by Tom Abrahams
Rickshaw used the biometric scanner, waited for the door to whoosh open, and stepped into the cell. Inside the room on either side of the door were two guards. Neither of them said anything to Rickshaw when he entered, but they stood straighter as he passed. They lifted their chins, pulled back their shoulders, and tightened their grips on their weapons.
“I hear you’ve come a long way to see me,” said Rickshaw. “I appreciate the effort.”
He pulled back a chair, pulled his Ruger Blackhawk six-shooter from his hip, and set it on the table. He flipped his duster wide with his wrists and sat down with a flourish.
The prisoner hung his head low, his chin to his chest. Rickshaw noticed the beginnings of male-pattern baldness. A thinning circle of hair spiraled outward.
“Have they offered you anything to drink? Are you hungry?” asked Rickshaw. “I’m sure we can get you something.”
Without waiting for a response, he snapped his fingers. “One of you get this man some water. Maybe a piece of fruit. Fruit is a delicacy. It’s the least we can do.”
The guards exchanged nervous glares before both of them moved toward the door. One stopped and the other pressed his eye to the scanner. The door whooshed open. It wasn’t shut yet when the prisoner spoke.
“I don’t know anything that can help you,” he said. “I already told your people that.”
The man didn’t look up as he spoke. His voice was soft but firm. It hinted at a reluctant defiance. Rickshaw chuckled. He flexed his fingers and the knuckles popped. The series of snaps echoed in the room.
“My people?” said Rickshaw. “We’re all the same people, friend. We’re all in this together. I’m on your side here. If I weren’t, you’d know it.”
Rickshaw reached for his weapon. He flicked the barrel with his index finger and the weapon spun like a top on the stainless-steel table. He waited until it stopped, the barrel pointing at the prisoner.
“As for whether or not you know anything that’s useful,” said Rickshaw, “I’m going to be the judge of that. I think it’s arrogant of you, almost disrespectful, to think you know what I’ll find useful and what I won’t.”
The prisoner lifted his head and glared at Rickshaw. His thin face was unshaven, the beard blotchy and hidden underneath grime and blood. His shaggy brown hair was cut short, and his nose was long and thin. It also might have been broken. There was swelling along its side, and dark, bruise-colored crescents gave his eyes the appearance of a raccoon. At least it reminded Rickshaw of what a raccoon might look like. He hadn’t seen one in so long it was hard to remember.
“I’m not on your team.” The prisoner sneered, one side of his chapped lips lifting higher than the other. “And I’m not your friend.”
Rickshaw chuckled again and planted his elbows on the stainless-steel table, pointing at his prisoner with a wagging finger. “That’s a delayed reaction,” he said. “You okay in the head? Did they rough you up a little too much on the way here from West Virginia?”
“I don’t have anything to say. You killed my wife. You killed my friends. Even if I knew something, and I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you if my life depended on it.”
Rickshaw couldn’t resist the broad grin that spread across his face. It was too good a lob not to smack it out of the park. “Your life does depend on it,” he said and motioned around the cell with one hand. “I thought all of this made that abundantly clear. I wouldn’t bring you here, offer you water and fruit, play nice, if I didn’t think your information is worth the effort.”
A sour look appeared tattooed on the prisoner’s face. He didn’t react, only sat there glaring intently and with malice at Rickshaw.
The captain decided to take a different tack. Time was essential. The abandoned harbor at Greenbrier made that apparent. Whatever information this man held, it most likely had an expiration date. Rickshaw slapped his palms on the table and stood. The prisoner shuddered but was otherwise unmoved as the captain slid the gun into his hand and moved around the table.
“Let’s do this,” he said, “since you seem unaffected by my hospitality and my charms. And since you’re convinced you don’t know anything of value, I’m inclined to be a little more aggressive.”
The door whooshed open and a guard appeared with a bowl of red grapes and a glass of water. His rifle was slung over his shoulder. He stood in the open doorway, evidently unsure of what to do.
Rickshaw, who was now standing next to the prisoner, nodded at the guard and eyed the table. The guard scurried across the cell and set the bowl and glass next to the prisoner’s hands. He backed away, his attention on Rickshaw, and unslung his rifle, resuming his position at the door.
“The timing isn’t great,” said Rickshaw, pointing the gun at the snack, “but I’m a good guy. I’m fair. I did make the offer. It would be rude if I took it away from you. You answer my questions and it’s yours.”
The prisoner didn’t move, his gaze somewhere in the distance beyond the walls of the cell. His hands were clasped, fingers laced, and he didn’t strain against the binds. His forearms rested on the table, his elbows hanging off the edge of it.
“Grapes are drought resistant,” said Rickshaw. “They don’t take a lot of water. Same as pomegranates, figs, dragon fruit. While I don’t have any of those more exotic offerings for you, I can attest that the grapes are delicious. They have seeds in them, so be careful not to—”
“I don’t want your grapes,” the prisoner seethed. “I don’t want—”
Rickshaw backhanded the prisoner, slapping him so hard spit flew from the man’s mouth. He grunted and looked up at Rickshaw with surprise, his cheek turning red. His eyes were suddenly wide with fear.
Rickshaw bent closer and spoke in a low, even tone intended to induce more terror than a yell. “Where is the Harbor?”
Stunned into silence, the prisoner licked a spot of blood from the corner of his mouth and shook his head.
“Where is it?” Rickshaw demanded. “This is only going to become more unpleasant for you. Less grapes and water, more pain and blood.”
Rickshaw backhanded him again, along the other side of his face. The strike whipped his head away from Rickshaw. The surprise of it had him whimpering now. Rickshaw could tell the prisoner was trying to keep himself composed, trying to stay in control, but was losing the internal struggle.
“Where is it?”
The man sputtered and spat blood onto the table. It bubbled in a sticky splotch next to his arm. The metal cuffs dug into his wrists. His fingers were balled into fists, his knuckles white.
“Where is it?”
He shook his head and looked up at Rickshaw. He said something, but it was inaudible.
“Speak up,” said Rickshaw.
“They moved it,” he said. “I don’t know where to, but it happened a few weeks ago.”
Rickshaw reached out toward the prisoner with his free hand. The man flinched, his body rigid.
“See?” said Rickshaw, stroking a bright red cheek with the back of his hand. “Was that so hard?”
The man trembled, his eyes flitting around the room as if looking for help that wasn’t coming.
“What’s your name, friend?” asked Rickshaw. “I’m Greg. My friends call me Greg.”
The man’s face twitched. The question seemed to throw him. It was part of Rickshaw’s method. With a man who’d gone from rabidly defiant to compliant so quickly, this was the next step.
“Blair,” said the man. He was drooling now.
Rickshaw sat on the edge of the desk and smiled. “Blair. That first or last?”
“First.”
“Last?”
“Evans.”
“Blair Evans,” said Rickshaw, trying out the sound of it. “Okay then, tell me, Blair, where did they move it?”
Blair’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. “I don’t know. I told you that.”
Rickshaw frowned. “You also told me you had nothing of value, nothing in which I’d be interested.”<
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“I don’t know,” said Blair. “Everything is a secret. Only people who need to know are told things. I wasn’t told things like that.”
“Things like that?” Rickshaw asked, arching an eyebrow. “So you were told things, just not things like where the Harbor is.”
Blair swallowed hard. He looked down, flexing his hands against the binds. He’d slipped up, and both he and Rickshaw knew it.
The captain held up his revolver and opened the cylinder. He emptied it into his palm and then put one round into the weapon. He spun the cylinder. “You need to reevaluate what you think I might find of interest, Blair,” he said. “And you need to do it fast.”
Blair stared at the revolver with wide, frightened eyes. “What are you doing? Are you gonna shoot me?”
“That depends on you,” said Rickshaw.
The captain stood and turned around. With one hand he gripped Blair’s wrist at the metal cuff. He held it there, flat against the table, while the prisoner struggled and pleaded.
Rickshaw pressed the barrel into the back of Blair’s left hand and pulled the trigger.
Click.
“You’re crazy!” said Blair. “You’re out of your mind. I don’t know anything! I don’t—”
Click.
“Please!” Blair begged. “Don’t do this. There’s nothing I can—”
Click.
Tears streamed down Blair’s flushed cheeks, tracing lines in the grime. He struggled against Rickshaw’s grip but couldn’t free himself.
“Okay!” he said. “Okay! I know something. I overheard some things, things I wasn’t supposed to hear.”
Click.
“Stop!” he cried. “There’s a place in Atlanta where they coordinate, where they plan. I know a place.”
Rickshaw lifted the revolver and let go of Blair’s wrist. The prisoner sank in his seat, the tension leaking from his body like air from a punctured balloon. He sobbed, his shoulders bouncing up and down.
The captain walked around the table and lowered himself into his chair. He reached out and slid the glass of water to the blubbering prisoner. “Take a drink,” said Rickshaw. “Calm yourself, Blair.”
Blair reached for the glass. He lowered his head toward his chained hands and hesitantly took a sip. Then he gulped it empty, wiping his mouth and nose on his shoulder.
“Tell me more about the place in Atlanta,” said Rickshaw. “Tell me everything you know.”
CHAPTER 18
APRIL 21, 2054, 8:30 AM
SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
PUTNAM, TEXAS
Norma lifted the brim of her hat and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The heat beat on her back as she rode east, away from the sun. She eyed the full canteen hanging from the side of her saddle. It was calling her.
“Don’t wait until you’re thirsty,” said Rudy, riding alongside her. “You’re already dehydrated at that point. No offense, but I don’t want to be picking you up off the highway.”
They were saddled on the backs of two of the poachers’ horses. A third trailed behind them, serving as a packhorse, loaded down with extra supplies, water, food, and weapons.
“We’ve only been riding for two hours, Rudy. We’ve got two days until we hit the wall. I don’t want to waste it.”
“If you’re drinking it, it’s not waste.”
Norma relented and lifted the canteen. She took a couple of healthy swigs and offered it to Rudy, who declined.
“I had some a couple of miles back,” he said. “I’m not as cautious as you are.”
“How are you holding up?” she asked.
“Good. It hurts, but I’m good.”
“Where does it hurt?”
He smiled broadly. “Everywhere.”
Norma blew him a kiss and shifted her weight in the saddle. Her boots pressed against the stirrups. She was as comfortable as she could be on someone else’s horse. They were riding along the edge of the interstate, headed due east.
They’d started on the asphalt but decided it was better for the horses to walk on the dirt that stretched in all directions around the thin gray line of highway that ran from Pecos to Latex and beyond.
Aside from the heat, it had been an easy ride so far. As long as Rudy was okay, she was good. The sounds of the horses’ shoes on the hard earth and the sway of her body in the worn leather saddle lulled her into a trance. Her mind drifted.
Rudy whistled occasionally, sometimes he hummed, but he didn’t intrude. He didn’t ask her what she was thinking or try to strike up a conversation laden with small talk. He knew her so well, she thought. He was her other half and she knew she was his.
It was his life, as much as anyone else’s in Baird, she’d tried to protect by asking Marcus to leave more than a decade earlier. Rudy was loyal to Marcus. The venerated Mad Max, the crazy soldier who’d beaten back the Cartel in the legendary battle at Palo Duro Canyon, had led him on a suicidal rescue mission that recovered her, Gladys, and Gladys’s sister.
“We owe him,” Rudy had said too many times to count. “I owe him. I can’t just walk away from him.”
Norma had known that Rudy would never leave Marcus. He’d give his life, if that’s what circumstances dictated, in favor of abandoning the reluctant, brooding hero.
“He couldn’t keep his family alive,” she’d told him. “Either of them. What makes you think he can keep an entire town safe? And if you’re by his side?”
It was a callous thing to say. Norma had known that the moment she’d said it. She’d seen the hurt in Rudy’s eyes, the disappointment spread across his face like darkness at sundown.
Rather than push her husband to leave Baird, to leave Marcus, she did what she thought was her only viable option. It had been the only thing she knew to do that would keep her husband, their friends, and their family safe.
Though that action hadn’t bothered her then, it did now. As they rode east toward the coast all these years later, her conscience wore at her. It was time to come clean.
“I have something to confess,” she said, her words cutting through the warm air and ending the long minutes of silence they’d shared.
Rudy stopped humming and glanced at her. “Confess?”
“It’s something I did,” Norma said. “Something I probably shouldn’t have done. Looking back, I definitely shouldn’t have done it.”
Rudy’s expression tightened. His eyebrows knitted, and he turned his body toward her. He eased his horse to keep even with Norma’s. “That sounds serious.”
Norma sucked in a deep breath. The warm air filled her lungs, and she held it there for a long moment, nodding on exhale. “Yes, it’s serious. And I was wrong. I thought I was right. I really—”
“What did you do?” Rudy cut in with a hint of worry. While his tone wasn’t accusatory, nor was it sympathetic.
“It’s two things, really,” Norma said. Her heart pounded in her chest. The rapid pulse in her ears was almost deafening. Her palms were sweaty against the leather reins. “All those years ago, when Marcus left Baird, you remember how I said something about him not coming back?”
“I remember,” said Rudy. “You said something about him knowing his value elsewhere. We were arguing with that guy Harold, the one who gave him the truck. It was Harold, right? Died of a heart attack a few months later?”
“It was Harold,” said Norma. “And yeah, I hinted Marcus shouldn’t come back. But that wasn’t all I did.”
Rudy frowned. He reached for the saddle horn and gripped it. “What do you mean?”
“I gave him a note before he got in the truck and drove off. Well, when Lou was trying to give him her Astros cap, I put the note in his bag. He didn’t see me do it. I don’t know when he actually saw the note.”
“What did it say?”
Norma swallowed and looked down at the horse’s thick black mane. It was easier to do that than look her husband in the eye. “It asked him not to come back. In no uncertain terms, I laid out my case for why I did
n’t want him around my family, why I thought he was a danger to us. His insistence on ending things violently, on making every solution a permanent one when I thought it wasn’t necessary, only served to put us in danger.”
“You’d already made that clear,” he said. “Why did you need a note? What else did it say, Norma?”
Rudy’s voice didn’t change in volume or octave. He was as calm as if they were talking about the weather. Still, her words caught in her throat.
“I didn’t put anything else in the note. I appealed to his affection for Lou, suggesting it was better for her if he wasn’t around.”
Rudy’s expression wasn’t one of anger, nor one of shock. It was something akin to sadness or, worse, disappointment. She hadn’t seen that look on his face before. In all their years together, Norma thought she’d seen every facial tic, heard every tone of voice. Apparently, she hadn’t.
“There’s more,” she said.
Rudy pressed his mouth into a flat line. He shifted his hips in the saddle and winced. He stole a glance at the path ahead then leveled his gaze back on Norma.
“I didn’t think he would keep in touch,” she said. “I’d made it clear I thought his distance was a good thing for all of us. But he’s a good man, I know that. And he wouldn’t abandon us even if he didn’t come back. His last letter…I…I intercepted it and I wrote back to him. I asked him not to write anymore, not to communicate at all. I told him it was too hard on Lou and that forgetting him would be best for all of us.”
Rudy shook his head. “Why would you do that? Why would—”
“I thought it was best. I was afraid he’d come back, especially if Lou got pregnant. If she and Dallas had children, I wanted them to have a childhood. I knew he’d bring the violence with him. I knew it. So I did what I thought was the right thing to protect us. To protect you, to protect Lou, Dallas, all of us.”
It sounded worse said aloud. The thing she’d done, keeping Marcus from them, was selfish. It wasn’t what she’d intended. She’d thought she was being the opposite of selfish, whatever that was. Yet hearing the words come from her mouth, articulated to her husband, only made what she’d done appear worse.
