by Tom Fowler
“I don’t think so, sir. What rank was he?”
“A warrant officer. Warrant Three by the time he left.”
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“You remind me of him in some ways,” Braxton said. “It’s a compliment. Tyler was a hell of a soldier. Great at planning, seeing the possibilities, then kicking the door in and shooting about a dozen people. He was a blunt instrument, but he was a smart one. We cleared a lot of buildings and secured a few towns because of what he did. Afghanistan might still be a shithole, but he helped make it safer for every person while he was there.”
Shah said, “Yes, sir.”
“Tyler and I have . . . history. You probably heard about it. He’s dangerous. We can’t have people getting spotted following him. I’m not going to give you the detail again.”
“Probably for the best, sir.”
“Don’t screw up again, though,” Braxton said. He opened the left-hand drawer and set a military-issue M11 semiautomatic pistol atop his desk. He left it on its side but pivoted it so the barrel pointed toward his subordinate. Shah’s eyes followed the movements. “We’re down one man because Tyler gave him a concussion. I don’t want to have to replace another.” Braxton fell silent a few seconds, letting the situation sink in. Make them sweat. “We clear, Mister Shah?”
Shah nodded like a bobblehead. “Crystal, sir.”
“Good. Now get out of here.”
He left. Braxton took his feet off the desk. He picked up the pistol and looked at it. He recently considered more aggressive measures when it came to Sara Morrison. Tyler posed a more immediate threat. He deserved a more immediate response.
20
The next morning, Tyler parked in the lot and surveyed the shop. No new damage. No shadowy figures lurking in the area. When he walked into the garage, Smitty was already on his back under an old Trans Am. “The Bandit drop this off?” Tyler said as he washed his hands.
“Christ almighty!” Smitty said, flailing about under the car. “Don’t scare me like that.” Smitty wheeled himself out. His eyes retained a little wildness. “Just started. Owner says there’s some noise in the engine.”
“You find it yet?”
“Nope. He couldn’t describe it really well. Someone who bought an older car without knowing anything about them.”
“Or cars in general,” Tyler added.
“Yeah.”
They fired up the engine. Smitty revved it from inside while Tyler listened from the front of the car. Then, they switched. Neither heard anything unusual. The Trans Am featured a thirty-five-year-old V8. It was down on power in Tyler’s opinion, but so were a lot of engines from the era. The specter of the ‘seventies and the fuel crisis lingered well into the ‘eighties and beyond. Tyler felt horsepower remained depressed until the early Aughts.
Next, Tyler listened by the exhaust while Smitty worked the engine. They switched places again and still heard nothing out of the ordinary. Smitty was right: someone bought a cool older car without knowing important things about it—like how it sounded. Someone had to operate a YouTube channel about the sonorous qualities of old Trans Ams. Self-education before buying the car should have been easy.
With the engine blasting, hearing anything else in the shop was impossible. Tyler was startled when Bobby the goon and his slender friend Rust appeared behind him. He had barely any time to react to Bobby’s hard right cross. Tyler turned his head a fraction before the blow thundered in. It still took him square in the jaw. Bobby was a large, meaty guy, and he packed a piston-like punch. It drove Tyler back and sent him sprawling to the concrete floor.
“Remember me, asswipe?” he said. His voice sounded loud and rough past the ringing in Tyler’s ears. Rust led Smitty back into the office at gunpoint, leaving Tyler alone with Bobby. He didn’t have a wrench this time. No tools lay around him. His best shot was grabbing for his gun. Waiting for the right opening may not be an option. “I remember you,” Bobby continued. He touched his face where bruising remained.
Bobby stood over Tyler and leaned down. “Where’s your wrench now, tough guy?” Tyler went for the pistol, but Bobby swatted it out of his hand and across the floor. He grabbed Tyler by the collar and belt buckle, hoisted him, and flung him into the stacks of tires near the back of the shop. Tyler managed to protect his head with an upraised arm, but the rest of him took a battering. He grunted as vulcanized rubber crashed all around him. Tyler rolled off a tire and slumped to the floor. He wondered if waiting for the gun would have been better.
Tyler got himself up to all fours as Bobby strolled over like he owned the place. His casual demeanor gave Tyler time; he only needed to recover and be able to counter Bobby’s attacks. The man was strong but unsophisticated, like someone accustomed to ending a fight in the first ten seconds. Most of the people he beat up were unskilled, and Tyler figured many of them would be cowering in the corner by now.
He was on his knees when his massive adversary stood in front of him. Bobby had something to prove. Tyler shamed him by knocking him out so quickly. He came here for revenge. It meant he wouldn’t try to end this right away. He wanted to drag it out . . . savor the beating. The smart play was to knock your opponent out when you held the advantage.
Instead of going for the knockout, Bobby fired off a jab. Tyler turned it aside with his forearm. For the first time, concern darkened Bobby’s expression. Another jab. Tyler blocked the second and got to his feet. When Bobby loaded up a haymaker, Tyler threw a short punch into the big man’s solar plexus. It staggered him and left him gasping for air. He was smart enough to backtrack as Tyler advanced.
Even sucking wind, Bobby’s size posed a problem. Men pushing three hundred pounds rarely toppled from a single blow. Tyler fired off a strong right jab, then a left cross. Bobby rocked backwards but didn’t fall. He blocked Tyler’s next punch and grabbed his arm. Tyler tried to jerk free, but Bobby shoved him away and spun him across the room. Tyler’s feet got tangled, and he crashed to the concrete again. His M11 lay too far away to matter.
Bobby stomped to him and leaned down again. “Not so tough without your tools, are you?” he said. Tyler saw the butt of a pistol peeking out of the denim just past the large man’s hip. He could make a play for it if Bobby were distracted enough . . . or saw him as an insignificant threat. Tyler blinked rapidly as if trying to both focus on something and stay conscious at the same time. He let his head loll from side to side. “Giving up so soon? I haven’t even started on you yet. And now I owe you for the punch.”
He bent down farther, so his face was only inches from Tyler’s. “I got a lot of pain coming your way, you son of a bitch.” Tyler reached up with his left arm and flailed weakly at Bobby’s face. As expected, he raised his arms to deflect.
It left the gun at his waist exposed.
Tyler grabbed it, sliding it out of the waistband. Bobby realized what was happening, his eyes went wide, and he used his left arm to try and block Tyler.
It didn’t work. Tyler rolled his wrist, leaving the barrel of the gun pressed into Bobby’s side above the hip. He pulled the trigger. Contact with flesh damped the report, yet it seemed to thunder in Tyler’s ears, the empty space in the repair bay amplifying the sound. Bobby screamed and sagged down atop Tyler. He rolled the larger man off, shoving him onto his back. Before Bobby could say anything else or scream again, Tyler shot him in the head.
“Bobby?” came a voice from the office after the louder gunshot. Tyler scrambled to his feet and put his back to the shop wall. “Bobby?” Rust. Tyler crept along the wall toward the door connecting the shop to the office. “Everything all right in there?” Bobby lay on the left half of the bay. Anyone coming to the door would see the body.
Sure enough, Rust saw it when he poked his head through the door. He was about to say something when Tyler pressed the barrel of the pistol to his head. “We need to have a chat.”
Tyler shoved Rust into Smitty’s chair. Smitty sported a busted lip but otherwise looked none th
e worse for wear. “Close the shop,” Tyler told his boss. “Lock the doors. Draw the blinds.” Smitty walked across the office and busied himself with shutting things down and making sure no one could see in. “The bay door, too,” Tyler added after a second. Smitty walked into the rear part of the building.
“You killed Bobby,” Rust said as he slumped in his seat. His wide eyes darted around the room. Tyler heard a tremble in his voice.
“Yes. Which means I have no qualms about killing you, too.”
“I’m not a threat to you.”
“My comment stands.”
Smitty re-entered the office, closing the connecting door to the work bay behind himself. “All done,” he said.
“Good.” Tyler sat on the edge of the desk. The first punch from Bobby rang his bell quite hard, and having something to put his weight on felt good. With the adrenaline wearing off, Tyler felt a little woozy. “We run a classic car shop, so I don’t like calling you Rust. Let’s start with your first name.”
“Rick.”
“OK, Rick. I think you know Smitty. You can call me Tyler, though I suspect you knew who I was before you came here today.” Rick said nothing. “Why don’t you tell me who sent you here?”
“I think you know,” Rick muttered.
“Tell me, anyway. I’m fifty; I forget things.”
“Max.”
“Good,” said Tyler. “See how easy this is, Rick? We’re just having a conversation.”
Rick offered a half-hearted nod. “Yeah . . . sure.”
“Tell me about the man you know as Max.”
“What do you mean?”
“You work for him,” Tyler said. “You must know some things about him.”
“I don’t think he’s the boss, but he’s the guy we always deal with.”
“We?”
“Me and Bobby.”
“I guess now you’ll have those conversations alone,” Tyler said.
“Yeah,” Rick said with a sigh.
Even though Tyler figured Max to be Kent Maxwell, he wanted to hear it from Rust. “Tell me what Max looks like.”
“A little taller than you, I guess. Maybe six feet. Same kind of hair, though. Short, dark. Acted like he was used to being in charge.”
“How old would you guess he was?”
“Younger than you,” Rick said. “Maybe forty?”
It fit Maxwell’s description. He’d avoided most of the stench and fallout surrounding Braxton at the end. Rather than distance himself from his former commander, however, Maxwell apparently decided to double down on working for him. Tyler didn’t understand some people’s decision-making abilities. “All right, Rick. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to load Bobby into the trunk of your car, and you’re going to drive out of here. You won’t tell anyone what really happened here. We clear?”
“Bobby’s dead.” Rick stared at Tyler, then his eyes flickered to the shop door. Where the body lay. “He’s dead.”
“Yes, he is,” Tyler said.
“You think I can lift his body in my trunk?”
Tyler patted the pistol at his side. “You got him going last time. I think you’d better try.”
Ten minutes later, Rick struggled to heft Bobby’s corpse into his trunk. Covered in sweat, he climbed into the front seat and drove away. Tyler sank into a chair, and Smitty did the same. “Holy shit,” Smitty said. “You killed a man in my shop.”
“Yes,” Tyler said with a nod, “and if I hadn’t, they may have just finished loading our bodies into the trunk.”
“I know . . . I know.” Smitty waved his hands. “It’s . . . a lot to take in is all.”
“There’s more.”
“What the hell now?”
“Now, we have to tidy this up. You’ll need strong cleaning supplies, bleach, trash bags, and lots of paper towels. Pay cash and split the list between at least two places.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” Smitty said. Tyler remained silent. “What are you going to do?”
“The big asshole rang my bell. I’m going to sit here, turn the lights off, and put my head on the desk.”
Smitty frowned in concern as he looked at Tyler. “Yeah, maybe you’d better. Wait here. I’ll be back.”
Tyler envisioned shooting Maxwell and Braxton as he drifted into a fitful rest.
21
After Smitty returned with a bunch of supplies, he closed the shop for the rest of the day. Tyler helped him clean up Bobby’s blood and other bits from the bay. It took a few hours to do a thorough job. While everything dried, Tyler popped some acetaminophen. Moving around and breathing in the cleaning solution fumes only served to exacerbate his headache.
Once the floor and equipment were dry, Tyler suggested they leave for the day. Only two cars waited for service, and Smitty was good enough with customers to explain away a minor delay. Tyler pointed to the two large trash bags. “Let’s take one each. Drop them in dumpsters at least a couple miles from here. Try not to be seen if you can help it.”
Smitty concurred, and they both got in their cars and drove away. Tyler pulled into a small strip mall on Northern Parkway, stopped behind the slapdash building, and tossed the bag into the dumpster. He drove the rest of the way home, popped more pills for his headache, and lay down to rest.
A few hours later, Tyler sat up in bed and rubbed his face. He walked past Lexi’s closed bedroom door, heard faint music, and kept going. On the kitchen counter, a pizza box with five slices remaining waited for him. Tyler smiled, put two on a plate, and ate them lukewarm. Getting concussed made him work up an appetite, so he went back and ate another two. He left the final one inside the fridge wrapped in foil.
Tyler settled in to paint. The last couple days ramped up his stress. Just hearing Braxton no longer rotted inside the walls of Leavenworth was bad enough. Piled onto the shit sandwich were getting followed by Lawrence Shah, being on Hexagon’s radar, Rick Rust and Bobby coming back, and the latter’s grisly—though deserved—demise. Tyler set a new piece of paper on his easel. He started this program to cope with the effects of the PTSD he’d always denied having. Maybe getting out in front of the stress of the last couple days would be better than letting it simmer.
As usual, Tyler didn’t sit down to paint any specific thing. He let the creativity take him, as his therapist used to say. It sounded like hokum the first few times she suggested it, but it worked. Tyler picked up a brush, chose some color, and got to work. He lost track of time as the art flowed out of him. His thoughts coalesced on the task before him. When he set his tools down at the end, Tyler felt spent.
He stared at his creation. The ruins of a simple house broke a sun-baked desert landscape. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon, darkening the distant sky. Blood dotted the stones of the former structure. Tyler nodded in appreciation at what he’d created. Between pouring himself into his art and the lingering effects of getting his bell rung, he felt tired. Tyler left the painting where it was and climbed back into bed.
Lexi walked downstairs and refilled her water bottle. Her dad must’ve eaten the rest of the pizza. When she’d checked on him a few hours ago, he was sacked out hard. She opened the fridge, saw the single remaining slice, and grinned. Only her dad would leave one piece of pizza. She walked back upstairs. His bedroom door was closed again, but sounds of snoring still came through. Lexi was about to go back into her room when she noticed the other door open.
He always closed this room behind himself. Her dad didn’t like showing off his art . . . even the good pieces. Lexi remembered when he first took up the brushes. He dismissed painting as some cockamamie therapy thought up by a hippie who’d never lived through real stress. In fact, he only did it because he found the idea of a support group repellent. Over time, though, her dad embraced what he created in this room. She never pushed for him to share his output with her. His art was more personal than most.
Her eyes fell on the paper still resting on the easel. It looked like a desert. H
e hadn’t produced a desert piece in years. Worse, the bright sky on the right side of the painting yielded to a dark and ominous one on the left. Lexi counted three yellow lightning bolts set against the inky blackness. The remains of what must have been a house dominated the foreground. The blood on the stones was easy to see.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Lexi whispered to the emptiness. In the few months before quitting Patriot Security, he’d produced darker works. Most of the time, though, her dad’s watercolors captured bright and hopeful moods. On the crossbar of the tripod was the first bleak one in a while. Lexi sighed. She knew her dad dealt with a lot right now, especially the reemergence of Leo Braxton. A shiver crawled down her spine as she remembered the story.
Lexi stared at the painting. She hoped it wasn’t the start of a trend.
Jake felt lucky to survive the incident yesterday. Once he got away from the two men looking for him, he hailed a taxi to leave the immediate area. Then, he rode the bus back to where he was staying, conducted a thorough sweep of the area, and finally allowed himself to breathe. It took a few minutes for his hands to stop shaking. After steadying himself and taking down his cameras, Jake slipped out of the hotel.
A thought gnawed at him as he stuck to shadows and side streets. What if he somehow got spotted again? Calling his dad brought the goon squad down on him. They must’ve tapped his father’s phone. Their conversation had been brief but apparently not brief enough. Jake wondered if anyone paid his father a visit afterward. He wished he could do more to help, but he’d only end up getting his dad killed.
Jake ventured into the seedier parts of Baltimore. These were the neighborhoods everyone thought about when they said they didn’t like coming into the city. On a normal day, Jake would’ve avoided them, too, but they were useful for certain things. He needed to be able to protect himself—and his father, if it came down to it. Some things simply couldn’t be acquired in the nice and shiny parts of the city.