Vivian hesitated. “Sounds risky, dangerous. Jim’s smarter than you think.”

“You saying you can’t pull it off? All you have to do is lose him, if it comes down to that. You could do this blindfolded. You ain’t afraid, are you?”

“Screw you.” She didn’t want to go along with Tony but she didn’t have another idea to throw back at him. “Let’s get home,” she said. “Go over this again. I may not have a choice. I don’t like that but I guess I can’t do anything about it.”

. . .

Back at the house, Tony babbled for more than an hour about his so-called strategy to escape Kilroy and Big Jim and then live happily ever after on Vivian’s stash. To shut him up, she led him to the bed and turned his brain to mush with her usual skill and creativity. When they finished with the sex, she offered him the bottle of Jim Beam. He chugged a shot, curled into a ball, and fell asleep in less than two minutes. Through it all he missed that she was thinking about something else.

She lay in darkness, repeatedly going over every detail of what her next steps had to be. She couldn’t wait until tomorrow, she knew that much. When she was satisfied with her vision, she used her training to make her body sleep for one hour. She eased out of bed at three forty-five a.m., threw on fresh clothes, stuffed protein bars, water, gloves, a hat, and other essentials into her backpack. She lifted Tony’s gun belt from the coat hook where he kept it. A little after four a.m. she slipped the truck keys out of Tony’s jacket and silently left the house.

She’d worried that Tony would hear her start the truck. The diazepam in the bourbon would help keep him in dreamland. Good thing Tony had a pharmacy in his bathroom’s medicine cabinet. Same old Tony. As an extra precaution she jabbed the left front and rear tires of the Crown Vic with her knife. She mounted the pickup and began her trek.

She drove without headlights. She expected to confront Big Jim at every corner. Her head moved from side to side and her hands gripped the steering wheel tight, too tight. She stopped at an intersection. Vivian breathed in as much air as her lungs would hold, then slowly let it out through her nostrils. She returned to the lessons she’d learned from hours of grueling practice and training. Focus on the goal; awareness of all obstacles; clarity of action; endurance of mind and body. She took three more deep breaths.

She could handle Big Jim or any other Texas cop.

When she was sure that no one followed her, she flipped on the lights and sped to her money.

. . .

Big Jim grabbed Tony’s ankles and dragged him from the bed. Tony woke up when his head bounced on the carpet. He sat up on his haunches, nude and disoriented. Big Jim slapped him.

“You sonofabitch! You let her go. Where the hell she goin’, Garza? Where the hell did that bitch run off to? Where’s the goddamn money?”

Several slaps and minutes later, Tony Garza realized what had happened and what Big Jim wanted. He struggled to pull on his jeans and then his boots and, finally, a shirt.

He managed a complete sentence. “She’s going after her Crystal Q take.”

“No shit, Sherlock. And where might that be, you shitbird?”

“How the hell should I know? She never told me. I was waiting to get it out of her, then I’d arrest her. But you spooked her and now she’s—”

Big Jim slugged him, no slap this time. Tony fell back on the bed. Blood leaked at the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t give me any of that horseshit,” Big Jim said. “You was gonna run off with that black piece of ass and her money. Except she played you like the sucker fish you are and she run off herself with your truck.”

“What? My truck? No!” He ran to the window. The empty front yard taunted him. “Goddamn her! I’ll kill her, I’ll—”

Big Jim raised his fist and Tony shut up.

“Listen to me. We have to find her. If you wanna keep your sorry ass out of prison, you have to help, so you’d better come up with somethin’. I’m not gonna take any heat for letting one of the Crystal Q gang slip through my fingers, ’specially since she was bangin’ one of my officers. You’re gonna help and we’re gonna find her or your next stop is the Walls Unit at Huntsville. That’s a whole other existence, Tony. You’ll have fun there. Bet on that.”

Tony rubbed his eyes. He spat blood on the carpet and shook his head. He clutched the Jim Beam bottle, held it to his lips, stopped, shook his head again. He drank water from the kitchen faucet.

“She can’t have been gone long,” Spencer said. “I found your door wide open and you still smelling like you had her pussy all over your face. Where she goin’? You spent days with her, you must have some idea. What did she do while she was here?”

Tony needed time. He had to play this right or he would end up in his own private hurt locker. “When did you first suspect her?” he asked. “Last night at the bar? I told her to stay home but she wouldn’t listen.”

Big Jim laughed. “You sorry… No, not last night. I saw her days ago runnin’ out in the boonies along the dry creek bed. In the dark, early, like four or five. I start my rounds before the sun comes up. Insomnia paid off, finally. She was headin’ back to town so I watched her. You could’ve shot me and I wouldn’t have felt it when I saw her run into your shack. I thought for sure you’d brag about your girlfriend. But when you didn’t say nothin’ about her, I figured she was someone I had to know more about. That’s quite a young lady you’re mixed up with, Tony. Didn’t think you had it in ya.”

Tony shrugged. “She’s a friend from long ago. What else can I say?”

“Oh, no apology necessary. I’ve seen what that kind of woman can do to a normal, if not too bright, man. You’re just human, Tony.”

Tony shrugged again.

“A dumb human, no doubt. So dumb you’re probably on your way to prison.”

Tony slumped against the bedroom wall. He tried to think.

“She’s got quite a rep, as far as cops go,” Big Jim continued. “Took a couple of days to pin down who she is. There’s not much about her in the national database but what there is says she’s a pro. I put two and two together and came up with the millions stolen from Harrington. I figured you two would make a run for it tomorrow, do a Bonnie and Clyde when you were supposed to be drivin’ up to the Crystal Q. I come by tonight just to double check. That’s when I saw your open front door.”

“You’ve had Vivian in your sights all along?”

“I know everythin’ that goes on in Kilroy. No way you could’ve kept that hot cup of chocolate hidden from me.” Tony nodded. “But, enough of this. You’re gonna help me find her. That is, if you wanna try to salvage the rest of your two-bit life.”

“Why didn’t you arrest her?” Tony asked. He answered his own question. “The money.”

Big Jim grunted.

Tony straightened up. “We should follow the creek bed, look for tire tracks. She ran out there every day, you know that. She must’ve been checking up on her stash. There’s got to be something out there where she hid the money, maybe buried it by a rock formation, or in an empty rattler’s nest, or—”

“Or a hole in the dirt,” Big Jim interrupted. “Big enough for a box of money but not much else.”

“You know something like that?”

“The Cueva Guzman. Guzman’s Cave, but it ain’t much of a cave. I’d forgotten all about it until now. About four miles up the dry creek. Don’t know how she found it. You can’t see it until you’re almost on top of it and it’s mostly a shaft hundreds of feet straight down. But it’s the perfect spot to hide somethin’.”

“Let’s go.” Tony reached for his department-issued gun belt with the holstered .45. The naked coat hook made him curse Vivian again. “I need a gun,” he said. The two men glared at each other for a few seconds.

“I need a gun,” Tony repeated.

Big Jim nodded. “There’s an extra in my car,” he said. “Don’t try anythin’, Garza. I got no qualms about puttin’ down a dirty cop, particularly one allegedly workin’ for me.”

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t you get trigger-happy. Remember, we’re on the same side.”

. . .

Big Jim handled his Tahoe PPV with the light touch of a water buffalo. The two men bounced and jerked as Big Jim swerved over, around, and through concrete-hard ruts, massive cactus, and half-buried boulders. As he drove, Big Jim explained that the cave was an opening in a low-lying ridge that allowed for two men to enter, but within ten feet it narrowed so that only one man could fit along the rocky floor. After a few inches, the shaft dropped suddenly and dangerously into blackness.

“You need ropes and lights and other equipment to manage that hole,” Big Jim said. “No one’s ever been all the way down, not since one of the passages caved in, makin’ it more narrow and dangerous. We had a kid trapped in there a few years ago, the Muncy boy, about twelve. His brother was with him when he fell in or no one would’ve ever known he was down that thing. He got stuck on a ledge, one leg hangin’ on by a hair, really. Couldn’t move up or down. Took us about eight hours to get him out. It ruined him. He ain’t been right in the head since then.”

“Jesus,” Tony said.

“I put up signs and roped off the hole and even tried to get the town council to allocate money for blastin’ the damn thing shut. But kids pay no mind to signs and the town council wouldn’t okay anythin’ without the city attorney’s approval, and that ain’t happenin’, not from that son of a bitch.”

Tony didn’t ask why. He didn’t really care. He wondered how far down the hole Vivian had crawled to hide the money. She could go deep if she had to. Deeper than either he or Big Jim could manage.

They drove for several more minutes until Big Jim slowed down, almost stopping.

“She’s still here.” Big Jim pointed to something in the darkness. “Thought we’d missed her. She should be streakin’ for Dallas.”

He parked about a hundred yards from the ridge. He switched off the interior light and quietly opened his car door. He walked slowly, hunched over.

Tony jumped out of the SUV. He carried a flashlight and hooked Big Jim’s extra gun in his belt. His fingers twitched in anticipation.

The long almost flat ridge stretched against the early morning sky. Rays of moonlight bounced off the black silhouette of his truck. A slight breeze caressed the men, who didn’t notice.

They inched up to the layer of horizontal rock that marked the opening in the Texas earth. They stared into the darkness and for a few minutes they saw nothing but the darkness.

“Hear that?” Big Jim whispered.

Tony listened. He heard the breeze against his ears. Then, something else. A groan, or a sigh. A soft sound tinged with pain. Tony stared harder into the cave.

She lay on her side, not moving.

Big Jim stood up. He slowly walked into the opening and almost immediately he had to stoop so he would fit. Tony followed.

Vivian lifted her head. “Took you clowns long enough. Feels like I’ve been laying here for hours.”

Tony switched on the flashlight. Vivian stretched along the floor of the opening, crammed against the wall of the cave where it narrowed into the shaft. Her right ankle twisted at a weird angle and Tony could see that it had already begun to swell.

“You fell?” he said.

“Of course she fell,” Big Jim said. “You moron. That ankle. Looks broken. Looks ugly.”

“Yeah, I fell.” Resignation filled her voice. She groaned. “I climbed down that goddamn hole until I got to the ledge where I had the bag. I grabbed it and was shimmying out, up on my knees, when something slithered across my arms. I don’t know, I think it was a snake. Something.” She stopped talking and let go of the tension in her neck. “I didn’t handle it like I should’ve,” she continued. “I jerked away, lost my balance. Did everything I could to not fall backward into that shaft, so I fell forward. Landed funny and my ankle collapsed. I hit my head and must’ve passed out. Don’t know how long. I was coming around when I heard you outside. Of course it had to be you two.”

“A snake?” Tony said. He aimed his flashlight away from Vivian. “That thing still here?”

Tony and Big Jim saw the canvas bag of money against the wall at Vivian’s back. They both rushed to the bag. Tony lunged for the stash. He dropped the flashlight, pulled the .45 from his belt, aimed it at Big Jim, and backed against the wall. One hand held the bag, the other his gun.

Vivian snatched the light and pointed it at Big Jim.

Big Jim aimed his gun at Tony.

“Give me that money,” Big Jim barked.

“Go to hell,” Tony answered.

“Easy, boys,” Vivian said through gritted teeth. “You can shoot each other, just let me out of the way.”

“Shut up, bitch,” Big Jim shouted. “Give me that money, Garza, or you ain’t leavin’ this hole.”

“Then ain’t none of us leaving,” Tony said.

“I got plans for that cash,” Big Jim answered.

“I’m sure you do. And they don’t include giving it back to Harrington. Chief of police, my ass.”

“You’re not one to judge me, boy.”

“Aw…” Tony sighed. He pulled the trigger of the .45 and Big Jim slammed to the ground. Big Jim’s gun flew into the blackness of the cave. He rolled in the dirt, clutching his right knee.

“You son of a bitch!” Big Jim screamed.

Tony had to finish off Big Jim, then Vivian. He stepped over Vivian to get closer to Big Jim.

Vivian turned the light into Tony’s face, blinding him. She hit his upraised leg with the flashlight and he fell to the side, arms flailing, hands clutching at the air. His eyes flared open. He tried to keep upright but his feet slid out from under him. The gun dropped into the hole. He followed it, hugging the bag.

Tony screamed as he bounced against the walls of the shaft. The screams stopped with a dull thud.

“Oh my God,” Big Jim said. “You lost the money. And you killed him Oh my God.”

Vivian struggled to her elbows.

“Well, now I got no choice,” she said. “You two screwed the pig royally. Have to get out on my own.” She looked around the cave. “I’m leaving and you’re not stopping me.”

“I’m shot, bleedin’, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“You’ll live. As long as you get that bullet hole looked at soon.” She caught her breath. “Guess you could bleed out.”

Big Jim shuddered. “You have to help me. I can’t stand up, can’t walk. You can’t neither. Together, we can get back to town. The doc’ll take care of both of us. Then you can disappear, leave. You’re not my problem. I don’t care about you.”

“You mean now that the money’s gone, eh? And Tony?”

“No one will miss him. He’s history. Happens all the time around here. People come and go. No one will look for him and for sure no one will look at the bottom of that hell hole.”

She painfully maneuvered to her knees, then forced herself to stand on her good leg. Sweat covered her face. She picked up a piece of dried cholla wood and used it to steady herself. Her ragged breathing echoed against the cave walls.

“That’s a great offer. But I think I’ll pass.” She examined her ankle under the beam of the flashlight. “Christ, this could take a while.”

“I can help. We can help each other. I’m tellin’ ya.”

She pointed the flashlight in the direction of the cave opening. “Maybe someone will notice your car and come around. Yeah, that’s probably what will happen.” Big Jim frantically shook his head. “They’re gonna ask where you are sooner or later.”

“You can’t leave me. I’ll bleed to death.” His blood-covered fingers hugged his knee. Blood soaked his jeans.

A few hundred dollar bills lay on the ground. She stuffed them in her pockets. Five hundred.

A ray of morning light streaked into the cave.

She leaned against the wall and accepted that the walk to Tony’s truck would be the longest walk she had ever taken. She breathed deeply, three times. Her training taught her to envision what she had to do, what the obstacles were and how she would overcome. The first goal was to get out of the cave, then make it to the truck. Retrieve Tony’s gun from the glovebox, where she’d left it. Then she would detail the next step. Driving the truck. Staying alert. Avoiding the roadblocks and helicopters. Dealing with the pain. Finding someone to help her. She thought she had a chance. Not much. But a chance.

She limped to the light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7 - Eel Estevez

By Joe Clifford

 

Eel Estevez had always hated the heat, since he was a little kid. The way the dry got caught in your throat, the clog of dead things choking passageways, cutting off the esophagus, making it hard to breathe. In the desert, water was scarce, and in the shantytowns of his youth, even more so. He remembered the price his mother paid before she died. Scrubbing rich men’s toilets in their air-conditioned mansions, sent back to the swarthy El Paso slums covered in shit, left to bake in a little clay hut. How his father died like a dog in the scorched fields. The heat was like the cancer that killed him. It consumed you, whole. Cooked you alive, from the inside out. What did it say, then, about a man who’d chosen to live his entire life sandwiched below the thirtieth parallel? Even when he got out of El Paso, Eel hadn’t escaped the heat. A brief, fruitless stretch in the Army landed him at Fort Huachuca on the Arizona-Mexico border.

Eel stretched, a blast of morning light winning the war against bent motel blinds. He glanced back at the woman. A big gal. Not fat. Full figured. Like that plus-size model they recently put in the swimsuit issue, one of those sports magazines trying to prove that we’re progressing as a society; it’s okay to love all shapes and sizes. Ashley something. The model. Not the girl. He couldn’t remember her fucking name. His head throbbed like it had been back-kicked by an extra stubborn mule with restless leg syndrome. Political correctness had even found a way to weasel its ugly head into soft-core porn.

He didn’t care about the girl in his bed, and he didn’t bother fishing the name of the sports magazine from the gray matter either. America didn’t give a fuck about fútbol, or soccer as they called it here, so Eel didn’t give a fuck about American sports. His love of fútbol was the one thread tying him to his homeland. Which wasn’t much of a homeland at all. He’d never lived there. The color of his skin meant he’d never be fully embraced here either. He was a man without a country.

This was why Eel didn’t go back to Mexico with Carter all those years ago. At least that was the reason he gave. There were other, more significant prejudices, harder to admit, confess aloud, not the least of which was that Eel felt no connection to his heritage. Never had. He was more gringo than most of the gringos he knew. He may not have felt particular allegiance to the States, but he was born in America. What difference did it make what was in his blood? It all spilled the same color.

Carter had had a hard time understanding how Eel, a Mexican, pure bred and blue, could feel no sense of community, no allegiance to what flowed in his veins. Geography, Carter had said, is an address, before pointing at his heart. “But this is who you are.”

The only time Eel and he ever got in a fight was that night Carter left, when he called out Eel for his lack of loyalty.

“It’s where we belong,” he’d said. “Mexico is our home.”

By then, Eel’s parents were both dead, Carter the closest thing to family he had left. But he didn’t feel like learning the ins and outs of a foreign culture, mapping different streets, new customs.

“Our home?” Eel said. “We have lived in Texas our whole lives.”

“And what good has that gotten either of us?”

At that point, Eel still wasn’t Eel, he was Estaban Estevez. He wouldn’t become Eel until later. But Carter was already Carter, having made the switch from Diego Rodriquez long ago. That night, however, what they called one another hardly mattered; they were just two boys who’d run the gamut from boosting to two-bit robbery, at a crossroads, deciding to take different career paths. Carter was going home, enlisting full-time, signing up for his fate. He had a connection to the drug trade, where the real money was to be made, and wanted Eel to join him. Eel still thought there was good in him.

“I know who I am,” Carter said. “What I am.”

“You?” Eel had mocked. “You? The one pushing a return to Mexico? You—Diego—who made up your own nickname from an American movie.”

They’d grown up on those gangster flicks, Scarface, Carlito’s Way, renegade cowboys, Butch, Sundance, the travels and trials of one-eyed fat men. It was a low blow and a deep cut.

They pushed. They shoved. In the end, no one threw a punch. Soon it was over. This was meant to be a celebration. So the boys forced themselves to laugh, have fun, trading swigs from the bottle, knocking back round after round in a border bar with the hole in the floor that smelled like hot piss and grease splatter. Sealing the sendoff by slitting hands with an all-purpose pocketknife on the curb of an all-night pharmacy. This wasn’t goodbye. They’d see each other again. They both knew then some bonds were forever, thicker than blood.

 

. . .

Eel had a lot of rules he lived by, or at least he used to, the first of which had been: no matter how tough you think you were, there was always someone tougher. Maybe it was because it had taken Eel Estevez so long to find that man that he’d forgotten. He’d gotten cocky, arrogant, reckless. As soon as you thought you were on top of the world, you could count on the world coming up behind you to kick you in the ass.

After the shitstorm at the ranch, while Benny and the others were racing off, thinking they’d won some sort of skeet-shooting jackpot, Eel knew better. Too many guns..Too much trouble for a run-of-the-mill smash and grab. Eel spirited toward open roads, all of which headed south, leaving the wreckage in his rearview, with nothing to do but think. Eel wasn’t stupid. He knew damn well what he was getting himself into. But that much money? It had been easy to convince himself of untraceable pickings. Plenty of blame to go around. There were countless funnels and monies off the book, the whole state of Texas rife with them, sitting right next to the border, quick access to spin a fresh load, tumble dry cash, spit it out clean. Half a million was pocket change to these men. What did Eel care if a few politicos were greasing palms to pass a zoning ordinance? The price of doing business in a free market economy. But no, that response had been too swift, too efficient and clusterfucked at the same time. Left a bad, bitter taste. It reeked of a set up.

Took a few days and a lot of miles. Phone calls. Inquiries. Calling in favors. The big one to Carter. It wasn’t like the friends ever fell out of touch.

Carter had done well for himself south of the border. Better than well, in fact. Carter’s reputation rivaled that of Clovis Harrington, the man Eel and his cohorts had just robbed, the man whom Eel should’ve known better than to go after. But not because of what Harrington was. It was the men Harrington really worked for. The monsters behind the curtain.

Carter confirmed what Eel already knew. That money they stole? Cartel money. He left Eel to wonder. Juárez? Zeta? Didn’t matter. He wasn’t walking away from this. He would be hunted down, propped on a post in the Sonora, innards picked clean by vultures and coyotes. His best chance was to broker a deal. Make a trade. Eel was no snitch. But self-preservation trumped all. Carter could be the go-between.

He watched the motel parking lot. No cars other than his, which he’d traded out twice on the road. Untraceable. No motorcycles. No trucks. Nothing but the heat. Vapors rose from the tarmac, gasoline sheens dancing, shimmering in waves. Eel hated waiting almost as much as he hated the heat. But Carter had said to wait. So Eel had no choice but to sit tight. Of course, this extra time meant too much time to think. And not just about the fuckjob on the ranch, his partners who, if they weren’t dead yet, were being hunted like game, exterminated one by one. Whether they knew it or not. No, Eel Estevez remembered being a boy, how his life might’ve turned out differently had he gone with Carter back to Mexico. He sure as shit wouldn’t be in this mess. Eel hated dwelling on the past, regrets, alternate futures. It was ridiculous, pointless. It was what it was, would be what it would be.

You know how I knew I was a thief? I knew I was a thief when I stole….

Eel laughed when he thought about those two skinny Mexican peckerwoods living in El Paso. Two boys in love with being outlaws before they even knew what such commitment entailed, glossed-over lessons learned from actors pretending to be the renegades they hoped to be. Some boys wanted to be heroes. Not Eel and Carter. They longed to be the bad guys, rooted for the villains. Eel just fought it longer, tried to take the righteous path, enlisted, did just enough to get honorably discharged. But all roads lead you back to who you really are, eventually. Carter had always been the smarter of the two.

Eel picked up what was left of a bottle, drained the dregs, lit a cigarette, and peered out of the blinds into the sweltering parking lot. Those vapors kept rising from the tarmac, smoking snakes, diablos distorting fields of nothing across the two-lane road. Dry tumbleweeds and tinder brush, snapped coils from the staked posts, whiplashed and now lying flaccid in the dusty culverts. He checked the bedside table. The motel clock either hadn’t been plugged in, or had been ripped from the socket in the throes of inebriated, high-octane sex. What was this girl’s name? His head swirled. He shouldn’t have drunk so much. But goddamn he hadn’t wanted to be in his head last night. His dead grandfather’s voice crept in once more. The last time Eel snuck south of the border, when the old man was dying. To see him one last time.

“That is why crime pays so well, mijo,” the old man said. “Because it’s illegal.”

His father, on the other hand, Auturo, did not judge his only son for his chosen vocation. A farmer who’d toiled for nothing but fast-acting cancers and an early grave, the senior Estevez all but gave his blessing for the path Eel chose to take. In the movies, American movies, they always showed the honest, hard-working father imparting lessons on their wannabe criminal child, trying to talk sense into them to do the right thing. Drive a bus. Work in a factory. An honest day’s wages for an honest day’s work meant more than all the riches in the world. Bullshit. Lies. Chupapingas. Money doesn’t buy happiness was just what the rich told you so you didn’t go after their gold.

Of all the jobs, this one…this one should’ve been easy. Until that fucking pilot and his buddy had to get greedy. His own men. What ever happened to honor among thieves? Another bullshit lie Hollywood sold.

The plump girl turned in her sleep woozily, dreamily, mounting her rump in the air, wriggling it, as though it had a mind of its own, begging for another go. The only thing separating her round, luscious ass from the free, open air, that threadbare sheet. Eel could almost hear her moaning, cooing. And he thought about it too. He couldn’t remember exactly how they’d met, only that it was at the bar, after he’d arranged to meet Carter this morning, drawing on the bonds of brotherhood to get him out of this jam. Brother or not, this favor was asking a lot. Going behind the back of the cartel wasn’t just risky, it was gambling with his life. But Carter, like Eel, had never married, never had kids, was a floating wolf. This made Eel feel better. A man could wager his own life easier when he didn’t have to worry about the welfare of others.

Carter said to stay put. Have a drink, relax, get laid. Carter said he was on his way. So Eel drank. And he picked up the girl. A big-boned, beautiful girl. The fucking had been good, and she gave as good as she got. He recalled that much, the way he took her from behind, and she took him right back. At least that was how he chose to remember it. If his raw, aching cock was any indication, his memory wasn’t far off. Both drunk, high on the blow she brought with her back from the bar. He felt the claw marks on his back begin to blister, the red, raised lines starting to sting as he sweated, flashes of her thick thighs returning to his mind’s eye, the way they bounced off his lap, running through the baker’s dozen, before she turned around again, put her head down, ass up, just the way he liked it, just the way it was now. But as tempting as that ass was, Eel turned away, watching for Carter. Now wasn’t a time to get distracted. Last night, he’d needed to kill the time. This morning, the focus was more on not getting killed.

He shifted in his jeans, tucked his cock down severely, admonishing the thing with disdain worthy of a Catholic nun, shielding himself from that rump twitching out the corner of his eye. He thought of the horrors, the men who’d wronged the wrong men, the neckties slit across throats to pull tongues through, until nothing stirred below.

Nothing moved in the parking lot either. Now he saw there was one other car in the parking lot besides the one he’d hotwired six counties back. In the far end of the lot, a non-descript, rusted, red sedan lurked in the shadows. He could see it hadn’t run in ages, like it had been left in that parking lot so long it had sunk into the melted tar. The bar next door, now closed until probably at least noon, loomed eerily staid, throwing shade. All of it too quiet, too lifeless. He peeked over his shoulder at the broken clock. The big-boned blonde fell back to the mattress, ass returning to slumber.

Eel searched out another bottle, took a pull of mostly backwashed, hot tequila, laughing suddenly for no reason other than he had gotten his nickname for being slippery, slithery. Apparently, “Snake” had been taken. At first, he hated the nickname, but like most nicknames, you didn’t get to choose your own, someone made it up for you, you didn’t get a say, and those kind always stuck. Carter was smart enough to make his own name. You either named yourself. Or someone else did it for you.

And the slippery part fit the bill. Through all the jobs, all the bad turns and rotten luck, the paydays lost, the backstabs and betrayals, the raids, the DEA and ATF and every other goddamn acronym that closed in—because no matter how good you were they were always closing in—Eel Estevez had never spent as much as a night in jail. It was a source of pride. Being a border Mexican, probably for the best. Especially these days. It was funny. The gringos didn’t mind you picking their fucking strawberries for ten cents an hour, but every November, some politico was preaching on the nightly news about the scourge of his kind, stealing the fucking jobs no one else wanted. His kind? No one embraced the capitalistic ethic like the career criminal. You see, you want, you take by power and might. By superiority.

Gennifer. With a G. That was the name of the girl in his bed. It finally came to him. That was how she’d introduced himself when he got off the phone with Carter, having slipped the barkeep a bill to use the houseline and keep his fucking head turned and ears shut, burner tossed long ago. “Hi. I’m Gennifer. With a G. And you look like you want to buy me a drink.” He liked that. The sass to go along with that ass. He may’ve actually said that. He’d already started tying one on by that point. Sure, it was a cheesy, stupid line, but that was why bars serve booze. A drunk man’s tongue, a sober man’s mind.

Eel let the blinds fall and eye-checked the rucksack handcuffed to the bedpost, patted his pockets, fingering the key like tonguing a loose tooth. A brief, fleeting thought popped in his head. Maybe he shouldn’t wait for Carter. Maybe sitting here, he was a sitting duck. It popped out as quick. More than his own hide, he had to help Benny. The others? Fuck ’em. But he liked Benny. He’d brought him in. They’d been tight ever since the Army. Outside of Carter, Benny might’ve been the only true friend he’d ever had. And Carter was his one shot at making it out of here alive. Once Eel figured out how to do that, he’d call Benny. Not that Benny would listen. By now the poor son of a bitch was probably heading west to make a deposit into his magic piggybank that would one day allow him to retire, fall in love, live a regular life. Men like Benny and Eel didn’t get to do that. But Eel owed him that much. If Eel could get himself out of this mess, he’d do his best to get Benny out as well. A two-for-one. Of course, that would involve Benny giving up the money, something he’d naturally resist. Not like he had any choice. All that money would be returned, one way or the other. Poor Benny had always been a dreamer.

Gennifer rolled over, long blonde hair fanning across the pillows as she spread arms and legs, the dark patch between the sheets making it clear she was open for business. The clear, unglazed look in her eyes told Eel she’d been awake the whole time, pretending to be dreaming while shaking that fat ass, teasing him.

“Guess I tired you out last night,” she said, reaching for her cigarettes on the scarred end table. When Eel didn’t seize the moment, she flicked on the lamp.

“Turn that fucking thing off.”

“What’s your problem?” She pointed to the bright, sunny window, rays unable to be contained by one-hundred-count curtains and mangled plastic blinds. “It’s morning.”

“I said turn it off.”

Gennifer muttered curses but turned off the lamp, staring at the blank screen of the bedside alarm. “What time is it anyway?”

“I’m guessing eleven.” Eel looked at the blank clock, then turned back to the window.

“What’s so interesting out there that you don’t want another go at this?” Gennifer with a G spread her hands over robust thighs, which she parted wider now, the dark v radiating heat beneath that thin-sheer sheet.

Eel didn’t give it a second glance. “I’m waiting on someone.”

“Who?”

“None of your fucking business.” He let the blinds fall, gathering her jeans and panties, bra off the chair, tossing them on the bed. “I think it’s time you go.”

“Sure know how to treat a lady.”

Eel peeled off a fifty from his wad and tossed that on the bed too. “Go get some breakfast. On me.”

“Where you want me to go? There’s only the bar next door and it ain’t open till three, and they don’t serve food anyway.”

“Then drive somewhere.”

“Don’t got no car.”

“How’d you get to the bar?”

“A friend.”

“Call your friend.”

Gennifer with a G nibbled her lip, crawling on all fours, playfully clawing out for his belt. “I thought you were my friend.”

“I’m not.” He went back to gazing out the window while she huffed and groaned. He heard her rolling off the bed, slipping on her bra and panties, fumbling for the tight jeans, shoes, parts of a purse he’d spilled in search of prophylactics.

Eel hadn’t driven all the way across the state to get blindsided while fucking some piece of ass. Eel computed the hours in his head. It shouldn’t be taking Carter this long to get here. Not under the circumstances. Carter wasn’t some rookie getting pulled over at a checkpoint. And Carter wasn’t pissing away valuable time on anything not one hundred percent necessary. Something was wrong.

A few thoughts hit Eel Estevez at once: What had happened to Carter? Were they on to him that quick? Had they gotten to Carter first? If so, they’d be coming for him next. He had to move. But where to? Why were his feet rooted, refusing to cooperate? The last thought, though, the one that really stung—where the hell had she hidden the gun?

Eel turned slowly, hands up where she could see them before she ordered him to do so. It was a small point of pride but Eel didn’t like being told what to do. When she bent and undid the handcuffs around the post, freeing the bag and the money, he resisted feeling for the key in his pockets. He didn’t believe in magic, but no one was so good they could pick a pocket ten feet away.

“Duplicate,” she said. “Generic.”

“What if I’d tried to leave?”

“Honey, I’ve been awake all night. You wasn’t doing anything without me knowing about it. And I’m telling you this for your own good. You make it out of this? Get yourself checked for sleep apnea. You snore like a wild boar.”

Eel could only stare.

She titled her head, almost sympathetic, like she really gave a shit. “This isn’t personal. It’s a job. I got the call. I’m getting paid. I was told to keep you occupied.” She let her gaze drift down to his cock. “Worse ways to spend a night.” Gennifer stood up like the pro she was, nodded at the door. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t need to tell him not to do anything stupid. She didn’t need to warn him not to run. Eel Estevez knew when he’d fallen into a spider’s web.

The walk down the motel’s baked brick sidewalk and across the arid parking lot with a gun to his back didn’t draw any attention. Because there was no one else there to bear witness. But that heat, it sucked what little breath he had left, that diesel ooze cooking in the sun blast, like taking a lungful of broiled oven.

They entered through the back door, the bar wouldn’t be open to the public any time soon, and there was a moment before Eel felt the cold rush of air conditioning, where, trapped between the bright heat outside and cold stone indoors, he considered making a move. It was a second, maybe less. She was close enough that if he spun and sprung, he could push her aside and run. But then what? Even if she was a lousy shot, his keys were back in the room. Nothing but fucking desert. Endless miles of scrub brush, dry grass, and sand. How far could he really run? What about Carter? What about Benny?

The cool, dark bar felt different in the day. And not just for the obvious, that light had replaced night, silence snuffing clinking glasses and barroom chatter. This was the moment Eel’s fate turned for good, and there would be no turning back. He wasn’t eighteen anymore. He wasn’t in the Army. He wasn’t on Clovis Harrington’s ranch either. He could take losing. He could take dying. He’d always known he’d die young. But not like this.

Carter sported more weight than the last time they’d seen one another, that short stretch when Eel returned to Mexico to watch his grandfather die. Two more men were with him. When Eel heard the back door lock, he figured at least one more lurked out of sight.

“Drink?” Carter said.

Eel nodded. Carter pointed, and a set of arms guided Eel to the booth. From the corner of his eye, he saw the woman, Gennifer, hand over the case, taking a thick envelope in exchange. Their eyes never met again.

Carter returned with a bottle of mescal and two shot glasses, nodding back to where the whore just exited. “I remembered you liked them thick.”

“How…” It was all Eel could get out.

“Do you know who you fucked with, amigo? Clovis Harrington isn’t some hick steer farmer. Soon as you mentioned the name, nothing I could do.”

“Nothing, eh?”

“I had to call it in.” Carter poured the drinks. “This isn’t personal, Eel.”

“Feels a little personal.”

“I know you don’t want to go back to jail.”

“Back? I’ve never been.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Eel pounded his shot. “So what now, amigo? You take the money? Hand me off to the Juárez, Zeto? Who?”

The other men in the room were far enough away that Eel could break the bottle, get behind Carter. Flush to the door, a hostage came in handy. Then again, there was a reason Carter had them positioned where they were. Eel’s short time in the Army taught him about blind spots, turkey shoots, when it was time to surrender.

“That money,” Carter said, “goes back to Harrington. Every last cent. I paid Selena out of my own pocket.”

“Selena?”

“What name did she give you?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, I guess not.”

Carter poured them each another shot.

“How’d she get here so fast?”

“She was here. Harrington owns damn near every border bar in Texas. Or knows who does. He’s built his own goddamn wall. And nothing gets in or out without his say-so. He’s a loyal employee. He knows better than to cross those boys.”

“You didn’t have to call him?”

“Me? Call him?” Carter howled. “Eel, the second you and those other dipshits took the money, you were made. Every known associate called. You think the policia can put out an APB? Ain’t nothing compared to the men you stole from. You’d’ve had better luck robbing the U.S. Mint. I don’t know who set this up—”

“You think I’m going to tell you now?”

“You don’t have to. They’ll figure it out. If they haven’t already. You were played, holmes.”

“Seven million ain’t what it used to be.”

“Seven million? Is that what you thought you were stealing?” Carter gestured back at the room, where more men gathered, local roughnecks looking for an easy payday. Everyone was for sale, three turning to six, seven, crawling out of the woodwork like cucarachas. “You don’t get this kind of greeting for pinching a cow fucker.”

So this is what friendship means, thought Eel. But he didn’t let himself think it long. Now was not the time for sentimentality.

“Harrington is in deep. Deep, mi amigo. We’re talking ops, government, shadow shit. That money was more than slush fund, more than Juárez, Zeta, and it was a fucklot more than seven million dollars. Every gang from here to the Neches uses the Bank of Harrington.” Carter shook his head. “What happened to you? How did you lose your way so bad to fall in with this lot?”

“Lose my way?” Eel tried not to laugh. But he didn’t try too hard. He gestured under the table. “I was there when you skinned your knee, three inches from that rattlesnake.”

“You think I forget?”

“Took its head off with my boot heel and a tug.”

Carter looked hurt. “You mean you saved my life?”

“More than once.”

“Sorry I can’t return the favor. Nothing I can do. You see these men? More are coming. They will make an example of you, Eel. They’ll slit your throat, pull your tongue through the hole, stick your head on a pole. Cut off your dick, stuff it in your mouth, before they fuck your corpse.”

“You could’ve just called with the bad news.”

Carter didn’t look hurt. Carter’s feelings were hurt.

Blood in, blood out.

Eel, so quick to rush to judgment, assuming everyone had a price, like that whore back in the room. He felt ashamed. He didn’t need to be told. Carter hadn’t made the trip to deliver the news; Diego had.

“Figured it best if you heard it from me.” Carter waited. “In person, like this.” He motioned between them, voice quieting. “Me. You. The way it’s supposed to be. We kick open the door, eh?”

“I’m sorry,” Eel said. He knew now that everyone he cared about, a group that comprised two, was going to pay.

Carter waved him off. “Once you made the call, well, that was that.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t be. We swore blood brothers a long time ago.”

Carter poured two more shots like it was no big thing. “Could’ve been either one of us. I mean, I’ve done some stupid shit too. You wouldn’t let me go alone.” He caught his eye, sincere. “Would you?”

“No,” Eel said, “I wouldn’t.”

Bringing the shot glass to his lips, Carter’s eyes fell to the table, rolling long enough to say, Look what’s taped underneath. Soon as they set the shot glasses down, the two men jabbed their hands into the dark depths and pulled the taped guns.

Sure, the odds were against them. Like Butch and Sundance. Eel tried to preserve the frozen moment here. Because before the bullets split the skull, it was the last scene playing that mattered most. The one that would be imprinted, seared for all eternity. And if it stopped there, in a way, that was where the story ended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8 - I Got You

By Brett Battles

 

 

 

The drone of the highway was just the tonic Benny Parker needed to sooth away the tension of the last few days. The jobs he did with O’Conner and Estevez always took a toll on him, bending him into someone he wasn’t, someone who could to terrible things.

He glanced at the duffel bag in the passenger seat. Inside was one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars in untraceable bills. The reason for the hell he put himself through.

If only all their heists were this lucrative, he’d just need to do one more and he could get out. In reality, it would be more like three or four before he could put this temporary life behind him.

Estevez wasn’t going to be happy when Benny dropped that bomb, but c’est la vie. Robbing others was Eel’s thing. For Benny, the gigs were only a means to an end he could reach no other way.

He stopped at a motel called the Rest Easy an hour before dawn. After a lukewarm shower, he sat on the bed and counted the cash.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust O’Conner. The counting was a tradition. One that, on this particular morning, started not at zero, but at one million one hundred thousand. When he finished, he was surprised to find an extra ten grand in the bag, bringing his total count to one million two hundred and eighty-five thousand. Just two hundred and fifteen grand to go.

After repacking the bag, he stretched out on the bed, put an arm through the duffel’s straps, and fell into a deep sleep.

. . . “Norris,” she said, extending a hand. “Eva.”

“Parker, Benny.”

He’d just flown in that morning, and Eva had been sent to escort him to their squad.

Attractive? Hell, yes. Five foot five with boots on, and a hundred and twenty pounds of lean muscle. Close-cropped hair, and skin tone and eyes that reminded him a little of Zoe Saldana.

“Well, Parker. Hungry?”

“Very.”

They hit it off from the start, sharing the same sense of humor, and a similar view of the world. About their only difference was that Eva had a kid back home from a previous marriage. Benny had neither a kid nor a marriage, previous or not.

There was no denying their mutual attraction, but neither ever acted on it. It was like they had an unspoken agreement that maybe, someday. But for now, the bond of their friendship was more important.

“I got you, Parker,” she would say on every mission.

“I got you, Norris,” he would fire back.

. . .By noon the following day, he was in Oregon, off the interstate and driving the backroads toward home in Oregon. The moment the chain blocking the private dirt drive to his grandfather’s old cabin came into view he felt the sense of peace he always did upon return.

The driveway wasn’t so much a road as a couple of tire ruts the forest kept trying to reclaim. Here and there, the trees encroached so close it almost seemed there was no room to get by, but he knew better.

When Benny inherited the cabin, the place had been but a few winters away from falling apart. He’d been in the Army by that point, and used whatever leave he could get to go up and work on the place. He’d been thinking that after he finally got out, the cabin would be his weekend retreat from city life. Little did he know then that when he actually did leave the service, the cabin’s quiet and solitude would be all he wanted, and he’d make it his home.

After parking, he slung the duffel over one shoulder and his travel kit over the other, and walked toward the cabin, road weary and glad to be home.

Nearing the porch steps, he stopped and frowned. The thread he stretched across the middle step before he’d left had been broken. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Of all the traps he’d set around the cabin to let him know if someone had been there, this one was the easiest to trigger. A curious squirrel, a hard wind, a bird wanting the thread for its nest. It could be anything.

A quick check of the dirt in front of the steps revealed a waffle pattern created by a pair of hiking boots. Distinctive. Not his boots.

So not a squirrel or a bird. A person.

The prints didn’t necessarily mean trouble either. He’d had his share of hikers stop by and ask for directions. Likely, that was the source, but it was always better to err on the side of caution.

He set the duffels on the ground, retrieved his pistol from his kit, and followed the prints. They led across the parking area and into the trees where they disappeared in the bed of pine needles and broken branches. A search around revealed another print on a spot of open ground. Not the same waffle pattern as the first, though. Two people? Maybe, or maybe they were made at the same time. He hunted for more prints, but came up empty.

Back at the cabin, he checked his other traps. Nothing else had been tripped, so he picked up his bags and went inside.

Like with the counting, he had a returning home ritual too. An order of how things were to be done.

One: set his kit on dining table.

Two: unlock the padlock and two deadbolts securing the basement door.

Three: carry the money duffel down the stairs.

Four: set it on his grandfather’s old desk.

Five: detach the baseboard and remove the false wall.

Six: open the safe.

The safe was large, the interior a good three feet deep by the same wide and another five tall. Even at that size, though, the one point one million it already held took up most of the space.

One by one, he added the new haul to the fund.

“Almost there,” he said when he was done. “Almost.”

Back upstairs, he warmed a can of stew, ate it standing up, and then dragged himself to bed.

. . .The wind always drove people crazy.

The undulating howl and the sand in your face and the very air you breathed blowing so hard you had to fight it just to get where you wanted to go.

Benny hated patrolling on nights like this. It felt as if an electric pulse bubbled under the surface of everything, like a buried transformer ready to explode. These were the nights better spent on base in a bunk, praying no one decided to lob a missile your way.

The whole squad was on edge. Conversations stilted. The few jokes told falling flat. And in between, long bouts of tense silence.

A half hour before midnight, the radio crackled through their APC. Gunfire reported. And since Benny and his friends were closest, they won the see-if-it’s-a-problem lottery.

“Here we go, here we go, here we go,” T-Rod said.

The others checked their equipment and remained silent. Nights like these, you didn’t want to temp the gods.

When they arrived at the provided coordinates, Crane, their lieutenant, said, “Norris, take your team and see what you can find out,”

“I got you, Parker,” Eva whispered as they piled out of the vehicle with Southside, Dolan, T-Rod, and their translator, Khaleel.

“I got you, Norris.”

It took a few minutes before they found a local who pointed them toward where the gunfire had originated.

Eva sent Khaleel back to the APC, and then led the team into a quiet neighborhood of narrow streets. Deep in the maze, they came upon a partially destroyed factory. Bomb damage. Months old at least. No way to know which side was responsible.

“Let’s check it out,” Eva said.

“Ah, come on,” Southside groaned under his breath.

“Thanks for volunteering, Southside. You, me, and Benny on point. T-Rod, Dolan, cover us.”

After activating their night vision goggles, Eva nodded to T-Rod and Dolan. Once the two men had the doorless entry covered, Eva, Benny, and Southside swung inside, rifles ready.

Room by room, they worked their way through the building. When Eva spotted the still intact door at the end of a rubble strewn room, she pointed to herself and Benny, and then signaled Southside to remain with Dolan and T-Rod.

It opened with a shove from Benny’s shoulder. On the other side, a set of stone stairs led down. Benny went first, rifle butted against his shoulder, Eva following a few steps behind. When he reached the bottom, he swung out and scanned the area.

A small room, its floor littered with toppled furniture and bits of broken building, but otherwise empty. There were two other doorways, one along the wall ahead and another on the one to the left.

He crept over to the opening on the left and peeked through. A small room, empty except for the rubble.

He shook his head as he returned to where Eva waited.

Together, they approached the other doorway. Beyond it was a hall with four additional exits.

Fan-fucking-tastic, Benny thought.

The first two rooms were filled with toppled shelves. Storage space, apparently. The ceiling had collapsed in the third room, making it impossible to get inside. There was similar damage in the last, though not a total cave in. There the ceiling had broken roughly in half, creating a kind of cavern that could be reached through a narrow opening in the wreckage.

They crawled in a few feet and scanned around. There wasn’t a damn thing of interest as far as Benny could see. He tapped Eva on the shoulder, and started motioning that they should get out of there when a rifle boomed, and a bullet ripping through the tunnel they were in barely missing Benny’s arm.

A second shot when off right on its heels, but the bullet slammed harmlessly into the rubble. A moment later, they heard someone scrambling through the cavern ahead.

“Shots fired! Shots fired!” Southside said over the radio. “Norris, Parker, are you all right?”

Benny had barely replied, “We’re okay,” when he spotted a person streak across the cavern and pull up into a gap in the half-fallen ceiling. “Shooter coming your way! South of where we came down!”

Benny squeezed through the last of the broken concrete into the cavern, and ran over to where the person had disappeared. As soon as Eva was through the tunnel, she joined him.

“I don’t see anything,” he said, looking up at the hole.

“Give me a boost,” she said.

With his hands he created a step, and lifted her until she had a grip on the broken ceiling.

“Clear,” she said after a quick scan. She pulled herself all the way up and held a hand down to Benny, helping him through the opening.

“Dolan, anything?” she said over the radio.

“Can’t find the goddamn hole,” he said.

“Don’t worry about the hole,” she said. “The shooter’s up already. Just look—”

A sound. Grit scraping the floor under someone’s foot.

She motioned for Benny to circle right, and then she headed left.

“I see something!” T-Rod said. “I think it’s the shooter!”

“Where?” Dolan asked.

“In the other room. Through that break in the wall.”

“What break?”

“Right there!”

The pause that followed lasted no more than two seconds. Then all hell broke loose.

. . .Benny woke before dawn.

Sit ups first. Five hundred, plus an extra hundred because he’d been away. Pull ups next, using the bar in the closet doorway. Two sets of fifty, and the promise of an additional set that evening. Again, as make up.

He took a shower, and started a fire in the fireplace, then poured himself some coffee and headed to the front porch to watch the sun come up. A moment after he opened the door, though, he quickly closed it again. At the far end of the clearing, where the driveway began, moonlight had glistened off the windshield of a pickup truck.

Crouching to stay out of sight through the windows, he crept over to his desk. He retrieved his Glock from the bottom drawer, then reached under the center of the desk and popped loose his Mossberg 930 shotgun from the clips holding it in place.

With the pistol tucked safely into his waistband at the small of his back, he moved into the kitchen and peered through the back window, looking for shadows that shouldn’t be there. Seeing nothing unusual, he slipped outside and snuck into the woods behind the house. A wide arc through the forest brought him to within twenty-five feet of the unfamiliar pickup, and gave him his first good look inside the cab.

A bearded man sat in the driver’s seat, leaning against the door as if asleep. Benny crept up to the vehicle and checked the license plate. California, with a frame touting a San Diego Ford dealership. A long way from home.

He moved over to the driver’s door, and rose up until he could see the man’s face.

What the hell?

While the beard was new, there was no mistaking the rest of the man’s features. It was Dolan, his old squad mate.

Benny tapped the Mossberg against the glass. Dolan jerked away from the door, blinking in confusion. When he caught sight of Benny, though, he grinned. “Parker!”

“What are you doing here?”

Dolan opened the door, and climbed out, then seemed to notice the shotgun for the first time. “You going hunting?”

“I asked you a question.”

“Chill out, man. I’m headed to Idaho to visit my uncle and was in the area, so thought I’d drop by.”

“Is that so?”

“Took me longer to find this place than I thought. By then it was pretty late, and I didn’t want to wake you.” With a shiver, he glanced at the cabin. “Mind if we go inside? I’m freezing my ass off.”

“How did you know where I lived?”

“Seriously? You talked about this place all the time, remember?”

“I don’t remember telling anyone the address.”

“You’ve heard of the internet, right?” He rubbed his hands over his arms. “Can we continue the interrogation inside before I start losing circulation?”

Benny wanted nothing more than to tell him to be on his way, but that might make Dolan curious as to why he was so anxious to get rid of him. “I got coffee,” he said, and started for the cabin.

Dolan grabbed a bag out of the cab, slammed the door shut, and hurried to catch up.

“You can’t stay,” Benny told him, glancing at the bag. “I’m not…set up for guests.”

“Relax. Not planning on moving in. Just thought I could clean up a little. Change my clothes. I wouldn’t say no to a shower, though.”

Upon entering the house, Benny hung his jacket on one of the hooks by the door. Dolan followed suit, then looked around.

“So this is the grandpa’s cabin. Not bad. Cozy, even.” When his gaze landed on the fireplace, he grabbed a chair from the table, planted it in front of the hearth, and plopped down. “You said something about coffee?”

In the kitchen, Benny set the Mossberg on the counter, and put the Glock into the junk drawer by the sink before pouring Dolan his coffee and heading back to the living room.

“Thanks,” Dolan said, taking the mug. “This place is nice and all, but man, talk about isolated. You don’t live up here full time, do you? I mean, what would you do for work?”

Ignoring the question, Benny said, “How long did they keep you in?”

For the first time, Dolan’s smile slipped. “Thirteen months.”

His sentence had been almost twice that long.

“And you went back to San Diego?”

“They weren’t going to keep me in the Army. Besides, where else would I go? Great weather, no humidity, and the ocean. What’s not to love?” He took a drink, and then set the mug down. “You mind if I take off my boots? I can barely feel my toes.”

“Go ahead.”

Dolan tugged off his boots, and extended his feet toward the fire. “Oh, man, does that feel good.” He glanced over at Benny. “You ever run into any of the old gang?”

“Gang?”

“The squad.”

“No.”

“That was some crazy times, wasn’t it?”

Benny grunted noncommittally.

Dolan downed the remaining coffee in a single gulp, then said, “So, any chance I could get that shower?”

“Sure. I’ll get you a towel.”

After Dolan was set up in the bathroom, Benny carried Dolan’s mug into the kitchen and then went back to move his unwanted guest’s boots to the door. One of them lay on its side, and as he picked them up, his noticed the distinctive pattern of the tread. It appeared to be an exact match to the print in front of his cabin.

Son of a bitch.

He set the boots by the door and retrieved the Glock from the kitchen, slipping it back into his belt. To cover its presence, he grabbed his Oregon State hoodie from the rack and pulled it on.

He contemplated leaving the Mossberg out where he could easily grab it, but he didn’t want to chance Dolan going for it first, so he secured it back under the desk. That way he’d be the only one to know its location.

By the time Dolan strolled out, Benny was sitting at the dining table, ostensibly going through the stack of mail that had been sitting there since before the Harrington job.

“You been gone or something?” Dolan asked.

“I only pick up the mail a couple times a month.”

“Really? Huh. Don’t think I could ever get used to country life.” He walked back over to the fire, but remained standing. “Say, you never answered my question about what you’re doing to make ends meet these days.”

Benny opened an envelope and pulled out an advertisement for life insurance. “A little bit of this and that,” he replied without looking up.

“That’s not what I heard.”

Trying not to show his surprise, Benny casually glanced at Dolan. “What did you hear?”

“That you hooked up with that Army buddy you used to talk about sometimes. Not from our squad. You called him…what was it? Eel?”

Benny let his arm drop naturally to his side, and began slipping his hand behind his back. “Who did you here that from?”

“It’s true, isn’t? I also heard he’s into some pretty heavy duty shit.”

Benny’s fingers closed around the Glock’s grip, and began to ease the pistol out.

“Whoa there, Parker,” a voice from the hallway said. “You don’t want to do that.” The floorboards creaked as T-Rod stepped into the light, holding a Smith & Wesson pistol. “Hey, buddy. Long time.”

Dolan circled behind Benny, lifted the back of the hoodie, and yanked out the Glock. “Well, look at this.”

“The shotgun’s under the desk,” T-Rod said.

“Is that so?”

T-Rod locked eyes with Benny and grinned. “I’ve been watching you since you came home. You still snore like a freight train.”

Dolan yanked out the shotgun, and then sat down at the table in the chair opposite Benny. He laid the Mossberg in front him. “Word around is that Estevez is in bed with some powerful people, and that he’s brought you in on their fun.”

“Rumors have a way of not being true.”

“I’m talking big scores.”

Benny said nothing.

“You remember Billy Carson? We’d see him around the base. I don’t remember what squad he was in.”

Though Benny expression didn’t change, inside, he cringed.

“I guess he knows your buddy Estevez too. Says Eel hired him for a job, promising a bigger one if things went well. I guess they didn’t because Eel never called him again. Carson was telling us the story…when was that? Last month?”

“Yeah,” T-Rod said. “Last month.”

“The part I found most interesting was that he said you were Eel’s partner. Imagine my shock. Mr. Straight and Narrow living a life of crime. I got to thinking if our old buddy Parker’s in on this, he should be able to get us in on it too.”

Fucking Carson and his big fucking mouth. Eel had paid the guy nicely for subpar work, making it clear that the dumbass was never to speak of the job or Estevez or Benny when it was over.

“So T-Rod and me, we decided we’d pay you a visit, see how we might assist in your operations. I have to say, when we got here a couple of days ago, I was surprised to find you living in this dump. I thought with all the cash you were supposed to have, you’d have fixed it up into some kind of mansion.”

“Obviously, your information is shit,” Benny said.

“I don’t think it is. We go back, you and me. We were tight once.”

That was a lie. They were never tight.

“I know you,” Dolan went on. “You’re a planner, Parker. You’d know that the smart move would be to leave most of the cash untouched. When you’d made enough, you’d skip the country, start a new life somewhere with a new identity. I should have realized that from the start.”

Benny couldn’t deny daydreaming of doing exactly that. But that’s all it had ever been, and while Dolan was right about using only the cash he needed to survive, he couldn’t be more wrong about what the remainder was intended for.

“What I want to know is where you are stashing it while you wait for the right moment. The banks report that kind of stuff to the feds, so you’d have to hide it somewhere. Which got my mind whirling around again. Hell, I thought, why ask for work when we can have all your money for doing nothing?” He smiled. “Tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way.”

“A nice story. And even if it were true, why would I ever tell you?”

“I’m asking nicely. I won’t do that again.”

“Go to hell.”

Dolan whipped up the Glock and pulled the trigger.

The bullet slammed into Benny’s left arm, spinning him sideways out of the chair.

Grimacing, Benny clamped his hand over the wound, then turned toward the kitchen, thinking he could make a run for the back door, but T-Rod was standing in the way.

The chair at the other end of the table scrapped across the floor, and Dolan walked over. “Where’s the cash, Parker?”

“Fuck off.”

T-Rod kicked Benny in the stomach, knocking the air out of the man’s lungs.

“Where?” Dolan asked.

Chest heaving, Benny eked out, “Fuuuck…off.”

Whether it was T-Rod’s plan or not, his next blow hit Benny in the head, and the world went dark.

. . .Benny hit the floor of the bombed out factory a moment after the barrage of M4 rifle fire started. Bullets and chunks of bricks and mortar flew through the air, some debris smacking down on him, but most sailing over.

“Cease fire! Cease fire,” he yelled into the radio.

The pounding continued for another few seconds before stopping. Benny lay there for another beat, just to be sure, and then pushed up and looked around for Eva. He spotted her limp form on the ground a dozen feet away and rushed over.

“Oh, God!”

Her face and the top of her uniform were covered in blood that had come from a wound on the side of her neck, near the base of her skull. The kind of wound you never recovered from.

“Open your eyes!” he yelled, not wanting to believe it. “Eva, open your eyes!” She wasn’t supposed to die. Neither of them was ever supposed to die.

Footsteps ran into the room, then slammed to a stop a few feet away.

“Is she…is she…?” Southside couldn’t get the last word out.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” T-Rod said.

“It wasn’t me!” Dolan yelled. “I swear. It’s wasn’t me!”

If the Army investigators ever discovered whose rifle fired the fatal bullet, they never released that information. Dolan and T-Rod received two-year sentences at Leavenworth for some minor charge Benny never bothered to learn. Ultimate blame for the incident was placed at Eva’s feet since she had been in charge of the squad. Benny and Southside were cleared of any wrongdoing and transferred back to the States. Though Benny had always planned to reenlist, as soon as his current commitment was up, he opted out.

Three months later, Eel called.

. . .Water hit Benny in the face.

“Snap out of it, Parker.”

Benny groaned, his arm and his head throbbing in pain. Slowly, he opened his eyes. He was sitting on one of the dining room chairs, though not at the table. Instead, he was in the kitchen, facing the back of the house, with Dolan and T-Rod standing before him.

“It’s about time,” Dolan said.

Benny glanced at his arm and saw that there was a blood-soaked dish rag tied around it.

“We took a tour of your place while you were out. Afraid we kind of made a mess of the things, but, to be clear, that’s your fault for not telling us where the money is.”

Past them, Benny could see the basement door. Though the padlock had been ripped off the wall, the heavy metal door itself was still closed.

Dolan followed his gaze. “Yeah, we already guessed it’s through there. How about you tell me where the deadbolt keys are?”

“Water,” Benny whispered.

“Keys then water.”

“Water…first.”

Dolan frowned, but nodded at T-Rod, who reluctantly filled a plastic cup with water and gave it to Benny.

Benny took his time lifting the cup to his lips and taking a drink, allowing the fog time to clear from his head.

If he let them get downstairs, he knew it wouldn’t be long before they found the safe. And if he didn’t, they’d probably kill him, then spend as long as it took to break the door down themselves.

But when you kept as much money around as he did, you prepared for situations like this.

He lowered the glass and said, “Inside the sugar bowl.”

Dolan spotted the white ceramic bowl on the counter and nodded at T-Rod. T-Rod dumped the contents on the counter. Hidden in the sugar were two keys on a ring.

“See,” Dolan said, “that wasn’t hard.”

T-Rod used the keys to unlock the deadbolts. When he swung open the door, cold air drifted into the kitchen.

“Check it out,” Dolan said.

T-Rod descended the stairs, quickly dropping out of sight. Benny could hear the thief moving around below.

After about a minute, Dolan yelled down, “You find anything?”

“Just shelves and junk,” T-Rod replied

“He wouldn’t leave it sitting out in the open, dipshit. Look for hiding places.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

A few bangs and some scrapping sounds.

“It could be anywhere,” T-Rod said.

Dolan looked at Benny. “Parker, if you don’t want me to kill you right now, you should tell me where it is.”

Benny allowed some faux doubt to cloud his eyes.

Dolan smiled. “That’s right. No reason to be stupid.”

Benny sighed, as if coming to an unavoidable conclusion. “Easier if-if I show you.”

Dolan considered it, and nodded. “If you breathe wrong, it’ll be your last.” He manhandled Benny to his feet.

“We’re coming down,” he yelled to T-Rod. He pushed Benny toward the doorway and motioned for him to go first.

T-Rod was waiting at the bottom when they arrived. Benny took a step toward him and spit in the son of a bitch’s face.

“Fuck!” T-Rod yelled. He wiped a hand over his eyes and snapped a hand out toward Benny’s shirt. But Dolan knocked it away before T-Rod could grab anything.

“Rein it in,” Dolan said.

Nostrils flaring, T-Rod said, “He just spit at me!”

“Bigger picture, Rodriguez.”

“Screw your bigger picture. He spit on me.”

“Cool it!”

T-Rod huffed and puffed for a few more seconds before relenting. “There’d better a lot of fucking cash, that’s all I gotta say.”

“Which way, Parker?” Dolan said.

Benny led them to the secret wall and slid it out of the way, revealing the safe.

“Holy shit.”

Dolan grinned ear to ear. “You are a smart man.”

“I assume you want me to open it.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Looking appropriately resigned, Benny put one hand on the dial, and the other around the side of the safe for support it seemed. As he worked the combination, his other hand grasped the metal lever that hung against the side.

After clicking the last number into place, he pulled the door open.

“Oh, yeah!” T-Rod shouted, staring at the stacks of cash.

Dolan seemed to have lost his voice, as he, too, stared, wide-eyed, into the safe.

“How much?” T-Rod asked.

“One point two million, give or take,” Benny said.

“Are you shitting me?”

The thieves took a step closer. That was what Benny had been waiting for.

Boom went the Mossberg hidden above the safe in the beams, and down went Dolan and T-Rod.

Benny staggering sideways, wincing from the noise.

Turning back, he saw that T-Rod was down for the count, his face taking a direct hit, pulverizing it. Dolan, on the other hand, was on his knees, looking around. He had also been hit in the head, but the blast had caught him on the side, blowing off an ear, unfortunately leaving his skull intact.

Benny saw the gun lying on the floor a moment before Dolan dove for it. He launched himself at the other man, hoping to pin the asshole down, but Dolan was able to grab the gun and begin to turn before Benny reached him. Their collision was underscored by a blast from the pistol. Benny’s momentum slammed Dolan’s face hard into the concrete.

Benny yanked the gun away, and stuck the barrel against the back of Dolan’s head. Delivering the justice that was years delayed, he put a bullet into Dolan’s skull. Benny held his position for a moment, wanting to be sure it was truly over, and then slumped against the wall.

As his adrenaline subsided, he began to feel a sharp pain in his torso. He carefully pulled up his shirt.

“Shit,” he whispered.

He had thought the blood covering him had all been Dolan’s, but apparently not all of it.

The bullet that had been fired when they crashed together had clipped him in the side. Fighting the pain, he reached around and felt his back, and discovered an exit wound. At least the bullet wasn’t still inside him.

Leaning against the wall, knowing that if he went to a hospital, the sheriff’s office would be informed and a deputy would be sent to check the cabin. And that would be the end of Benny’s plan. He couldn’t let that happen.

. . .Benny woke to darkness. He reached for his phone to check the time, but stopped moving the instant his side screamed in pain.

Dolan and T-Rod.

The money.

The gunfire.

Shit.

Earlier, he’d patched himself up as best he could, taken a dose of the antibiotics from his med-kit, and then passed out.

How long had he been asleep? Ten hours? A whole day? More?

He carefully swung his legs off the mattress and rose to his feet, squeezing his eyes shut with each spike of pain. Once it was bearable, he picked up his phone.

3:37 a.m.

He’d been asleep for nearly eighteen hours.

He checked his bandages. While there was a large circle of blood in the middle of the one on his torso, it wasn’t completely soaked. The bandage on his arm showed even less blood.

He made his way to the kitchen and turned on the coffee. He was going to need it. A lot of it. Before he’d slept, he’d decided on a course of action.

Though he hadn’t reached his monetary goal, what he’d already collected would have to be enough. He had a promise he’d made to himself, and he couldn’t risk something else happening before he could keep it.

After redressing his wounds, and cleaning up as best he could, he grabbed his three largest duffel bags and headed into the basement.

The smell of blood hit him the moment he opened the door. He did his best to ignore it as he stepped carefully around the carnage in front of the safe.

In his impaired condition, it took him nearly a half hour to evenly distribute the cash among the bags, and another ten minutes to haul the duffels upstairs.

By five thirty, he had Dolan’s truck packed and had returned for a final trip down the stairs. While Dolan was the closest to Benny’s size, T-Rod wasn’t that far off, and with his face already unrecognizable, he would serve Benny’s purpose best. Benny first removed all identification from both men, and then slipped his own wallet—in which he always carried one of his dog tags—into T-Rod’s pocket. He then doused both men in lighter fluid and set them ablaze. Eventually, investigators would probably figure out the ruse, but by then it wouldn’t matter.

He waited by the truck until he was sure the cabin had caught before he drove away.

Ten miles down the road, he stopped at a gas station and used an old pay phone to call 911 and reported seeing flames in the woods. No sense in burning the whole forest down.

With that done, he headed east.

. . .A few hours after he crossed the Mississippi River, the skin around his wound started feeling irritated. He hoped it was part of the healing process, but as he was driving through Ohio the next morning, he knew he had a problem. The redness was spreading. An infection. Maybe even blood poisoning.

Great.

Since stopping to see a doctor still wasn’t an option, he upped his intake of antibiotics, hoping that would do the job.

His fever began outside Erie, Pennsylvania. He swallowed half a dozen aspirin and tried to ignore it. He thought about getting a room for the night when he reached Massachusetts, but he was so close now, he wanted to just press on.

In those final hours, the pull of sleep grew stronger and stronger, but instead of winning the battle, the feeling scared him into a determination to keep going at all cost.

By one a.m., he reached the suburbs, east of Boston.

It took him a half hour to locate the house, an old one-story place on three acres that needed a little work.

Though there was a gate at the end of the driveway, it was open. The lights at the house, however, were off. He idled at the side of the road, his face red from his fever, unsure what he should do.

“I got you, Parker,” Eva said.

She was suddenly sitting in the seat next to him.

“I…got you, Norris.”

She smiled. “You’re almost there.”

“I know.”

“Thank you.”

“I…I could have done…better.”

It was only after she evaporated that he realized he should have ask her what to do.

Maybe I should walk around and clear my head.

But as he reached for the door handle, his mid-section screamed in pain. He pressed back against the seat, his breaths shallow and rapid. When the pain eased a little, he peeled back his shirt. The infection had nearly spread all the way across his stomach, and the area closest to his wound had turned black.

“No coming back from this,” he mumbled.

Taking a page out of Dolan’s book, he killed the truck’s lights, pulled onto the driveway, and stopped halfway to the house. He turned off the engine.

He stared at the house, thinking of an alternate life, one in which he visited on happier occasions, with Eva at his side. One where everything was—

He sucked in a deep breath.

He’d started to nod off. He knew what would happen if he did, and he still had work to do first.

Fighting the pain, he leaned over and searched through Dolan’s glove compartment. As he’d hoped, there were a couple of pens. He grabbed one, and the owner’s manual for the truck. Ripping off the back cover, he turned it blank side up, and began to write.

. . .Like most days, Sandra and Larry Norris were in the kitchen by six thirty a.m. While Sandra cooked oatmeal for their breakfast, Larry made lunch for their granddaughter and put it in a well-used paper bag.

It was almost seven by the time they heard Megan coming down the stairs.

“Grandpa, is someone here?” the girl asked from the other room.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Larry said. “What did you say?”

Megan appeared in the doorway. “Whose truck is that?”

“Truck?”

“The one parked in the driveway.”

Larry and Sandra went to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, there was a black pickup parked halfway down their drive.

“You two wait here,” he said. “I’ll check.”

He pulled on a light sweater and headed outside. The weatherman had said it was going to be a pretty nice day. It was already feeling that way.

The driveway had been graveled once, but years of use and the punishment of winter had exposed more and more dirt. Maybe someday he’d be able to get it done again.

He hadn’t expected to see anyone in the truck, so paused for half a second when he realized someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. As Larry neared, he gave a friendly wave, but the person didn’t respond. The reason soon became clear. The driver, a man, looked to be asleep.

Larry frowned. Why would someone park in his driveway and fall asleep? Well, he sure couldn’t stay there. He was blocking half the road, and Larry would have to take Megan to school soon on his way to work.

He walked up to the driver’s door, and was surprised to see that the window was open.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Hello?”

He rapped against the door, but the guy didn’t move.

“I’m sorry, but I need you to move your truck.”

Nothing.

He reached in and shook the guy’s shoulder, but instead of waking, the man slumped to the side. Larry could now see that the man’s shirt was blood stained.

“Are you all right?”

He opened the door and climbed in far enough so that he could check the man’s pulse, except there wasn’t any. More than that, though, the man’s skin was unnaturally cold.

The guy was dead.

As Larry started to retreat from the cab, his sweater caught on a piece of cardboard that had been propped on the steering wheel. He picked it up, thinking it was just a piece of trash, but checked both sides just to make sure first.

Not trash. Not trash at all.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Norris—

 

Not sure you remember me. My name is Benny Parker. I served with your daughter, Eva.

 

Larry did remember him. Benny had made a trip to Boston to bring them some things of Eva’s he’d had. It had been obvious to Larry that Benny was nearly as devastated as they were about their daughter’s death.

He leaned back into the cab and took another look at the driver’s face. It looked like Benny, though older and pale.

 

I don’t have a lot of time, so will keep this brief. I have something for you. I mean, for Eva’s daughter. Sorry, I can’t remember her name.

 

It’s in the back of the truck. The three duffel bags. They’re hers.

 

Larry read to the end, and then read it again. When he was through, he checked the back of the truck. Three duffels, just like the letter said.

Using the rear bumper, he climbed inside and opened one of the bags. Stacks of cash. More than he’d ever seen in his life.

 

I want you to know no one will ever come looking for the money. It’s all taken from people who didn’t deserve to have it, and often earned it by criminal means. You can, of course, turn it in. But I ask you to take some time and think about it first, and how it can give Megan—it’s Megan, right?—how it can give Megan a head start in life.

 

Your choice is simply this, when you call the police, the bags can be in the truck or not.

 

Sandra would have turned it over to the police right away, no matter how much it might help their granddaughter.

Larry glanced in the direction of the house, and noted that the truck blocked any view from there of the nearby trees along the drive. He then zipped closed the bag he’d opened and grabbed its straps.

. . . “How much is a life worth?”

It was one of those questions. You know the kind. The would-you-rathers and the what-would-you-do-ifs meant to fill time. That’s the thing about war, there was always so much damn downtime between bits of action. The sitting, the waiting, the mindless tasks, the boring patrols where nothing happened. Day after day after day after day.

“What kind of life are we talking about?” Southside asked. “I mean, you know, an old man’s? A baby’s? What?”

“One of ours,” Stevens said. He was the one who asked the question, so he set the rules.

“Hell, my life’s priceless.” T-Rod tapped his chest and then held his hands out wide to the side. “Ain’t enough cash in the world to buy this work of art.”

“The Army already bought you,” Southside said.

“Bullshit. The Army’s only renting. No one’s buying me.”

“A million dollars.”

Everyone turned and looked at Eva.

She shrugged. “I say a million dollars.”

“A million dollars?” Dolan said. “Man, that’s crazy. You can barely buy a decent house in San Diego for a million dollars.”

“Then how much do you think?” Stevens asked him.

“Gotta be at least five, right? Minimum.”

Southside laughed. “You ain’t gonna make five mil in your entire life. No way you can be worth that much.”

The conversation devolved from there into a scrum of numbers being tossed about and counter arguments being made. Benny, who was content to listen to the others chatter, thought Eva was a lot closer to right than Dolan. One point five million seemed fair to him. Enough money for those you left behind to get on their feet and maybe do something with their lives, but not so much that they would get lazy.

As questions went, Stevens’ was an all-time great, keeping them occupied for a full three quarters of an hour. By the next day, though, when the wind kicked up, making the world crazy, the others had all forgotten about it.

Everyone but Benny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9 - Racklin
by Gar Anthony Haywood

“Dude, I’m late,” the guy in the backseat said, working his way up to a good tantrum. “The fuck.”

Racklin didn’t feel like offering the little bitch any apologies, but he knew he owed him one. He pulled the Nissan over to the curb, perfectly parallel, and said, “I did what I could do. You saw the traffic.”

His passenger yanked his door open, adorable canvas laptop bag in hand, and smirked. “Shit. My grandmother could have gotten me here faster.”

And again, because he was right, Racklin just watched him climb out onto the sidewalk, slamming the car door behind him like a jilted lover, and storm off, into this Grand Avenue high rise where he’d be six minutes late for a meeting with, no doubt, some other twenty-something prick or set of pricks, both or all planning to make millions on the backs of people just like Racklin.

Or, not quite like Howard Racklin, because how many fucking Uber drivers had a retirement fund fit for the COO of General Motors?

Racklin didn’t need to do this Uber shit for the money, and he damn sure didn’t need to do it for love. He just needed the practice behind the wheel. Because it was this or nothing at all, the end of who and what he’d been all his adult life: a driver. A wheelman. The kind of professional you called when you needed vehicular transport between two points, on paved streets or dirt roads, at whatever speed was necessary to outrun all possible forms of pursuit. Racklin wasn’t the best, the best never lived as long as Racklin had, but he had always proven close enough, and after the Crystal Q job—botched up shit show that it turned out to be—wheel work had made him a very rich man.

Pity it didn’t make him a smarter one, or one with a little more luck. If Charley had taught him anything—and his stepfather had taught him everything about the criminal profession he knew—it was to get out of a game while your pockets were full and there was still an open door through which to make a safe exit. That’s how Charley had done it. He’d lost Racklin’s mother in the process, and damn near gotten himself killed as well, but in the end he’d walked away—flown away, really, his skills as an old barnstorming pilot playing a key role in his escape—with a small fortune, one he was able to live on comfortably for the rest of his life.

Racklin had been given that same chance and had blown it. The time to walk away from driving for good had been right after the Crystal Q heist, which he’d survived by a thread as thin as the hairs on a horsefly’s ass. But he hadn’t done it. He’d taken on one more job instead, not so much tempting the devil as spitting in his left eye and pissing in his right, and the cold sweat Racklin broke into today just trying to drive the speed limit in a goddamn Nissan Sentra was a direct result of that decision.

He no longer dreamed about the accident, but for weeks afterward, it haunted his sleep like a ghoul holding a grudge.

The Silverthorne Media heist should have been one of the easiest and sweetest he’d ever signed up for: a high tech software company out of the Silicon Valley, a week after its first public offering had made instant millionaires of its three college boy owners. Somebody got the bright idea to throw a big party at corporate headquarters in San Jose and share the wealth with the small staff, not by handing out iPods and gift certificates but by tossing cash and prizes around like fucking bridal bouquets. Cash, as in short stacks of C-notes, and prizes in the form of genuine Breitling watches, the kind authorized dealers insured to the tune of eight grand against theft.

Three people were all the job required: the ex-classmate of one of the owners who’d gotten wind of the event; a gunman for muscle; and a driver. Racklin’s two partners crashed the party and hustled out with the high five-figure take like kids snatching snacks at the 7-Eleven, and Racklin did the rest. No blood, no drama, and no visible pursuit. All Racklin had to do was get them to the drop in one piece.

But pursuit or no pursuit, Racklin never left a crime scene without haste. The more distance he could put between the crew and the mark before the first 911 call was made, the better he liked it. So from the jump, he had the Silverthorne getaway car, a late model Chevy Malibu with the three hundred horses of a Camaro SS’s V6 stuffed into its engine bay, tracing their escape route at an easy fifty, planning to throttle down only when instinct moved him to do so.

Near crashes and pedestrian casualties were part of the job, of course, especially on urban runs like this one. Racklin had seen more than his share of both. But in twenty-seven years as a wheelman, he’d never had a crash bring him to a stop, nor hurt anybody on foot so bad the doctors in the ER couldn’t fix them.

When the old guy in the walker stepped off the curb, he knew the odds had finally caught up with him.

There was no place to put the Malibu where it wouldn’t up the kill rate or wrap itself around a utility pole; Racklin just ran right through the poor bastard, the two guys in the backseat screaming like bitches as the Chevy launched the old man into space. All witnesses saw after that was a blur of green, Racklin standing on the car’s gas as if to pierce the sound barrier. They made it to the secluded drop site in record time, too fast for the cops to locate and give chase, but no one in the car felt like celebrating. They divvied up the take and broke off, Racklin left to trust that his accomplices would keep their mouths shut because their armed robbery had just turned into a murder rap and, like Racklin himself, they’d want to pretend it never happened as soon as their consciences would allow.

He made his way toward Los Angeles in his own ride, prepared for a long stint in hiding, and sensed almost immediately that something was badly amiss. Miles before the grapevine on Interstate 5, his hands on the steering wheel began to shake like a spooked ratter's tail and the road wouldn’t stay focused in front of him. He had to pull over twice, to vomit and let his nerves wind down, just to keep himself from plowing into the center divider or another car. Racklin kept seeing the old man climb up the windshield and across the Malibu’s roof, making a racket, his aluminum walker vanishing beneath the car’s front wheels like so much grass before a lawnmower. Why the fuck had the dumb shit stepped off that curb? Why hadn’t somebody stopped him?

Racklin made it to L.A., but he was damn near crawling when he arrived. And every time since then when he’d slip behind the wheel of a car, it was the same: the shakes, blurred vision, nausea. If he hadn’t been ready for at least semi-retirement before, he sure as hell had to start considering it now, because fate didn’t seem to have any other future in mind for him.

Still, he was a wheelman, and he wasn’t going to let go of driving without a fight. So, he traded in his Charger SRT for a new Nissan Sentra four-door, a rolling box painted hospital white with all the horsepower of a goddamned motorized wheelchair, and gave himself a reason to get in it every day and turn the key in the ignition: Uber. Running strangers from one end of Los Angeles to another, listening to their inane stories and whiny complaints, never letting the Sentra’s speedometer climb above sixty-five, no matter how much they offered to tip or swore was on the line if they failed to arrive at Point B on time.

In the beginning, he could only take short runs, nothing that would require him to use the freeways. And even then, he’d sometimes have to pull over in a rush to puke at the curb, making some excuse having to do with a rough night out or a change in his meds.

By now, however, he’d worked his way to the point where the cold sweats didn’t come until the Sentra was doing the posted limit on the 405, or some impatient jackass in the back was goading him into running yellows on the street. The streets were still the worst, because that was where he had killed a man guilty of no greater offense than being old and slow and careless, and every intersection seemed to hold the promise of a similar disaster. On the street, Racklin’s eyes darted from side to side, up to one mirror and over to the next, like a cop on patrol, and he tapped his brakes at any sudden move a pedestrian might make. He felt like a fool.

But it was either this or quit, and he wasn’t going to quit. He couldn’t. The need for speed was in his blood, and he was going to feel the rush of it again, without his knees buckling and his stomach collapsing into a knot, or die trying. Because Charley had instilled that in him too: persistence. Work with what you’ve got and turn it to your advantage, no matter how long it takes. Charley had made his own fortune converting what should have been a fatal stroke of bad luck into a million-dollar windfall, so he wasn’t just talking out of his ass.

Racklin was an Uber driver, and he was going to go on being an Uber driver until he finally got his chops back and could call himself a wheelman again.

. . .

“Hey,” the little blonde in the tight yellow skirt said, “you remember me?”

Racklin thought he did, sort of, but he couldn’t place her.

“Not really. Help me out.”

“You drove me to my mother’s place last week. You’re an Uber driver, right?”

She snuck a peek at the sticker in the Sentra’s rear window. Racklin had been pumping gas near his apartment in Echo Park when the girl walked up, he didn’t see from where.

“Yeah, that’s right. Your mother’s?”

“In South Pas. You picked me up around six thirty at work in Glendale. You really don’t remember?”

Racklin really didn’t. “Sorry. Maybe it was an off night for me.” He figured her to be somewhere in her early twenties; too old to be jailbait and too young to be a good time entirely devoid of guilt.

“Sure. Are you busy?”

“Busy?” Racklin hung the gas nozzle on the pump, screwed the Sentra’s filler cap back on.

“I could use another ride. I was just about to call for one when I saw you here. If you’re not on, it’s no problem. I just thought…”

“Sure, sure,” Racklin said, opening the passenger side door for her. “You can make the call on the way.”

She wasn’t going to South Pasadena today, just a strip mall in Hollywood. Or so she said. When Racklin pulled the Nissan into the cramped little lot and a guy jumped in the backseat with the lady the minute she unlocked the door for him, Racklin figured she had another destination altogether in mind.

“Yo, Rack ’Em Up, how you doin’?”

It was Danny Eaves, the hired muscle from the Silverthorne job. Danny was a pink-nosed, sliver-thin Army vet with dishonorable discharge papers somewhere in a drawer, and he shared his general disposition with a dim-witted hornet trapped in a jar. He was also, Racklin thought, a premonition realized; a loose end that should have been tied up back in San Jose with two bullets behind the ear.

Eaves cheerfully gave the blonde a wet kiss. “Thanks, baby.”

“You lunkhead. What the hell are you doing here?” Racklin asked, spinning around in his seat. But, of course, he already had a good idea.

“I need a ride, what else? And I didn’t think you’d come if I asked for one, so I had Kelly here ask for me. Worked like a charm.”

Kelly smiled like she’d just won a gold star. No wonder Racklin hadn’t remembered taking the blonde to her mother’s in fucking South Pas last week.

“How did you find me?” Racklin asked.

“Find you? Shit, man, you found me! I came down here for a little R and R, hit the beach and babes for a weekend, and who do I see last Saturday, dropping some old gal off in Venice in this shitbox little Toyota? Ol’ Rack ’Em Up himself, baddest wheelman in the business!”

“It’s a Nissan,” Kelly said.

“What?”

“This is a Nissan, not a Toyota, D.”

“Whatever.” Eaves looked back at Racklin. “Anyway, I’ve been followin’ you around, off and on, ever since. And I gotta hand it to you, Rack, man. An Uber driver. Gotta be the last thing anybody’d expect a man like you to be doin’ with himself.”

“Get out, Danny,” Racklin said.

“What?”

“I said get the fuck out of my car, asshole. I’m not going anywhere with you today.”

“No? You didn’t see this piece in my hand when I got in? You don’t think I’ll use it?”

Racklin had seen it: a blue metal 40-caliber, bound up tight in the wiry man’s right fist. Racklin’s own gun was in the pocket of the driver side door panel, where he’d have to leave it until Eaves dropped his guard or the forty, one or the other.

“Get this motherfucker started and move. Don’t matter which direction, just move.”

Racklin did as he was told.

Eaves sat back in his seat and spread his legs, enjoying the ride. “Rack, this is my friend, Kelly. Kelly, say hello to my old partner, Rack ’Em Up.”

“Hi,” Kelly said.

“Fuck you.”

Eaves laughed, tickled as usual by anything that made Racklin see red.

“What do you want, Danny? Spell it out.” Racklin had the Sentra up to thirty-five, a crawl he was certain Eaves would take notice of any second now.

“You ever hear the expression, ‘some things you can’t unsee,’ Rack? Well…” He grinned and shook his head. “That’s my sitch: I can’t unsee you, hidin’ out here in Los Angeles. I know you’re here. So if somebody were to ask me where you’re at…” He let it go at that.

“Somebody like who?”

“I’m not talkin’ about the cops. And I don’t know their names. I’ve just heard that some powerful people are lookin’ for you. And that they’d pay good money to find you. Real good money.”

More loose ends, Racklin thought. This time from the Crystal Q heist, no doubt. O’Conner? Estevez? Or the man Racklin had brought into the job who double-crossed them all, Will Ellison? His bet was O’Conner. O’Conner had shaved Racklin’s take from the Crystal Q job by fifty grand as payback for Ellison’s act of betrayal, and he might have decided that amount wasn’t payback enough.

“Hey, Rack. Step on it. You’re drivin’ like an old woman.”

Racklin tried to will his right foot to lean harder on the gas, but his foot wouldn’t move. Between his flaring vehophobia and Eaves’ veiled threat of blackmail, this was the best he could do without causing a six-car pile-up.

“How much?” Racklin asked. Because the sooner they could agree on a price, the sooner he could yank the Sentra to the curb and let Eaves and his little girlfriend out.

“I think a hundred even would be fair. Don’t you?”

A hundred grand was almost twice Racklin’s take from the Silverthorne job.

“A pointed stick up your ass is what would be fair.”

Eaves laughed again, and this time, the girl joined in. “Be that as it may. My price is one-zero-zero, jack. In cash by noon tomorrow. You copy?”

“And I’m just supposed to trust you won’t come back for more later. Is that it?”

“I’m not a greedy man, Rack. I can go a long way on a hundred Gs, and so could you while I was spending it. You understand what I’m—Jesus!”

Racklin had suddenly stood on his brakes, pitching them all forward in the Nissan’s interior like loose mannequins. The idiot in the mini-van who’d seemed intent on running the red at the upcoming intersection had done nothing of the kind. But for Racklin’s money, he may as well have pole-axed the Sentra and killed them all, because Eaves would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know now that something was seriously wrong with his old “partner.”

“What happened? Why did you stop?” the blonde asked, dumbfounded. They were sitting in the middle of the intersection, car horns blaring in waves behind them.

Drenched with sweat, Racklin got the car moving again.

“Damn, Rack,” Eaves said. “You really have lost it, haven’t you? You can’t drive no more.”

There was no point pretending otherwise, but Racklin felt compelled to try. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I told you. I’ve been watchin’ you for days. I thought this granny-behind-the-wheel shit was all an act. But it’s not, is it? You’ve really lost your nerve.”

Racklin didn’t say anything.

“It’s because of that old man you hit, ain’t it? The dumb fuck.” He chuckled like a kid at a birthday party.

Eaves’ laughter was almost enough to make him draw his Smith & Wesson in the door pocket to his left. Take his chances in a close-quarters firefight inside a moving vehicle, if that’s what it would take to shut him up.

But Racklin just kept driving instead.

. . .

Before Charley and Racklin’s mother, Nadine, began robbing banks, Charley flew planes, first in an aerial circus where the pair met, and then as a crop duster. But neither occupation paid worth a damn nor held enough excitement for either of them, so Charley and Nadine turned to a life of crime. Racklin was trapped in boarding school up in Oregon during this time. His father, the circus’ abusive and alcoholic PA announcer whom Nadine had left for Charley, had placed him there, terrified of the influence his ex-wife might have on their only child if he didn’t wield his court-appointed custody rights to hide the boy away.

And then Nadine died. Technically, she was declared dead after seven years in absentia, but the truth was a lot more nuanced: She took a bullet through the driver side door of the getaway car in the last heist she and Charley would ever pull together and Charley torched her body with the vehicle. The New Mexico bank job had turned sideways on a monstrous scale and covering his tracks became imperative to Charley’s survival. But the heist had also made him a rich man, and as soon as he was able to arrange it, he negotiated an unofficial deal with Racklin’s father for the boy’s custody. Prior to Nadine’s disappearance, Racklin used to spend several weeks every summer with his mother and Charley, and Charley had grown rather fond of the kid. Both he and Racklin knew Nadine would want them to be together.

So Racklin had been there, under Charley’s wing, ever since, right up until the old man’s death in a Vegas convalescent hospital eight years ago. Over the course of their time together, what Charley hadn’t taught him about being a thief and a first-class driver like Nadine, no one on earth knew.

Today, Danny Eaves had Racklin by the short-hairs, and Charley was no longer around to offer advice on how to make the asshole disappear. If it was true that ghosts from Racklin’s Crystal Q past had a bounty on his head, he had to figure out a way to deal with Eaves, permanently, and within the twenty-four hours Eaves had given him to do it.

Eventually, Racklin came up with a plan he thought Charley would approve of. But the first step would easily be the hardest: he had to pay Eaves off.

. . .

“Thanks, Rack ’Em Up. Pleasure doing business with you,” Eaves said, zipping up the bag full of cash Racklin had just handed him.

“Go fuck yourself, Danny.”

The laugh again. Eaves tossed the bag in the trunk of his car, taking one last look around the parking structure to make sure Racklin had come alone. “Don’t guess I have to tell you this is goodbye. You can come lookin’ for me if you want, but you ain’t gonna find me.”

“Famous last words,” Racklin said.

But driving off with Racklin’s hard-earned money, Eaves sure looked like a man he was never going to see again.

. . .

In fact, Racklin saw Eaves only eight hours later.

The reed-thin gunman entered his apartment in Fresno after his flight up from Los Angeles and Racklin greeted him with a blow to the back of his head, dropping him to the floor in the dark like a tipped cow.

“We meet again,” Racklin said, returning custody of the black leather bag Eaves had been carrying to its rightful owner.

Eaves shook his head, trying to clear it. He recognized the voice, but the gun in his assailant's hand was the only thing he could really see with any certainty.

“Rack?”

“I had a guy in the business tell me once, Danny: prepare for all eventualities. I couldn’t be sure you or Simmonds would try something like this after I killed the old guy in the walker, but I had to take precautions, just in case.”

Simmonds was the setup man for the Silverthorne job.

“Hold on a minute…”

“So I had somebody keep tabs on both of you. I looked upon it as an investment in my future. I’ve known this was your crib since the day you moved in.”

“Hold on, I said! How—”

“How’d I get here so fast? Well, I sure as hell didn’t drive.” Eaves’ eyes had adjusted enough now to the dim light that he could see the small grin on Racklin’s face. “We both know that much, don’t we?”

He put three bullets in Danny Eaves and left.

. . .

The first time Charley ever took Racklin up in his old biplane, Racklin knew he wanted to fly.

Take-offs and landings were hard for him now, of course. The blur out the windows to each side reminded Racklin of nothing so much as driving a car the way he once loved to drive a car, pedal to the metal, balls to the wall. But there was no one to hit on a runway, no sudden movements to jerk your attention from the wheel, so flying just didn’t hold the same terror for him.

Still, the two modes of transport held a similar rush. Like driving a car at its limit, flying was the purest form of freedom, lending a pilot the sense of being untethered from the world and all its suffocating hypocrisies.

It was at a private flight school in Indiana that Racklin met Ellison, the pilot he’d recruited just months ago for the Crystal Q heist. An instructor at the school, Ellison was a natural pilot and probably always had been; where Racklin was a sparrow, Ellison was a hawk. Still, they’d made fast friends and had kept in touch. Racklin hadn’t seen Ellison’s potential for backstabbing until it was too late, and his former flight instructor had made a shambles of the Crystal Q crew so as to try—and fail—to take more than his fair share of the take.

Ten thousand feet above green patches of farmland in northern California, en route from Fresno Yosemite Airport to Bozeman, Montana, Racklin checked his instruments again and patted the leather bag occupying the Cessna 182’s passenger seat like man’s best friend. And maybe the money Eaves had died for, and all the rest Racklin had socked away, was, in fact, the only friend Racklin had left. It was for damn sure he couldn’t count anybody Ellison had left alive back in Fort Worth in that group, most especially Ellison himself.

If so, Racklin could live with being alone. Friends were overrated. Money wasn’t. If there was one thing a wheelman knew how to do, it was run and hide.

Even one who couldn’t drive a car the way he used to anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10 - Showdown

by Gary Phillips

 

 

“He’s supposed to be holed up in here,” said the one in the passenger seat wearing glasses.

“The cash Harrington spread around says so,” Ellison said from the backseat.

“Word is he’s panicked and on the run,” added the man with the glasses.

The driver looked at this man but didn’t say anything.

Harrington’s considerable reputation and money, which went further than hands-on beatings, had been used to run down the known associates of the man called the Financier once Zach Culhane had given up his name after the wife had given him up.

Culhane had been tortured and branded mercilessly under the bland stare of Clovis Harrington. He spilled, was chained up, and then disposed of like the slab of meat he’d become. Harington’s tactics hadn’t produced much else of use because he didn’t know much else. Though a bounty was issued for the Financier. As to the career criminal seemingly only called O’Conner, or Connie to his friends, as was alleged, Ellison knew his name and that of Hector from their time on the scouting mission over the Crystal Q. But he knew little else about the two.

But from what the maid had said, Flora whatever her last name was, the one who’d been in the wine cellar, her account confirmed it must have been a masked O’Conner down there breaking into the safe. As he had heavy steps, she guessed the man with him was older but she could see he knew what he was doing. Not that she knew anything about cracking a safe, but while he seemed to be of a certain age, he handled himself efficiently. Ellison concluded that must have been Hector.

When Harrington’s money rained, it was learned that one of O’Conner’s past crime partners was an old-school box man named Hector Gonzales. Thereafter, a freelance team had been engaged to make inquiries about Gonzales—who it was rumored was out of the country. And when the job had gone down, Ellison had a man called Eel in the cabin with him throwing out the firebombs. His name and description also went out on the underground grapevine.

But all this rigmarole had also produced the one in the passenger seat sitting across from Harington’s other man, who drove. The lean man who’d addressed Ellison was in his forties, a lined face with steel grey hair that looked like it had been cut with him sitting at the kitchen table and a towel around his shoulders. He wore a loose sport shirt and cotton pants, rubber soled work shoes, and dark socks. To top it off, he also sported horn-rimmed glasses with thin lenses. He looked like such a civilian, he could be middle management of a big box store chain. The guy a checker called from out back when the frozen food display started leaking. He even had a square John kind of name, George Collier. Only, he’d been sent in by the board of the North Texas Citizens Improvement League.

Harrington, Ellison had noted, hadn’t been happy to see Collier. He was soft-spoken and observant, not given to talking if not necessary. Collier wasn’t about the bluster. His effect on Harrington, given to inflating himself and letting everyone know within earshot he was the fiercest cock of the walk, was subtle. Harrington still barked orders but Ellison could tell the cattleman was conscious of the other’s presence, deferential to him even. Like a teacher aware of the principal sitting in the back of their classroom, judging them silently on how well they controlled their classroom. And now he was here with them. It made sense given O’Conner had pulled the string to take down the slush fund.

“How about over there?” Collier said, pointing.

“Okay,” the driver complied. Ellison hadn’t gotten this man’s name. The second one, sitting in back with him, was nicknamed Shim. What that was derived from he had no idea and wasn’t interested. But before they’d left the ranch to take a private flight out here to Southern California, it was clear that in the field, Harrington’s men would take orders from Collier, no question.

The driver guided the black Lincoln Town Car to a stop atop a low rise. He shut the car off and almost instantly, Ellison was aware of how beguiling the air conditioner had been. The three exited the chilled car into the afternoon heat of Riverside County. Ellison knew there were cities out here, even pristine golf courses that looked like the grass had been spray painted in lush greens, but where they were was sparse and flat, with sandy dirt underneath their shoes. Not exactly the desert proper, but close enough for his tastes, Ellison reflected.

“How do you intend on finding him in this?’ Ellison said to Collier.

“Good question.” To the driver he said, “Pop the trunk, will ya?”

The driver thumbed the key fob and the trunk unlatched.

Collier retrieved a pair of binoculars from there and, coming back to stand with the other three, scanned the junk yard down below. No, Ellison corrected, it was more of a recycling center on steroids. For what Collier was viewing were several acres of used shipping containers, some of them forty-feet long and others twenty-feet long. Whether the longer or shorter version, the height and width seemed the same.

There were rows of double stacked containers under an overhead metal skeleton of railing and metal lattice work while others were in the open. There seemed to be little to distinguish why there were those under the arrangements and those that weren’t.

“Why the hell are these way out here with no ocean around?” the driver said to no one in particular.

“The containers have a second life as portable offices, storage for your business, or even housing.” Collier rattled this off like explaining price changes on the tomatoes to the staff as he continued studying the area. Where they had parked was the eastern side of the container compound. There were no gates, as who the hell could steal one, and as far as Ellison could tell, no housing around containing tagging prone teens. There were though a number of heavy duty fork lifts about for moving the shipping containers around.

Collier lowered the binoculars, pointing. “Toward the northern end is an office, several cars littered around this. There’s some sort of fabrication set up that way too. There’s a two-story L-shaped facility made out of the containers with glass windows installed. That’s where I saw some sparking from welding going on. Other than that, there’s no personnel about. Certainly not on this end of the facility.”

“How could he be inside one of those tin cans and not melt?” Ellison said. He sounded on edge and scolded himself to be cool in the company of these men.

Collier pointed again. “There are power lines snaking around some of those overhead constructions and thick cable crossing the ground thereabouts. He could have fans going, hunkered down in one with windows a couch and flat screen. Who the hell knows. But we have to find out.”

He then regarded Ellison. “’Cause it’s not like you nor I have much of a choice.”

O’Conner had killed his crime partner, who had also been his life partner. He’d made the decision that late afternoon on the gravel parking lot to see to it he ended the thief’s life. Why else would he have made his unwise alliance with Harrington. He knew he was a dead man, but he had to end O’Conner’s days first—see the light go out of his eyes as he took him out.

From the still partly open trunk the crew took guns out. Ellison hung back. He knew he wasn’t going to get a gun. The driver and Shim each acquired a lightweight but deadly efficient Ingram M11. The weapons’ stocks were folded in and each had an extended magazine and a suppressor on the end of the barrels. Collier lifted out a handgun and closed the lid. The four then descended. Collier spoke as they did so.

“Like it or not, it makes sense to fan out as we’ve got plenty of ground to cover. Sweeney,” he said to the driver, pointing, “you take that quadrant. I’ll take more or less down the middle and you two that way,” he said to Shim and the pilot. “Only call if you tag him or have him pinned down.”

The four split off into three and began scouring the storage yard. The men walked along hard packed earth amid rows of the stacked cargo containers. Ellison limped slightly from his leg wound. The containers were varied in coloring from several shades of blue, yellows, greens, reds, oranges, and white ones as well. Letter and numbers were marked on the narrower ends of the containers that were designed to be opened for loading or unloading. Cawing crows perched atop the containers, their heads turned as their ink deep eyes watched the interlopers prowl about.

“Why don’t you go that way?” Shim said to Ellison. He indicated a side passageway they were almost upon.

Ellison was going to object, but to what end? He’d realized before they left Texas that if a lead to O’Conner developed, he was to be the staked goat, the bait to draw the thief out. Tucked into his sock was a steak knife he’d palmed from Harrington’s ranch house. He did as ordered and moved cautiously along the passageway. The efficiency of the containers’ design was such that they could be stacked on top of each other and in rows, butting up one against the other. But periodically there would be spaces between these which Ellison concluded must have been done to let the workers walk around the stacks. Width-wise, there were passageways between the rows and he could see these were wide enough for the forklift to access.

The way he’d gone let out onto a clearing of a sort where modified shipping containers were on display. These were not stacked one on the other, but here they sat individually in a semi-circle in this area. Two of the containers been changed over so that the side of the metal box had been retro fit to open on hydraulic pistons as a makeshift awning. Sliding glass doors had also been installed in the thing. The interiors were staged as modest offices. The other two containers had been altered into modular living quarters with built-in beds and cubbies.

Ellison heard a sound behind him and spun around quickly, crouching, hand going toward his hidden knife. A crow now rested at the end of on one of the upraised awnings glaring down at him. “Shit,” he muttered, his nerves taught like harp strings. “Get it together.” The crow shifted side to side on his clawed feet as Ellison started away.

. . .

As discussed with Collier when they were taking their guns from the trunk, Shim was to make it seem that Ellison was off alone. When he’d sent him down the passageway, Shim hadn’t gone off in another direction but had crept along a parallel passageway. From his vantage point he could see Ellison in the area with the modified containers. He’d seen when he’d turned around, reaching for his calf. He figured that meant he was carrying a blade. Hey, you couldn’t fault a guy for initiative, he concluded. Ellison began moving out of the clearing, and Shim gave him a few beats to get ahead, then he too moved into the space with the display settings. He intended to walk around one of the changed over offices to yet another passageway among so many, but in that way again roughly matched Ellison’s steps.

He cleared the corner of the office container and was along the passageway of more double stacked units. This one was narrower than the others, two men abreast couldn’t walk along it. The gunman was crossing a gap between dual stacks when he was struck in the temple. He sagged in the knees and O’Conner sprang from the gap onto him.

“Motherfucker,” Shim growled, off balance. He tried to raise his Ingram but was having difficulty. O’Conner had slipped a restraint of a nefarious design past his shoulders. His arms were pinned to his sides. The thing was essentially a large, wide belt that could be adjusted. It was padded and therefore the occupant, apparently a mental patient, Shim guessed, wouldn’t cut themselves struggling against the leather.

Shim fell back against a container opposite and was about to curse again but O’Conner raised the collapsible baton he’d first hit him with. Viciously, he whipped the flexible shaft on the man’s head several times rapidly and with considerable force. Shim was not able to muster the strength to get out of his leaning position. The hoodlum’s eyes went vacant and he collapsed to the ground, blood soaking his short-cropped, sweaty hair. His skull was fractured and if the membrane was torn, he might well develop an infection and die painfully. All this had happened in seconds. A statue-faced O’Conner picked up the hood, draped him over his shoulder, and, noting the head wound didn’t drip much, carried him off to deposit him in a shipping container. He returned and retrieved the Ingram, having already searched the unconscious man briefly and relieved him of his smartphone. O’Conner moved off.

. . .

Sweeny had a bad feeling about this job. He’d heard about O’Conner second hand before this and it was his understanding this was not an individual given to hasty moves out of uncertainty or fear. The impression he’d been left with was he was a man not to be fucked with. Added to that, all this up and down the aisles in this place gave him the heebie-jeebies. He was getting a crook in his neck from alternately looking up at the tops of the containers and slowing his tread to peek in the gaps between the stacks. That son of a bitch could be anywhere, he reasoned, and if not for the bonus that Harrington had offered, he might just have gone AWOL. They’d passed civilization on the way in and surely there was a meat locker cool tavern back there where a fella could have a beer or two and ruminate on his future. He was pushing fifty and lately had come to the realization that the life of being hired muscle lacked upward mobility.

He neared the end of yet another damn passageway and a body ran past up ahead. Instinctively, he crouched slightly as he let loose a set of rounds that whisped about like ghostly insects. His bullets pinged off the sides of the containers and thumped into the dirt. He knew he didn’t hit anybody. He considered doubling back, could be this O’Conner had help. What made them think this dude was alone in this goddamn place? Wide-eyed, Sweeny glanced over his shoulder. Hell of a time to have his mid-life crisis, he groaned inwardly.

Resisting the urge to call Collier, as that would show weakness, he pressed forward. Damn him if the sun hadn’t moved in the sky and the shadows at the end of this corridor didn’t seem longer, deeper. For good measure, he shot the Ingram again, spraying rounds from right to left in case O’Conner was hidden in the gloom. No body fell out onto the ground. He went ahead and reached the end without incident. He was at an intersection of containers, passageways to either side of him and one up ahead.

“Christ,” he gasped. Which way had O’Conner been going? He looked right. He was sure it was that way he’d run. Shit fire, but he’d have to find out for sure, or if Collier didn’t shoot him, he’d make sure everyone knew he was a big pussy.

“What a life,” he said, shaking his head as he steadied his weapon. Sweeney eased along the walkway between the containers. He had both hands on the Ingram, one on the grip, finger extended across the trigger guard, and the other hand supporting the truncated frame. He wanted to be as accurate as possible. There would be no second chance. Despite being on point, he had the impression the looming metal boxes were closing in on him, constricting the light and cutting off his air. He stopped as he neared another gap between the containers. This one seemed larger than the others and an alarm jangled inside his head. O’Conner was there and would cut him down as soon as he passed by. But he’d get the drop on him, he’d come out on top.

 A wry grin on his face, Sweeny rushed forward and peppered the gaps to the left and right ahead of him.

 “Yah, yah, yah,” he yelled, rounds spitting from the end of the heated suppressor.

 He counted on his bullets ricocheting off the ends of the containers, flying everywhere along the length of those gaps. Skip rounds, some called them. In this way, either O’Conner was hit or he had to retreat, the gunman reasoned. As he ran forward, he pulled the empty magazine out and, as it dropped to the dirt, inserted a fresh one. He eyed one of the gaps and, turning, went prone, aiming his gun at the gap opposite. No body, no blood.

“Shit.” Pressed to the ground, the breath caught in his throat. He got to a knee, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He closed his mouth, willing his body to slow so he could hear. But he heard nothing, not even the crows. He rose, wary, sweat on his brow and his heart pulsing in his neck. Where the hell was this bastard? Maybe he’d taken a powder or maybe the whole damn place was rigged to blow. No, that was foolish, wishful thinking, Sweeney knew. He was here. O’Conner wasn’t the type to ignore loose ends, and that fuckin’ pilot was a loose end who’d tried and failed to kill him and take his money. He could see where that might be a burr in his saddle.

 What if, Sweeny wondered, prowling about again, he could make a deal. Give him the pilot on a silver platter and they went their separate ways. Yeah, that could work. But there was Collier to deal with. Still, this was a big yard. He could make the agreement with O’Conner and Collier wouldn’t be the wiser. O’Conner could pull the pilot into one of these containers to have at him as he pleased later. Tie and gag him and lay low, how long would Collier want to be here? All fuckin’ day? Naw, he could tell by how he acted that Collier was a dollars and sense guy. That’s why the League had sent him in. The heist and Harrington leaving dead bodies and fallout in his wake had to be a matter they wanted to get settled.

 For instance, far as he could tell, that fine-ass wife of his wasn’t among the dearly departed. What was that about, and how come an asshole like Harrington had let her be since, if it was true, she was in on the robbery? Big business was about—

Sweeney stopped again, the hairs at the base of his neck standing on end. He looked up, firing. Two crows fell to the ground. Their small bodies distorted from where his bullets had torn through them. One of the crows had an eye shot out but its remaining orb glared unblinkingly at his killer.

“Dammit,” he said, unnerved. Behind him, metal on metal banged.

“Look, O’Conner” he began, trying to turn, trying to show he wasn’t a threat, that he wanted to be his ally. He wasn’t even a quarter of the way around when the .380s from the gun O’Conner had confiscated ripped into him. Sweeny was dead before he crumpled to the dirt.

O’Conner had exited a door that had been added to one of the containers on one of the forty-foot side post its arrival at the yard. This was common as the various containers were pre-prepared for their after-market uses. He bent down to the body and applied gauze and tape to the fatal wound. He did this so as to not leave a blood trail. Using a fireman’s carry again, O’Conner lifted Sweeney off the ground. He strode off with him like he’d done with Shim.

. . .

“Shim,” Ellison said, louder this time. “He’s not going for it.” No answer, though he half expected that too. But knowing the man should be shadowing him and realizing he wasn’t, he was certain he was dead or at least laid up. They’d been roaming around this place for the better part of an hour and he was now back before the modified containers.

There was the shuffle of footsteps and he glanced over to see Collier on the side of one of the boxy offices. His handgun was down at his side and he stared across the expanse at the pilot. For several moments the two men regarded each other as if strangers at an impasse on a one-lane bridge. Collier came closer.

“I spotted some blood and spent shells scattered about in the section Sweeney was searching,” the bespectacled man said evenly. “I would surmise O’Conner has dealt with he and Shim, who doesn’t answer his phone. Their Ingrams are missing too.”

“Why hide the bodies?”

“Maybe he has help. Clearly, he didn’t hole up here in desperation,” Collier said, more for his benefit than anything else. “Or maybe he’s just fucking with us, keeping us guessing.”

Ellison had an odd sense of relief. Possibly, in Collier’s estimation, he still had value. Though it could be O’Conner was saving the best for last and Collier was next up to be eliminated. He said, “Now what, send me up and down the aisles and hope he bites?’

Collier looked off at a far point. He looked back. “He’s going to pick us off as we head back to the car.”

“Then call for backup. You must have people out here.”

Collier adjusted his black frames. “By the time I arrange that, we’d be dead. I don’t think he’s going to wait around and let that happen.”

Ellison had a sour look on his face as if he had a hole in his stomach. “We’re dead if we stand around. You must have more firepower in the car.”

“There is.”

“Then like you said, what choice do we have?”

Collier pursed his lips and began walking. Ellison soon fell in step beside him. Collier was about to speak, and that’s when Ellison knifed him, jabbing the steak knife in his side and relieving him of his handgun. The knife was dropped to the ground.

“The hell,” the League’s man wheezed, grimacing.

Ellison pushed him and Collier took a few steps backward, tripping over his own feet and plopping down on the ground on his butt. “This won’t help you,” he said.

 “I’m going to help myself.”

 When Ellison jogged around the corner of the container, footfalls receding, Collier took out his smartphone. But before he could dial 911, other footsteps approached. He knew who it was. He looked up to see him backlit against the sun. Even given the distortion of the angle, his impression of O’Conner was his size, big, solid, like he’d been put together with iron slag and tensile wire, and only went into motion when necessary. His hands appeared unusually large to Collier. In one of them was the recognizable outline of the M11.

“Before you gun me, O’Conner, maybe you’ll listen to a proposition I have for you.”

“What would that be?”

“I’m not one of Harrington’s crew.”

“Who are you?”

“The League, I represent their interests.”

“And their interests are in eliminating me.”

Collier winced as he shifted, his hand pressed on his wound. Crimson stained his fingers. “Well, see it from our perspective. Any enterprise will act in the stead of its members. Such is not unusual.”

O’Conner raised the weapon. “That’s right.”

“But,” Collier said, holding up the bloodied hand, “there can be certain circumstances that cause a re-evaluation of the normal directives.”

“You being wounded and all.”

“And you clearly are not going to stop until you’ve caused considerable disruption to the course of things. There are matters in the works that do not need unnecessary scrutiny. Really, you know, it’s not like it’s your money.”

“It is now,” he said flatly. “The League wasn’t going to build daycare centers with it.”

“Point taken. If Harrington were to back off, if a détente could be reached, how would that be?”

O’Conner recalled that picture of Harrington he’d first seen when he’d begun his research. “He isn’t.”

“But I would talk to him. I could do that. Like any member of an organization such as ours, he is not immune to the desires of his other board members.” He winced again. He would need to make that call soon, he reasoned, pain lancing his abdomen.

“Your board may not see it like you do.”

“I can try. I do have some influence.”

“Where’s the pilot heading?”

“I wouldn’t want to guess. You might take umbrage,” Collier huffed hollowly.

“But you have some idea. Man like you would have done his research and assembled information on me and him, a wild card. A double-crossing bottom feeder who weaseled his way into you all’s grasp as a way to avoid being among the hunted, to try to buy enough time until he could angle an escape. It’s not like he’s proven he has that much usefulness as a bloodhound.”

“He did over sell,” Collier allowed. “Though that’s understandable given the circumstances.”

“Well, it’s not like he had a future as a member of Harrington’s crew. Think of this as expediting what was already going to happen sooner or later.”

“Still, there are lines a professional shouldn’t cross.”

O’Conner hunched down. “He would.”

“I’m not him.” Collier said firmly.

O’Conner regarded the man then reached for his smartphone lying next to his leg on the ground. He blew the dust off and wiped off his bloody hand. He then pressed Collier’s right thumb on the phone’s physical button to activate the device. He then touched and swiped the screen for several seconds and found the app he was looking for. He tapped it alive, his amber eyes intent on the screen. Momentarily, a satisfying grunt rose in O’Conner’s throat.

After O’Conner left, Collier used Shim’s phone which he’d exchanged with him. His hand shook slightly as he punched in the emergency number and he hoped he wasn’t going to pass out from shock before he could tell them his location.

. . .

O’Conner had surmised correctly a man like Collier, a detail-oriented sort, would have any car he was in tied to a GPS app. Just in case matters went south. Sure enough, he was able to track Ellison in the Lincoln on the man’s phone back to the Los Angeles area and a place called Lawndale. The municipality was on the edge of what was called the South Bay of beach cities. Hawthorne Boulevard, which further north became La Brea Avenue, bifurcated the small city and also intersected the 405 Freeway, which O’Conner had exited. From what he observed through his windshield, this was a majority Latino enclave, though there was a noticeable presence of blacks, whites, and Asians too. The housing stock was modest to creeping gentrification of mid-century models. The Lincoln was parked on a residential street a few blocks east of Hawthorne with single-family homes and low-slung dingbat apartment buildings. Around the corner on one end of the block, not too far from where the Lincoln was parked, was a senior care facility called Golden Gardens. On the opposite end, the way in which he’d come, at the intersection of that street, a numbered one and Hawthorne, was a strip mall with a sheepskin seat covers shop, a beauty supply outlet, and Le Magnifique nail salon. He found a place to park and got out of his car. He placed Collier’s phone on the ground and stomped it into pieces.

As he did so, O’Conner wondered if Ellison came to roost here or if he simply dumped the Lincoln and obtained other wheels, maybe even caught the bus or called up one of those driver services to take him elsewhere. A black and white rolled by as O’Conner stood on the end of the block, hand in his pocket. It was a sheriff’s car and the female deputy inside didn’t seem to pay him any attention, but he knew better than to be complacent. A dispatcher’s voice crackled over her radio. It would not do for him to get busted when he was close to solving part of his problem.

He started walking even as the car went away from him. He could feel those cop eyes centered on her rearview mirror, watching his back. O’Conner turned off the block and headed over to the main drag. He loitered in a donut shop slash Chinese food joint over a tepid cup of coffee. Two gardeners were in there discussing boxers and the best flowers to plant for this climate. O’Conner then walked back some fifteen minutes later, figuring the deputy, if she had circled back, would be gone by now.

The Lincoln was still parked when he returned to the street. He frowned, considering what to do next. Walking up and down the block was a sure way to get spotted if Ellison was still around. On the other hand, he needed to be certain of his options. He took a breath and started off. He’d make one circuit of the block and hope the odds were in his favor and Ellison was holed up with a cold one while he too considered his next moves and not camped by a window. O’Conner noted the makes of cars in driveways and discounted the lawns where there was a child’s wagon or tricycle. He couldn’t see Ellison being chummy with the family type. Then again, nobody could imagine O’Conner living in a subdivision, so who knew? But for the time being, he eliminated those abodes from his calculations.

Around back at one of the apartment buildings, he stood in an empty car slot and listened to the noises from above. A heavyset woman came out of the laundry room pulling a basket of freshly done clothes. He nodded at her as if he belonged there and she didn’t give him a second look. Overhead, O’Conner heard a sports talk show on and a vacuum cleaner going. O’Conner didn’t hear Ellison’s voice. A little further on toward the end of the block, the parking for another apartment building was marked off in front. In the corner of the windshield of a late-model pickup, parked with the back end toward the wall, he noted a parking decal for the Compton-Woodley airport. He knew from Racklin that Ellison had done smuggling jobs. It was a thin lead, but it was worth pulling on. He memorized the truck’s license plate number and, back in another public establishment on Hawthorne Boulevard, called on one of his encrypted phones.

“This is O’Conner. I need some additional information,” he said to the hacktivist when the line was answered. “Shouldn’t take you long, but I’ll meet your rate.”

“Go ahead,” the disguised voice said, a tone of bemusement lurking underneath the words.

Soon, he knew who was the owner of the vehicle and the connection to Ellison was much more solid. Emil Xactos was thirty-seven and had a part-time job handling freight at the Compton-Woodley light aircraft facility less than thirteen miles away. He was a competition surfer and a licensed pilot, and also flew charter flights. What the hacker also uncovered was Xactos had been the person of interest in a drug and cash smuggling operation. But he hadn’t been indicted. This could not be a coincidence, O’Conner concluded. It had to be that Ellison was going to get taken over the border by his old compadre. Maybe some airstrip in a small Mexican village they’d used often in the past. To lay low and see if the opposing forces after him would cancel each other out.

He didn’t think it would be long before Ellison was in transit again. But he had to be someplace to keep watch yet not be conspicuous. Squinting against the sun’s rays, he scanned about.

“Hmm,” he sounded. O’Conner walked over to the rest home. There was a parking lot on the side bordered by a low wall. He went through a side door entrance and into bracing, manufactured air. He used the bathroom and wandered around, none of the staff bothering him. Several other adults his age and older were present, some coming out of patients’ rooms and others entering to visit a loved one. There was a vending machine and he bought an over-priced turkey sandwich dry as the Sahara.

He left, willing himself to eat the less than desirable food. At the end of the lot was the low wall, shrubbery behind that and a cyclone fence behind the greenery that looked out on an alleyway. He returned to his car then eventually drove it back to the facility and parked it nearer to Golden Gardens. The rear of the building abutted the low wall. Climbing on this, he could make his way along, crouching down below the windows letting into the rooms. From inside one of them a baritone voice hummed various tunes. The paralleled parked cars ended several feet before the end of the building so he didn’t think there was much chance of him being seen.

O’Conner had taken a small soft-sided bag with him. From this he took out gloves and, putting them on, tore away some of the shrubbery. He then climbed the cyclone fence and, getting to the top, was able to lean over and reach the top of the roof. He let his feet go from the fence and the soles of his shoes were now on the building’s wall. He was between the windows but he knew from being inside they were high enough up the wall an elder would have to stand on their bed to see him. He clambered up onto the flat roof, and also went flat. He bellycrawled to the right place on the lip and this afforded him a look at the apartment building he assumed Ellison was in. Hours passed.

Past seven, the sun not yet down, Ellison and another man he took to be Xactos came out to the pickup. While O’Conner was vain and hadn’t yet admitted to Gwen Gardner he needed glasses for close-up reading, his long vision was still good. He could make out both men. He scrambled from the roof.

“The fuck,” Xactos said as he started driving the pickup away.

“A flat?’ Ellison said. When the truck had started off, there had been a kind of rendering noise coming from underneath.

“No, that can’t be it. But I better see.” He put the vehicle in neutral and set the brake. He was about to open the door when Ellison yelled.

“Oh, shit, O’Conner, no, wait…”

. . .

The bullets obliterated the side passenger window and entered in a downward angle the body of the pilot who slumped forward, dead. A man in a black hockey type mask and a handgun with a suppressor talked to Xactos from that side of the pickup.

“Keep your hand on the wheel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When the police come, tell them everything, except, if I was you, I would not remember my name.”

“Yes, sir.”

. . .

O’Conner had put the child’s tricycle underneath the pickup. Collier’s checking up on him hadn’t disclosed he was a part-owner in the shipping container customizing concern. Hector Gonzales had sent him a message so he had to make a detour. But then he was headed back to Texas to settle matters for good.

 

 

Chapter 11 - Hector

By Richard J. Brewer

 

 

Michael Cochran sat in the Ford Explorer, his breath fogging the air.

“So now we have him,” said Morris from the backseat. “Let’s take him, find out where the money is, and get the hell back to somewhere warm.”

“I second,” said Eddie.

“Third,” said Dayton.

Cochran wasn’t about to give the go ahead. It wasn’t his call. That would have to come from Harrington, but he did hope that call would come soon. For one thing, they needed to keep things on the down low, and time mattered. Right now, they were unfamiliar faces in an unfamiliar town, and if they didn’t get to business soon, they ran the risk of drawing attention to themselves. Cochran did not want to be one of “those guys” that people remembered once the shit came down.

“What do you think the story is with the woman?” said Eddie.

“Think they’re a thing?” said Morris.

“I bet he’s boning her,” said Eddie. “What do you think, C?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care,” said Cochran.

“Yeah,” said Eddie. Continuing like Cochran hadn’t spoken. “He’s boning her. She’s his side thing.”

“Dude,” said Dayton. “What is she? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? And he’s, what? A million years old?”

“Oh,” said Eddie. “You telling me that when you’re his age you won’t be wanting any young pussy? You just gonna sit around and listen to podcasts and shit?”

“She doesn’t live there. He’s got that big-ass house and she doesn’t even live with him. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What? You never heard of ‘Poon on Wheels?’ All the old folks use it. I think it’s covered by Medicare. There’s something going on there.”

“She wears one of those headwrap things.”

“So?”

“So doesn’t that mean she’s religious or somethin’?”

“Yeah, ’cause religion and sex, those two things never hook-up together.”

“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” said Cochran. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”

“Good by me, man,” said Dayton. “I haven’t been able to feel my feet in over an hour.”

“Fucking Minnesota,” said Eddie.

“Fucking Minnesota in fucking December,” said Morris.

It was five days before Christmas. The temperature, according to the readout on the Explorer’s dashboard, was four degrees below zero. The four of them had come up from Texas as soon as they had received word on the old man’s whereabouts. Thanks to the pilot, Ellison, and a little info from the late and non-lamented Culhane they learned what name the old Mex was using and, more importantly, where he was using it. After that, it was only a matter of showing up, confirming the intel, and doing the job.

Truthfully, Cochran hadn’t been sure what Minnesota would be like in December. He was Texas born and raised and had never been out of the state. He knew it would be cold this time of year, but Christ on a pony, not this cold. Sure, it got cold in Texas, but this was enter-the-core-of-your-bones-and-never-leave cold. The weather wasn’t what mattered though. What mattered was that Gonzales was here, and if he was here, then the money, or where to find it, was as well. The woman was unexpected, but again, she wasn’t what mattered. He would prefer she didn’t get in the way, he hoped she wouldn’t get in the way, but if she did, well, that would be too bad for everyone.

Cochran and his men had been in town for the past couple of weeks and been following Hector that whole time. It was easy to do. It wasn’t like his day to day was complicated. He lived in an old two-story Victorian house. Mornings, he’d take a walk around the neighborhood, giving a wave hello to his neighbors as they left for work. Sometimes he’d stop and shoot the shit with someone before he ended up at the local diner where he’d grab a cup of coffee at the counter and read the newspaper.

“Who the hell reads newspapers anymore?” said Eddie.

Around noon he’d have lunch, then head back to the house where he usually stayed for the rest of the day. Twice he was met by the young woman, once for morning coffee and once for lunch.

Cochran had Morris followed the woman.

“She’s a teacher.”

“Teacher?”

“Yeah. Over at this elementary school. She walked through the gates and all the kids came running up to her. It was all, ‘Oh, Mrs. Samir, this! Mrs. Samir, that!’ Then the bell rang, she herded the little shits into a group, and they all went inside.”

“Samir? What kind of name is that?” said Eddie.

“How the hell do I know? It’s some “not the fuck from America” shit. .”

“So what’s the connection with the old guy?” said Dayton.

“I’m telling you…” started Eddie.

“There’s something going on there!” finished Morris and Dayton with a laugh. Even Cochran had to give up a piece of a smile.

The house was mid-century wood frame, and currently decorated for Christmas. A string of multicolored lights encircled it, and a large handmade wreath, a mixture of pine branches and round bright red holiday ornaments, sat at the center of the front door. The whole thing had a Norman Rockwell feel to it and made Cochran shake his head. If he had half the money Gonzales was supposed to have taken from Harrington, he’d have been living in Acapulco or Hawaii. Someplace warm with sandy beaches and lots of alcohol, that was for sure. Not this freakin’ sub-zero, ass numbing place.

Cochran was just about to start the car when his cell phone rang. He picked it up and held it to his ear.

“Hello.”

“Is it him?” said the voice of Harrington.

“Yes, sir,” he said to his employer. He pulled up a paper copy of an old driver license photo. “Hector Alejandro Gonzales.”

“St. Peter, Minnesota,” said the voice. “For fuck’s sake.”

“That the boss?” asked Eddie.

Cochran made a shushing gesture at the man sitting next to him. With a tap of his finger he put the phone on speaker so the rest of the men could hear the conversation.

“It took long enough to find him,” said Harrington. “What the hell is an old beaner doing all the way up there?”

“Hiding out from you, sir,” said Cochran.

“Any sign of the money?”

“No, sir,” said Cochran. “Actually, quite the opposite.”

“What do you mean?”

“He lives alone in a house. We took a quick look inside. Gonzales has some clothes, a few books, a bed, TV, the usual household stuff. Nothing special. None of it new. TV isn’t even a flat screen. We couldn’t find any bank statements. He doesn’t live like someone with half a million dollars to draw on.”

“What about the people around him? He got friends?”

“He’s seems friendly enough with the people in the neighborhood. There’s this woman—”

“There ya go,” said Harrington. “Who is she? Girlfriend?”

“Not that we can tell,” said Cochran. “She’s a school teacher. No major connection that we can see. He’s met her for coffee, lunch. One night she came to the house and brought him a plate of cookies and one night a casserole or something.”

“She stay the night?”

“No, sir. Just brought him some food and left. Didn’t even go inside. I think she was being neighborly. It seems like that kind of town. They look to be just friends, nothing more than that. Sir, we can take him right now if you want. We can bag him and have him in front of you in a few days.”

There was a silence on the other end of the phone that went on long enough that Cochran began to think he’d lost the connection. He was just about to redial when the voice came from the speaker.

“So no sign of where he’s got the money?”

“We get him, we get the money,” said Cochran. “It won’t take long to make him tell us where it is.”

“If he has it,” muttered Eddie.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Eddie, sir,” said Cochran. Giving the man a “shut the fuck up” look. “He’s concerned that this Gonzales may not be the Gonzales with the money.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, sir, he’s not acting like someone who’s come into a bunch of stolen cash. Are you sure your intel is correct? I mean, yes, it’s the guy you gave us to find. But are you sure it’s the guy from the job?”

“Hector Gonzales,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “Hispanic male, sixty-eight years old, did a three year stretch in San Quintin for robbery. And he’s a known collaborator with this guy O’Conner. They’ve known each other for years and pulled a bunch of jobs together. It’s him all right. It’s him and he has five hundred thousand dollars of my money.”

“He’s not exactly living like a king here, sir.”

“So he’s a cheap son of a bitch. Fuck him,” said Harrington. “It’s him. I’m sure of it, and odds are he’ll know where we can find this fucker O’Conner. Do it.”

“Sir?”

“Bag him and make him tell you where he’s hidden the money.”

“You don’t want us to bring him to you?”

“I don’t need to see his face,” said Harrington. “The only faces I want to see are the presidents on the stacks of bills he stole. Get the money. Punch his ticket and get back here.”

“Yes, sir,” said Cochran. “We’ll get it done.”

“And find out if he knows where this O’Conner is, or where any of the other assholes are who were part of the robbery.”

“Yes, sir,” said Cochran. Then, “Not sure how cooperative he’ll be once we’re done with him on the money thing.”

“Keep at him,” said Harrington. “The money’s the primary objective, but if you can get him to give up any of the others, that’s good too. He can save us some time. Losing an ear or a finger can make people more than willing to give up information.”

“Hold in mind, sir. He’s an old man. He might not be able to take too much pushing.”

“It’s not like the outcome is going to be any different one way or the other. As long I get my money, anything else is a bonus. We found Culhane and we’ll find the rest of them eventually, with or without this wetback’s help.”

“Yes, sir,” said Cochran. “What if the woman should show up?”

“Is that a real possibility?”

“She’s come to the house twice since we’ve been here.”

“I don’t like things that can come back and bite me in the ass,” said Harrington.

Cochran said nothing.

“Did you hear me?” said Harrington.

“Yes, sir,” said Cochran.

“All right then. Call me when it’s done and you’re on your way back,” said Harrington. His tone brightened. “We’ll throw a barbecue to celebrate.

“Well, thank you, sir, that sounds—” But Harrington had already cut the connection.

“Okay then,” said Cochran to the others. “Let’s saddle up and get this over with.”

“’Bout fucking time,” said Eddie.

The four men exited the Explorer and began to walk down the street toward the house, their shoes crunching in the snow.

 

Hector Alejandro Gonzales stopped at the doorway to the bedroom, his right hand reaching up to grip the frame for balance as he bent over, the pain in his abdomen making him grimace. He took in a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh as the pain subsided to a more bearable ache. Straightening up, he entered the room. With a sigh he sat on the edge of the bed and surveyed the four walls around him. Until he’d come to stay in this house he’d never spent more than a year in any one residence.

When he first arrived in St. Peter, he’d, not for the first time, been on the run. He and O’Conner had pulled a decent job that had landed him a good bit of swag, fifty thousand in raw, uncut diamonds, but it had been a high profile heist. So he was looking for a place to hold up and sit on the proceeds for a while before attempting to fence the stones.

The sign in the window had read simply “room for rent.” The pregnant woman who had answered the door, Maria Delatorre, formerly Maria Fernandez, was friendly and, Hector remembered thinking, beaming in her expectancy. Her husband, Luis, worked construction and doubled as a local handyman around the neighborhood. They had bought the house three years prior. It had been in pretty bad shape at the time of the purchase but the two of them had put a lot of effort and money into renovating it. With four bedrooms and three bathrooms it was more house than a young couple just starting out needed, but there were hopes to fill it with children—the one about to be born being the first of what would hopefully be a happy brood. But despite having done much of the work themselves, the renovations had put a sizable dent in their finances, leading them to rent out the room. The extra income would be helpful in making ends meet. With Luis at work, Maria had shown Hector the room. Set at the back of the house, with its own bathroom just across the hall, he remembered thinking it was the perfect place to hunker down for the next few months. Keep his head low until things had cooled down enough for him to turn the diamonds into cash and move on.

That had been seven years ago.

Three years into his stay and two years after the birth of their son, Joey, Maria was a widow.

It was mid-January and Luis had been working on a construction site in a nearby town. He was on his way home after a long day. He would have been tired. It was later surmised that he had been rounding a corner at a speed incompatible for the winter conditions. He hit a patch of ice, lost control of his truck, careened off the road, and slammed into a tree. He was rushed to the hospital where he lingered for three days before succumbing to his injuries, leaving his grieving wife a single parent and deeply in debt. There hadn’t been any life insurance. They had talked of it often, but there never seemed to be enough money. Consequently, there would be no compensation money for Maria and her son.

By that point, Hector, to his surprise, had become a part of the family. With Luis gone, Hector’s role grew. He often babysat for Maria when she worked late at one of the two jobs she had to take after her husband’s death. He made the boy’s lunch each morning, or made sure he had enough money to buy lunch that day at the pre-school he attended. He also took the boy to school and picked him up afterward. Sometimes he stayed to help the teachers as a volunteer. He’d read stories to the kids and help with the serving of school lunches. Once in a while he’d slip an extra helping or two to some of the kids in line. This particular school served an area of the city that was, to say the least, less fortunate than other sections. An extra apple or slice of bread on a plate could make a world of difference to some of the children he saw. His current situation had forced him to cut back on his work at the school.

After school, he and Joey would play games before Hector made dinner. Along the way he became Tio or Unca Hector to the boy, an honorary moniker that was not discouraged by Maria and brought an unexpected warmth to the old man’s heart.

What she did contest was Hector’s offer to buy the house from her. He knew she struggled each month with the mortgage and he saw it as way to take some pressure off the single mom. She looked at things differently.

“I can’t take your money, Mr. Gonzales,” she said. “You need to keep your savings to supplement your Social Security. You need it for your old age.”

“Maria,” he answered. “Take a good look at me. How much older age do I have? Better you and Joey have my money than the government. This way you won’t have to work so hard and I will have a fine house to enjoy what time I have left.” He didn’t bother to tell her that he wasn’t collecting any Social Security and never would. He’d never had a real Social Security card in his life, and as for what time he had left. Well, that was something else.

After much back and forth Maria had finally consented to the sale. Hector had paid her more than market value for the house which led to more back and forth discussion, but in the end she accepted the money. The only condition he placed on the sale was that she keep the ownership of the home in her name.

“But then it is like you don’t own it.”

“I own it,” he said. “I’m paying you for it. It’s mine.”

“But if something happens to you?”

“Then you do with it as you please.”

“But your family.”

“Maria, I have no family. You and Joey… I don’t want to argue. I can do this. Let me do it.”

In the end, there had been tears and, eventually, acceptance. And more tears six months later when Maria and Joey had moved to Florida. Her mother, who had escaped from Cuba in the ’60s, lived there along with some aunts and uncles, and she felt it was important for Joey to learn about her side of the family and their history.

Waving goodbye at the loaded to the gills SUV until it turned the corner at the end of the block, Hector walked up the wooden steps to his house and discovered that somehow he’d, without thinking about it, without planning for it, and certainly never expecting it, gone and set down roots.

Hector had come to the U.S.A. from Mexico the old-fashioned way. He crossed the border in the dead of night with nothing but the clothes on his back and a gallon jug of water. He was twelve years old. He was alone. He’d had a mother but she had died when he was seven. There had been a father, but his mother never got around to telling him who it was. In the end, what did it matter?

After her death, Hector had lived the life of a street urchin—begging for change, avoiding predators, selling Chiclets gum to tourists, and thievery. Once he crossed the border into the land of the free, that latter choice proved to be the most lucrative of options available to him.

Oh, he tired the straight and narrow. He took jobs away from plenty of white true Americans. He picked fruit. Painted houses. Washed dishes. Washed cars. But these jobs always found him working for someone else. He needed to work solo, be his own man with no one telling him what to do, and so he fell back on more familiar ways.

He made sure to avoid the gangs. He might have been young, but despite the old saying that proclaimed the virtues of safety in numbers, from what he could see, the incarceration rate as well as the mortality rate in gangs suggested that they offered very little in the way of safety. He also hated tattoos. Eventually, time and circumstances led him to becoming a B&E man. It was less violent and less risky than drugs or armed robbery. He started with cars and then moved on to apartments and homes. An open window or a poorly secured door provided plenty of opportunities to make fast cash. Case a house. Wait for the occupants to go out for the evening or away on vacation and it was all yours for the taking.

His safe cracking skills came more out of necessity than choice. It was easy to grab loose cash or whatever of value was left lying around a house that could be fenced quickly, but the real money was hidden in lockboxes and home safes. The first was simple enough to grab and force open at a later time, but it was the second, the safes, tucked into walls or sunk into floors, that held the cream, and they took an expertise to open that he didn’t possess.

At nineteen, Hector was serving his one and only jail term when he met Finny Adaire. Finny was old, older than Hector was now, and was also waiting out his first jolt. He had been cracking safes for over forty years when Hector met him. It was an uncommon relationship, an old Irish criminal at the end of his career and a young Mexican ladrón at the beginning of his. Maybe it was that. The old man was alone and suffering from a variety of ailments. He could see the carrion boat coming his way and, possibly, that made him pay more than a casual interest in an upstart like Hector who kept to himself and didn’t associate with any of the undesirable prison elements, or maybe he recognized a bit of himself in the boy. Finny had grown up alone on the streets of Belfast before making his way as a teenager to America, where he learned his trade and became one of the best box men in the business.

Hector once asked him how he’d come to be sent up.

“A man said ‘trust me,’” he said.

“And?”

“And I fuckin’ did,” said Finny. “And you can believe that won’t happen again. Fool me once. I should have known better. In this life, trust isn’t something you need to proclaim, it’s something you earn.”

The two men had become friends, and when Finny was finally released from prison, he walked out of the gates to find a classic, coal black, 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 special sedan waiting for him, a grinning Hector sitting behind the wheel. Finny walked along the length of the car, admiring the well-polished exterior, he put his bag in the trunk, and then settled himself into the passenger’s side of the car.

“Where to?” said Hector

“Is there a bar close by?”

“More than one.”

Finny settled back into the soft, warm leather upholstered seat and shut his eyes.

“Dealer’s choice,” he said.

Thus began a most profitable partnership. When Finny died seven years later, he had taught Hector everything he knew about the business. There wasn’t a lock the young man couldn’t pick, a security system he couldn’t bypass, or a safe he couldn’t crack or blow with an expert use of explosives.

It was sometime later that Hector met O’Conner. The criminal was looking for someone to break into a large walk in safe, set in a high-rise office building. Hector had been referred to the man by the Financier.

The safe held two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold coins. The electronic security system had been complex and had taken Hector nearly an hour to bypass. Once inside, though, the actual opening of the safe only took ten minutes. Hector had walked away from that job with a fifty thousand dollar payday and a working relationship that would last for over a decade.

The Crystal Q job had netted him five hundred thousand dollars. The biggest payout of his career. But then those two assholes, the pilot and his accomplice, had tried to take it away. It was a good thing O’Conner had been prepared. The double cross had failed and left the accomplice dead and the son of a bitch pilot wounded, gone, and penniless. O’Conner had redistributed the take among the remaining crew, then everyone scattered in seven different directions.

That should have been the end of it, but then he’d gotten the call from O’Conner.

“He talked,” said O’Conner. “Culhane and the Financier are missing. I’m thinking they’re both probably dead.”

“The fucking pilot?”

“Yes,” said O’Conner.

“And you think they got to Culhane and the Financer?”

“It’s a concern.”

“So what? They were connected. He doesn’t know all of us.”

“Someone always knows someone,” said O’Conner.

“So what are you doing?”

“Keeping my eyes open. Thinking that something’s gotta happen.”

Hector was quiet.

“You might want to consider taking a vacation,” said O’Conner.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

“You okay?”

“Sure,” said Hector. “I’m fine… Just running some things through my head.”

“Seriously, you old bastard,” said O’Conner. “Take the money. Go somewhere. Lay low until this thing blows over.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“It will,” said O’Conner.

“You sound pretty confident.”

“I’m…”

“You’re what?”

“I’m just running some things through my head.”

“Hah.”

“You watch yourself, Hector,” said O’Conner. “I’ll let you know when things clear up.”

“I will.”

“You sure you’re okay? You don’t sound right.”

“Well, I just found out some super rich, pissed off Texan one per-center might be gunning for me. That can change the way a man sounds.”

“Fair enough,” said O’Conner. “I’ll call you.”

“Okay,” said Hector.

O’Conner disconnected and Hector felt the world around him get a bit colder.

Now, two months later, he knew they had come for him.

Hector opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out his vape pen. With a click he sucked in a lung full of heated cannabis oil, the cannabinoids delivering a soft relief from the pain in his gut. The diagnosis had come nine months ago. Well before the Texas job. The doctor, with his most serious face, had sat with him and talked about options, the first of which would be a surgeon gutting him like a fish to get what cancer they could, followed by chemo and radiation. The odds were against him beating the disease. The surgery and treatments would more than likely only buy him a few more months. Months of discomfort and pain with the end result being the same as if he did nothing. At sixty-nine, Hector couldn’t really see the point.

He’d first noticed the black Ford Explorer cruising by the house a week ago. He saw it again later in town and again a few hours after that parked down the street from the house. Inside were four men, all looking grim and unhappy in the Minnesota cold.

That’s when he began to make his plans.

Cochran and his crew climbed the steps of the house. The windows were dark. They assumed the old man was in his room asleep. Still, they were as quiet as they could be as they approached the front door. From their previous break in they knew that the only thing guarding the house from the evils of the outside world was a standard deadbolt. Pulling out his tools, Dayton had the door opened in just a few minutes.

Once inside, using hand signals to communicate, there had been a quick search of the first floor. As they’d found before, the house was filled with simple, non-expensive furniture. The only extravagance seemed to be a beautiful six-foot Christmas tree with a few brightly wrapped packages sitting around its base. Once they had confirmed there wasn’t anyone in the bottom floor, they all gathered at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. It was then that the lights came on.

Hector was sitting quietly on a chair at the top of the first landing. Guns quickly came up and pointed at the old man, who continued to sit, his arms crossed in front of him. He had a bemused look on his face.

“Madre de Dios,” he said. “How long did it take you to open that lock? Three minutes? Four? And then you clomp all over the place. How much noise were you looking to make? That is just sad.”

“Don’t move!” said Cochran.

“I will say you did a good job tracking me down,” he said. “But it wasn’t just good legwork, was it? That perra of a pilot gave me up.”

“Does it really matter how we found you?” said Cochran. He continued to point his gun at Hector. “We’re here. You’re here. That’s the main thing, isn’t it? Oh, and the money. There’s that too. So, where is it?”

“Money? That’s why you are here? You want money? I’m sorry to say, mi amigos, I don’t have anything on me. I do have a change jar in the kitchen, though, where I keep my spare change. There’s at least twenty bucks in there. Maybe more. It is all yours if you want it.”

Eddie chuckled but stopped when Cochran gave him a cold stare. The leader then turned his attention back to Hector.

“You really going to fuck with me?” he said.

“Trust me,” said Hector, his eyes serious. “I am not fucking with you. There’s no money here.”

“You went through a half million dollars in two months? Right.”

“Well,” said Hector, a slight smile coming to his lips, “there was a time in Buenos Aries. I’m thinking I was a little younger than you. It wasn’t five hundred thousand dollars, but it was a lot and it was all gone in one glorious week. Oh, now that was… Have you ever been to Buenos Aries? No? You don’t know what you are missing. But no, I didn’t spend the money. Though who told you it was only half a million?”

That got the men’s attention. The guns came down a bit.

“You saying there’s more than that?” said Eddie.

“How much more?” said Morris.

“Don’t talk to him,” said Cochran. “He’s full of shit. He’s just talking bullshit.”

“Where’s he gonna go?” said Morris. “Maybe he is talking bullshit. Maybe. But what if he’s not? Harrington only wants his share of the money back. Right? He says that’s five hundred thousand dollars. If we give him that, he’s happy, we get paid, and we’re done. But if there’s more to be had, we can split that up four ways. Then when we’re done, Harrington gets what he expects, we get paid, and we get a little bonus on top of that. Happy all the way around.”

He looked back up the stairs. “How much more, old man?”

“At least another three or four hundred thousand,” he said. He gave an apologetic shrug. “At my age, I’m bad about keeping track of my money.”

“And you’ll tell us where all this money is if we let you go,” said Cochran. “Is that it?”

“Oh, I’m just answering questions,” said Hector. “Did you think this was a negotiation?”

“What the fuck?” said Morris.

“Told you it was bullshit,” said Cochran. He raised his weapon again. “Where the fuck is the money?”

“Right now?” said Hector. “It is in a safe place. A good place, I think.”

The men were silent.

“The towel head bitch,” said Eddie.

“You should watch your mouth,” said Hector. “But no, she doesn’t have any of what you are looking for.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” said Cochran.

Hector’s only answer was a smile.

Corcoran looked around at the house, filled with Christmas decorations. The wreaths, the tree with wrapped packages sitting beneath it. A bitter smile came to his face.

“I get it,” he said. “You think we’re stupid?”

“That is neither here nor there,” said Hector. He rose from the chair. “It doesn’t really matter what I think. Does it?”

“Hands, motherfucker,” said Cochran.

All four men raised their weapons and pointed them at the old man.

Hector dutifully raised his hands, showing his empty palms.

“We’ll see who’s stupid. Get your ass down here. We got some talking to do. And trust me, you are not gonna like how the conversation is going to go.”

“So,” Hector said. “What do you think of my house? Never in my life did I ever think to own a home. With my lifestyle…ay, it never seemed to be in the cards.”

“Yeah, it’s a great fucking house,” said Cochran. “Get down here. You are going to tell us where that money is.”

“You guys are determined. I have to give you that. Finding me. That took determination. Coming all the way here? That took determination. But your surveillance skills? I’m sorry to say that they are not worth shit. I clocked you right away. How long you been here? I say a couple of weeks. Am I right?”

“He just keeps talkin’ shit,” said Eddie.

“I’m only asking once more, old man,” said Cochran. “You can walk down or I’ll have Eddie here put one in your leg and you can fall down.”

“All right,” said Hector, his hands still raised. He took the first step down the stairs, his foot landing squarely on a pressure plate hidden under the carpet runner. Immediately a series of pops could be heard coming from outside the building.

“Guys?” said Dayton, speaking up for the first time since they had entered the house. “You hear that?”

“What the hell?” said Cochran.

“Like I said,” said Hector. “Your surveillance skills are shit. You know. I really loved this house. Feliz Navidad, gilipollas.”

The pops heard inside the house came simultaneously with a series of bright flashes outside the windows. Each of the multicolored Christmas lights encircling the home had been filled with a mixture of plastic polystyrene, hydrocarbon benzene, and gasoline, more commonly known as Napalm. The liquid fire burst from the bulbs and immediately coated the front of the building’s old wooden frame. Anyone looking from the street could see the flames ignite and spread their way up the walls.

Inside, Hector took another step down the stairs, tripping another detonator plate that sent an electrical signal to each of the presents under the Christmas tree, causing them to explode, sending a shower of fire across the floor and around the room. In a matter of minutes the building was engulfed in a fire that burned so hot there was no chance of saving the building. It was all the fire department could do, once they arrived, to keep the flames from spreading to the surrounding houses.

Two weeks after the fire, Sarrah Samir was sitting at her dining room table when she heard the loud thump of something being drop on her front porch followed by three short knocks on the door. Rising from the table she walked over to the door and put her eye to the peephole. Through it she could see a man with distinct features dressed in a heavy black coat and a knitted watch cap pulled down to cover his ears. As she observed him he raised a gloved hand and gave another three raps at the door. With the safety chain latched she opened it a crack.

“May I help you?”

“Sarrah Samir?” said the man.

“Yes.”

“You knew Hector Gonazles?”

“Hector?” she said.

“Yes,” said the man. “You knew him?”

Sarrah smiled. “Yes. Yes, we were friends,” she said. “And you?”

“We were friends as well. From work.”

“I did not know he still worked. I thought he was retired. What kind of work do you do?”

“Consulting.”

“In?”

The man thought for a moment. “Securities,” he said. Hector was very good at helping me in… opening new accounts.”

Hector was a good man,” she said. “He used to volunteer at our school. Mostly in the cafeteria, preparing and serving food to the children. We are a poor school and any help is appreciated.”

“You’re a teacher.”

“Third grade. Thomas Paine Elementary. I am also an admistrator, a playground supervisor and sometimes a janitor. It was always a pleasure to have Hector with us. The children loved the days he came to school. Sometimes, he would sit in on the classes. He would tell stories.

“Stories?”

About places he’d lived in his life. Mexico, South America, different parts of the United States . They were usually silly stories, but the children loved them. He used to….”

She paused, an odd look had come over her visitor’s face.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. No,” he said. “It’s just… I guess you never really know someone.”

“How did you know about me?”

“Hector,” said the man. “He contacted me a week before he…before the fire. He told me about you. About you being friends.”

“I’ll miss him,” she said, then. “Oh, but I’am being rude. You should come in. I can make tea.”

She undid the chain on the door.

“I appreciate the offer, but I can’t stay. I’m only here to pick up… ”

He turned and gestured behind him at a black Cadillac parked at the curb.

“Hector’s car.”

“Yeah. It’s a….”

“1968, Fleetwood Cadillac,” said Sarrah. “it’s a…”

“Classic,” the two said together.

“He has told me this many times,” said Sarrah.

“Well the old bastar..., um, the old guy, he went and left it to me.”

“See, he was a good man,” she said.

“And he left you these,” he said reaching down to pick up two heavy looking duffel bags. “May I set these inside?”

“Yes, of course. What’s in them?”

“Ms. Samir,” the man said pleasantly, “I’m just the delivery guy.”

He carried the bags into the house and set them on the living room couch. After refusing another offer of tea he left the house, walked down the porch steps and along the walkway toward the curb.

“And the bags? Don’ t you want to know what’s in them?” Sarrah called after him.

“Hector left them for you,” O’Conner said over his shoulder.

With that, he climbed into the car, brought the engine to life and drove away.

Once he was gone Sarrah shut the door. She turned and studied the two duffels sitting in her living room. Finally she crossed the room, reached over and slowly unzipped one of the bags. As the contents became visible her eyes widened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 12 - All Debts Paid

by Richard Brewer and Gary Phillips

 

 

Déjà vu.

That feeling of having been somewhere before. In this case, though, it was true, he had been here before. In fact, he’d been to the Crystal Q ranch twice before, and one of those times had taken him all the way into the big ranch house and to one of the biggest scores of his career, but he’d never expected to return.

Never say never in this line of work.

Watching the house over the past couple of days had been confusing. He had been surprised to find that security hadn’t been beefed up since his last visit. Arrogance or stupidity? O’Conner wasn’t sure. He had power bars and bottled water, and relived himself up here. The nights weren’t too cold and with a fleece-lined windbreaker on, he napped lightly by force of habit propped against the tree, gun under his splayed hand.

During the day there were the usual ranch hands responsible for the cattle going about their business. Texas cowboys on horseback and ATVs making sure that the animals were fed, watered, fattened for slaughter and whatever else needed taking care of in the maintenance of the spread.

That was during the day; nighttime and that personnel wasn’t around, gone home or the itinerate ones off into that bunkhouse some acres from the house. Using the wide trunk of one of the old oak trees overlooking Harrington’s fancy pool as cover, hunched down or sometimes on his stomach, he’d continually surveyed the terrain. He couldn’t see any movement in house. The pool was lit from lights in it but the rest of the grounds were in gloom. The emerald water seemed to float in a sea of dark. The grounds ahead of him were clear. A well-mowed, too green lawn stretched before him, ending at short brick steps leading to a patio area that butted up against the house. Two French doors on this side allowed access to the home. Looking around again through his binoculars, he was struck once again by what appeared to be a lack of security. He had originally come loaded for a battle. A compact Mac10 with an extended magazine was slung across his chest, extra magazines hung from the bandolier. He also had a canvas weekender bag packed with pertinent items. But he was beginning to wonder if such might have been overkill.

Arrogance or stupidity?

Still, he had come with a mission, an action had to be taken. O’Conner could understand vengeance. Maybe more than most people, and maybe now more than ever, but it was time for things to come to an end. This vendetta of Harrington’s. The bodies in the ground. Hector one of them. Enough was enough. He refused to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder because some shit-kicking Texan yahoo couldn’t take a punch and let it go.

As O’Conner contemplated his next move, the backyard was flooded by light. He ducked down behind the tree. He watched as a pair of guards appeared from opposite ends of the house, their bodies having activated the motion sensor lights that covered the back grounds. The two men move toward each other, meeting in the middle of the raised brick patio that marked the center of the house. They scanned the grounds while chatting between themselves. Both carried M-15 rifles, and holstered handguns sat on their hips. One guard pulled out a pack of cigarettes, made an offer to his cohort, and the two grabbed a quick smoke. With one last look around they separated and headed back to their opposite corners. O’Conner stayed where he was, and once the two men rounded their corners, he started counting. Thirty-five seconds later, the lights clicked off.

He watched the cycle two more times. Ten minutes for the guards to make their rounds, thirty-five seconds for the lights. Using his field glasses, he scoured the outside of the house. Again, he didn’t see any cameras, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any around. But his waiting was over.

The next time the guards came around, he readied himself by the tree. As soon as the two men disappeared from view, O’Conner sprinted across the expanse of grass. In twenty-two seconds he made it to the house and flattened to the ground just behind a set of oversized potted plants. Forty-eight seconds later the lights clicked off, leaving O’Conner in darkness. No one seemed to notice the extra seconds it took for the lights to turn off.

Ten minutes later, the lights returned and O’Conner allowed himself to rise into a crouch, like a runner at a starting line. As the two guards met at the center of the patio, both looking out at the backyard, O’Conner charged forward, a taser in one hand and his collapsible baton in the other. At the sound of his approach, the men began to turn. O’Conner raised the taser and fired. Two electronically charged prongs shot out in front of him, their connector wires trailing behind. The darts sunk into the guard to the right in the upper shoulder and neck. The device had been altered to deliver more voltage than a regular one. The man convulsed and peed himself as he fell to the ground, spasming.

O’Conner immediately dropped the taser to concentrate on the second guard, who was bringing his rifle around toward his attacker. O’Conner, in a smooth, downward motion, slashed the baton across the guard’s forearm, forcing him to release his hand on the gun’s trigger. He followed up with a brutal palm heel strike under the man’s jaw then a punch to the face, smashing his nose and sending him staggering backward. Two quick cracks to the skull with the baton and the guard was out on the patio tiles. O’Conner applied similar cracks to the tasered guard’s head. He proceeded to bind them with zip ties and gag them at the base of the house. Still no one else came to check on things.

“This isn’t right,” O’Conner muttered. Yet it didn’t smell like a trap. Being this kind of clever wasn’t Harrington’s style. He put on his gloves, tugging the supple leather tight on his large hands.

The double glass doors were electronically locked but a quick search of one of the guards produced a key card that let him into the house. Producing a Glock with a suppressor on its end, O’Conner surveyed this part of the house he hadn’t been in before. He was in a large room. A pool table sat in the middle of the floor, balls racked and waiting for a break. The walls were adorned with the heads of several exotic and probably endangered animals. He didn’t get the supposed sport of hunting four-legged beasts. It was humans who were deadly.

Moving forward, he made his way in the main entry hall. A wide expanse of stone tiles made up the floor and a large curved stairway led up to the second story of the house, the bedrooms, and, O’Conner figured, Harrington. Starting up the stairs, he heard someone coughing from another room. It was a deep, wet cough that built in intensity until it ended with a final hack that seemed to clear things up for the moment.

“Goddamn it,” said a voice. “Flora! Flora, you here?”

O’Conner froze, expecting Flora, one of the housekeepers he knew, to respond to the person in the next room. But the only answer was silence.

“Goddamn it,” said the voice. “Fuck it.”

O’Conner heard the sound of a chair scrapping across the floor, then there was the chuck of a refrigerator door shutting followed by a succession of drawers opening and closing. By now O’Conner was sure the voice belonged to Harrington. With his gun raised in front of him, he moved slowly toward the kitchen door, a sliver of light shining out from under the bottom. With a rush he pushed the swinging door open and stepped into the room, his eyes and gun quickly covering the room in search of any threat.

Harrington sat at a granite kitchen counter, an open carton of ice cream in front of him. He was in his slacks, undershirt, and paisley silk robe. A half-empty bottle of Irish whiskey and glass were nearby as well. He viewed the intruder, a look of surprise on his face. That look morphed into one of weary resignation.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

O’Conner leveled his gun on Harrington’s chest. Always sight on the center mass.

“Who else is in the house?”

“I’m it.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’re O’Conner.”

“I said, who else is in the house?”

“And I said I’m it. You can believe me or not. You want some ice cream?” He looked at the open container then back to O’Conner. “Rocky Road,” he said with a bitter smile. “Seems about right, don’t you think?”

“How can you be the only one around?” said O’Conner. He lowered his gun but remained alert. “Last time I was here you practically had an army on us.”
      “Oh, the times they are a changin’,” Harrington said. He started reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe.

“Easy,” said O’Conner, the gun coming back up.

Harrington raised one hand in innocence, the other slowly pulled a folded sheet of paper out of the robe pocket. He set the paper down on the table and with two fingers slid it across the counter toward the career thief.

O’Conner took a step forward and, gun in one hand, reached inside his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. Not prescription, the magnifying kind he bought at a Best Value drug store. He then picked up the paper and with a shake of his hand he unfolded it and gave it a quick glance. He looked back at Harrington.

“From your wife.”

“Soon-to-be ex. Read it.”

Keeping his gun trained on Harrington, he perused the paper. “Huh.”

“Keep going.”

O’Conner finished reading then set the paper back on the counter. “She really doesn’t like you.”

“No shit.”

“So, she sent this out to all members of the North Texas Citizens Improvement League?”

“Oh, yes,” said Harrington. “Each and every mother-lovin’ one of them. She has the dates and details of practically every under the table deal we’ve ever bankrolled and the names of all the participants.”

“Including you.”

Harrington raised a spoon of ice cream in acknowledgement. “The cherry on top of the shit sundae.”

“Leaving you…”

“Abandoned. Cut from the League and any further dealings with it. You read it. I am forever and a day ‘persona no bienvenida’ to all my former Leaguers. And in addition to my ostracization, they get to contribute a healthy sum of cash each month to support the lifestyle she’s so become accustomed to in exchange for her silence, and most of that money is coming from my accounts.”

“They can do that?”

“The power of the League is not to be underestimated.”

O’Conner figured Collier must have lived. That he’d convinced the board that Harrington was too much of a liability now. He said, “What about the money from the safe?”

“Fuck. That’s small potatoes. Teeny, tiny potatoes compared to what’s at stake now. They could give a shit.”

“What about you?”

Harrington gave a bitter bark of a laugh. “I barely have a shit left to give.”

“You came at us hard.”

“I did,” said Harrington. “It was business. You took from the League. You took from me. Was I just supposed to let that go?”

“People are dead.”

“Some of mine too. Like I said, it was business. Now that business is done.”

“Not between you and me.”

“For fuck’s sake. You telling me you never had any collateral damage in your career? Come on, O’Conner, no dead bodies piled up in your past?”

O’Conner’s eyes shifted out of focus in remembrance, then he was back in the present.

“Thought so,” said Harrington. “I can see the answer in your face. Are my guards dead?”

“No. Damaged.”

“But they could have been, yes? I don’t think you brought those guns to just wing ’em.

“Correct.”

Harrington regarded him.

“What do you want from me, O’Conner? An apology? Well, you aren’t going to get it. More money? I don’t have it. I’m the victim here. I’m the one who got robbed. I’m the one who’s fucked. And not just by you.”

“I want the business between us to be over.” He’d already fed damning information to his hacktivist contact to leak to the SEC.

“Then it’s over. Okay? Done. Finished. Acabado. I couldn’t pursue you and your fellow culprits even if I wanted to. I have more to think about. I have to figure out how to get myself back on my feet. I don’t have the time, the resources, or the inclination to continue going after you.”

Harrington had another helping of ice cream. He put the spoon back into the carton and stirred it around.

“You can do whatever you want,” he said. “But I’m out. I’ve had it. As far as I’m concerned, this whole business between us is over. I really am done.”

O’Conner looked at the man sitting alone in a house big enough to have its own zip code eating melting ice cream from a carton. No wife. No money. No power. He looked older than he was. Old and pathetic.

“You are half right,” he said.

“Wha—”

O’Conner raised his Glock and put two quick shots into the man’s chest. Always go for the center mass.

Harrington fell backward off the stool onto the kitchen floor, the look of surprise having returned to his face.

“Business is never done until all the debts are paid off,” said O’Conner.

He turned toward the door. Thoughts of Hector, the Financier in the wind, and the others, from both sides, ran through his head. All dead probably. Well, that was the risk they ran getting into the bull ring. That didn’t mean, though, he let certain behavior slide all the damn time. You couldn’t call yourself a pro and do that.

“Paid in full, motherfucker,” he said, walking out of the house and away from the Crystal Q.

 

 

 

 

Biographies

 

 

 

Editors

 

Richard Brewer, a native Californian, has always loved stories. Following that love he has worked as a writer, editor, actor, director, bookseller, book reviewer, movie development executive, and audiobook narrator. He is co-editor of the critically acclaimed Bruce Springsteen inspired short story anthology Meeting Across the River, as well as the speculative fiction collection Occupied Earth: Stories of Aliens, Resistance and Survival at all Costs. His most recent short story, Last to Die, was included in another anthology inspired by The Boss, Trouble in the Heartland, and was noted as one of the Distinguished Mystery Stories of the year in The Best American Mystery Stories 2015.

 

Born under a bad sign, Gary Phillips must keep writing to forestall his appointment at the crossroads. He has written various novels, novellas, radio plays, scripts, graphic novels such as Vigilante: Southland, and published 60 some short stories. He has had several of his works optioned for film or TV including the graphic novel The Rinse about a money launderer, and his short story “The Two Falcons” from The Highway Kind: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drivers and Dark Roads. Phillips has edited or co-edited several anthologies including the bestselling Orange County Noir, Occupied Earth (with Richard Brewer) and the critically praised The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. He is the immediate past president of the Private Eye Writers of America.

 

Contributors

 

 

Brett Battles was born and raised in southern California. He is the USA Today bestselling and Barry Award winning author of over thirty novels, including the Jonathan Quinn series, the Project Eden series, and the time bending Rewinder trilogy.  Though he still makes California his home, he has traveled extensively to such destinations as Ho Chi Minh City, Berlin, Bangkok, Angkor Wat, Singapore, Jakarta, London, Paris, and Rome, all of which play parts in his current and upcoming novels.  Authors who have influenced him over the years include, but aren’t limited to: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Alistair MacLean, Robert Ludlum, Stephen King, Graham Greene, Haruki Murakami, and Tim Hallinan. 

He has three very cool kids—Ronan, Fiona, and Keira—who are all quickly becoming adults, which both excites and unnerves him. As for his neurotic, paranoid, cute Australian Shepherd Maggie, that’s more of a…developing relationship. You can learn more about Brett and his books at http://brettbattles.com

 

 Joe Clifford is the author of several books, including Junkie Love and the Jay Porter Thriller Series, as well as editor of the anthologies Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of BruceSpringsteen; Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, and Hard Sentences, which he co-edited with David James Keaton. Joe’s writing can be found atwww.joeclifford.com.

 

David Corbett is the author of six novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar), Do They Know I’m Running ("a rich, hard-hitting epic"—Publishers Weekly, starred review), and The Mercy of the Night (“Superlative” —Booklist, starred review). His latest novel, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, will appear in 2018. His novella, The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell, also appeared in 2015, and his story collection Thirteen Confessions was published in 2016. David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in journals as diverse as Mission and Tenth, The Smoking Poet, San Francisco Noir and Best American Mystery Stories (2009 and 2011). His book on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (Penguin), has been called “a writer’s bible,” he’s a contributing editor for Writer’s Digest, and he’s written numerous articles on the craft and theory of fiction for other outlets, such as the New York Times, Narrative, Bright Ideas, Zyzzyva, and MovieMaker. He has taught at the UCLA Extension's Writers' Program, Litreactor, Book Passage, 826 Valencia, and numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. For more, visit www.davidcorbett.com

 

Gar Anthony Haywood is the Shamus and Anthony award-winning author of twelve crime novels.  His short fiction has been included in the Best American Mystery Stories anthologies and Booklist has called him "a writer who has always belonged in the upper echelon of American crime fiction."  Haywood has written for network television and both the New York and Los Angeles Times.  His most recent novel is Assume Nothing, and the six books in his Aaron Gunner P.I. series are now available as e-books from Open Road/Mysterious Press.

Jessica Kaye is an entertainment and publishing attorney at Kaye & Mills (www.kayemills.com) and a Grammy Award-winning audiobook producer. Jessica owns Big Happy Family, LLC, an audiobook distributor (www.bighappyfamilyaudio.com.) She created and co-edited Meeting Across the River (anthology, BloomsburyUSA, 2005) and contributed a story to Occupied Earth: Stories of Aliens, Resistance and Survival at all Costs (Polis Books, 2015.) She is the author of the forthcoming How To Produce (and sell) a Great Audiobook (F+W Media Inc./Writers Digest Books, 2019.)

Manuel Ramos is the author of nine published novels and one short story collection. The Edgar® and Shamus nominee lives and writes in Denver. He is a co-founder of and regular contributor to La Bloga, an award-winning Internet magazine devoted to Latino literature, culture, news, and opinion. www.manuelramos.com

Zoë Sharp was brought up on an English dockside and opted out of mainstream education at the age of 12. She wrote her first novel at 15 and created her Special Forces-dropout-turned-bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox after receiving death-threats in the course of her work as a photojournalist. Lee Child famously once said (in writing, with no threats involved): “If Jack Reacher were a woman, he’d be Charlie Fox.” When Sharp’s not scribbling, undertaking house renovation, or improvising weapons out of everyday objects, she can be found crewing yachts or international pet-sitting. (It’s a tough life, but somebody’s got to do it, right?) She’s been nominated for just about every prize going (always the bridesmaid, never the bride) for both her short and long fiction. For a free ebook download and more info, visit www.ZoeSharp.com