Complicated Shadows

by James D F Hannah

  "Always plan for contingencies," I said. "The cartels do not play."

  "Which is now a problem I have to fucking deal with because of your asswipes." He sighed. "Would have been considerate of you to just have killed Mathers. Now I have to do it before he sells my shit out, and that's compounded with getting rid of the ass bandit in the back seat."

  Isaac said, "Fuck you."

  Davies kneed the back of the seat. "Good agents died there tonight because of you, Lance."

  I laughed. Burwell knocked me in the shoulder with the butt of his gun. "You think dead agents is funny?"

  "No, but your name being is 'Lance' sure as fuck is," I said. "Did your parents intend for you to take the pork sword from birth, or assume that you'd back your way into it one day?"

  He hit me, popping the pistol butt against the back of my skull. My head jerked, and I lost my focus and cut the wheel, and we swerved. I straightened the steering up, but the tires squealed, and I heard Davies and Isaac bounce around in what there was of the backseat.

  "Watch what the fuck you're doing over there," Burwell said.

  "Stop hitting me with that goddamn gun," I said.

  Davies shook her head. "I got those tires a month ago."

  Burwell rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. "You people. Jesus. There was a goddamn plan. The Mexicans would grab the faggot and go. Wait a few weeks, and someone would call in finding a body in a shallow grave, and it would get ID'd as Martin. Case closed, end of motherfucking story." He shook his head. "What the hell is it with you assholes fucking up a good plan?" He shot me an angry glare. "Especially you. If that big queen ex-trooper hadn't gotten slit open, no one would have given two shits about the bottom boy in back."

  "Seems like an awful lot of people care about him now," I said.

  "Yeah, seems that way." Burwell gave a casual shrug. "None of that is my thing. All I know is the boys in Juarez want him, and they seemed willing to write a big, fat nice check make sure they got him."

  From the backseat, Davies stirred around. "What about Price and Kaur then? Why kill them?"

  Burwell wrenched his frame around to peer into the backseat. "I'm sure it will disappoint you that the people paying me don't keep me up to date on every bowel movement they make, or on why they opt to do certain things. They say 'frog' and I ask 'How high?'" A smile flickered across his face. "Goddamn but what a way to go out. These Mexicans are primal motherfuckers. They'll just blow your ass up, fucking Scarface-style." He made a motion with his hands like an explosion. "Ka-fucking-boom. Which makes how Price bought it even more pathetic. A bullet through the head? It's almost 'so what?'" He motioned with the gun toward the road. "You'll take an exit up here in a few miles, and I'll tell you where to go then."

  If I had to guess, I figured his directions would lead to an abandoned field, desolate and away from anything. Somewhere to dump the bodies where they wouldn't be found for a while. By the time animals and the elements had had their way with us, an open casket would not be a possibility.

  I glanced at Davies in the rearview mirror. She was thinking harder than I was. Thank God. I watched as she wiggled body around, pushing herself down in the seat. She saw me looking at her in the rearview mirror and jerked her head toward Burwell. Her eyes said Keep him busy.

  My eyes responded Got it. Or, at least I hoped they did. They're eyes; who knows what they said.

  I cleared my throat. "They'll see you on the security cameras."

  Burwell's attention had moved on elsewhere, his gaze on the window. He didn't even bother to look at me.

  "Back at the gas station," I said, louder, pushing forward. "You're on whatever video surveillance system they've got at the gas station. Plus, there's a record of Davies calling you from a pay phone. They'll piece together your part in this."

  Burwell leaned his head on the glass. "A fuck lot of good it'll do them. After I deliver McCoy, and I plan to vanish off into the ether like a memory, somewhere without an extradition treaty with the U.S. of A." He pointed the pistol at me. "How much do you think a pound of twenties is worth?"

  "No idea. Never came up in casual conversation."

  "Nine thousand, eighty dollars. A pound of fifties is more than twenty grand. Twenty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty bucks. This is how those boys in Juarez count their money. They weigh it because counting it takes too much time. Can you even comprehend that sort of money?" He pounded the butt of the gun into his sternum. "I, meanwhile, drive an eight-year-old Honda with two bald tires. Why? Because I don't make shit, taking part in a fight I don't believe in, because how exactly is selling drugs to the folks who want to use them the worst thing in the world? If nothing else, it's social Darwinism. Take out the weak ones, let the smart and strong survive."

  "Which one are you, then?"

  "Motherfucker, I'm mad-dog strong." He pointed at an exit sign. "Take that exit, then turn right."

  We lost the freeway lights as we hit a county road. The interior of the car went black, the only light coming from the full moon, tinging everything in purple, making it feel otherworldly.

  At the stop sign, I flipped a signal for my turn. Not like there was another car anywhere nearby. A courteous driver to the end. We passed the occasional house, a doublewide sitting off by itself on the side of the road, but otherwise, it was only us.

  In the backseat, I saw Davies pushing herself further and further down. Her body was U-shaped by this point, knees high in the air, even with her head. Which was how most people sat in the backseat of a Volkswagen Beetle, I believe.

  Burrell pointed to a narrow road on the left. "Head up that way."

  I did as directed. I said, "Do you think you're so smart and important, the Mexicans will hand you a sack of cash and let you walk away? You don't think they'll just chop you into tiny pieces once you've done what they need done?"

  Burwell let the pistol barrel swing toward my head. Even in the darkness, it's almost impossible to not know when there's a gun pointed in your face.

  "You talk too fucking much, you know?" he said.

  "So people tell me when I shut up long enough to let them talk." The words rolled out of my mouth strangled and forced. I tried to keep calm, to keep focused. I cleared my throat again, this time out of necessity. "Were you always this way?"

  He chuckled. "What way are you talking about?"

  "Selling out work, friends, colleagues, all for a few bucks."

  Burrell turned toward me. "Trust me when I say this is a lot more than a few—"

  That was when he saw how Davies had shifted her body until her shoulders were flat on the seat and her legs were bent and in the air. Burwell tilted his head as he watched her pause for a second.

  "What the hell—"

  Davies kicked Burwell in the face. The crack of his nose shattering filled the car interior. He screamed out a muffled cry as blood gushed like a fountain. He aimed the gun toward Davies.

  I braced myself, stiff-armed the steering wheel, and pounded the brakes. The car jolted and slid on the gravel, and we all flew forward. Burwell took it the hardest, his head smashing into the windshield, his body bending into something awkward and painful. The windshield spider-webbed from the blow of Burwell's head. He grunted and folded like a lawn chair and slid into the floorboard. His pistol fired, the shot popping a hole through the roof.

  Davies threw herself forward, wiggling between the seats. Burwell grunted and tried to lift his gun hand. Blood smeared across his face like war paint, and his nose didn't look like a nose anymore, but hung limp off of his face, dangling like a piece of meat. Davies rammed a knee into his chest, her other leg pinning his arm against the console. He screamed and got off another shot that whizzed by my ear and cut through the headrest and shattered the back window. Isaac ducked into the seat.

  Davies brought her knee up against Burwell's jaw, over and over, each time banging his head against the glove compartment. He tried to scream, but it came out as a wet gurgling sound, and she jammed her kn
ee harder, and Burwell's teeth crunched, followed by something that sounded like a hunk of meat being cleaved, and fresh blood flowed from between his lips.

  Davies pressed harder on his arm with her left knee and his hand fell limp and the gun dropped. She angled her leg against his throat and twisted her body around until she could reach the gear shift and put the car in Park.

  She heaved a deep breath. Blood was everywhere.

  "Fuck," she said. "And I got it detailed, too."

  37

  Davies handed me the gun, told me keep it on Burwell as she got out of the car, and pulled him out. She didn't try to be gentle, holding him by the lapels and yanking him free from the backseat. He collapsed onto the dirt into a sack of pathetic-ness, rolled his eyes upwards at up, and let his mouth drop open. Something fell out and landed in the dust. It was dark red and meaty. We all stared at it with equal parts bemusement, wonder, and disgust.

  "That's what I'm thinking it is, isn't it?" I said.

  Davies kicked at the chunk. "His tongue." The words came out with an off-handed casualness that would have made me laugh under almost any other set of circumstances.

  Burwell mumbled something angry that didn't indicate he considered Davies funny. He had lost most of his fight and a substantial amount of blood. We cuffed his hands and feet together, shoved fast food napkins from the glove compartment up his nose to stem the bleeding, and propped him upright against the car.

  I made tight circles with my wrists, getting the circulation going again. "I have to say, Davies, how you bent yourself in the backseat was impressive as hell. Saved our lives."

  Davies cupped a hand around her eyes and peered into the car. "There are advantages to your girlfriend teaching yoga." She stood upright and stared at Burwell. "That's a horror movie. How can one motherfucker bleed so much?"

  Burwell sobbed a sad little noise and knocked his head against the fender of the VW.

  "The bullet holes are more of an issue," I said. "You can't Bondo those. The bigger matter at hand is the question of who is left in the Bureau you trust?"

  "A few hours ago, the answer was been this asshole." Davies kicked at Burwell. Burwell sunk his head between his shoulders and stared at his feet. "Eleven months working with this fucker. Putting up with his shitty jokes and Vienna sausages for lunch and acting like he's got so much to teach me, and how I ought to be grateful to learn from him. Nearly a whole goddamn year of trusting him. Been to his goddamn house. Met his wife and kids. And he would have let me die out here."

  "I doubt the plan was letting us die so much as killing us outright and leaving us to rot. They named his price right. Let's find somewhere safe and then you beat the mortal fuck out of him then."

  Davies checked her watch. "Two-oh-four in the morning. I can call people in D.C., but I need somewhere to call them, and a place to hide until they can get us and Burwell."

  Woody's place passed through my mind for a hot second. It made sense strategically, with as little as I knew about strategy. We'd be well armed if the Mexicans found us again. But there was still only three of us, and only two of us knew how to shoot a gun, and only one of us had a skill level that exceeded the zombie video game-level head-explosion lucky shot.

  And while I worried about the Mexicans, I knew the Japanese seemed an issue as well. Sure, they hadn't blown up anyone, but they didn't have issue throwing muscle around. They could have been coming after us also, and I wasn't sure even Woody had guns enough to help us fight off two competing sets of killers. I mean, okay, sure, he has more than enough guns, but those alone wouldn't keep us from getting killed. Plus, if anything happened to his dogs, it might be better to let a competing death squad kill me.

  It was an exciting time to be alive. I hoped I got to be alive a little while longer to appreciate it all.

  Isaac said, "Daddy's farm."

  "What?" I said.

  "The farm," he said. "My daddy's farm."

  Davies smiled. "Funny. Okay, why not? Wait, and I'll tell you why not. Because it's a goddamn marijuana farm under so many government radars they could track Santa Claus for real, and it'll be the first place the Juarez cartel comes looking. Then the three of us go rolling in at two in the morning? No way. Much like Helen Keller, I do not see it happening."

  "Honestly, not the worst plan I've ever heard," I said.

  "Sweet Jesus, I hate to think what the worst was then."

  "Is the farm still under surveillance?" I said. "If it is, then if there's anything that resembles trouble, they'll send people in, right? The jack-booted thugs the talk radio guys will also show up and save us. It'll be great."

  Davies sighed. "We pulled back the surveillance once we brought Isaac in. It was part of the agreement when Isaac came into the system.

  "Daddy's fortified the entire property," Isaac said. "There're tripwires and booby traps and electronic surveillance. My father used drones before the government thought about it. We’re not counting how everyone there is my family, and everyone there has a gun within arm's reach. If you want somewhere safe, Agent Davies, I can't think of somewhere safer."

  I looked at Davies. "What he said," I said.

  Isaac stood up and dusted himself off. "Daddy installed his own cell phone tower years ago. The signal's impossible to track."

  Davies shook her head. "Gonna be great when I call from there. I'll pile that onto the other shit to explain from tonight." She looked down at Burwell. "What about him?"

  "We put him in the trunk, take him with us," I said.

  "Seems like that would be awfully uncomfortable."

  "Of the things in my world I'm worried about, his comfort level sits low on the list. Hell, I might hit a few potholes along the way."

  "Might as well bust up the suspension while we're at it. Help me haul the fucker in there, then."

  I considered shooting Burwell in the face. The moment happened while we moved him, and he tried to fight up some. I reached for the gun I had shoved in the back of my pants, which cooled his jets, and he stopping with the struggle. But I didn't let go of the gun, and I kept a thin-slitted gaze on him I didn't break.

  It wasn't right, but that didn't matter. As I stared at him in the trunk of the car, all I saw was his willingness to kill Isaac and Davies and myself, to sell out himself and his country for a few bucks.

  He wasn't wrong on the drug stuff; this was fighting a war we didn't have a chance of winning, and arresting low-level dealers and users didn’t solve the problem. We needed to be helping people get off the shit, and quashing it all from the top down.

  But I didn't buy for a moment that Burwell did what he did because he was following his beliefs. His little speech was nothing more than his excuse to justify a desire for a paycheck, the words of a pissed-off man tired of seeing everyone with more than what he had, and wanting his share. His idea of the American Dream. Or he was just an asshole, and I could save us all a lot of time and kill him now.

  Except I'd already shot one person in the head that night, which seemed like more than enough.

  Davies looked at her former partner. I had my hand on the trunk lid, ready to close him up.

  "I'll take Burwell in, and he'll answer for this shit," she said.

  "You think he'll talk?" I said.

  Burwell pushed his eyebrows together. It cracked the dried blood all across his face. He mumbled and made noises likely meant to be curse words, but instead came out as a meaningless jumble of wet sounds.

  "Well," she said, "he'll try to. I guess he'll just have to write it all out."

  Burwell drew back his lips and showed us his teeth, crusted in blood. "'Uck Ooo!" he said.

  I shut the trunk lid.

  38

  Isaac told us to stop so he could use a pay phone and call ahead to warn everyone we were coming. Davies said she didn't think it was a good idea.

  "Showing up unannounced at this time of night is an even worse idea," Isaac said.

  Isaac made his call, and we traversed our way through
the many paths that took us to the McCoy farm. As we got closer, the gates opened to let us through, closing the moment we were clear.

  Floodlights bright enough to illuminate a football stadium came on as we approached the farm. By the time my eyes had adjusted to the light, people were waiting for us. I counted close to a dozen, men and women, the youngest one a girl maybe 10, wearing a nightgown and holding a shotgun twice her size, the oldest a woman at least 80, a dried apple doll of a human being, carrying a semiautomatic rifle that seemed like it should have weighed enough to topple her over.

  Tennis McCoy, in faded blue jeans and a denim shirt, his cowboy hat with its feather tilted to the back of his head, stepped out from the group and into the beams of the Beetle's headlights, hands in his pockets. He was the only person without a weapon.

  I turned off the car's engine and got out. A few people lifted their weapons. Hammers cocked on guns. I kept my hands visible and a big smile on my face.

  "Morning, everyone." I said.

  Tennis McCoy smiled. "Morning. I understand Isaac's with you."

  "That he is."

  "Then do you mind letting him out of the car? He's a tall boy, and I bet he's cramped up back there."

  Wait until you check out what we've got going on in the trunk then, I thought, before I reached down and pulled the seat forward and Isaac climbed out. The smile on the old man's face grew wider as Isaac got closer, and he threw himself around his son, and Isaac pulled himself even closer to his father.

  "I never thought you'd be back here," Tennis McCoy said.

  "Neither did I, Daddy," Isaac said. He looked around his father to the armed individuals staring at us. "Granny? How're you?"

  The dried apple doll said, "I'm doin' all right, Isaac. Glad to see you home. Your daddy, he said you were workin' for the government." She shook her head. "Don't see no need for such things. You ought just to come on back home." She looked at me. "This that boyfriend of yours I heard talk about?"