“I ain’t never seen anything like that before,” Kenny said. He sat on a box outside of Billy Campbell’s walk-in freezer and stared at the floor. His mind was full of images of Billy’s brains exiting his head. The chubby closeout king couldn’t even muster up the slightest desire to mold the bill of his cap into a perfect arch. “I can’t shake the sight of it. I don’t know why it bothers me so. I mean…with what we do for a living and all.”
Step paced in front of the freezer door. They had hidden the body under a tarp and then surrounded it with boxes of ground meat. “He just saved us the trouble.”
Kenny shook his head. “I can’t look on it that way, Step. I just can’t. Billy was up against it and, brother, you and me put him there.”
“He got himself into this mess, fatass. We didn’t force him to borrow money from Boss.”
“But you heard him, he borrowed that money for his business. He wasn’t doing nothing bad with it.”
“So he says,” Step said. “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t take the word of a man who would trade out his little girl to wipe a debt away.”
“But he said—”
“He said! He said! He said! He was a piece of shit, Kenny!” The veins in Step’s head started to pound against his skull. “You heard what he said about his boys, that Boss would’ve sent us off to kill them if he didn’t make the deal with his daughter! Would you ever kill a kid?”
Kenny thought it over. “No.”
“Of course you wouldn’t! Neither would I!”
“But we also ain’t the only ones that do closeouts for Boss. He’s got a dozen other guys that do what we do for him in four different states. Maybe these other fellas ain’t as discriminating as me and you.”
Step continued to pace without addressing Kenny’s last point. “We gotta find out what’s going on, whatever the deal was. The only thing that appears to be clear is that Boss took Billy’s daughter. The question is for what.”
“That ain’t the only question,” Kenny said.
“What’re you talking about?”
“The question is how many times has Boss done this sort of thing, and how many folks have we closed out who wouldn’t take his deal?”
Step stopped pacing and stared at Kenny.
“I ain’t never thought we were doing the Lord’s work, Step, but I sure as hell never thought we were doing the devil’s, either. I got it in my head that we were closing out nefarious types, bad guys and gals who was into bad things. Now I got a feeling we may have blood on our hands, good blood, from decent people.”
Step sighed and nodded. “I got that feeling, too.” He stooped down next to Kenny. “Me and you are gonna figure this out. We’re gonna find out what’s going on, I can promise you that. No one can know about Billy. As far as we know, he just took off to clear his mind, went to see his boys in Nashville and Lexington. You understand? We might be able to use him to squeeze out some information from Boss, but only if Boss thinks he’s alive.”
Kenny nodded. “Ima tell you one thing for sure. Boss can kick me and knock me in the nose all he wants, but if he’s into something having to do with kids”—his eyes narrowed and his cheeks went flush—“Ima break his fucking neck.”