by Scott Cook
The main floor common room was full, as Crowe had expected. He could smell takeout pizza, dust, and the familiar odor of men who had a nodding relationship at best with soap and deoderant. Kenny Flo and his twin brother, Dougie Flo, lounged on a sofa, passing a bottle of White Owl whiskey back and forth between them. Shitbox, a great buffalo of a man in a leather vest that could have upholstered an armchair, played a game of cutthroat pool with Smokey Hooper and Spider Burke, both of whom wore dingy strap undershirts that showed off their ropy arms. Digger Lewis sat on a barstool, cleaning his fingernails with a wicked-looking pocket knife, his tongue planted firmly between his yellow teeth. The last two, Boone and Pulaski, chewed thoughtfully on oversized slices of pizza and glared at Crowe.
“Gentlemen,” Crowe said, unsmiling, as he strolled between the pool table and the chairs where Boone and Pulaski sat. “Always a pleasure.”
Rat Face had set off Crowe’s alarms, and the look from Boone and Pulaski confirmed his suspicions. He glanced around the room – the pool game had come to an abrupt halt, and the Florence twins had put down their bottle. So it’s going to be now. Crowe had expected it at some point, of course, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t be today of all days. Then again, it had to happen sometime, especially after his conversation earlier with Hodge. Some of them guys are pretty hardcore.
Fuck it, he thought. Might as well pull off the Band-Aid and get it over with.
Shitbox laid his cue next to the table, drained his bottle of Labatt’s Blue, and let out a Herculean belch. Nearly as wide as he was tall, with a round face and a beard that qualified him for entry into ZZ Top, Shitbox was easily the largest and physically strongest of the Roses. He was also the most genial, with a disarmingly squeaky voice that was totally out of proportion with his size.
“Hey, Crowe,” he said. “How’s the boss doing?”
Crowe recognized the attempt to defuse the tension in the room and ignored it. He liked Shitbox well enough, certainly more than the rest of the Roses, but he wasn’t about to engage in idle talk. This was their first meeting after the guilty verdict, after Rufus Hodge was moved to maximum security, after the executions of Chuck Palliser and Richie Duff. It was without a doubt the most important moment in his two years with the Wild Roses.
Crowe fixed his gaze on Pulaski and leaned against the pool table. He folded his arms across his chest and crossed his feet, not unlike the position he’d taken in the plastic chair at the Badlands. He was good at it, and it had served him well over the course of his career.
Pulaski stared up at him defiantly, chewing his pizza slowly and deliberately.
“Hey, Pulaski,” Crowe said mildly. “I could swear I just saw that little shitpoke cousin of yours in the storefront when I walked in.”
Maxim Pulaski was approximately the same size as Crowe, but a few years younger, with shoulder-length raven black hair, and a handlebar moustache that he thought made him look like Sam Elliot. He had been born in Eastern Europe and moved to Canada with his parents when he was five. When fighting broke out back home, he’d returned to the Balkans and saw more than his share of combat in that ugly war. He wasn’t someone to fuck with lightly.
Pulaski wore his shirtsleeves rolled high to show off his biceps, where he and every other Wild Rose sported a tattoo of a red rose wrapped in barbed wire. Crowe waited patiently as Pulaski swallowed the pizza and wiped the grease from his mouth with a paper towel. He took his time.
“What’s it to you?” Pulaski finally asked, his eyes locked on Crowe’s. “He’s worked lookout before. He needed some cash, so I told him he could. You got a problem with that?”
Crowe maintained his shooting-the-shit tone. “I told you months ago that I don’t want hangers-on in the clubhouse when the boss is in lockup. It’s too much of a risk.”
Was Hodge talking about Pulaski earlier? Crowe wondered. Aside from Crowe himself, Pulaski was probably the smartest of the Roses, and the most ruthless. But was he capable of doing what Hodge thought he might have?
Boone put down his own slice of pizza and stood up, positioning himself next to Crowe by the pool table. He was the oldest of the Roses, with long, steel-grey hair in a ponytail, and deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. His belly hung out over his belt, but his arms were thick slabs that were still as strong as they’d ever been. Crowe ignored him and kept his gaze firmly on Pulaski.
“Well?” said Crowe. He raised his eyebrows in expectation of an answer.
Pulaski stared at him. “What’s the big deal?”
“What’s the big deal?” Crowe grinned and shook his head. “Ask Dumb Fuck Duff what the big deal is, Pulaski, he’ll tell you. Oh, wait a minute, no he won’t. He can’t. He doesn’t have a fucking tongue anymore, does he?”
Boone put his hands on the hips of his faded jeans. Crowe continued to ignore him. “You got sump’n to say, Crowe?” Boone asked, trying to sound nonchalant yet defiant at the same time. “You got sump’n to say, spit it out.”
Now Boone, too. Could he have helped Pulaski? The two were thick as thieves, and both had military backgrounds, though Boone had never been in the shit like Pulaski. Crowe held his position and glanced around the room. The Florence brothers were watching him intently. Smokey Hooper and Spider Burke leaned on their pool cues, Smokey lighting up one of his trademark Export A Filters, the ones people in the know called Green Death. Shitbox looked like a kid who had walked in on his parents fighting. Digger Lewis continued jamming his knife under his fingernails as if he were the only person in the room.
Crowe smiled, letting nothing show. “Fuck me, Pulaski,” he chuckled. “I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist. I couldn’t even see your lips move when Boone talked. Maybe I should have been looking at your asshole instead.”
Boone scowled and laid a hand on Crowe’s right shoulder. “Now listen here, you prick–”
Crowe grabbed Boone’s right hand with his own. Quick as a snake, he twisted the older man’s arm over his head and behind his back, using the momentum to position himself behind Boone. He drove his right knee up into the base of Boone’s spine, then grabbed Boone’s thick grey hair with his free hand. He didn’t dare give Boone time to get his bearings; if he did, the older man’s strength would be a threat. Crowe shoved Boone’s head toward the center of the pool table. His nose connected with a wet smack, spraying blood and snot across two square yards of green felt.
Crowe heard a sharp intake of air behind him as Pulaski leapt from his chair. He dropped Boone to the floor and spun to his right, grabbing Shitbox’s cue and swinging it in a wide arc in one fluid movement. The cue struck the back of Pulaski’s head with the force of a major league triple and split in half. The narrow end flew through the air, smacking Digger on the side of the head, finally breaking his fingernail-cleaning reverie.
Boone moaned on the floor next to the pool table as Crowe kept his eyes on Pulaski. He was clearly stunned, stumbling backward away from the table, but his right hand was hidden from Crowe’s view by his torso. Crowe hadn’t seen Pulaski when he swung the cue, had only heard the loud cracking sound when it connected with the man’s head. He would have to make a split-second decision when that right hand reappeared. He was ready. Jason Crowe was always ready. It was his job.
Pulaski lurched toward Crowe. Seconds ticked by. Finally, his right hand emerged from behind his back holding a folding knife with a four-inch carbon steel blade. It was shorter than the blade Digger had been using on his fingernails, but Crowe judged by the quality of steel that it would be considerably sharper. Pulaski swung blindly at Crowe’s midsection with all his strength, slicing through his cotton tee-shirt, but missing the skin underneath by millimeters.
Crowe stepped to the side and grabbed the wrist of Pulaski’s knife hand with his own left. He brought the thick end of the broken cue down with his right hand on the outside of Pulaski’s left elbow. Pulaski’s scream echoed through the concrete bunker like a siren.
We’re not done yet, Crowe though grimly. H
e hauled the man, stumbling, over to the edge of the pool table next to Boone, who lay on the floor, holding his gushing nose and cursing. Crowe stomped the back of Pulaski’s knee. He dropped next to the table, still moaning, as Crowe grabbed Pulaski’s left hand and laid it flat on the edge next to the corner pocket. Crowe picked up the eight-ball, tossed it lightly and caught it a couple of times, making sure everyone could see it. He surveyed the room quickly; Shitbox looked on the verge of sucking his thumb, but the rest, including Digger Lewis now, were watching him with rapt attention.
Crowe took a deep breath. This was the part of the job he had always hated. It didn’t come second nature to him the way it did to men like Hodge. But a man had to do what a man had to do, or so John Wayne had led people to believe. He raised the eight-ball as high as his arm would go and brought it down as hard as he could on the back of Pulaski’s hand. As he did, he bellowed: “MUSTN’T!” at the top of his lungs.
The ball went up again and came down with a dull thok. “PLAY!”
Up and down again, another scream from Pulaski. “WITH!”
One final time, one final crack, one final scream. “KNIVES!”
Crowe dropped the eight-ball back on the table, where it landed with a clunk that resonated in the silence of the common room. He let go of the mangled hand. Crowe had been careful not to break any of the fragile tarsal bones – the man was no use to him one-handed – but he had inflicted plenty of pain to make up for the lack of long-term damage. Pulaski slid to the floor. Boone muttered a curse as the younger man landed on him. Crowe stomped Boone squarely in the nose with the sole of his boot, prompting a sickening shriek and a fresh gusher of blood.
Crowe was breathing more heavily than he would have liked as the adrenaline ebbed from his body. He knew Rufus Hodge would have buried the broken pool cue in Pulaski’s throat if the man had been stupid enough to come after him with a knife, but Jason Crowe wasn’t Rufus Hodge. Still, he was pretty sure he had made his point. Like any wolf pack – and that’s what the Roses were, when you stripped everything else away and looked at their core, they were a wolf pack – someone was bound to challenge the alpha male when he smelled weakness. They didn’t dare try anything while Hodge was on trial and there was a chance he might walk, but Crowe had noticed subtle cues during his eight months as the Roses’ reluctant de facto leader. They had to wait for the verdict, and that’s what they had done.
Now, the big dog had torn open the challengers, and they had rolled over and shown their bellies. Crowe understood all of this in his head, but it didn’t help quiet the cramp in his guts. Plus he was now down at least one man for the foreseeable future, and quite possibly two. Assuming they had ever truly been his in the first place. Was there more to it than just dominance? He thought back over the past eight months: had they shown any signs of conspiring against him before now? He wanted to say no, but he had been preoccupied throughout the trial. Hell, even before the whole mess with Hodge had started. Crowe had been hired for a specific task, and leading the Roses wasn’t it. He’d somehow inherited the mantle when Hodge entered lockup, but he certainly hadn’t asked for it. And now he was hauling a truckload of unanswered questions behind him, too, not to mention a new cloud of police suspicion.
This day just keeps getting longer, he thought.
As if reading Crowe’s thoughts, Kenny Flo picked up the White Owl and waggled it at him. “Drink?” he asked. Dougie, who looked absolutely nothing like his twin brother other than his chestnut hair, was grinning crookedly at him. Crowe grabbed the bottle and took a long pull. The cheap whiskey burned like a hot coal in his mouth and belly, but it helped slow his heartbeat and clear his head. Shitbox, Spider and Smokey had resumed their game, though Crowe thought Shitbox looked decidedly green. Boone and Pulaski had mercifully passed out under the table. Digger was looking around the room as if he had just awakened from a dream.
Crowe was about to speak when he heard a slow, distinct clapping from the entryway. Startled, he looked over to see an hourglass silhouette standing in the doorway to the storefront. It was Diane Manning. The door swung shut behind her as she sauntered slowly into the room, the sultry smile on her lips standing in stark contrast to the verdict that Gregory Larocque had brought down the day before. She continued her slow ovation as she walked.
Christ, Crowe groaned inwardly.
“That was quite a show,” she purred as she sidled up next to Crowe, ignoring the rest of the men in the room. They weren’t ignoring her. Manning’s heart-shaped rear end strained the confines of her skirt, and her breasts pressed heavily against her silk blouse, leaving gaping holes between the buttons that practically begged the Roses to peek at her considerable cleavage. They took her up on the unspoken invitation.
Crowe didn’t particularly like Diane Manning, but he couldn’t help feeling a familiar cramp in his crotch when she approached him. He had meant to meet with her tomorrow to discuss some very important issues, but here she was now. He wondered if it was deliberate. Of course it was deliberate. Everything she does is deliberate. Though they had worked side by side for months, the lawyer baffled him. She was as smart and as canny as they came in the courtroom, yet she seemed to get off on playing Marilyn Monroe in most other situations, using her feminine charms like some D-list fame whore looking for a sugar daddy.
Diane looked up at Crowe and placed a hand on the small of his back, inspiring a fresh tingle in his jeans. He could feel the eyes of the Roses on him. He had just established himself as leader – he wasn’t about to jeopardize that by letting the lawyer who had let Rufus Hodge go down for murder embarrass him. Sure, he thought. Maybe if you tell yourself that enough times, your cock will finally get the message.
“What do you want?” he asked gruffly. “We have work to do.”
She ignored him and tossed her chestnut hair. “Hello, boys,” she smiled to the room. The Roses returned the greeting, except for Shitbox, who simply blushed. Diane Manning was the only woman that Crowe had ever seen elicit a respectful response from the Wild Roses, even now, after the verdict. Most females outside of the Roses’ own stable of prostitutes were greeted with catcalls and inappropriate attempts to grab their asses. Crowe chalked it up to the aura Diane gave off – sexy but whip-smart, and not afraid to plant the heel of her fuck-me pump into an unsuspecting scrotum. Crowe wondered what the Roses would have done if she’d been a man and had walked into the clubhouse, bold as brass, after failing to live up to the promise of a not-guilty verdict for Rufus Hodge.
“We need to talk,” she said distractedly, obviously enjoying the attention from the Roses. “It’s about the appeal.”
Crowe sighed. He did need to talk to her, very much so, but he wasn’t about to let her know that under these circumstances. “All right, you’ve got five minutes.” He led her toward the office. “Smokey, get Pulaski and Boone to the emergency room at Foothills. Tell them it was an accident with an engine hoist. I want them back here before morning. The rest of you stick around. We have work to do, starting right now.”
Smokey Hooper bent under the pool table to pick up Crowe’s victims while Diane favored the Roses with a coquettish wave. “Bye, boys,” she cooed. They gawked at her swinging hips as she sashayed away.
Crowe pushed her into the office and slammed the door behind them. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” he hissed.
“Lighten up, Jason,” she said, dropping into one of the overstuffed chairs that sometimes served as beds after an all-nighter. She pulled out a gold case and withdrew a long, white-filtered cigarette, lighting it with a silver-plated Zippo that Crowe guessed cost more than many people made in a week. “I’m assuming that show I just walked in on means you’re officially running things now.” She drew deeply on the cigarette and blew out a long trail of smoke. “I mean, I already knew that was the case, but that display certainly solidified things, didn’t it?”
Crowe closed his eyes and sighed. I’m in a fucking Raymond Chandler novel. He tried to will his burgeon
ing erection away and failed. It was almost creepy – like getting a hard-on from looking at a swaying cobra. “How I run things is none of your concern, Diane,” he said, hoping he sounded cooler than he felt. “Get to the point. You said something about the appeal?”
“Yes,” she said, as if suddenly remembering the reason she came. She crossed her legs, sending another shiver through Crowe’s crotch. “That’s right. I withdrew the motion.”
Crowe opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He shook his head, then opened his mouth again. This time he managed to say, “What?” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Diane, we’ve talked about this. The appeal is a no-brainer. Larocque convicted based on Alex Dunn and Richie Duff’s testimony. The only physical evidence was that single digital photo, and that’s as flimsy as a whore’s drawers. A first-year law student would know the conviction doesn’t hold water.”
Diane smiled at him, bouncing one smooth, bare knee on the other. “Tell me something I don’t know. But honey, this isn’t the law we’re dealing with here. If Rufus Hodge were a handsome high school hockey star or something like that, then sure, we’d tear the conviction apart. We’d do everything we could to make sure justice was done. But it’s not that kind of case. Hodge is a monster in the eyes of the media and the public, and make no mistake, this is the court of public opinion. Plus, let’s face it, Jason – you can’t pull off a stunt like you did yesterday and expect any sort of sympathy from anyone.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. He’d already given it to Rufus Hodge that afternoon. Christ, what a mess.
“Don’t worry, Jason,” She soothed. “I know how good you are at your job. I’m not worried about that. But sweetie, I have to tell you, if the public had their way, Hodge would be hanging by his balls from the nearest tree. And it won’t be long before the police finger you and drag you kicking and screaming into the media spotlight.”
Crowe moved to speak, but she held up her palms to interrupt. “I have no doubt the police won’t be able to bring you to trial, but no appeal judge in the country would let Rufus Hodge back on the streets after he had a cop and a witness executed the day after his conviction.” She smiled. “That’s not how the game is played.”
