Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  “I’ll keep the flowery bullshit to a minimum. I had no idea the show was this big. I want in. I’ll never have the brains to run a shop like you do, and I don’t want to. But I want more than I got. I want the Land Rover and enough cash to be who I am. I’m sick of faking it. I want fuck-you money. I want a lot of it. That’s it.”

  “Good. Come back over here.” Wayman again moved the mouse. Clicked on Room 13, and dragged the cursor back the time line until a stunned and frantic Finch entered the room, followed by Wayman and Asger.

  “You’ll see in this video, no one’s holding a gun to your head. No one’s pushing you around. Not inside the room, on camera. As far as the video proves, you’re an accessory after the fact.”

  Finch sat on Wayman’s desk.

  Wayman said, “Accessories get the same firing squad as conspirators and murderers.”

  Finch exhaled. “Like I said. I’m in. Every single girl you turned into sausage came to Salt Lake City on a truck I drove twenty hours from Sierra Vista. You didn’t need a video to know I’m part of this. What I want to know is, when am I going to get my cheeseburger?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Finch stood at the sink splashing water into his face. His father slept in the next room. Wayman had driven him to a motel and left him at his father’s door, and Luke had appeared surprised to see him. He didn’t usually make the run from Williams with the boys. He didn’t know how they did things. He’d gotten a room with a single bed.

  Of course he had.

  Finch went to the motel front desk and paid for a room.

  It’s better this way. Don’t want to sleep on the ratty couch, and don’t want to hear you snore, Dad.

  Finch lowered his head to the faucet and dropped cupped hands of water over the back of his head. He worked it through his dreadlocked hair so it would keep his head cool and give him a chance to wake up and think.

  He’d incinerated the wire.

  He should call his FBI contact right now and tell her what had happened. She’d want to know as soon as shit went sideways. She was a hardass. He had to make sure she understood he didn’t want to be complicit. He was acting out of fear for his life.

  But the video would show him playing along. Quipping jokes, wiping blood off the walls with aplomb.

  He should have gone to the FBI in the very beginning, when he was twenty and first started putting things together. It’s what he should have done. When you see evil shit, you do something, not sit and wonder about personal consequences.

  But he’d never been taught that. He had to learn it on his own. Had to develop his own personal sense of right and wrong based on the hurts other people gave him, and his guiding sense that he didn’t want to do that to other people. He’d barely been aware of himself at twenty years old. All he wanted was beer and women. But eventually he’d figured out it sucks to be on the receiving end of self-absorbed inconsiderate assholes, and he became hyper aware of when he was causing harm. Not just real pain, like from a fist fight. But emotional harm. Even frustration. Finch couldn’t pull out in front of another car. If his entry into the lane would cause the other driver to have to tap his brakes, Finch would wait. It just wasn’t cool to be an asshole to someone until they were an asshole to you.

  After a couple years of listening to his father talk about the differences between the races—not that one was better than another—that’s how it started out—and then the tripe about how there’s so much more opportunity in the great United States because of free markets and capitalism, and how delivering truckloads of kids into the country to explore the miracle of capitalism was a noble endeavor ... after a few years of piecing things together, the boy who just wanted to get drunk and laid realized he was smuggling kids so his father and brother could sell their sex. He’d started out believing what he’d been taught: my family is good, and loyalty to family is one of the highest ideals.

  But after years of service, he’d found his loyalty hadn’t been toward good people doing good things. He’d been loyal to an evil enterprise.

  The realization took a long time to come top of mind. He was more and more troubled as the years went by. He lived more and more recklessly. Drank and used drugs. Steeled himself for the monthly round trip to Sierra Vista and Salt Lake City, and tried to make himself almost useless any time other business came up that they might want him to help with.

  He’d contacted the FBI, came clean to Agent Lou Rivers, the woman who looked and acted like a man, and she’d told him if what he said was true, he could go to prison for a long time, and the only way out was to give the FBI what it needed to take down the entire operation. Everyone, top to bottom. Names, dates, video, audio, financial records. She wanted him to deliver enough evidence they could show probable cause for search warrants in Williams, Arizona and Salt Lake City, plus where ever else the girls were shipped afterward.

  She always wanted more, and never acknowledged how much he’d already given her, and how much he risked every time they met.

  He’d begun wearing a recording device for the trip from Williams to Sierra Vista, all the way through to Salt Lake City and back. But the recordings only had him and Cephus jawing about bullshit. Cephus pretended to not know much about the rest of the operation, and Finch worried that prying too hard would signal something was wrong. Finch had never been interested before.

  Why now?

  After months of tiny progress, Agent Lou Rivers began to pressure Finch to become more involved in the dirtier parts of the business. She’d told him to volunteer, and say something about how he needed more money, and he was willing to do what it took.

  But every time he thought about going there, his stomach tightened. He saw images of kids and old men, and he wanted to run from it.

  Finch backed away from the sink with his hair dripping onto his shirt. His face was cool. He still hadn’t eaten—there were no fast food joints open on the ride from The Butcher Shop to the motel. His stomach was tight but the cool water brought an adrenaline charge. He was hungry, but strong. The situation was fluid. He’d bought time with Wayman by pretending to be gay, and that seemed to change Wayman’s behavior entirely. As if all his apparent lack of interest in the family business could be explained by feeling sexually out of place.

  Hell, maybe Wayman was gay.

  Either way, Finch realized, Luke and Wayman had either planned to test him tonight and then kill him or, judging from his father’s surprise, just kill him. He’d played things right so far, and had bought another day. An hour or two.

  If they were going to kill him, wouldn’t they have done it where they have the perfect operation in place already, to disappear his body? Wasn’t that the implied threat in the entire night’s activities?

  Finch pushed aside the curtain with his finger and looked at the cars outside. The nearest street lamp had a half-lit purple appearance, as if unconvinced it was night.

  The clock read 3:00 a.m.

  I need food.

  “Fuck this.”

  Finch unzipped his satchel and dumped a pair of worn jeans, a shirt, underwear, socks, and jacket on the bed. He only ever brought enough for one night.

  Turning, he noticed the coffee pot. Good idea. He filled a paper cup with water and dumped it into the maker. Loaded a single serve pouch. There was room. He stacked another pouch on top. He could use the jolt. He opened the accoutrement packages and dumped the cream and sugar from both in the bottom of the paper cup. Hit the on button.

  Finch extracted his wallet and stripped off Wayman’s clothes, throwing them to the floor. Jumped in the shower, scrubbed his body with the rough white washcloth, and rubbed himself red with the scratchy towel. Stirred his coffee and sipped while naked in front of the wall mirror. Is this what a vigilante looks like? Pooch stomach, slack shoulders, limp dick looking like a stack of nickels?

  Finch squared his shoulders and drank more coffee.

  He donned his clothes from the top of the bed and slipped into Wayman’s shoes.<
br />
  He threw on his jacket and at the door looked back on the room. Wayman’s clothes were on the floor and the plastic hotel key on the dresser top.

  The newspaper he’d carried from the truck, and still hadn’t read, lay beside the television.

  Finch grabbed the paper, tucked it inside his jacket like another layer of insulation, and let the door close, or not close, behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The night was cold. Snow glistened in the air. After a block, Finch placed his numb hands in his pockets. His wet hair froze. He should have toweled it more.

  As he walked, his mind wandered. What did it mean that he’d embraced the girl’s butchering well enough to convince his brother to let him live?

  Did Wayman know him better than he knew himself?

  Was he a good guy, or did the right reward make the difference? Could he embrace his father’s business? Because while the moral aspect of the decision seemed relevant, he needed to live long enough to make it. The danger aspect was more palpable.

  Finch turned his head without slowing his pace. A car’s headlights a block back ... the car didn’t seem to be moving forward.

  He turned right at an intersection. Around the corner, he ducked into a shop entrance and squatted; if his head was visible through the glass, maybe it would look like a handbag.

  The car eased around the corner and stopped next to the curb, headlights cutting a swath that left Finch in no danger of being seen. He lowered himself farther and peered around the corner, near the concrete step.

  A cigarette glowed on the driver’s side.

  This dude was following him. The driver leaned closer to his windshield. The car inched forward. Stopped.

  You’re wondering how I could disappear in ten seconds, and you’re not buying it at all. You know I’m not from around here, so I don’t have a friend’s place to duck into. And in five seconds you’re going to realize I’m probably hiding nearby.

  Very nearby.

  Finch trembled. Adrenaline shot into the mix of coffee and sugar already in his blood.

  The car engine turned off. The door opened, and a tall man stepped out. The street lamps here were bright. He wasn’t the one Wayman called the dago on the dance floor, but similar. Long black hair, a thick upper body, like he was used to pumping iron and cracking heads. He stepped in front of the vehicle. In his left hand, he carried a pistol with a long barrel.

  From where the man now stood, Finch would be easy to see.

  He eased into a sprinter’s stance, ready to leap. But the man walked as if assuming Finch had turned the corner and made a run for it.

  With his adversary at an angle past him, Finch slipped out of the entry and, on feet as light as possible, ran for shelter behind the man’s car. Coming to a stop, he skittered a pebble across the pavement.

  The man twisted, lifted his gun arm and hurried back to the car. Still stooped, Finch circled the car. His senses distorted. Fear created a new dimension. He saw the pavement like it was inches from his face, but nothing around it; he heard his footfalls as if amplified through an rock band’s sound stage. His heart shook and his body felt nothing, not his fingertips on the concrete, not the cold on his face.

  Finch saw the man’s feet. He looked up.

  The gun barrel, inches away, was a perfect circle, the man’s face a cold menace behind it.

  No way would he miss.

  Finch swung his hand at the gun and connected with air. His vision warped back to reality. The man stood two feet away—where he’d been all along. The safety release snicked.

  Finch leapt. He reached with his arms and shifted sideways. Expecting a flash and blackness, he instead felt the barrel of the gun in his hands, felt the man’s body against his shoulder as he drove into him and twisted the gun away.

  The man bucked him backward. Growled. Connected a fist to his shoulder and then slammed it down on his neck.

  Finch brought his crossed arms up hard. His voice tore his throat in a scream that had no end. The man stumbled backward and Finch advanced, slipped a foot behind him, tripping them both onto the ground. Still grasping the handgun, Finch’s fury surged. Here was a man who represented all the evil of his father’s empire. A man who was prepared to kill him to ensure his silence, all on the order of his father ... or his brother … his family ...

  Holding the pistol away from him, he slammed the heel of his other hand against the man’s nose, bouncing his head off concrete. The man’s gun grip loosened and Finch smashed his right hand to the man’s face again, and again, and pried the handgun free.

  He turned it in his hand, shoved the barrel into the man’s stomach and pulled the trigger. It popped into the man’s guts.

  It was a .22.

  Finch pulled the pistol back and snapped the entire magazine into the man’s chest.

  He looked up the street. Back the other way. Still kneeling, he dug out the man’s wallet and put it in his jacket pocket. Put the .22 automatic in the other.

  Finch stood, pulled his collar higher about his neck, and resumed walking toward the bus station.

  Dizzy, he closed his eyes as he walked. Somehow everything in his world had changed in a day. Nothing made sense. This guy came for him, and was fair game.

  Wayman would understand that.

  They should have given him more time to come around.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Wake with the sun, colder’n a witch’s bippy. Got Stinky Joe nuggled in, couldn’t zip the bag all the way. Didn’t wanna tote a blanket for a dog won’t carry his own food. Not when I’s traveling paramilitary light. So we freeze our asses on bare ground.

  Try and shake myself warm and that don’t work, but I can’t get up and around, ’cause the house ain’t two hundred yard, and the whole front’s exposed. Got the zillion acres of golden grass toward the highway side, south the house. Got the wooded hills behind. I’s edge of wood, can’t see but the side the house.

  Check the Timex. Six thirty. Got to be in the low twenties, from the joints. Throw back the tarp and get the feet out the bag. Slip ’em into leather ice blocks called boots. Lace ’em with shaky hands, then since I can’t get up and walk around, bring legs up, knee to chest—or that direction—till the stomach tires but the shivering stops. Put on my coat and throw the bag back over me.

  Times of discomfort a man gotto think on what he likes. And in real discomfort, what he hate.

  I hate them fuckers in that house.

  Sun shine bright on the Graves place, log cabin like the magazine covers. Big ass logs, mebbe foot round. Two story. Got the green roof made a tin. Black windows. Mile long deck. Swimming pool in back. Whole thing lit up at night with spotlights pointed at the walls and little lights ’long the drive.

  Day or night they’s no approach without if someone’s a-lookin’, they’s a-seein’.

  I think on my location. I’ll spot anybody come or go but nothing in the house. But if I switch to the back, the house’ll block the drive. Figger I’ll wait here and bust inside when they leave. Or sooner if I’m a mind. Meanwhile, I stow my shit and crawl to a mess a brush. Rig the tarp over a bush so the camoflage’ll mebbe blend. I can stand behind without drawing the eye, and watch from below.

  Joe don’t seem interested in nothing but sleep, and I can understand. We didn’t get our spot picked till half the night was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  FBI agent in charge Gordon Emerson squatted next to the body of a murder victim, discovered on the street at four in the morning, beside a car stopped in the street in front of a men’s clothing store. The dead man’s open shirt displayed ten blood spots, giving the appearance he’d been repeatedly stabbed with a skewer and bled out from the holes. One was in the stomach, the rest, above the heart.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Gordon said. “Aren’t you working something under cover?”

  The woman glanced up the street. “It’s six a.m. My bad guys are in bed.”

  “So what
are you doing here?”

  “I was going to ask you the same. Why isn’t the Salt Lake City PD handling this?”

  “We’re rolling it into another investigation. How’d you even know about it?”

  “Heard about it from Junior. Wanted to see if I recognize the vic or not.”

  “Well?”

  “Yeah. He worked in the Butcher Shop nightclub. So how’d it go down?”

  Gordon studied Maggie. Decided to try to draw her out.

  “Well, the perpetrator fought him. There’s damage to the back of his head. The nose is bent, and he was bleeding from it before death. Then whoever did that shot him ten times. Looks like a twenty-two.”

  “What investigation?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re rolling it into what?”

  “Need to know. But bigger than you might imagine.”

  “Yeah, okay. So listen, you got a line on the perp yet?”

  “Around the corner, maybe thirty yards back, we got video from an ATM and from a camera facing up the street. There’s a kid on it, and right after, this car. The kid’s wearing a hoodie but the face is visible enough.”

  “You got video already?”

  “The bank’s been robbed six times in the last three years. We have a good relationship. The head of security has a standing authorization from the bank owners to give us the video without subpoena.”

  “I want to take a look.”

  “No need. We know the kid.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Wait a minute. I’ve given you too much already. What are you working? What’s the tie-in here? Or I’ll tell you to leave.”

  “You know the nightclub where this guy worked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ve got a prostitution outfit, run on the upper floors. Pedo shit.”

  Emerson looked away. Nodded. “Okay. The nightclub owner—Wayman Graves. The perp’s his kid brother. I just haven’t decided whether the vic was supposed to take out the kid, or the other way around. The car is registered to the vic, and the killer was on foot. Usually the guy with the advantage—in this case the car—is the killer. But not here.”