Chump Change

by G. M. Ford

  I patted him on the shoulder. “I thank you for your help,” I said. “I’m a lot of things, but a rancher isn’t one of them. I couldn’t have—”

  I was interrupted by Cody yelling from the other side of the yard. They were ready to take off and wanted Herbert to get in the truck.

  Herbert rose. “No moon next few nights,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said again.

  I watched as he walked over to the truck and got in to ride shotgun. He gave me a worried smile and a two-fingered salute as they drove by and then disappeared around the side of the house.

  It was the fifty-foot flames that first got my attention.

  Keith and I had discussed our domestic options and decided that, when it came to bedding down for the night, discretion had best be the better part of valor. Since sleeping in the house was out of the question, and the barns were going to be the first place our disloyal opposition looked for us, we’d decided the best thing would be to steal back the element of surprise from the enemy. To that end, we each picked out one of the old cars dotting the backyard, evicted any and all previous tenants, and then cleaned them out as best we were able.

  Keith chose an old Buick he found over by the fence. The one with the three portholes running along the side of the hood. Mid-fifties or sixties. Looked like nobody’d opened the door in half a century. Everything just the way Olley left it, back about when I was still nothing more than a gleam in my old man’s eye.

  As for me, I found an old oxidized junker out in the middle of the yard. Not much to look at but solid as a rock. Wasn’t till I got inside that I saw it was a Hudson Hornet and that it used to be pea green. Probably mid-fifties. Solid steel and, by Seattle standards, the size of a studio apartment.

  By the time night fell, we were both cozied into the backseats of our chosen land yachts, with a couple of sandwiches and a Diet Coke or two for company.

  We’d also redistributed the arms and ammunition. I gave Keith the Glock 17 and all the ammo, then broke out the AX9 assault rifle for myself. I wasn’t, by nature, much of a gun guy, but I’d learned along the way that given a weapon I could spray like a garden hose, I was just as deadly as anybody else.

  I was determined to stay awake, but you know how that goes. Especially at my age. Last thing I recalled was listening to a night bird song and trying to figure out what it was, and to whom it might be calling, so it’s not surprising that I first thought the sudden splash of heat on my face must be part of some bucolic dream I was having. Dawn on the meadow. That sort of thing.

  Wasn’t till the blistering roar jerked my eyelids up that I realized what was going on. Somebody’d tipped over the fuel tank and set the gasoline on fire. Great curling waves of orange flame and black smoke rolled up into the night sky.

  From my perch inside the Hudson, it looked like the bunkhouse barn was at least partially engulfed. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911.

  “Lewiston Emergency,” the woman’s voice said. “What’s your emergency?”

  “Got a barn on fire and a shooting out at The Flying H Ranch. U.S. Route ninety-three. Send everything you’ve got,” I shouted into the mouthpiece before stuffing the phone back into my pocket and kicking open the car door.

  I squatted in the tall grass, found two more sixty-round banana clips where I’d left them on the floorboards, and jammed them in my coat pockets.

  When I peeped up over the Hudson’s hood, first thing I saw was two guys coming out the back door of the Hardvigsen house. Both of them holding rifles.

  I suppose I should have shouted a warning or something. Given them a chance to surrender, maybe. But I didn’t. I was scared shitless and running on adrenaline, so I sighted out over the hood and let em have it on full auto.

  I walked the line of impacts up the ground until it got to them and watched as the one on the right threw up his hands and went down in an ass-over-teakettle heap. The guy on the left was hit somewhere down low, but somehow kept his feet. I could hear him hollering above the roar of the fire as he hopped toward the shelter of the far corner of the house.

  I raised the rifle and was going to take him down when a sudden rustle of the grass pulled my attention behind me. I turned in time to find myself looking down the steel nostrils of a double-barreled shotgun. The guy was wearing a ski mask and a grin, and I knew, in that instant, that this was the last thing I was ever going to see.

  An ear-shattering boom shook the night. I closed my eyes and waited for the pain and blackness to overwhelm me, but they didn’t come.

  When I dared to look up, the ski-mask guy was dead on the ground, with a hole the size of a silver dollar decorating the side of his head. Keith threw himself onto the ground beside me.

  “Guess Moon lied about waiting till Monday,” he said.

  “Ya think?”

  “What now?”

  “I called the cops,” I said. “We just gotta hang in there till they arrive.”

  He nodded.

  The Hudson rocked on its springs as it began to absorb rounds from the direction of the house. High-caliber rounds that were traveling all the way through one side of the car and out the other. I grabbed Keith by the collar and pulled him forward, up behind the front wheel, where we had the engine block between us and the shooters.

  “We stay here, they’re going to flank us sooner or later,” I shouted.

  He looked at me like I was speaking in tongues.

  “Let’s take it to them,” I yelled over the sound of shattering steel. “See if we can’t back em off a bit.”

  “Have at it, man,” he said.

  “Cover me.”

  He held up a trembling finger, ejected the empty clip from the Glock and slapped in another. The Glock automatically chambered a round. Keith took it in both hands and then laid down next to the flat front tire. He waited for the next volley of muzzle flashes and then began to squeeze off rounds. The Hudson shook from the high-caliber impacts. The air was filled with pulverized glass. I could hear the metallic tinkle as bits of chrome began to fall from the car. Keith squeezed off two more rounds, and I heard someone cry out in pain. I took that as my cue.

  I held the AX9 tight against my body as I sprinted across the yard. I was aiming for a rusty John Deere tractor very nearly buried in the weeds along the west fence line. As I ran, I snapped a glance at the burning barn. The whole west wall was engulfed in flames.

  Backlit by the fire, three crouching figures, their outlines shimmering in the maelstrom of heat waves, duckwalked in my direction. Their intermittent muzzle flashes and the sound of metal bees zooming past my ears told me I had best do something, in a big hurry, so I threw myself to the ground next to an ancient apple tree, got as much of the trunk as I could between me and them, and then got up on one knee, so I could see over the grass.

  I picked the guy in the middle and stitched a line of fire outward and upward until the first one hit him in the crotch, the second high in the chest, and the third restructured major portions of his head.

  And then I was moving again. Crawling through the grass on my hands and knees, listening to the sounds of lead threshers ripping around me as I moved. I could just make out the top of the tractor about ten yards in front of me when my right foot took a terrific impact and suddenly went numb. I set my jaw and kept on crawling, expecting to die any second, until I pulled myself behind the massive rear wheel of the John Deere and resumed breathing.

  I sat down and pulled my foot up toward my face. The entire back half of my boot was missing, heel, sole, and everything. I gingerly felt around on my foot, touching myself here and there, counting my toes, expecting my fingers to come away wet, or to slip into some gaping wound that would, once the shock wore off, reduce my nervous system to mint jelly. Didn’t happen, though. The foot was dry. All the slug had hit was my boot. I wanted to shout in elation, but restrained myself.

  Above the din, I could hear Keith’s steady rate of fire keeping somebody pinned down. I scrambled to my f
eet, slid over to the middle of the tractor, rested my elbow on the old metal seat, and began to spray .223 rounds all over the field in front of me.

  Took about five seconds to empty the clip. Another five to slap in a fresh sixty rounds, crawl up to the front of the tractor, and peep over the engine.

  A solitary, hooded figure was in a full sprint across the yard. Firing an automatic weapon as he ran, directly toward the battered Hudson and Keith. I could see the Hudson disintegrating before my eyes. Looked like time-lapse photography of a car rotting into the ground. I raised the AX9 and sent a stream of metal out across the yard and then watched impassively as the sprinter ran into it.

  The impact spun him in a complete circle. Sent his weapon pinwheeling up into the red sky. Almost looked like a high school baton twirler, until you saw the flaccidity of his final fall and knew intuitively that this guy was down for the count.

  I looked over Keith’s way. His eyes were the size of saucers, but he was sporting a grin bigger than the Ritz as he slammed a fresh clip into the Glock.

  And then the lights came roaring around the corner of the house, pulsing red, yellow, and blue, and I thought for a moment that salvation was at hand, until I saw who jumped out of the patrol car, riot gun in hand. Our old buddy Rockland Moon was shouting back and forth with people I couldn’t see, which, as far as I was concerned, made him the enemy, except that Rockland was a cop, and if you killed a cop, I don’t care what sort of asshole he is, or how much money you’ve got, you’re going to the big-boy jail for a long, long time. Period. End of story. So I settled myself onto my elbow, put my front sight on the first pulsing light on the left, and blew his light bar to screaming smithereens.

  By the time the last of the colorful shredded plastic had found its way back to earth, Rockland Moon had given up trying to locate me in the yard, in favor of hugging the gravel next to his patrol car and hoping to God I didn’t kill him.

  The spent clip burned my hand on the way out. I jammed my last clip into the slot and leaned back against the tractor. I took several deep breaths to clear my head and steady my shaking hands. That’s when I noticed the pulsing lights playing over the house and yard. Couldn’t be Moon’s lights. I was sure of that, so I took a peek.

  Three Lewiston PD cruisers now decorated the Hardvigsens’ backyard. The cops were armed and aiming at Keith and me over the tops of the cars.

  A bullhorn blared above the roaring of the fire.

  “Put down your weapons and come forward with your hands up.”

  He said it three times. So I figured he must be serious. Finally, I looked over at Keith and nodded. We stood up together, laced our fingers behind our heads, and began to shuffle toward the blinding lights.

  “Get down! Get down! Get down!” the horn screamed.

  We did as we were told. Flattened ourselves facedown in the grass, so a squadron of angry police officers could kneel on the backs of our necks and use about four times as much force as was necessary to handcuff us.

  The air was filled with static and radio talk as they force-marched us over to the nearest police car and bent us over the hood. While they frisked us, I could hear Deputy Rockland Moon telling somebody that I’d tried to kill him.

  A pair of Valley Hospital emergency vehicles swung around the corner of the house and kept on going, right out onto the middle of the lawn, a move that allowed the following fire truck full access to the raging barn.

  The EMTs came pouring out of their vehicles and began to swarm the yard.

  “Got one,” somebody cried.

  “One down here,” another voice shouted.

  The scene got to be a bit of a haze for a while. Cops screaming questions into my face, medics barking orders at one another, sirens and lights and radios creating a stew of sensations too thick to chew.

  “This him?” I heard somebody ask.

  A hand grabbed me by the back of the shirt and stood me up straight.

  Big ruddy-faced guy with a veiny nose. He was wiping the sweat from his face with a red mechanic’s rag. He said his name was Peter Gallagher and he was deputy chief of the Lewiston FD.

  “This your barn?” he asked.

  “Temporarily,” I said.

  “And there’s nothing alive in there?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  He shrugged. “Then it’s a goner,” he said. “No sense risking personnel. It’s so far along it’s dangerous. No sense in getting anybody hurt.”

  I said I understood.

  “We’ll keep the crew out here to make sure everything else is safe.”

  I thanked him in the nanosecond before the cop slammed me back down onto the hood and stuck a knee in the middle of my back to make sure I didn’t run off.

  Must’ve been twenty minutes before somebody grabbed ahold of my handcuffs, stiff-legged me over to a Lewiston Police car, and stuffed me in the backseat. I twisted myself sideways, so I wasn’t resting my weight on my manacled hands.

  Another ten minutes, and a uniformed cop opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat. Neat little guy with a pencil-thin mustache and a spotless uniform. His name tag said he was Nathan Wilder and that he was chief of police of Lewiston, Idaho. He looked me over. “Hell of a mess out there,” he said finally. “We’ve got two men dead and another two shot up pretty bad. You’re probably going to want an attorney present before you make any sort of statement.”

  He read me my rights. Chapter and verse. Asked me if I understood.

  I said, “I want to tell you what happened.”

  “I’d rather your attorney was present.”

  I started to talk anyway. When I’d finished he said, “That’s not the way Deputy Moon tells the story.”

  “Well, we both know how that is, don’t we?”

  His face was hard as concrete. He wasn’t about to disparage another cop, even a hummer like Rockland Moon. His concern for my rights, however, told me he was a by-the-book kind of guy, and under the circumstances, that was the best thing I could hope for.

  “I think I can prove to you which of us is telling the truth.”

  “How’s that?”

  I told him.

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “There’s one way to find out,” I said.

  Just before seven in the morning, the jailer came and let me out of my cell. The fact that she was alone and didn’t cuff me told me everything I needed to know. I was still huffing out sighs of relief when we got Keith from his cell, and the three of us took a silent elevator ride downstairs to the Lewiston PD’s offices.

  She pulled open the door that read LOGISTICS and stepped aside. Keith and I wandered in. Chief Wilder and another guy in uniform were the only people in the room. Spread out on tables were the four game trail cameras, a substantial hillock of ammunition, the Smith & Wesson .38, the AX9, and the Glock 17. Everything had been removed from Keith’s overnight bag, and from mine too. For some ungodly reason, I was struck by how sad and alone my underwear looked, lying there on the fake walnut veneer, next to Gordy’s post-mortem photos. Keith’s brightly colored pile of glow-in-the-dark condoms, on the other hand, more or less spoke for themselves.

  Wilder spoke first. “Had another one die this morning,” he said. “Couple of hours ago. That makes three bodies.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Wilder nodded at the other cop. “This is Captain Quincy Morgan of the Asotin County Sheriff’s Department.”

  We exchanged barely discernable nods.

  “You want to tell us what happened out there?” Morgan said.

  “Roland Moon tried to kill us,” I said. “We defended ourselves.”

  “Roland Moon and his wife, Cassandra, flew out of Lewiston–Nez Perce County Airport at four-thirteen yesterday afternoon. Nearly twelve hours before the festivities began out at The Flying H. Filed a flight plan for Denver. We checked with the Hilton, and the happy couple arrived as scheduled.”

  I shrugged and made a “so what” face. “A
ll that means is he’s too smart to be around when the shooting starts.”

  “What do you think? You think you’re the first one ever figured out Roland Moon was a crook? He’s been investigated by every law enforcement agency in the damn country. The FBI, the Washington State Patrol, the Idaho Bureau of Criminal Identification . . . all of them . . . hell, the SEC spent a couple of years trying to tie him to an insider-trading beef.

  “And you know what they came up with? Nothing. Nada. Squat.”

  “You’ve got three dead shooters,” I said.

  “Along with two wounded and two intact,” Morgan added. “Patrol picked up a pair of them trying to walk back to town.”

  “So what are they saying?” I wanted to know.

  “They’re saying they want to speak to their attorneys.”

  “Vegas,” Wilder said. “They all seem to be from Vegas.”

  Which, of course meant that nobody was admitting anything. Ever.

  Morgan wandered over to the nearest table. He rested his hand atop the prodigious pile of ammo and threw Keith and me an angry glare.

  “So . . . let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he began. “Your plan—if we can call it that—was to insert yourselves into a local business deal, for the express purpose of enraging the players sufficiently to attack you?”

  Didn’t sound so good when he put it like that, but I had to admit he had the gist.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “So tell me why I shouldn’t charge you as an accessory. You incited this whole damn thing. Hell . . . you invited it!”

  “I respectfully disagree,” I said. “What I was doing was sleeping on a piece of property to which I hold legal title. A group of people I don’t know, and with whom I’ve never had any dealings whatsoever, trespassed on my property, committed arson against me, and then tried to kill both of us. If that’s not self-defense, then I don’t know what is.”

  Morgan patted the pile of ammo. “And you certainly were well prepared to defend yourselves, weren’t you?”

  When I didn’t reply, his voice rose. “Thirteen hundred rounds,” he shouted.