The man on the bike stood on the starter, and the engine bucked and roared. At that instant a bottle arced from behind Ray, a flaming rag tied around the neck. Everyone looked up, the bikers, the dancers, the man on the ground, his mouth bleeding. The bottle seemed to hang in the air a long time and then hit the barn and broke over the wide doors, showering flame on two men drinking beer in the open doorway. The man on the bike tried to get off, the bike toppling and taking him down with it, pinning his right leg. Another bottle broke on the side of the barn, there were screams inside, and Ray turned to see Cyrus shoulder the shotgun and unload both barrels toward the men on the steps of the house.
There were more shots from the trees, and men and women were screaming and running. A Molotov hit the porch, and a man in a black T-shirt was engulfed in flames and ran out into the night. Someone in the barn began to fire a big revolver wildly into the trees, and the slugs splattered against the bark. Cyrus was pounding his chest and bellowing, his cracked voice rumbling and breaking, screaming that all these fuckers had to get out of his yard, his voice sometimes lost under the screaming of women, the ragged popping of the guns, and the strangled cough of motorcycle starters.
Ray dropped low and began to claw his way back toward the hill. He heard two more booming shots from the shotgun, answering fire from the barn and the house. When he reached a wide oak he stood in the lee of the massive trunk and looked back at the farm house. The men Cyrus had brought stood behind trees and along the side of the house. One of them threw something at an open window, and it broke open against the sill, dumping flaming liquid inside and outside of the house. The barn was already burning hard, and the guy with the AK was firing into the flames. Even hidden back in the trees, Ray could feel on his face the heat from the fire.
Cyrus was standing out in the clearing over the guy pinned under the bike. The meth cooker’s eyes reflected the yellow light from the burning barn as he brought the butt of the gun down on the man’s head hard and fast while the trapped biker feebly tried to protect himself with one curled arm. Some of the people from the barn had reached the cars, and Ray heard more engines cranking and the guttural blat of motorcycles firing up. He hadn’t seen the Charger yet, but he wanted to get away. There was a terrible, shattered screaming from somewhere inside the house and sobs echoing from the dark. He saw pale figures disappearing into the darkness on the far side of the barn. The music was still playing somehow inside the barn, a wailing solo guitar that sounded as if a blowtorch had been turned on it.
He ran bent over, as if through rain. The moon had come out of the clouds, and he could see the grass as a dim blue and the black lines of trees. The sounds of the shots and the fire and screaming faded, and for a while all he could hear was his breath-ing and the sounds of his boots in the grass. When he broke out of the trees he turned to look behind him, and the low mass of the hill blocked his view. The sky was bright with firelight as if the hill were a volcano erupting, bleeding fire and smoke into the night sky.
He heard something moving through the grass and lifted his head just in time for a massive body to collide with him. The air was knocked from his lungs, and he tumbled over onto his side and scraped his arm open against a stiff bush bristling with thorns. The other man was sobbing, his eyes black and unreadable in the darkness. Ray lurched up onto his knees, and the man swung at him with a knife that caught the blue light of the moon so that Ray fell back again trying to stay out of his way. The other man had silver hair and a long face, and he pushed off a tree stump to stand over Ray with the knife. He feinted as Ray held an arm up, making short stabbing motions like a man looking for an opening to harpoon a fish. Ray fell back again, trying to work his arm behind him to free his pistol from his waistband, but the man stepped on his leg, and Ray cried out with the pain and pulled forward with an involuntary jerk.
“Hey!”
They both turned to see Cyrus, his gun leveled. Ray let himself drop back, and the old double- barrel lit up the clearing for an instant so that Ray could see the man, the trees standing spaced like pickets in the dark, the broken stump and the bush he was tangled in, each leaf standing out for a millisecond before the it was dark again and Ray was night- blind. He could feel blood and flesh hit his chest and arms, and the biker with the silver hair fell back, his legs jerking.
Cyrus walked over, breaking open the gun and jacking the spent rounds out, the brass ends catching the moonlight. He pulled two more rounds out of his jeans and snapped the gun together and stuck the barrel in Ray’s ribs and leaned on the stock. The pain shot across Ray’s stomach and down his legs and made him sick to his stomach.
“Run away.” Cyrus leaned down. “And don’t think about telling nobody what you seen here. You called this deal, and you and your gook buddy got just as much to lose as we do.” He straightened up and walked back toward the house, disappearing into the dark.
What was all this for? he kept thinking. How much money was in it? There must be millions somewhere, right? Was all of this about the kind of money stuffed in the duffel bag? It wasn’t enough. Not for all this. There wasn’t even enough money to buy a decent house.
Laying there spattered with blood under the white moon like a hull of bone, he saw that there was almost nothing in it and that all around him were the dogs that slinked under the table and chewed each other’s throats for scraps. These men, Scott and Cyrus, and him, too. Ray and Manny and their friends. Ripping at each other with teeth and black claws and the whole time dying themselves, worn thin and bleeding. Wandering away to die alone or killed for their weakness.
Ray pulled himself up painfully and ran without looking back. He could see men back by the line of cars, some carrying guns. He made for the Honda and had just reached it when the dark Charger rocketed up the drive and spun off the driveway at the turn, throwing gravel. Two men who had stayed back with the cars started firing shotguns at the long car as it missed the turn. Ray could hear the hard crack of glass shattering as whoever was inside stomped the accelerator and the big Dodge fishtailed and the tires whined and spun uselessly in the wet grass.
A third man ran close and threw one of the firebombs hard against the rear windshield. Already starred from the shotgun pellets, the glass bowed in, and the interior of the car filled with yellow light as the gasoline spilled across the rear seats. More shots hit the front windshield, and the wheels stopped spinning. Ray stood, transfixed by the sight of the car burning. It was blue, he could see now. Dark blue, midnight blue. The men who had been firing the shotguns ran back to the Taurus and slammed the doors. They pulled out, and the third man jumped into the rear seat while the car was still moving. It shot down the driveway, gravel spitting from under the wheels and clattering against the other cars.
Ray could hear sirens now and far away could see the red and white lights of fire trucks making their way up Forty Foot Road. There were distant pops and cracks from the direction of the farmhouse. Ray finally started jogging back toward the car, pulling his keys out of his pocket. When he got the Honda moving down the driveway, picking up speed, he kept looking back toward the Charger. The inside of the car filled with flame, and smoke spi-raled out from under the hood. The doors never opened, and no one got out.
CHAPTER
TEN
RAY CALLED MANNY and started telling him everything that happened, his hands vibrating like broken machines. Manny stopped him, told him to meet him at the place where he was staying, in a room over a bar where they sometimes hung out in War-rington, a place owned by a guy who’d sold them guns a couple of times.
Ray parked in the dark reaches of the parking lot and walked across the asphalt, feeling a bass beat from inside that resonated in his chest before he even opened the door. Inside, the noise was deafening, the place packed with kids. Young guys with ball caps on at angles and gold chains around their necks, shoulders hunched, going for some kind of effect that eluded Ray. Did they think, with their freckled skin and wide eyes, to be taken for dangerous? He elbowe
d his way to the bar and asked for a beer and a shot. He downed the shot and carried the beer back out to the entrance to get to the stairs, waved to the bouncer, a friend of Harlan Max-imuck named Edgy.
At the top of the stairs he knocked, and Manny let him in with his right hand held behind him, poking his head through the door and looking up and down the hall. When Ray went by him Manny threw a baseball bat onto a mattress on the floor and dropped down beside it. The floor vibrated with the pulse of the beat from downstairs. Ray could feel it through his boots.
The place was a mess, a big empty space with extra tables for the bar, chairs stacked, cardboard cutouts of girls in swimsuits and cartoon pirates selling rum and beer. There was a little plastic fan sitting on the floor pointed at Manny, the box it had come in put into service as an end table holding Manny’s works, a bottle of peppermint schnapps, a package of bright orange peanut butter crackers. There was scattered trash, empty bags from Yum Yum Donuts down the street, empty green beer bottles, an ashtray and a pack of Marlboros.
Ray told as much of what had happened as he could remember, though he knew things were already getting confused, his memory distorted by intensity and his own fear. “They went fucking crazy. They burned the fucking place down, shot people. I never saw anything like that.”
Manny’s head bobbed. “Good. I hope they killed that fucker and his dog. I hope they killed everyone who ever met him or knew his name.” He scratched at a sore in the crook of his arm.
Ray said, “You’re high.”
“Fucking A, I am high.” He went to the peanut butter crackers, took one out with exaggerated care, and made large, approximate movements of his arm to get it to his mouth. “Why are they orange? ’Cause of the cheese?”
“Fuck, man.”
“I mean, is cheese really orange? Isn’t it white, or blue or something? I mean, it’s basically moldy milk.”
“Manny.”
“I’m just saying, why orange? I can’t have an opinion about orange?”
Ray squatted by the box and picked up the bottle of schnapps and swigged it.
“That is some nasty shit.”
“It’s sweet. I got a sweet tooth.”
“You got like three teeth, and you’re going to be losing them soon.” Ray went to the window and looked out through a hole in the shades. The lights in the parking lot glinted from pickup trucks and SUVs. He watched a boy kissing a girl sitting on the hood of a parked car. She was wearing a white top that stopped a few inches from her jeans.
“Where did you score?”
“Monk on Bristol Road. You going to give me shit about that, too?” Manny got to his feet, swaying. He pulled the bat off the bed and swung it wildly, losing his balance and backing into a wall, leaving a dimple in the wallboard where his elbow connected.
Ray waved his hand in front of his face. “Oh, fuck off. I just want to keep a low profile.” He shook his head. “Like I give a shit if you get high.”
“I know, I just. . .” Manny bobbed his head. “I can’t handle this shit. Sitting around. I’d rather get out in it than sit and wait.”
“Well, what the hell? Aren’t I out there trying to handle it? Rolling around in the fucking tumbleweeds with these hillbillies?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t need shit from you.”
“Okay, okay.” Manny held up his long arms and dropped his head, making peace, then went back to pacing, swinging the bat at flies. “Life goes on,” he said, his voice low. “A man becomes preeminent; he’s expected to have . . . enthusiasms.” This was a favorite of Manny’s, The Untouchables. De Niro a hulking animal in a gray suit. “Enthusiasms. Enthusiasms. What is that which gives me joy?”
“Smack?”
Manny dropped the bat and it bounced and knocked over some empty green beer bottles. “Not just that.” He looked around as if seeing the place new and rubbed his eyes with both hands, like a child. “Stealing shit. Money. Sherry.” He stared into the middle distance. “I gotta sleep.”
“Go ahead, man. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Manny dropped to his knees and crawled to the mattress and dropped onto it, his black hair splayed around his head, his body long and white but for the tattoos aging green. Frankenstein on his right arm, Al Pacino as Scarface on his left. His junkie mother, from a photograph he used to keep with him all the time, across the small of his back. Blond hair in curls and a shy smile. She was long dead, cut to pieces and left in garbage bags by the side of the road in Bristol Township.
Manny didn’t lift his head. “So, did we win?”
Ray thought about that. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“When will we know?” Manny’s voice was muffled by the mattress.
Ray shrugged, realized Manny couldn’t see it but figured he took the meaning from his silence.
AT NINE THE next morning Manny was still asleep, so Ray left a note and went down to pick up a paper and took it to the Yum Yum Donuts at County Line and sat on a stool bolted to the floor. He hadn’t slept, and his eyes were cinders in his head. He skimmed through the accounts of what had happened at the barn. Two dead, names unreleased, with three more in critical condition, a dozen more treated and released. The cops knew it was bikers fighting over turf, and there were sidebars on the motorcycle clubs, the Pagans and the Outlaws, and the meth trade. He would have to look at later editions to see the names of the dead.
He was edgy and his mind skittered from one thing to the next. He took out his cell a few times and looked at it, finally shoved it in his pocket and went to the car. His arms and legs twitched from lack of sleep, and a kind of strange electricity pulsed in him. When he got back to the bar he took the stairs two at a time, shouldered in the door to grab Manny’s works, and then tied himself off using the cord from the fan. Manny was a freak about not sharing needles and kept spares still in their cellophane and paper covers. The noise of unwrapping them woke Manny, who sat up and watched him cook the heroin in his blackened spoon and bang his arm to bring up the vein.
Ray let the blood back up in the needle and shot it into his arm.
“Christ, Ray.” Manny licked his lips. “When was the last time you fired up?” Ray untied the cord from his arm and smiled, but Manny shook his head. “Dude, I know you been chipping, but shit.”
“So bill me.”
“Fuck you, I don’t care about the money.” Ray put a finger to his lips. “Don’t talk. Go get more dope.” A wasp was buzzing, hitting the glass of the window with a rhythmic tick. Ray lay back and the buzzing filled his head. The hot light from the morning sun hammered his skin, and sweat rolled from his hair and into the hollows of his eyes. The bed was a raft on a sea of lava, and the air wrinkled with heat and fire. He heard Manny go through the door, but the sound was distant, tinny, as if it were on the radio in another room. Someone downstairs started up the sound system, and there was a resonant hum he could feel in his jaw and then long guitar notes. The room vibrated, and the beer bottles rolled, throwing green light onto the walls. The wasp hung in the air over his head. He focused on it, a perfect engine of rage beating the air with tiny wings in a relentless semaphore he could not follow.
ray jerked awake. Manny was sitting on the floor, flexing his arm to bang up the vein and holding the needle. The sun was lower in the sky, and there was noise from downstairs communicated by vibration through the floor. They couldn’t stay in this room much longer.
He’d had a dream about the accident that sent him away, when Marletta died. He was standing in the road with blood coming out of his hair and looking at a man asleep in the road, only of course he wasn’t really asleep, and there were tracks leading off into the weeds where the car Ray had been driving was on its side, and he couldn’t find Marletta anywhere. It was the most he had remem-bered about the accident that had sent him to prison. The most that he had let himself see, maybe. He knew there was more. It was like reading a terrible book and not wanting to turn more pages because you knew the story just got worse.
Ray had sat in bars with guys and listened to them talk, and when the subject came up he just said he worked for a painting crew, but things broke down when somebody knew somebody in the business, and his lies would become tenuous and elaborate, which gave him a bad feeling, like he was pretending to be tall by balancing on stilts. He would get tense and defiant, and the people around him would slip away.
He went around the room and began picking up Manny’s clothes and stuffing them into his bag, impatient to be on the move. Manny himself lay back, his eyes rolling, and Ray knew it was going to be a little while before he could get him out of the room and into the car. He dug through his jacket and found the one- hitter and gave himself a jolt so he could focus, formulate a plan of action. He wanted his car back, wanted to go home and get a shower and listen to his own music.
Loaded up with bags and bits of clothing, he moved down to the car, edging past drinkers in the dim bar and pushing out into the sunlight slanting through the trees behind the crumbling asphalt lot. Outside he became aware of his clothes, stiff and foul-smelling, and he caught sight of himself in the long side mirror of a pickup. His hair was wild, his face streaked, and there were dark stains on his clothing and he remembered where they were from and he shuddered and had to resist the urge to crawl out of his clothes right there in the parking lot. He looked and felt like someone who had been living rough in the open and thought if he had seen a guy looking like this in a parking lot he’d have figured him for a guy on the bum. He dumped everything in the back of Sherry’s car and got in and drove up to County Line and cut left toward the Dunkin’ Donuts. When he got there he drove to where his Camaro had been and found an empty square of blackened asphalt surrounded by yellow tape.
The Dope Thief Page 14