Throwdown

by Doug Sutherland

  23

  “So what’s in it for me?” Elway looked skeptical.

  Langdon reminded himself that Elway was a different animal from the usual run of people he dealt with. He took his time.

  “What would you be doing right now?” he asked, “I mean if you weren’t here.”

  They both knew the answer to that. By now Elway would be on the street, out of money, and probably compelled to get into some kind of situation that would put him right back in the place he’d just left. Both inside and outside Elway had been on the receiving end of enough pitches and schemes to last him a lifetime. He looked back at Kenny, kept his eyes flat.

  “Not the point,” he said finally, “you asked me to come up here for a reason.”

  Langdon looked uncomfortable, almost embarrassed.

  “There’s been some stuff going on,” Elway didn’t change his expression, waited for it, “people sniffing around. I’ve done pretty well here and I’ve got too much to lose.”

  Elway looked around the kitchen of the old farmhouse that Langdon seemed so proud of. He’d been up early, a habit ingrained from his time inside, and he’d used the hangover time to make coffee, poke around a little. He’d been noisy doing it, although he hadn’t meant to be, and Kenny had stumbled into the kitchen half an hour later. One side of the kitchen was open to the front of the house, separated only by a counter, and Elway could see a cold low sun angling in from the picture window in the living room.

  He hadn’t been particularly impressed with what he’d seen so far, although he had to admit that, as of right now, Langdon was a lot farther ahead in life than he was. He remembered that even as a punk kid Langdon had been smart, maybe smart enough not to put all the money out front where anybody could see it.

  “Look, Kenny,” he said, “you’re not giving me a lot to go on. Let’s cut the bullshit. If you need something that’s okay. Everybody needs something. Right now I need to know what’s going on, because if there isn’t anything to this I’ve got to make some kind of a move, do something that’ll get me something back. I don’t have any time to screw around and do nothing.”

  Langdon wasn’t used to being talked to that way, but Elway didn’t give a shit. Elway remembered Langdon from well before the time when Kenny was a big fish in Strothwood’s half-assed little pond. Back then Elway had been about the only thing that stood between Langdon staying healthy and getting the shit kicked out of him. Bullshit didn’t last long inside, and Langdon had bullshit written all over him. Elway still didn’t know why he’d protected him in the first place – it wasn’t Elway’s style – but over the time they’d been locked up together he’d seen Langdon parlay Elway’s protection into something that kept them both in more dope and money than Elway would ever have been able to pull off on his own. The setup hadn’t lasted long, maybe a little over a year. They’d both been in for kid stuff, because that’s what they were – kids. Elway was a couple of years older, but that was all. The difference was that when they got out Langdon went back to the tiny little place he came from and Elway floated around in the big bad world, got into some really serious shit that left a man beaten to death in a warehouse and at least three of his greaseball buddies very interested in Elway’s whereabouts. That made the Army look really attractive all of a sudden.

  It worked, for a while. It probably could have kept on working, could still be working, but Elway was Elway. They put him in some hard places but he was already turning into a hard man and the Army taught him things that made him even harder.

  It was a pretty good arrangement. He got to stop looking over his shoulder all the time and the Army got a blunt instrument. He was fine as long as he was ‘advising’ in a war zone, but even Elway couldn’t stay in war zones forever. In between deployments he’d fucked up – as both he and the Army had known he would, eventually. The dishonorable discharge that followed put him right back where he started – on the street, scrabbling around until he got caught stupidly holding some dope. He’d known better than that, but the promised payoff had been too good to pass up.

  He knew now that nothing was ever too good to pass up. Langdon was staring at him, maybe reading what he was thinking. Langdon had always been good at that shit. Now he took a deep breath, looked at Elway straight on, told him what he said was the whole story and what Elway would get out of it. The way Langdon told it he was being squeezed from two sides. Elway just shrugged when Langdon told him about Stallings.

  “He won’t let go of it,” Langdon said, “nobody else gives a shit but he keeps asking questions.”

  “You told me he’s been thrown off the force, suspended. He can’t do fuck all. What’s his name again?”

  “Frank Stallings,” Langdon said it like it was supposed to mean something.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Yeah, well, I did some research, asked some people I knew in Pittsburgh.”

  Here we go, Elway thought. Langdon was trying to impress him, sound like some kind of criminal mastermind with minions and connections everywhere. He’d probably made a couple of phone calls.

  “He was a big deal in Pittsburgh,” Langdon said, “put some guys down. People I talked to said he was like some kind of gunfighter.”

  Langdon stopped talking, let that sink in, maybe to see Elway’s reaction. He didn’t get one. Elway had been in real gunfights, a lot of them. Talk was cheap and so was third hand information. There were a lot of cops out there who’d shot people. The people cops shot at usually weren’t trained, most of the time weren’t very good at shooting back, a lot of the time had their capacities dulled by drugs, alcohol, stupidity or a trifecta of all three. Hell, sometimes cops shot people who weren’t armed at all.

  Stories and hearsay didn’t impress Elway. What did matter was that they impressed Kenny. Elway could use that to raise his price – once Kenny got around to telling him what he was really scared of.

  Kenny was scared of jail time. Nobody wanted to be in there, but Langdon was terrified of it. There were a few guys who thought of it as inevitable at some point, the cost of doing business, but Langdon wasn’t one of them. Neither was Elway, for that matter. The difference was that Elway didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.

  Langdon thought too much, and when he finally got around to telling Elway exactly what he’d done with the kid and the Camaro Elway could see why. That sunken car wouldn’t stay down forever. They never did. Sooner or later somebody would catch a fish hook on it or bump their head on it skinny-dipping, then do the right thing and call the cops. Elway hated public-spirited citizens.

  “I might as well have left it in my front yard,” Kenny said.

  “How far away?”

  “Couple of miles.”

  “That’s a lot better than your front yard, man. I mean, you should’ve burned the fucker, but it’s underwater now and nobody’s found it yet.”

  “They will.”

  “Sure they will – someday. Doesn’t mean they can tie it to you.”

  “Who the fuck else would they tie it to?” Kenny snapped.

  Elway shrugged. One of the things he remembered about Kenny Langdon was his imagination, the invention of problems and obstacles that could grow from virtually nothing into something insurmountable – at least to Langdon.

  The Nesbitt kid was an example of that, although even Elway had to admit that it must have been a horror show. Langdon had panicked, assumed he’d be the first and only guy the cops would go after. Elway had been the victim of cop logic before and couldn’t fault that assessment. No question that Langdon had dumped the kid too close to home, but at least he’d dumped him, not hung around and waited for the cops to arrive. The car and the body inside might get found five years from now or tomorrow afternoon. Didn’t mean they’d be able to prove Langdon had anything to do with it.

  Langdon didn’t see it that way, had leap-frogged straight to the worst-case scenario. Part of it was his ego. He figured he was such a big deal in town that the cops did n
othing else but plot ways to take him down.

  He couldn’t sit still, kept popping up and down from his chair, leaning against the kitchen counter, pacing around – he was jumpy, coming apart at the seams. That was different from what Elway remembered about him. Langdon had always been able to stay cool, no matter what kind of shit was bouncing around in his head. This time around he was anything but, and he was showing that newfound weakness to Elway. Showing weakness to Elway was never a good idea.

  Elway believed Langdon when he said he hadn’t killed the kid – Langdon had no reason to lie about it, not to him. It didn’t matter anyway – at the minimum Langdon was looking at some kind of serious jail time for fucking with the body the way he had. That had him freaked out, and what freaked him out even more was his conviction that whoever had killed the kid had probably been after Langdon in the first place. Langdon finally sat down again. Elway stared across the table at him, wondered if he’d stay put this time.

  “I need somebody to watch my back,” Langdon told him.

  Not just your back, Elway thought. Langdon thought he was fucked, and somehow he’d come to the conclusion that big bad Dan Elway was the solution to all his problems. For once in his life that gave Elway some leverage, something to work with.

  He was about to raise the subject of money again when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked up as Sherry walked in, went straight to the coffeepot on the counter behind Kenny.

  “Try making more noise next time,” she sounded pissed, “I was trying to sleep in.”

  She is one spectacular piece of ass, Elway thought, watching as she opened one of the cupboard doors. She was wearing one of Kenny’s old denim shirts, nothing else, and it rode up along the back of her legs as she stretched to reach a coffee cup at the back of an upper shelf. Stretched a little more than she had to, he thought.

  He filed that away for later, brought his eyes back to Kenny, but Kenny either hadn’t noticed him staring at her or didn’t give a shit. He just shook his head quickly at Elway, let him know the conversation was over.

  Sherry poured her coffee and then turned around, leaned against the counter. She looked half asleep.

  “How come you’re up so early?” she asked.

  Kenny just shrugged. He and Sherry had gone another round the night before at the bar, a spat Elway knew his sudden appearance had caused. He’d stayed the hell out of it, but even from a distance her ‘fuck you’ had been crystal clear. Langdon had just turned his back on her and walked back to where Elway was sitting, told him they were leaving. That was fine with Elway because he wanted to get the money side of things straightened out and the bar wasn’t the place to do it.

  It hadn’t mattered anyway. Once they got to the farmhouse they got into the booze instead–Kenny said he never kept dope at the house, stashed it someplace else. The drunken conversation had gone everywhere except where Elway needed it to go and he was still trying to get it back on track when Langdon suddenly decided to call Sherry at the bar. Elway had never been good talking to women and he listened, a little awestruck, while Kenny talked her into changing her mind and driving out to the farmhouse on her own. He was still talking when Elway said to hell with it and decided to get some sleep.

  A while later he’d been wakened by the racket of some shitbox little car with a bad muffler pulling up in the driveway, followed by the sound of doors opening and closing and voices downstairs. They either weren’t used to having somebody else in the house or they just didn’t care, and after they’d come upstairs Elway heard enough of the play-by–play from the bedroom to leave him with a raging hard-on. From the way they were acting this morning it was like none of that had ever happened, even though they had to know he’d heard it all.

  “I wanted to sleep in too,” Kenny was telling her, “you were late last night.”

  “What did you expect? I told you about the fire. Ted Saunders was really upset – I couldn’t just walk out and leave him there.”

  “You said it wasn’t that big a deal.”

  “I didn’t think it was,” she shrugged, “but he’s getting as paranoid as you are. He thinks somebody set it.”

  That got Kenny’s attention.

  “You didn’t say anything about that last night.”

  She stepped away from the counter, leaned over Kenny’s shoulder. She was talking to Kenny but her eyes met Elway’s.

  “You didn’t give me much time to say anything.”

  24

  “This is fucked, Ted.”

  “No shit.”

  Saunders was in no mood for Kenny Langdon, let alone the hard case he’d just walked in with. He remembered the guy from the other night, had ex-con written all over him.

  Saunders had just brought a case of new beer glasses up from the storeroom to find both of them standing near the back of the dance floor and looking speculatively up at the scorched ceiling. Saunders couldn’t remember if he’d locked the door, but Sherry had a key because she worked there and that meant Kenny would have a key too, whether Sherry knew it or not.

  The timing of the visit made him suspicious, but he knew Kenny needed the place up and running almost as much as he did. Saunders nearly called him on the key thing, but he was so pissed off by the fire he knew he could’ve just forgotten to lock the door when he came in. Besides, he had enough shit on his mind, couldn’t be bothered. Enough already.

  “What are you gonna do now?” Langdon was still looking over the damage.

  It was actually minimal, smoke and water mostly, but from the look on his face Saunders could tell Langdon didn’t really know what he was looking at.

  “I’m going to open on time,” Saunders shrugged, “it wasn’t that bad. I mean, they told me I could come in here and start cleaning up. I guess that means they don’t think it’s going to fall down.”

  Langdon flashed him a lopsided grin.

  “Maybe they’re hoping it will.”

  Saunders grunted. He and Langdon were at least a generation apart but they had at least one thing in common. The so-called town fathers hated them.

  Saunders and Langdon had an uncomfortably symbiotic relationship – Langdon needed a clearinghouse, a power base, and Ted Saunders just needed the business Langdon and his hangers-on attracted. Langdon came over and slouched against the bar. The big guy looked around for a moment longer, then followed.

  “You got any booze left or did it all blow up?” Kenny asked.

  “If it had blown up we’d be standing in a parking lot right now.”

  “You should have told me,” Langdon said.

  “Told you what?” Saunders asked.

  “About the fire.”

  “Jeez, Kenny – it just happened last night. Gimme a break.”

  “I mean if those two assholes had been bothering you. They did it, right?”

  “It was just an accident, Kenny.”

  “Sherry told me you thought somebody set it.”

  Shit, Saunders thought.

  “I was just pissed off, that’s all,” pissed off then and disappointed now, disappointed that Sherry passed this stuff on to Langdon. Saunders didn’t want to get into this, changed the subject. He cocked his head toward the other guy, “so who’s your friend?”

  Up until now the big man had just been lazily scanning the interior. Now he turned back toward Saunders, extended a hand across the top of the bar. Saunders reached out, expecting to get his hand crushed. Didn’t happen.

  “Dan Elway,” he said.

  “Ted Saunders. You just visiting, Dan?”

  “So far.”

  Whatever that means, Saunders thought. Kenny glanced at the guy too, but then just turned back to Saunders.

  “So those guys – who were they?”

  “Don’t have a clue.”

  “Ted, you’re a friend of mine. If–”

  Kenny cut himself off in mid-sentence. He’d caught Saunders’ glance at the entrance, looked over his shoulder. Saunders wasn’t sure if he was glad to see Frank
Stallings or not. Frank paused at the door, his eyes narrowing a bit as he registered the bar’s occupants, then took his time coming over.

  Langdon and his buddy turned back to their drinks. Frank glanced around the interior of the bar.

  “Doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would,” he said.

  “It isn’t,” Saunders told him, “I was lucky.”

  Frank nodded, took in Kenny and his new best friend.

  “How you doin’, Kenny?”

  “Living the dream, Frank. How’s life in the private sector?”

  Frank ignored the tone and just shrugged. He didn’t ask who Elway was. Saunders figured he didn’t need to. He looked at the three men, realized there was enough testosterone in the air to set off something that would dwarf the effects of the fire. And I just got this place cleaned up, he thought.

  It was as if Kenny had read his mind.

  “Gotta go. I’ll probably see you tonight, Ted. Frank, it’s been fun. We gotta do this more often.”

  Kenny was almost at the door before Elway got around to following him out. Saunders realized he’d been watching them leave, then turned to Stallings and saw he’d been watching too.

  “So what brings you here, Frank?”

  “Nothing much. I heard about the fire, just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “Like Kenny says, livin’ the dream.”

  Frank just nodded. He looked around, grimacing at the acrid, smoky tang in the air.

  “How long do you think it’ll take to get the smell out?” he asked.

  “Dunno,” Saunders shrugged, “they only left a minute ago.”

  25

  “Let’s get this done,” Samuels growled.

  They were losing daylight and it was getting cold. The divers had just come out of the water – Kelly knew they were wearing wetsuits but this time of year the water temperature in the river was just this side of ice.