The night the cops came for Matlin was supposed to be a celebratory one. For the students, it was the last day of classes before Thanksgiving break. For the local dealers, it was the second busiest weekend of the fall semester, second only to Halloween.

Jack spent the pre-gaming portion of the evening in the back of a white van with the windows blacked out. They’d parked down the street from a house party. Detective Rapino sat in the back, twisting the knobs and levels, and playing with his headset. Detective Keisling affixed tape to a small microphone, then the microphone to Jack’s pasty chest. Jack did not enjoy the close proximity to cops—he never had—but passed the time by thinking of what he would do with his newfound riches.

“If my nipples fail to harden, detective,” he said with a smile, “please do not take offense. I’ve yet to cotton to fellas and I reckon to stay that way.”

Neither cop laughed. They gave no sign they’d even heard.

“I only got one chest hair, so be careful not to pull it off with that tape.”

“If you find the adhesive to be uncomfortable,” said Keisling, “then be sure to file your complaint either through the department website, or with the duty sergeant down at the sheriff station.”

“I’m just messing around,” said Jack. “Just being funny.”

From the backseat, Rapino said, “Could you say that one more time?”

“Beg pardon?”

Rapino tapped one ear of his headset, then motioned for Jack to repeat himself. Jack nodded, then lowered his lips closer to the microphone taped above his left nipple.

“I said I was only jerking around.”

Keisling and Rapino were good old boys, born and raised beneath the Piney Woods of East Texas. Keisling from some place called Huntington and Rapino from further out. Both wore plaid shirts tucked into their dress slacks. They kept their badges on their hips and cowboy boots on their feet. Felt hats, except when indoors. To everyone else, they said “sir,” “ma’am,” and “thank you.”

They did not say it to Jack.

To Jack, their every word was punctuated with a tone that said they couldn’t give a shit if Jack liked what was going on, that he was going to do it. They could back it up with billy clubs, service weapons, or even their bare hands if need be. This was not the first rodeo for either of them.

“Our objective for this operation is to net one Benjamin Garrett Matlin,” said Keisling. “This operation does not end until we have a transaction totaling more than three hundred dollars. Is that clear?”

“Loud and.” Jack sat up straighter. “Yes, sir.”

“If the transaction does not equal three hundred dollars,” continued Keisling, “then the operation will be aborted and your participation, although noted, will not have concluded in our investigation.”

“Trust me,” said Jack. “I’ll get you plenty more than three hundred bucks.”

Said Rapino from the back as he again tapped his headset, “Could you say that one more time, please?”

Jack had plenty reason to believe they’d conduct more than a couple hundred bucks of business that evening. While he had no intention of cozying up to Matlin again, to get in a room with him and a large quantity of product would be next to impossible. However, he had an ace up his sleeve.

Summer.

It took Summer all of thirty minutes to set up the deal. How she’d put it into her friend’s head, he’d no idea. Hell, for all he knew, part of that money was hers. All that mattered to her was getting done what Jack said needed getting done.

She’d said, “You can always count on me, Jackie-O.”

If the cops had set it up, it’d be entrapment and the whole case would be kaput. But the cops hadn’t set it up, that had been Jack and Summer. Both of them counted the imaginary piles of money they’d accumulate once Ben Matlin was out of the picture and, for the next two days, talked nearly of nothing else.

However, time passed on tiptoes throughout the week until finally the day of the party came and all the light quit Summer’s eyes. No longer was there a spring in her step. No longer had she the urgency of those earlier times. Jack imagined it to be hard on her.

“They assure me no one will ever know it was me who wore the wire,” he’d told her over and over.

“You and me will know you wore it,” she said in a low voice. She swallowed one of a row of pills she had lined up along the overturned cardboard coffee table. “I guess that’s all that matters.”

“Hardly,” said Jack. “You and me can forget all about it after a couple weekends of partying hard. I plan to forget about it after we buy a new place. Somewhere a little closer into town. What do you think about that? Finally getting out of this here Light House trailer?”

“Huh? Yeah, sure.”

“Buck up, Summer,” Jack had told her. “Things are about to change for you and me.”

For the rest of the day, she acted like she had something more to tell him, but Jack paid it no never mind. Instead, he put on his game face. He popped an Adderall, then decided that would never do, so he snorted a wee bit of yay. Still, unconvinced, he dipped into the leftover crank he’d ferreted between the pages of his copy of Timmy Leary’s Book of the Dead. He mellowed all that out with a joint the size of a breakfast sausage before stepping out to meet the cops.

 

ALL MIC’D up and raring to go, Jack stepped inside the party. It was a good one. A proper mix of girls to boys, enough sampling of classic rock by the DJ to keep it steady, and free flowing beer from two kegs in the backyard.

Jack said his perfunctory hellos, but he was there for business and not pleasure. It wasn’t long before he’d gotten hold of Dealer and Dealer’s friend, and then was soon joined by Ben Matlin. Jack had not seen Matlin since their jaunt to Houston and found himself more than uncomfortable at the sight of him.

Matlin could have been juggling cats for all Jack knew; he wouldn’t look up from the carpet.

“We ready to do this?” asked Dealer.

“Let’s go,” said Jack.

Not so fast. Matlin snatched him at the elbow and motioned him into the hallway shadows. Jack struggled and brought up a knee, but Matlin had him pinned to the wall.

“I ain’t going to hurt you,” said Matlin. “I just want to talk.”

“We got nothing to talk about,” Jack whispered. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather the money do the talking.”

“I want to talk to you about…” Matlin cocked his head to the south, “…you know…”

Jack damned the microphone beneath his shirt. “I don’t think that would be appropriate conversation right now.”

“It’s something I feel should be addressed.” Matlin looked up one side of the hallway, then the other. They were alone. “I was out of line.”

“Look, we can forget about it.”

“No, I can’t forget about it. I—”

“Well, we don’t have to talk about it.” Jack’s voice leveled-up. “Not right now. This is not a good time to discuss this. I don’t want it discussed.”

“I’d like to get it off my chest.”

Matlin waited for a drunk girl to slip past them on her way to the restroom. He said, “I haven’t had the best luck with interpersonal relationships.”

Jack blinked once. He blinked again.

“It’s no secret that I like to party,” said Matlin. “I can skip all the coke and booze, but I can’t say no to a good tab of E. I eat it, snort it…my biggest fear is one day I’ll finally break down, cook it, rig it, then shoot it straight into the veins beneath my nutsack.”

Matlin’s hot breath smelled of corn chips and energy drinks.

“You know how people get off on that shit?” he asked Jack. “Biochemically, I mean. It eats holes into your brain. MDMA does its job by eating tiny holes through your dura matter. I think about that every morning when I wake up and I think about it every night when I go to bed and I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t afraid it affected my decision making.”

“I don’t know what to say…”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just want you to understand I know what I did in Houston wasn’t right. People shouldn’t do things like that to each other.”

“Nothing happened, man.” Jack fussed with his shirt, about where the microphone sat. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“What kind of person does that to another man?”

“Nothing was done, Matlin. Technically, nothing was done, so can we please drop it?”

Matlin drew even closer and his whisper steamed Jack’s eardrums.

“But I swear to God, Jack,” he said. “If you give me a second chance…if you let me take that back, I’ll make it up to you ten times over. I’ll make you the happiest man in all of Lufkin. I’ll make you rich…”

Jack opened his mouth.

“Just give me one more chance, okay?”

Jack closed it.

Said Matlin, “How about we talk about it later? Over a taco? For now, let’s sell some fucking drugs.”

Matlin slapped Jack hard at the shoulder and nearly knocked loose the transmitter at his belt. He left Jack leaning against the wall, rubbing the wound in his side, which lately had begun to itch. He watched Matlin disappear into the bedroom, where waited Dealer and his buddy.

On instinct, Jack looked at the front door. He could still make a run for it. He could rip free the wire and be halfway to Louisiana before the cops knew he’d gone rabbit. But he’d decided before turning his head back the direction Matlin had gone that he would go through with it. He had to, if for no other reason than—

Jack looked again to the front door. He rubbed his eyes with his fists.

It can’t be.

It was.

It’s impossible.

It wasn’t.

Having entered the front door, he stood out among the throng of college-aged party-goers. Alan Scovak stood six feet four inches and his gingerbread hair hung past the middle of his rail-thin back. He was bearded, tattooed, and sported a thousand-yard stare. Scovak saw Jack long before Jack saw Scovak, and already he’d cut the distance between them in half.

“No, no, no…” Jack could barely contain his panic. “Not today.”

“Hey there, buddy-ro,” said Scovak. “Long time, no see.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I heard there was a party,” he answered. “I like to party.”

“You know what I mean. What the hell are you doing here? In Lufkin?”

“She called me.”

“The hell she did.”

“You really believe that?” Scovak pulled the pack of smokes out of Jack’s shirt pocket. He lit one, then crumpled the rest and dropped them to the floor. “I’m real sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” said Jack. “Those things will kill you.”

“Not if something else don’t kill you first.”

Nobody knew if half the shit Scovak told them was true. Rumor had it he’d been to prison in Florida. Or Georgia. For murdering a man, or two men, or maybe for simple possession. It could very well all be an act, but one that could win an Oscar, so Jack cut him a wide berth.

“How’s Toby doing?” Jack asked.

“You know, Toby and I weren’t on the best of terms after the two of you hightailed it out of Carolina. Let’s just say that was the beginning of the end of my business with him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Are you?” Scovak smiled sideways. Jack’s stomach flipped. “In the end, Toby and I had a difference of opinion that couldn’t be reconciled.”

“On what?”

“On the value of my work.”

“So what did you do?” Jack didn’t want to know.

“I decided to test the market.”

“To what result?”

“Fuck the market.” Scovak held up a tiny plastic keg cup full of piss-yellow beer in mock toast. He drank it dry, then tossed the cup aside. “I swore up and down a million things I’d do if I ever laid eyes on you again. I lost a lot of sleep thinking about it.”

Jack’s ear twitched. His side hurt. The microphone up his shirt felt heavy enough to bow him over.

“Why don’t you keep that to yourself for now?” asked Jack. “In the meantime, if you need directions to the quickest route out of town…”

“I’m not going anywhere, Grant,” said Scovak. “Me and Jazz got a fire to rekindle. And she’s told me what all you got fixed around here and I’d say, the very least, you owe me one.”

“How much did she tell you?”

Scovak’s smile slithered ever upward. “She loves me. She told me that much.”

“If that were true,” said Jack, “you’d shut the fuck up and be on your merry way.”

Scovak’s ice-blue eyes went to Jack’s midsection, his chest, then his throat. Behind him, Matlin popped his head out the bedroom door.

“Jack…”

Said Scovak, “We ain’t done by a longshot, you hear?”

“I don’t imagine we are.”

“I’ll see you later tonight.” Then, the kick in the gut. “When you get home.”

 

HOW IT went down depended on who you asked.

There were maybe eight, nine people in that back bedroom, counting Dealer’s buddy, Matlin, and Jack. Mostly stoners from around town, nearly all of them with skin in the game.

No sooner had money and drugs been transacted than did the population increase by six more, these men all with badges.

Dealer’s buddy had eyes in the back of his head. He was one of the more paranoid people in a sea of paranoid people.

“I had a bad feeling about the dude,” he said, long after. “He was nervous and skittery. His eyes bugged and he was sweating a mess. Johnny tells me that’s because of all the Molly the guy took, but I bet it was something else.”

If Dealer’s buddy thought Matlin was in on the sting, he kept it to himself. No one would dare make such a claim after what happened that night.

“Next thing you know, in come the cops. All of them screaming get down, get your ass on the floor…don’t make me shoot you. You know, cop stuff.”

Another guy who had been in the room was Lance, who was with his girlfriend, Sheila. They’d already dropped a couple tabs of Molly and were looking to score some more.

“I thought they came in a bit extreme,” Lance later said. “You have to ask yourself why cops think they need riot gear in a college town.”

“Especially the size of Nacogodoches,” said his lady.

“I’m no lawyer or nothing,” he said, “but I’ve been out drinking with a couple of law students and they all agree with me: civil rights were violated.”

No one denied the cops were ready when they came through the door that night. Rarely had they an occasion for their Kevlar vests and riot shields. So often had they lasciviously eyed the boxes upon boxes of zip-ties, the canisters of tear gas, the batons and billy clubs. How hard they’d charged into the black part of town, begging for someone to get antsy, but that end of Nacogdoches was too sleepy for anyone to get antsy.

Ben Matlin, it turned out, was their dream come true.

Crunch had not been in the room. Hell, Crunch had not even been at the party, on account of he had left town to see his grandma, but he rarely let that fact get in the way of his telling of the events.

“Matlin prepared his entire life for that very moment,” he’d often say. “It’s anybody’s guess how many times he’d lived it in his head. Couldn’t nobody ever open a door too fast in a room where he transacted business, on account of you might send him scurrying for a back door somewhere. That squirrelly bastard mapped the ingress and egress of every room since he’d sold his first ten-strip, I’ll bet you.”

Perhaps. The only other entrance or exit in that bedroom were the windows against yonder wall, and Matlin had made for them.

Said Dealer’s buddy, “That little guy ran so hard against those windows, you’d have thought they would have broke. They didn’t. He bounced off them and landed on the floor. It was like a cartoon, man.”

“Of all people,” Lance would often say, “you’d think a gay fella would take less issue with a long stretch in prison. Me? My number one fear is getting locked up with a horde of slavering buggers who’d barter me like cigarettes.”

“That wasn’t the case for old Ben Matlin.”

The folks on the local news had questions. So did the upper echelons of command within the police and sheriff’s departments The committee that oversaw the joint task force held several reviews. The official version came from the point man on the operation, Detective Keisling.

“The suspect was ordered to remain on the floor. He did not. He made a second attempt to evacuate through the far window, and again was unsuccessful.”

“At this point, how was the suspect’s behavior?”

“He had become agitated. He then began a confrontation with another of the occupants of the room.”

“This occupant was your confidential informant, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what was the nature of this confrontation?”

That was the one of the points most often contested. No one denied that Matlin made for Jack’s throat, but the cause for such an attack was left to mere speculation. Dealer’s buddy said Matlin had gone plain rabid. That his fear of incarceration outweighed his use for reason. Jeni, a raver chick who had been in the room, said Jack was only trying to calm his friend, to prevent further harm from coming to him.

“Regardless of why he did it,” Lance would later say, “all we know for sure is what he did. That little dude jumped on Jack Jordan and put both hands around his neck and started bashing his head into the floor. Over and over, screaming something like, ‘What did you do? What did you do?’”

Most everybody agreed those were the words said as Matlin commenced a melee upon their counterpart.

Said the cop, “That’s when he went for his pocket.”

“All of a sudden,” said Sheila, “the cops were shouting for him to keep his hands in the air, don’t move, don’t move…”

Looking back, there should have been no question that Matlin was going for his phone. After the cops lit him up, they’d had to pry it from his fingers, he gripped it so tight. But hindsight was twenty-twenty, and no sooner had Matlin pulled his hand from the pocket of his blue jeans than the entire room was filled with gunfire.

“The suspect was hyper-aggressive in that moment. We saw no other option.”

“It was a volley of gunfire, man. They took him out high.”

“They killed him in cold blood, right in front of our eyes.”

Asked the investigative committee, “Was it a justified shoot, detective?”

Keisling’s reply: “The officers and myself felt that in order to sidestep any further injury or bloodshed, deadly force was necessary.”

One question on everyone’s lips was why Matlin elected to go for his phone in the middle of a bust. Some speculated he was calling for a lawyer. Others thought perhaps his intention was to tip off his suppliers of a potential raid. No one had any concrete evidence one way or another.

But the biggest sticking point came with what happened next. The version given by the cops never mentioned it, but they weren’t the only ones in the room that night. At every keg party, campfire, or living room where passed a joint from one stoner to another, there existed a different ending.

“They’ve got us all on the ground,” Lance would often say. “They’ve got our arms behind us and they’re zip-tying us at the wrists. Checking our pockets. All the while, Ben Matlin bleeds out on the floor.”

“They’re dragging Jack out of the room,” said Dealer’s buddy. “His face is busted up, one eye swole shut.”

“Jack’s screaming, ‘Let me see him, I want to see him.’ He’s screaming it at the top of his lungs. He’s bucking and grunting, fighting off the cops until finally they heft him closer to where Matlin is dying.”

“We’re pretty sure he’s still alive at this point. He’s almost to the door, but not quite. You can see loogies of blood coughing out of the holes in his chest.”

“It was nasty.”

When asked what happened when Jack was delivered to the side of his fallen friend, everyone agreed that he stood over him. That the two men locked eyes. That, as Matlin left this earthly plane, the bloodied and beaten Jack Jordan shouted angrily into his face until finally all of the little man’s lights had gone out.

What he screamed to the dying man depended on who told the story.

“He kept screaming you fucking killed him, over and over,” said Lance’s girl, Sheila.

Lance argued, “No, he said something like how he now knows what it is like to lose someone.”

“Whatever it was he said,” Dealer’s buddy would tell folks, “he said it over and over until they carted him out of the room.”

Unbeknown to everyone involved, Jack still repeated it, days and weeks later. Most often, he did so as he stood before his bathroom mirror, or the rearview in his shitty Honda, or any reflective surface he came across. He said it in his mind and he said it with his mouth. Anytime his eyes caught the reflection of his own eyes.

“Now it’s your turn to get fucked.”