Midnight Lullaby

by James D F Hannah

  “How much are you into your dealers?” I said. “Do you owe them the whole three hundred grand, or was the plan to pay them off and then disappear somewhere with what was left?”

  I inched Jeremiah Mayhew closer, keeping the gun tight against him. Monica Mayhew held her ground steady.

  "I’ve tried to figure out why you kept Walters alive, especially after watching you burn Teller, and all I can think is that all you want is the money. Your brother here, he’s a true believer, but you grew tired of being the pretty face, always in front of the camera, knowing you’d never be the real power, and when you couldn't find other ways to bury pain anymore, you shoved a needle into your arm. But the more you used, the more you owed, and drug dealers only extend that line of credit so far. Did you find out blowjobs only pay off so much?"

  Jeremiah Mayhew pulled at the cuffs. “My sister is a blood-sworn member of the National Brotherhood—”

  “Shut up, Jeremiah,” Monica Mayhew said.

  Jeremiah looked at her as if he’d watched her kick his puppy. “He’s lying, Monica. He wants us to turn us against one another.” The timbre in his voice, you couldn’t tell if he was trying to convince her or himself.

  Monica Mayhew wrenched her arm tighter around Doria. "I said to shut up."

  I looked at Jeremiah Mayhew. “Your big sister wanted out. I bet she told you the money was for something else, a big plan she had, but you got played, didn’t you?”

  “The cause—” Jeremiah Mayhew said.

  “What cause?” Monica Mayhew said. “The Brotherhood? We’re a joke, Jeremiah. The only reason that compound exists still is because we’ve been selling meth to bikers. The world doesn’t need us.”

  “Bullshit! The world will rise up around the Brotherhood—”

  “Fuck the Brotherhood. I’ve lived with nothing but the Brotherhood my entire life, trying to justify it to the rest of the world, and you know what I realized? That it will never be mine. It's in the goddamn name—the fucking Brotherhood—and it would always be yours, and I'd be nothing but a set of tits to show off.”

  “How did you know Walters was stealing from you?” I said.

  “He was the only one who wasn’t blood-sworn." There was a twinge of laughter in her voice. "Everyone else, every step of the way, they’re sworn to the Brotherhood. They believe in the cause. But when our totals didn’t add up, and we traced back our steps, we saw it had to be Walters.” She glanced over her shoulder, back at the house, then me. Nerves were kicking in. Maybe she needed a fix. Maybe she realized everything was falling apart. “I owe forty grand, give or take. The rest, I was buying into a deal that’ll net about three million, and I can say ‘fuck you’ to all of this shit and go have a real goddamn life.”

  Jeremiah Mayhew looked at me. Moonlight glistened in his tears. You could see in his face all of his little racist dreams and beliefs shattering, collapsing and crumbling, in the moment.

  “She said once the race war had begun, we’d use the money to start fresh. A better National Brotherhood. No more drugs, no more pandering, just our beliefs. Show people we were right.”

  “It’s over, Jeremiah,” I said. We took a step forward. “We can end this now.”

  "Stop right there," Monica Mayhew said. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  "You only have yourselves now, Monica. Let this go. In the phone call, Doria said 'these two.' Not 'them,' and not 'these people.' It was specific. 'These two.' Because you two fuck-nuts are it. You've abandoned the Brotherhood for this. Stop this now before anyone else gets hurt. Before anyone dies."

  Monica Mayhew said, "I want the money, that's all, Malone. Just give it and everyone walks away."

  "There's no money, Monica. It’s gone. The Feds confiscated it. Walters is turning state’s evidence. He’ll tell them everything. The National Brotherhood is history. Everyone knows what a fraud you are. There’s nowhere to go. Let her go."

  I was talking, buying time on shaky credit. It was bullshit, but I was counting on paranoia to keep her from figuring that out.

  Monica Mayhew's face tightened. She knew she was running out of cards to play. Her eyes narrowed and her shoulders tightened and she smiled.

  "Then I guess I have to kill her," she said.

  That was when the red dot appeared on the side of Monica Mayhew's head. Dust and snowflakes danced in the line of light that ran back into the trees.

  Jeremiah Mayhew sucked in a gasp of air. Monica Mayhew's eyes swam to the side. That quiver she had on her pistol intensified.

  "Goddammit, I'm fucking serious!" Monica Mayhew said through her teeth. "I’ll fucking kill her." She looked toward the laser sight. "I want my money!"

  My throat closed shut. My focus went to the gun underneath Doria's chin.

  I didn't notice Jeremiah Mayhew shifting his body ever so slightly, his left foot hooking around my right ankle, and the sudden jerk. My feet slid out underneath me, my body flying into the air, and I landed with a hard thud on my back.

  Jeremiah Mayhew broke out in a run toward his sister. I looked up into the hillside where Woody was positioned with his sniper rifle.

  "Do it!" I yelled.

  The red dot dropped from Monica's head to Doria's calf. There was a gunshot and Doria screamed and her body lurched forward out of Monica Mayhew’s grasp and she clutched her wound and fell to the ground.

  Monica Mayhew swung her body toward the hillside, moving her gun up and taking a firing stance. The dot moved again, and her chest exploded in a geyser of red, and she buckled under the force of the shot. There were two more cracks of thunder, more blood, and her gun flew from her hand and she stumbled backward. She landed on the cold ground and didn’t move.

  I rolled to my side, brought up my pistol, and fired. The shot caught Jeremiah Mayhew in the right thigh. It sent him first onto his knees, then chest-down into the ground.

  I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. My right knee throbbed from the fall. I forced myself to my feet.

  Jeremiah Mayhew dragged himself toward his sister's pistol. He still had another 10 feet to clear. I walked up beside him and fired a shot into the ground, six inches from him. He pulled back as dust and rocks flew into the air. He rolled onto his back and stared at me, hands raised in surrender.

  "I give up," he said.

  I aimed my gun in his face. I watched him sweat, watched him wonder if I would pull the trigger. I wondered about it myself. I hadn’t gotten to shoot Monica Mayhew, but a part of me thought any Mayhew would do in this moment. Jeremiah Mayhew owed me for all those albums he had shattered. Oh, and for sister cutting off my goddamn finger.

  I fired a shot just to the left. The bullet missed him by two inches. He screamed like a six-year-old on the playground, then realized he hadn't died, and started to cry.

  “You’re not worth it,” I said. “None of you are.”

  I dropped my gun to the side and walked over and picked Monica's weapon off of the ground.

  I limped my way to Doria. She sat up, holding her leg. I crouched down beside her.

  "Let me see," I said.

  She gave me a stare that would have withered a plastic houseplant. "Fuck you."

  "Let me look at your leg first, then foreplay."

  I pulled her hands away from her calf. Her hands were sticky with blood. The wound looked clean, a nick on the back of the calf, a lot of blood and pain but nothing she wouldn't heal from. I took a handkerchief from my pocket and pressed it against the wound, then took off my flannel shirt and tied it around her calf to apply pressure.

  I didn't hear Woody come down from the mountainside or walk up behind me. He was simply there, holding a sniper rifle.

  "I radioed for Simms to bring in an ambulance," he said.

  "Check on the girls in the house, will you?"

  Woody walked away without a word.

  I looked at Doria. She kept her face turned away from me.

  "He fucking shot me," she said.

  "That he did. May have saved
your life."

  She pursed her lips together. "Fucking shot me." She looked at me. "Knowing you is not worth this shit, Henry."

  "So I understand."

  41

  I gave Doria a few days after getting shot before I called; it only seemed fair. She didn't sound thrilled when she answered the phone.

  "Before you say anything," she said, "understand that I can't do this."

  "'Hello' to you as well."

  "I'm serious as a heart attack, Henry. I don’t want to see you."

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm home, and no, you can't come and see me."

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't want to see you."

  "Can I ask why?"

  "You got me shot, Henry."

  "I didn't tell Woody to shoot you. And for that matter, he did it, not me. I thought he'd just shoot Monica Mayhew in the head."

  "Monica Mayhew's chin was digging into the crown of my skull, Henry. That would have been a hell of a shot to make."

  "Woody could have made it."

  "He told me he did it to take me out of the equation. It was a cleaner shot with me out of the way."

  "He watched Speed the week before."

  "Right. Shoot the hostage." There was a small laugh.

  "When did you talk to him?" I said.

  "Yesterday. He called to apologize. He seemed to feel that the gentlemanly thing to do was to say 'I'm sorry for shooting you in the leg,' and Hallmark doesn't sell that kind of card."

  "It's an under-served market, I bet."

  There was a pause so quiet, I thought she might have hung up, before she said, "I'll be honest that it wasn't getting shot that made me decide I can’t see you, which is not a statement I ever imagined I'd make. It was always going to be you disappearing at Christmas and then you only showed up again when you needed something. That was wrong, and I hope you're sober now, and I hope everything works out for you, Henry, but we're done."

  The line went dead. I heaved a deep breath, hung my head, and stared at my feet, waiting for answers to arrive that never did.

  I thought about calling Maggie. I needed someone to talk to. I decided against it, though. The last thing I needed was more heartbreak in one day.

  Maggie did end up calling me the next day, and I let the message go to voicemail. She said she’d heard about the Mayhews, and my part in everything, and that she was proud of me, and that she loved me, and that she’d gotten the job in Philadelphia.

  "As per usual, I shouldn't even be talking to you," Jackie Hall said.

  "You'd miss me if I didn't come around," I said.

  "You, and the clap, that's what I'd miss." Then he reached into the box of donuts I brought with me and snagged two maple-glazed beauties.

  It was late March and we sat in Jackie's office as life bloomed again in Parker County. The last stretch of winter had dragged its ass along like a dog across a carpet, keeping everything cold and covered in snow until two weeks prior, when the weather broke and the sun melted everything away. Someone had planted daffodils in flower boxes around the state police outpost. It was lipstick on a pig, sure, but you had to appreciate the effort

  Snow had been the only thing keeping my life peaceful up to that point. It was difficult for there to be an investigation into a series of suspicious activities when you couldn't get your car out of a parking lot because of three-foot snow drifts. But the state police and the FBI did come around to my door, asking me questions about why Simms and I had gone off on our own after the Brotherhood, and didn't bother to tell them what was going on.

  I said the track record with large governmental organizations dealing with these types of things wasn't what anyone would call "sterling," and besides, I figured the NSA had been listening, anyway. No one was amused. Except me. I was laughing. Fuck 'em, I figured.

  They hadn’t been happy about Monica Mayhew dying, either, since she was a lynchpin in the whole investigation. I said I’d watched her set a man on fire and that she’d cut off one of my fingers, so I didn’t give a shit what they made them happy; her being dead brought me an immense amount of satisfaction.

  "How long is Simms going to be under investigation?" I said to Jackie.

  "You asking for you, or you asking for Simms?" He chewed a large bite of donut and swallowed it with a drink of coffee.

  I shrugged. "I'm nosy. I like to know things." Simms and I had talked a time or two since everything, but what with a federal investigation breathing down our necks, we felt it best we keep a respectable amount of distance.

  According to the newspaper reports, the county commission wasn’t pleased with the sheriff's actions, even if it meant four kidnap victims were returned safely, a money-laundering operation was shut down, and the Brotherhood compound had been seized by the federal government and would be bulldozed to the ground over the summer. The commission put Simms on suspended leave with pay.

  Jackie licked glaze off of his fingers. "Officially, I can't tell you that. Unofficially, I can say he should be back on duty by the end of the month. You know how that deputy is doing?"

  "The doctors aren’t sure when he'll walk again. He's up in Morgantown, doing physical therapy. Most likely he’ll be there for a while."

  "You should go up, give him some words of encouragement. A 'there you go, sport,' that sort of shit."

  "I'm sure he'd be thrilled to see me."

  The Feds swooped in and whisked Walters away somewhere so he could turn state's evidence against the Brotherhood and organizations it worked with. The state bar was ready to disbar, and he would have time on his hands since no one not on a Federal payroll wanted anything to do with him.

  Which was fine with the now ex-Mrs. Walters, Rachel, who filed for divorce two days after the incident at the lake house and moved back in with Simms. I was sure there was another reason I hadn't heard from Simms. Man probably didn't have time to breathe.

  "How's the wife and kid?" I said.

  "They're awesome. She's pregnant. Three months along."

  "Pregnant during summer. That's fun."

  "I'll go buy her ice cream when she asks."

  That made me smile, because it was such an act of kindness and love, and because I didn't imagine it took much work to send Jackie to the frozen section at Kroger.

  "You wanna come by sometime, have dinner?" Jackie said.

  "Sure. She still a good cook?"

  Jackie patted his stomach. "Do I look like I'm starving?"

  Billy called up a little after six one evening, told me to hustle my ass up to his house. I reminded him gently that his son had a bum knee, and he could shove that hustle to a place sunshine would never know.

  “Saddle that horse you call a dog and ride up here,” he said. Once I got there, he motioned me into the living room and fiddled with the remote for his DVR.

  “When d'you get a DVR?” I said.

  “It’s the 21st century, you old goat. Everyone’s got DVR.”

  He rewound the six o’clock news and the blonde small-market anchor started out the broadcast with the announcement of the arrest of Wilson McGinley. They showed footage of McGinley, in a suit even worse than the one he’d been wearing the day I met him, being led out of the McGinley and Kurt offices by Federal marshals.

  “Known throughout the state for his firm’s television ads, McGinley was taken into custody today after federal prosecutors revealed he was suspected as a key member in the leadership of the National Brotherhood for the Advancement of European Heritage,” she said. “Prosecutors said McGinley may be charged on as many as 70 different counts for his role in racketeering, money laundering, drug running, illegal arms deals, and murder.”

  The footage of Wilson McGinley coming out of the firm’s offices in handcuffs, looking pissed as hell as he scowled and tried to hide his face as cameras flashed and reporters shoved microphones in his face, brought a smile to my face. It must have been the first time McGinley hadn’t cheesed for the camera in decades.

  “You
aware of any of this?” Billy said.

  “Nope,” I said. “But I guess everything Walters has been telling the Feds led them there. It explains how Monica Mayhew chose Walters to set up the money laundering and the gun running, and why they cut him loose when things started to unravel.”

  “Figures. I ever tell you I know him? McGinley, I mean.”

  “I can't say it's come up in conversation."

  “Graduated high school with him. He was a prick back then, too.” He squinted at the TV. “Looks like he’s had work done. Plastic surgery.” He shook his head. “Fucking asshole.” He turned off the TV. “I made spaghetti. You hungry?”

  Iggy’s tail whacked at the back of my knees at the mention of food. I rubbed her head.

  “I could eat,” I said.

  42

  Bobbi Fisher called to tell me she was leaving Parker County and wanted to say goodbye. The whole world seemed to be moving forward without me.

  Izzy and I were on the couch. I was following up on a movie recommendation from Woody, watching The Friends of Eddie Coyle, with Robert Mitchum getting pulled in deeper and deeper and struggling harder and harder to get out. But it was Mitchum, so the struggle looked relaxed and cool. He pulled that shit off better than I did.

  She asked to meet me before she left, and she suggested the Walmart parking lot. This wouldn't be a lengthy farewell; she was a woman on a mission.

  She drove a Toyota station wagon with a tag-along hooked to the back. Her daughters were in the back seat, each of them staring intently at electronic tablets. I pulled up next to her, and we each got out and leaned against the driver side bumper.

  She looked better than when we'd first met. She had put back on some weight, filling her face out and adding color to her cheeks. Her hair was blonde and professionally done, with all of those highlights and lowlights that hairdressers always brag about. She wore a hoodie and skinny jeans and biker boots.