First things first. We need money, and we need clothing, and we need transport.
Getting the money is the easy part. Preston thought he’d cut me off from the civilized world by taking away my cash and credit cards, and in a way he did. What he didn’t understand—what his handlers apparently didn’t know about me either—was how little that actually matters to someone with my talents and training.
I try to follow the rules and color inside the lines most of the time. But I was taught how to steal and cheat and lie by the very best criminals our government has to offer. All Preston has done is liberate me to use those skills again.
I don’t feel the need to inflict myself on any innocent bystanders today, so Kelsey and I drive deep into what they call Pennsyltucky, the rural areas that make up most of the state outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At first glance, it’s idyllic. Old barns, small towns, green pastures. It’s also home to a booming meth trade, liquored-up violence, and cash-only gun sales.
We drive around until we find just the right kind of bar: one with too many cars out front in the morning, paint peeling from rotten wood, and windows dark with grime, like cataracts in the eyes of an old man. We park next to the run-down beaters in the lot, and I can practically smell the bad vibes coming from the building. Exactly what we need.
When we walk inside, I can tell the place was gorgeous once. Hundreds of square feet of deeply polished pine flooring, a wide bar cut from a single log, antique copper-plate ceiling. All of it now pitted and stained and yellowed with neglect. I am not one for feng shui or any of that mystic crap, but a place takes on the characteristics of the people who inhabit it, and the defeat in here is so thick I can almost see it hanging in the air with the cigarette smoke.
Despite our dirty clothes and lack of a shower, we’re still the best-dressed and cleanest people here. We get hard looks from the crew holding down the seats before noon. There’s an immediate wave of hostility. They’ve seen people like us before. Tourists. We might as well be from another country. They think we’re here to score drugs and gawk at the locals. A little tale of adventure to bring back to our equally rich and useless friends in Philly.
The bartender looks like your grandmother, if your grandma ran with biker gangs and kept little envelopes of crystal in her purse instead of hard candies. She ignores us for as long as she can, but eventually brings her attitude over to our end of the bar. I smell food cooking, and I’m hungry enough to order the chicken-fried steak without thinking too much about the kitchen. Kelsey orders a Pabst Blue Ribbon. The bartender practically spits with contempt. That would have been on tap here twenty years ago. Now it’s a hipster brand that sells for four bucks a glass. Kelsey changes her order to a Bud.
There are some ugly words muttered from the tables in the back. I take a look around and scan the watchers in the booths and chairs. No real danger. Life beat the crap out of these people long before they came in here. They’re not likely to stand up or make trouble. Most of them are already buzzed, their minds soft and bloated as their bodies, sloshing around in puddles of warm draft beer.
But one gleams, shiny and cheap, like a brand-new penny. It’s almost like he’s a tick, sucking life from the skins of everyone else in here. He locks on to us, eyes hard, a tight grin pulling his face in half. The local dealer. This is his office, and he thinks he sees new customers.
No. He thinks he sees new victims.
I pluck out his name: <Tyler>. His thoughts are about as friendly and inviting as razor wire.
I’m about halfway through the greasy steak when he slides up to us, that grin even tighter.
“Hey there, folks. How’s it going?”
He stands provocatively close to Kelsey. Challenging me already.
We chitchat for about a minute before we get to business. “So,” he says quietly. “You looking?”
Kelsey giggles. God bless her, she’s a natural at this. “Looking for what?”
“You’re too pretty to play hard to get,” he says, moving even closer. “You know what you want.” Tyler is not exactly subtle. He figures we’ll let him do whatever he wants as long as we get the meth.
The bartender stands at the other end of the bar, her back turned as if she’s trying to ignore us. But she’s in on it. She gets a cut of every sale Tyler makes in the bar. And she plans to back whatever play Tyler makes with the sawed-off shotgun she keeps under the register.
We negotiate for an eight-ball, with him steadily raising the price. Thoughts of money give me a way into his finances. He’s got about $500 in his wallet, and about three grand in a brick of small bills in his car. That should do.
We walk out through the back door. Nobody looks at us. Even if I couldn’t see the plans in Tyler’s head like they were on a movie screen, I would know what’s coming next.
Tyler uses the bar’s rear exit, which opens onto another gravel-and-dirt parking lot. Kelsey almost goes through the door after him, but I hold her back a little. I go out instead.
I’ll give Tyler this: he doesn’t waste any time. As soon as I step over the threshold, he rears back and throws a roundhouse punch at my head.
It’s always worked before when he’s ripped someone off. And it’s not a bad tactic, as long as the intended victim doesn’t see it coming.
But I do. And I am suddenly so grateful to Tyler for being stupid and vicious enough to do this.
I slip the punch, step inside the swing, and knock my shoulder hard into Tyler’s chest, driving him back. He nearly loses his footing, but manages to throw a left instead. He’s off-balance, wrong-footed. He doesn’t know how much trouble he’s in.
I block the left and put the heel of my hand right in his face. His head snaps back, his feet start pedaling like he’s on a bicycle, and I help him the rest of the way to the ground with a leg sweep.
He goes down into the gravel. Instead of finishing him, I wait.
I realize now I could have raised the cash a half dozen easier ways. Swiped an ATM card from someone’s pocket and the pin number from his head, for instance. Found a poker game and bankrupted the other players. Sold the Escalade to a chop shop. Pawned my watch.
But I’m in a foul mood, and it feels pretty good to fight back instead of running.
I can hear Kelsey’s small voice of alarm when I allow Tyler to get up. <what are you doing?> Then she understands that all I really want is to hurt someone, and Tyler’s been elected. It feels like a knot slipping loose as she figures it out.
He struggles to his feet, blood pouring from his nose and a gash on his forehead. He lifts his arms and snarls and gets ready for his last stand.
Unfortunately, at this range, I also get a solid connection with him, and his memories begin crashing into my head.
I see the death of his father when he was eleven, creating an absence that still hurts every time he thinks of it, like probing a broken tooth with his tongue. This was followed shortly by the disintegration of his mother, who retreated into herself and left nothing behind for her kids. He still brings her a carton of Marlboros every time he visits, about the only thing in her life that seems to give her any joy. He was a welfare case, a skinny little runt in church-bin clothes, a frequent victim of bullies. And then, by the miracle of puberty, he shot up six inches and gained fifty pounds and turned into a bully himself. He was just smart enough to realize the best business in town was helping other people deaden their pain. He started out buying beer for the other kids in his high school, then branched out to bad weed, then pills, then meth. He’s also smart enough to realize he’s never met a successful small-town dealer over thirty, and he knows he’ll be looking at the end of a gun or prison pretty soon.
None of it excuses his sins—and there are many. But nobody’s the bad guy inside his own mind.
I focus on one of the bad memories. Tyler once stomped on a guy’s knee until it folded the wrong way. The guy was on the floor of the bar, about ten feet and twenty months from where we are standing now. He’d given Tyler some smart-ass comment. Tyler doesn’t even remember what, but the guy walks with a limp to this day, and everyone remembers the incident. There’s a glow of accomplishment surrounding the memory, and he hears Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” on his personal soundtrack every time he thinks of it.
That helps. That helps a lot as I duck under his final weak attempt at a punch and elbow him hard in the back of the skull.
He hits the ground face-first, not even putting up his arms to soften the blow. He’s done.
Without pausing, I reach under my shirt and take out my gun. I point it at the bartender before she can aim the shotgun at me.
Kelsey gasps. She didn’t see the bartender coming. She was too busy watching the fight. But I’ve said it before: it is nearly impossible to sneak up on me.
The bartender figured she’d bail Tyler out as she’s done in the past—they’re business partners, after all. Now, looking down the barrel of the Walther, she’s questioning the wisdom of that idea.
“Go back inside,” I tell her. “Leave the shotgun.”
She thinks about it for a second. <I got the shotgun> <bet that shitty little piece will jam up on him> <I could still get him> <damn, is Tyler dead?> <I could still get him>
“Jesus, is there something in the water in this town? I said leave the shotgun, Mona. You don’t want to die today.”
Using her name finally wakes her up. <cop? is that a cop?> <fuck this> She puts the gun on the ground and backs carefully into the bar.
When I feel that she’s gone, I step over to where Tyler is snuffling and bleeding into the gravel. He’s beginning to come around, but he won’t be able to get back on his feet for some time.
I shift him onto his side—he’s going to puke at least once—and fish his wallet and car keys out of his jeans.
I pop the trunk of Tyler’s car, a nearly new Ford Mustang that he’s already filled with empty beer cans, dirty clothes, and the wrappers from a few hundred Extra Value Meals.
I find the ziplock bag of cash under the spare. There’s a ten- to twenty-year sentence worth of meth in the trunk as well, plus a few guns wrapped in old towels.
I also find a bag of his second-most-popular product: Oxy. A lot of his customers use it to take the edge off a meth high.
I grab that, along with the ziplock full of cash, and slam the trunk closed.
“Mission accomplished,” I tell Kelsey. “Let’s go.”
Kelsey looks at the bag of pills, then at me.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Let’s talk about it in the car, all right?”
“Jesus Christ, all of this—did you do all this just to score drugs?”
“I need it,” I tell her.
She doesn’t say anything. Just looks down at Tyler, still barely moving on the ground.
This isn’t the place for this conversation. I feel like shouting, the adrenaline still surging through me from the fight. But she’s not the enemy. I keep my voice under tight control. “It’s not the same,” I tell her. “Believe me, you do not want me to lose it, and these”—I hold up the bag of pills—“will keep that from happening.”
She looks uncomfortable and turns away quickly. “Let’s just get out of here,” she says.
She walks around the side of the bar, headed for the SUV. I don’t read her thoughts. I don’t have to.
I start to follow. But for some reason I’d rather not explore, I reach into the ziplock and pull out a couple of twenties. I drop them next to Tyler.
At least he’ll be able to buy his mom her smokes.