektorhaus and setting up an ambush for Donny Punani’s gang, he improvised brilliantly for someone with no functioning brain.
The four hundred pound giant at the door reached out to palm Bagby’s head, but Bagby smashed the tequila bottle in his face and shot him in the mouth with the flare gun.
Peapea came storming out onto the porch, his head a blazing torch. Bagby went around him, shouting, “Shock and awe!”
Zef jumped left, but there was no dodging the fucker.
What to do? You are holding a shotgun…
This timely realization caused Zef to pull the trigger with the big semiauto shotgun pointed at the floor.
The point-blank buckshot storm took Peapea’s left foot off at the ankle. The giant collapsed on top of him, pinning him to the wood porch. Peapea screamed but no sound came out. Head engulfed in crackling flame, green phosphorus dragon breath jetting out of his mouth.
Zef screamed too, inhaling barbecue fumes and mouthfuls of ash from Peapea’s blazing face. Shotgun somewhere out of reach, dropped in panic. Glock trapped between them, a lethal hard-on he was sure would go off on its own. Twisting away from the sparks Peapea tried to pour down his throat. Breathless, buried alive, Zef bit into the heel of a hand that closed over his face, squeezing his head fit to pop it. Teeth meeting in muscle, screams bubbling through blood.
He heard a wild spree of shots like two-by-fours clapping together, teenage screams going up and cutting out and Bagby laughing and screaming, “HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW, BAXTER?”
Zef thrashed in earnest, trying to get out from under when hot droplets of melted fat dripped on his face. The flare had burned through Peapea’s cheeks and made a brittle black ruin of everything below his nose. The stench of pot and body odor and cordite were extinguished by the palpable miasma of charbroiled flesh.
At last, Peapea fell still and died on top of him. Zef tried to make a bridge of his legs and roll Peapea off, but straining until his colon nearly popped out, he only managed to adjust the corpse so its guttering flames didn’t drip shit in his face.
When a hand finally took Peapea by his muumuu and rolled him off Zef and helped him up, he didn’t even flinch when he felt the two-fingered claw.
“Hey man,” Hodad said, “I don’t want to neg your pos, you know, but…”
Throwing up and crawling away from the corpse, Zef thought, Get up, he’s HERE, it’s almost over…
“Dude, get your checkbook out,” Bagby shouted from the back of the house. “I got your boy back here.”
Zef had to climb the wall to get upright. Could it be? After all this shit, could it really be over? “Yo, wait up,” he called, voice cracking.
Hodad tried to help, but Zef shook him off. Two surfers on the couch lay splayed backwards with their lungs hanging out their backs like popped water wings. Down the hall, stepping over a third surfer swimming the filthy shag carpet. Passing a half-open door when the cheap laminate flew apart as three separate starbursts came through it where Zef was supposed to be.
Dropping on his ass, he pointed the gun at the door and shot four, five times. A big local guy with long hair on the toilet tipped over and sprawled into the whirlpool bath. Bagby seemed to really want a bonus, because he’d completely shot off his face. Zef’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted it to be Donny so fucking bad he couldn’t look at it.
So he scoped the dead local girl leaning against the shattered mirror with her bare ass in the sink and a gun on the counter beside her still smoking. Bagby must’ve executed her boyfriend while she was giving him a blumpkin or something, but even he had balked at killing a girl.
Another notch in your belt, ninja. Scope my new merit badge. Ladykiller!
Bagby stood over him. “You OK, bro?”
Zef got up. “Said you had him…”
“That’s not him?” Cackling, Bagby ran into the master bedroom and fired the AK into the ceiling. Zef heard a woman screaming. Naked jailbait ran shrieking from the waterbed. The alpha surfer sat up and knuckled one dreamy blue eye and tossed his sun-bleached hair and said, “Bagby, you… fucking fag… just take your fucking kine…”
Bagby leapt onto the waterbed and kicked the alpha dog in the chin, then pinned his head to the wall with his knee. Labored giggles, not so funny now, but still, you had to laugh as Bagby stubbed his fat joint into the blonde guy’s eye.
He screamed louder and higher than the women. Bagby took a huge hit off the joint. The room filled up with a pungent smell like scorched egg whites. “Dude, you gotta taste this!”
The smart thing to do, what a boss would do, would be to put a bullet in Bagby’s brain the next time his back was turned.
But Zef just watched him punch the one surviving surfer in the face over and over, and couldn’t pick up the gun.
“Jesus man,” Hodad said, �
�he doesn’t know shit. What’re you punishing him for?”
“Not punishing him,” Bagby grunted between blows. “I’m rewarding me.”
“He’s not here, yo… what the fuck, he’s not here, and…”
“Relax, bro,” Bagby said, popping his knuckles. “You on Island time.”
“FOK YOU!” Zef grabbed a fistful of dreads and yanked Bagby backwards, swept his feet out from under him so he landed flat on his back. Sticking the Glock in Bagby’s face, he snarled, “I’m not paying for this.”
Bagby looked like he’d just swam a hundred laps in a pool of blood. Everything red but his grin. “I’m sorry, bro, it’s just… I always hated these fucking guys.”
“What the fok is really going on? You fokked up my whole operation…”
“Relax, man, nothing is fucked. They thought they were gonna take my pot and bail. They were cleaning the shit all afternoon when that fat fucker out front showed up early and caught them. He was sitting on them waiting for Donny, who could still show up any minute, so instead of getting on my case, maybe you wanna get ready to paddle out…”
Zef dropped Bagby and turned on Hodad. “Where’re, um, the others…?”
“Isidro and Maja? Outside, waiting for your man.”
My man. Fok! “Who?”
“The nice Filipino couple you hired. Those’re their names, man.”
Pull it together. This can still work. Nobody called the cops, and in this storm, nobody saw or heard anything. He’s still coming…
Zef’s phone played smooth jazz. Please, not now…
“Yo, get that fat dead fok off the porch, yeah?” He hit the button. “Yo.”
He heard the deep, angry nasal breathing and thought, Fok me. “Hi, boss. Yo, like...this is a really bad time…”
“Oh, it’s a bad time? I’m sorry. Are you and your friends tripping on LSD?”
“Uh… no…”
“Well, you better tuck into that bag I gave you and hook up a few doses of GSD.”
“Some what?”
“Getting Shit Done, son.”
“Yo, I really don’t need this right now…”
“Tell you what…” Deep, deep breath. “When you pay me to do a job and I royally shit the bed, then you can feel free to call me at whatever hour you like and put a foot up my ass at your own discretion.”
Zef backed up the hall, looking in doorways for a room without corpses in it. “OK, fok, I’m sorry, it’s just... we’re making mad progress.”
“Son, I’m beyond losing my religion with you. You’re actually making me start to doubt the power of money. Why is the good money I’ve spent not yielding the result I’ve quite reasonably requested?”
Finally, a room with a futon, a hookah, a couple broken surfboards and no dead surfers. He closed the door. “If it’s so fokking cake, yo, whyn’t you get your rooinek homeboys on it?”
“I don’t even understand your ghetto jibber jabber, and I’m not impressed by it. You are fast approaching the point where, for me to do the thing myself would’ve been easier and cheaper. You’ve done nothing but fuck up since you were hired, leaving me to suspect that even my limited, conditional trust in you was totally misplaced.”
How did he know? “Yo, nothing is fokked, OK? Just relax… you’re on island time…”
“No, you listen. I just had to send a sizable contribution to the Maui Sheriff’s Toy Drive Charity, and I’ve written a whole book about how bad for society charity is. And all so they would sit on a shitbird drug dealer in the ICU at Wailuku Catholic with everything below his mouth broken, who says you killed his cousin in Honolulu, and then tried to kill him. They like him for manslaughter for the dead Jap, but they’re threatening to go for Murder Two if he doesn’t shut up about you.
“This is what it’s come to, and it’d be simpler at this point to just crimp his breathing tube and let the beeping sing him to sleep, but then I’d be hiring killers to clean up your mess… You see why I’m at my wit’s end, here?”
“Sure, boss.” Zef thinking, Heh, joke’s on you, I’m like three royal fuckups ahead of that one. Try to keep up, cheese… “You said you’d cover expenses. Well… those are, like, expenses.”
“Thing is, I know where you’re at. Right about now, you’re probably in the very trough of the doubting phase. You’re thinking you’re not up to this. This is how people like you sabotage themselves. You know damn well what I’m talking about.”
Zef couldn’t think of anything to say in his defense. Dr. Bill’s voice had gone all soft and warm, and he wanted to nod and agree and thank him for letting it out, the yellow poison and the black, stored up inside him.
“You’ve been in love with a whole pack of lies about yourself, and now that you’ve seen those lies utterly discredited, you don’t know who, or even what, you are. And that… is… perfect.”
“Dr. Bill, I’m afraid, yo… I’m not a…” I’m not a killer, he tried to say. I mean, sure, I can kill people, just not on purpose.
“You’re trying to convince yourself you’re not right for this job. Well, let me tell you something. Jesus Christ wasn’t taken down by a bigger messiah, was he?”
What? “No, it was like the whole Roman Empire.”
“No, it was a conspiracy of weaselly little shits, Jewish Pharisees and Roman thugs had it in for him, but nothing could’ve happened without Judas. JFK wasn’t killed by a bigger, better man. Bobby was a bigger hero, so they got an even bigger loser to bag him. Jesse James, Gandhi, Che Guevara, Crazy Horse, the list goes on. To snuff out light, you need darkness. To take down a hero, you need a loser to shoot them in the back. And you’re the loser for the job. Which you’re going to do.”
Wanting to argue that Gandhi never ripped anyone’s head off with his bare hands, he stuttered, “You can’t talk to me like this… You got nothing on me that I don’t got on you…”
“OK, I’ll bite. What do you got?”
Think, think… “Well, I’m sure someone would be interested in the drugs you supplied…”
“Which drugs would those be?”
“The coke you gave me… The ice I’ve got in my pocket right now.”
“Oh, you stupid kid. Go ahead and get that shit tested. It’s a very potent but widely prescribed ADHD medication. Face it, boy. You’ve got the attention span of a gnat. I know I publicly argue against using drugs as a crutch, but drugs work. As for the grass, I’m pretty sure you stole it. It’s medical, anyway. Legal in Hawaii, if you’ve got a card. As for the rest of it, it’s your word against mine. But if you want to renege…”
“Yo, whatever, I’m on the motherfokking case, shit. But we gonna have to talk about the bottom line…”
“That’s what I like to hear, I think. Call my people if you need anything. And Zephyrus…”
“What?”
“Don’t leave me any more messes.”
Bagby was standing in the hall outside the door. “What is the bottom line, dude?”
“Go cover the front door, dog.” Zef moved to push past Bagby, who blocked the whole hallway.
“A rising tide lifts all boats, right, wigger?”
“Yo, don’t even trip, bitch,” Zef said. His hand went to the gun in his waistband.
“Boys, put your dicks away.” They both looked at Hodad. “Van outside.”
Zef went right through Bagby to get to the windows.
An old Ford Econoline was indeed stopped in the driveway. Headlights jabbed the house. Haloes blocked the driver’s face. Maja came out of the bougainvilleas like a ghost with two automatics and put them both in the driver’s face. She was looking back at the house. She’s looking for you, stupid.
Hodad sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed and his claws resting on his knees. “Om,” he said.
“My bitch better have my money,” Bagby said in a taunting, falsetto voice. He went for the door.
Zef stiff-armed him out of the way. “Cover me.”
“What?”
�
�Lowell, you’ve done nothing but fuck up since you were hired, leaving me to suspect that even my limited, conditional trust in you was totally misplaced. So stay back and don’t pop a cap, unless you want to find out what getting fired from a job like this entails.”
Pushing past the baffled burnout, Zef went down the steps, picking up his shotgun and holding it like he knew how to use it.
He walked around the microbuses and up to the van, the lights still blinding, making the rain a forest of glowing chains. Where the fuck was Ring… Isidro?
He came up alongside Maja, who looked at him eagerly from under her sopping wet wig.
“Aloha, brotha,” said Kewalo. “I’m picking up my cousin.”
Zef shook his head. “Not him.” Wiping water out of his eyes, rubbing sensation back into his numb face. Nudging Maja aside, he stuck the shotgun barrel in the window. “You can’t come in. We’re busy.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Kewalo smiled. His teeth were fishhooks. His grayish skin glistened in the reflected headlights, like it was covered in tiny, tiny beads. Or teeth. “I can wait.”
Just do him. Just shoot him in his fucking face. Kill him like he killed Primo, in cold blood while he sat in his fucking car.
Maja called for Isidro, moving down the road into the dark. Zef told her to stay close, but she disappeared. What am I in charge of?
Just shoot him. He almost did. And then everything happened at once, and it was way too late.
In the house, Bagby shrieked, “NO WAY, FUCKER! NONONONONO!”
The front windows blew out on tongues of fire. Bagby came running out the front door with the AK high against his chest and a burning trash bag flopping against his leg.
The windows on the passenger side of the van shattered before he heard the barrage of shots. Kewalo dropped behind the dashboard, popped the van in Drive. The Econoline jumped forward to smash into a microbus. Zef flew backwards into the thorny embrace of the bougainvillea hedge. Who was fucking shooting?
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