by Nick Petrie
He put his fingers into the tool marks.
The dirt inside was tightly packed and still slightly damp.
“They found it,” said Judah Lee. The flashlight in the crawl space lit his face from beneath. The blue skull tattoo and the pointed teeth going dark at their rotten roots were truly terrifying. “Those goddamn people took our family legacy.”
* * *
• • •
They walked back through the vacant lot to the street behind, where they’d left Judah’s red pickup. It was parked across from a neatly kept little house with a picket fence out front and flower beds blooming like crazy.
Albert put his powerful hand on his brother’s thick arm. “Let’s go home, Judah.”
That morning, before they left the farm, he’d set up the corral trap where the south field met the trees. Hogs had been rooting up the sweet potatoes again, looking for the tender shoots. Now he had a bad feeling. A stone in his belly. He wanted to go check the corral. Anything to get out of there.
Judah shook off Albert’s hand and strode toward the little house.
“Let’s find another way, Judah. Let’s just go home.”
Albert never could keep up when Judah Lee was in full stride. He was afraid of what his brother had in mind. But arguing with Judah Lee had never done any good. Usually it made things worse. Gave him ideas.
The house had a good steel security door facing the street. Without a word, Judah Lee turned and walked up the driveway, past an old Buick, to the high wooden fence that wrapped the backyard. There was no dog, and Judah shouldered through the gate before Albert got close enough to put a hand on him.
There was no security grate at the back porch. Just a thick wooden door with a pair of heavy-duty deadbolts.
Judah Lee leaned back and kicked it in.
An elderly man at the kitchen sink reached for a cast-iron fry pan, but Judah brushed it aside and smashed the old man to the floor with a single heavy fist. An old woman screamed and dropped beside him, covering him with her body. Albert had to shush her with the back of his hand to keep Judah from taking up the fry pan and beating them both to death.
“It’s for your own good,” Albert told them as he tied their skinny wrists with clothesline. He stuffed dishrags into their mouths, then left them together on the living room sofa amid lace doilies and dried flowers, like his own grandmother had kept. While Albert turned out the house lights, Judah took their keys and moved the Buick across the street, then drove the modified pickup into the small garage with the sound of rending wood. The beefed-up truck was too big for the door.
When Judah came back, he loomed over the couple.
No mask over his face, not even a handkerchief tied bandit-style.
They shrank away from him, and Judah smiled.
Albert knew then that his brother had lost the desire for disguise, had stopped caring for any consequence that might bring. The stone in his belly got heavier.
“We don’t need to do any of this,” he said. “We can still go home.”
Judah gave Albert a look as empty as the eyes of the skull tattooed on his face.
“That race traitor will come by soon enough. Tonight or tomorrow, we can wait. I’m guessing he’s careful. He’ll check these streets. We’ll follow behind, and he’ll lead us to what he stole. Or we take it out of his hide, then go after the woman who lives there.”
Judah turned to stare out the wide front window at the falling darkness while Albert stood uneasily in the unlit living room, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looking at the elderly couple huddled together on the couch.
“Here’s how it is,” he told them. “When we see who we’re waiting for, we’re gone. But you never saw us, all right? We weren’t never here. If we find out different, we’ll be back. And we won’t be so nice.”
The tied-up old couple nodded their heads with solemn dignity undercut only slightly by the dishrag ends hanging from their open mouths. The old man’s brown face was turning dark where Judah had hit him.
Time passed with painful slowness. The tick of the grandfather clock filled the room. Then Judah pointed at a big SUV driving past. “We see them before?”
“I don’t know.” Albert was tired. He’d been up most of the night before with Judah, and spent most of the morning setting up that corral trap. He didn’t know why he’d thought catching hogs still mattered.
“Losing your nerve, big brother? Afraid of your true self?”
Albert didn’t know who his true self was anymore.
Maybe it didn’t matter. He was in this now. He couldn’t think of a way out of any of it. Losing the farm. Going to prison. Or dying along the way.
Maybe that last one was the best.
“Here it comes again. Look. You recognize that guy?”
“No, I don’t.” Albert didn’t want to look. He just wanted to go home. But his head turned, and his eyes followed the SUV. And he did recognize the man in the passenger seat. That shaggy dark hair, that bony, long-muscled arm hanging out the window, those searching eyes like a wolf on the hunt.
“Dang,” said Albert. “It’s him.”
“Okay.” Judah rubbed his hands together. “Get the truck. You’re driving. I’ll be right behind you.”
Albert limped to the garage and climbed into the driver’s seat. It was hard to maneuver, even harder to see where he was going with the changes they’d made to the truck. He took out a corner of the garage with the big new fender, then a section of fence.
That wasn’t who Albert thought he was, someone who wrecked things. But that’s who he’d become.
He sat waiting in the driveway, but he couldn’t see Judah Lee through the tiny space he’d left in the window. Afraid they were going to lose the shaggy wolf-eyed man, he opened his door to call out but saw Judah Lee walking down the front steps.
He wore a wide pointy grin as he wiped the blade of his knife on the leg of his pants.
Then Albert knew Judah had killed the elderly couple.
The stone in his belly got heavier still. There truly was no way out. Albert might as well have killed those folks himself.
Judah hopped on the back bumper and into the sheltered bed of the pickup. He thumped the roof of the cab. “Time to go, big brother. Hit the gas.”
And, God help him, Albert did what Judah Lee told him to do. Again.
* * *
• • •
The problem was, now Albert was too far behind the big SUV to follow. He’d watched them take a right turn a few blocks up, but by the time he got there, the SUV was nowhere to be found. The narrow view ports only made it harder to see.
“Goddamn it,” howled Judah Lee from the back. He slammed his heavy hands on the cab roof, denting it in his rage. “You are fucking useless.”
“Screw you,” muttered Albert. But he kept driving, head craned forward as he peered through the little opening in the windshield. The SUV he’d seen was boxy and newer, which made it different from everything else in this neighborhood of beaters. He’d gotten a good look. It didn’t have much traffic to hide in, either. He knew which way it was headed.
Albert had been hunting almost since he could walk. He had a good eye. He could spot a deer silhouette in the thickest brush.
He’d drive until he found that SUV, and the shaggy, wolf-eyed man in it.
While the stone in his belly grew heavier by the minute.
50
Peter and Lewis spiraled in toward Wanda’s house from a long way out, looking for the Burkitts brothers. Windows down in the thick evening heat, their pistols within easy reach, the long guns under a blanket on the back seat. They cruised the busy avenues and side roads and the parking lots in the gathering dark, not knowing what vehicle they were trying to find, but fairly sure they’d know it when they saw it. As they circled closer, Peter peered into the tangled d
epths of the vacant lots, finding nothing.
Finally Lewis drove down Wanda’s street. Her house was still standing, with no sign of new damage, and no watchers in sight.
He didn’t stop. “Either we beat ’em here, or they’re laying up somewhere, waiting.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “We might have gotten lucky if we’d caught them by surprise, but we can’t compete head-on, not with what I think they’ve got. We need a serious upgrade.”
Lewis circled around and drove across the Wolf River into Frayser as the last of the daylight winked out behind the high granite clouds to the west.
* * *
• • •
Peter knew where they were going. Starting from the Texaco where Eli had taken Peter’s truck, they followed Fat Rudy’s original directions to find a phone.
The Wet Spot stood on the corner, a rectangular white brick building with a storefront below and sagging wooden exterior steps climbing to apartments above. Metal grates over the front first-floor windows, steel security doors at the front and rear, the storefront’s side windows bricked up years ago.
There was a vacant lot to one side and another behind the alley. The parking area at the rear had two cars, Charlene Scott’s long, low, matte-black stealth ride and a plain blue four-door Ford pickup. King Robbie’s big Mercedes SUV sat right out front.
Lewis cruised past without slowing. “See all the cameras?”
Peter had counted sixteen. Eight mounted at the building corners above the first floor, for overlapping views of the immediate area, and eight more at the parapet wall above the second floor, to look down the surrounding streets. “Reminds me of your old place in Milwaukee.”
“Only better. These people aren’t messing. Plus it’s a damn ice cream shop and grocery store. You don’t know what kind of civilians gonna be in there. Women and children. And we can’t just hang out and wait until it’s empty, because they’ll see us on the monitors.”
“What I want is a conversation.”
Lewis snorted. “Jarhead, you humiliated these people. Took that girl shooter’s pistol, then held up his muscle at gunpoint. Made even more of an insult because you didn’t respect them enough to kill them.” He shook his head. “Better to just put on a ski mask and walk inside and shoot them dead.”
Peter looked at his friend. “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
Lewis looked right back. “You keep asking what I used to do for a living? Well, this is how I got started, back in the day.”
At the corner, he turned and pulled to the curb, out of sight of the cameras.
“I used to stick up the corner boys for food money when I was a kid. Moved fast and beat ’em down and got it done. Didn’t get rich, but I didn’t starve to death, either. After Uncle Sam taught me to kill people and not give a shit, I moved up the food chain to the big boys.”
Peter had collected enough snippets of conversation from his friend that he’d already guessed this much. “I’m disappointed,” he said. “I thought you sold encyclopedias door to door.”
Lewis faced forward, the cords standing out in his neck. “Man, I hate dope dealers. They poison their neighborhood six ways from Sunday. We should go in there and kill them all.”
“Power hates a vacuum,” said Peter. “Remember what Iraq was like after the ruling party got dismantled? The Baathists all kicked out of office with nothing to replace them? The army sent home without pay? That’s when the civil war started, and everything went to hell.”
Lewis snorted. “This is no fucking joke. People at this level, they made it there because they’re smart and fast and half-crazy. They’re heeled and ready and they will not hesitate to kill you dead without a second thought. Your only advantage is surprise.”
Peter smiled. “No, our advantage is that we’re smarter, faster, and completely crazy. So we’ll suit up, park right in front, and go in hard. But no killing unless we have to.”
Lewis shook his head. “Jarhead, why you always got to make things so damn difficult?”
“I have a feeling,” said Peter. “Maybe a way to stabilize things.”
“It’s a mistake to think they’ll stick to any deal you make at gunpoint. I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing.”
“We’ll adjust to whatever comes. Don’t worry, I won’t hesitate.”
“Tell me again why I hang out with you?”
Peter clapped Lewis on the shoulder. “Because I make your life so goddamn interesting.”
* * *
• • •
They still wore the tactical vests from their approach to the Burkitts brothers’ farm. They’d put on thin windbreakers to be less conspicuous on the road, but now they peeled off the jackets and checked their gear in silence.
Peter’s last task was to set his phones to airplane mode, but when he pulled out the burner, he saw a text from June. Don’t mean to cramp your style but where the fuck are you?
Peter showed the text to Lewis. “I think I need a minute.”
“Yeah you do.”
They sat in the Yukon, pistols snug in holsters and the angular HK rifles butt-down in the footwell while June’s phone rang in Peter’s ear.
She answered. “What the fuck?”
“Hi, honey. Lewis and I are just getting ready for a meeting.”
“Don’t bullshit me. I am not happy with you.”
Peter had never been able to fool June for a single minute.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“When will you be here?”
“I don’t know. There are too many hairy assholes still out there, but we’re working on it. Can I get back to you later?”
“As long as you come back to me,” she said. “You hearing me, Marine?”
“Yes, ma’am. How’s Wanda?”
“The doctor came and took a look. She told me that Wanda’s malnourished and probably addicted to half these goddamn pills. I got a referral to a therapist and a plan to taper Wanda off those meds. I also made an appointment for a full physical next week.”
“Did that young woman Nadine show up?”
“Less than an hour ago. She barely said hello, just went into Wanda’s room and closed the door. I thought I heard somebody crying. They’re still in there now.” He heard the concern in her voice.
“I’m sure they’re just talking.”
He was fairly certain it was more than that. He changed the subject.
“I’m still thinking about Wanda’s gallery show. You think there’s any way she’ll make her deadline?”
“Oh, I’ll make it happen, even if I have to choose the images myself. Actually,” June said, “I was looking at Wanda’s laptop. She has these other photos, they look like they were taken in a nightclub. Very different from her other stuff. A lot of life there, dancers and musicians, people all dressed up. They’re really good, I think. I called the gallery owner and he said to include as many as we like.”
“That’s great,” Peter said. “Maybe she can find something new to focus on.”
“Maybe so.” Then she said, “Is that him, the kid onstage with the silvery guitar?”
“Yes.”
“I can see who he reminds you of, and why you want to save him. They don’t look anything alike, but they have the same kind of presence. Even in the photo, you can see it.”
Peter didn’t glance at Lewis. “Let’s talk about this later.”
“Wait.” A muffled sound, maybe her hand over the phone. Then, “Nadine just came out. She says she’s worried Eli’s going to get himself into worse trouble.” June read off an address. “She said that’s where Eli’s been staying. She said get there soon. And bring a shovel. Maybe two.”
“What?”
“That’s all she said.” June pushed out a breath. “We need to have a serious fucking conversation,
Marine.”
“I know,” he said. “We will. But not yet. I need to finish this thing, and I need to know you’re safe while I’m doing it.”
“I’m safe here,” she said. “You stay safe, too.”
“Lewis brought vests. We’ll be fine.”
“Put him on.”
“What?”
“Put Lewis on the fucking phone.”
He handed it to Lewis. June did all the talking.
Peter couldn’t hear her words, but he could hear the tone. Loud. Insistent.
Lewis just listened with his small, tilted smile. It didn’t take long. Finally, he said, “Yes ma’am. Loud and clear.”
Then ended the call.
Peter looked at Lewis. “What was that about?”
Lewis shook his head. He looked down the darkened street. The night clouds were lit from the city below, looming closer with their hanging curtains of rain. “Your girlfriend is something else.”
“What’d she say?”
Lewis shook his head again. “That woman is a keeper, Jarhead. I hope you understand that, what you got with her.”
“Lewis, what the fuck did she say?”
He turned to face Peter. The intensity of his stare was almost physical.
“She said kill anybody I have to. Long as I bring you back in one piece.”
Peter blinked. “Jesus Christ.”
“Uh-huh.” Lewis drummed his fingers on one leg. The Yukon’s engine growled almost below the range of hearing. “You still looking to do this?”
Peter wanted to feel regret, but he didn’t. He took a deep breath and felt the familiar lift of adrenaline, the best high in the world. The taste of copper filled his mouth.
“Oh, hell yes,” he said. “Let’s roll.”
51
They left the Yukon a car length behind the big Mercedes and went through the door without discussion, as if they’d done it a hundred times before. Peter first with his rifle up and ready, Lewis a half-step behind, then fanning to Peter’s right with the sawed-off 10-gauge snug at his shoulder and a big smile on his face.
