FONTANA
Just don’t lie and say it’s about the girl.
Magic’s house was right where Jake said it was. Nate sat in the dark in front of it. He did a pre-murder checklist. Means. Method. Escape route. Justification. That last part was easy. He just couldn’t lie to himself and say it was for the girl. This was something for him, something to make himself feel whole, or if not whole then at least patched. He couldn’t go on, do the things he had to do, knowing Magic was walking around having done what he did.
The girl back at the motel needed him. He swore he would die to protect her. But all the same, this had to be done. Sure as gravity.
Gray teevee light flickered from the front window. The house belonged to Chad Davidson, a man known as Magic. Nate had heard the name, late night in Susanville when the myths got spread. Magic had a cousin who’d died for the Steel in the Agua Dulce shoot-out. Agua Dulce was legendary. The OK Corral starring white power killers and meth heads. Some suckmouth marked for death took on a truckload of Steel killers in the middle of the high desert. It ended in a cattle stampede and wildfire. Magic’s cousin Carter caught a buckshot load in the face. Nobody ever found the suckmouth. Magic needed payback. Magic found the suckmouth’s old biker gang. Magic took thumbs as trophies. Can’t ride a chopper with no thumbs. Magic left a bunch of half-handed bastards pawning their bikes.
Magic had got his vengeance. And maybe he thought he’d done it for his brother found half-headed and burned in the desert, but Nate knew he had not. He knew that vengeance was a dumb and selfish act, and he knew if it went wrong he would leave Polly exposed and alone. Nate would be a fuckup again, one last, worst time.
But he was going to do it anyway. The ghost of his brother inside his head would have it no other way.
Nate had been here an hour already. He knew Magic was inside. But he had a woman with him. They might be in there all night. But Nate doubted it. Magic didn’t seem the type to cuddle after. So he waited.
He knew Magic was just the triggerman. Crazy Craig Hollington was the one who’d killed Avis and Tom. He was the one who put the greenlight on all of them. He was the only one who could lift it.
So kill him too, the ghost of his brother hooted in his head. Easy for the dead to say. Crazy Craig was untouchable. He was locked down in Supermax. The guards said it was to protect the world from Crazy Craig. Nate wondered if the hacks were dumb enough to believe that. Being locked in the room with no view didn’t stop Crazy Craig. Ask Avis.
Don’t lie and say it’s for Avis either.
She wasn’t his woman, not when she died, and she’d never really been his anyway—one thing Nate knew for sure was that nobody belonged to anybody but themselves, not in the end. But so what? Nate could know it was bullshit and still know he had to do it. He was powerless against the thing inside him, the thing with the voice of his brother that said this had to be done. And he was glad he was powerless against it. This was a thing he could do. He could kill Magic. He could avenge Avis, at least partway, whether it helped her or not. And then? Since he couldn’t kill Crazy Craig, running was the only thing left. He guessed he and Polly would make like the suckmouth from the Agua Dulce shootout. Disappear. They could find someplace where Aryan Steel couldn’t touch them. South, down in Mexico. He’d heard whispers of a place called Perdido, down at the tip of Baja, a place you could stay forever.
Don’t lie and say it’s about the girl.
He couldn’t keep her. He was already poisoning her. Polly thought he hadn’t known she’d been there when he’d put Jake in the fire. He’d seen her, though, right as he’d put his knee on Jake’s belly and pressed him into the coals. He’d seen her eyes wild and alive watching his violence. He understood how she felt. It scared him all the more because he understood it, because it was the surest he’d ever been that she was his.
The door to the house opened. The featherwood walked out. She had combat boots. She had the featherwood ’do—a skull shaved down to fuzz everywhere but her bangs, which hung in her face. She had black fingernails. She had crank jitters you could spot in the dark.
He waited for her to get into her truck and drive away. Her brake lights lit up and the time was here and Nate felt his strength leave him.
You got to feel weak to get strong. Nick said that, in the car outside what was to be Nate’s first liquor store. When he saw Nate’s hands shaking. You got to feel weak to get strong. Don’t run away from it.
Nate closed his eyes. Took deep breaths the way Nick had taught him. Breathing was how you talked to the animal in you, Nick had taught him. Nick had talked to his animal a lot, and it had talked to him, and Nick had taught Nate about it, and now here he was. He opened the car door and slipped out into the night.
Nate knocked light on the door, the way the woman would knock if she was coming back because she’d forgotten something.
His blood like shook soda in his veins.
He heard a man walk to the other side of the door. Nate swore he could see the man through the wood. Could feel him somehow lean against the door to peek out the eyehole.
One more breath. In and out.
He kicked the door. The door popped open. The door popped Magic in his face. Nate walked in. He got the pistol raised. Time slowed down.
Magic had an old-school Mohawk. He had an iron cross on the bare scalp above his right ear. He had a dotted line tattoo across his throat that said cut here. His nose was a red smear from where the door had tagged him. Magic had four blue bolts on his arm. The bottom two were wet. Fresh.
Two fresh bolts for two new kills. One was Avis, the other her man. Nate’s brain took the time to have that thought. That was a mistake. Thoughts moved too slow for fighting.
Magic’s boot came up kicking. It moved slow, like the air was syrup. But time was fucked now and Nate was moving slow too. The boot crashed into his knee. Nate went down.
Magic came on top of him, his eyes murder hot. He talked. The world moved too slow for Nate to decode the sounds.
Magic got his hands around Nate’s throat about the time Nate noticed he didn’t have the gun anymore. Magic squeezed. Nate could still take sips of air. His vision didn’t blur at the edges. The volume of the world stayed the same. Magic didn’t know shit about chokes.
Nate broke Magic’s grip. Magic fell on top of him. Magic felt Nate’s face. He fumbled for Nate’s eyes. Nate hugged him close. He pressed Magic’s face into his chest. Magic bit through Nate’s shirt. He broke skin. Nate rode the pain. He got a knee under Magic’s stomach. Nate kicked out, flipped the man over, landed on top. Magic kept searching for Nate’s eyes. Nate grabbed a wrist. He twisted it. Heard a pop. Heard a scream. Kept twisting. Magic rodeo-bucked him, knocked him off balance. Magic reached for something on the ground with his good arm. Nate saw the gun come up at him just in time to think oh shit—