Bad Men

by Allan Guthrie

  Wallace really deserved what he was going to get. No doubt about that, and Flash would dearly love to give it to him, but as if Wallace wasn't a tough enough proposition in the first place, he now had a fucking gun to contend with, which was an absolute pisser of a situation.

  Which is why Pearce was the man for the job. So he'd turned it down already and Dad had given up on him, but Flash reckoned he could still be persuaded. And he wasn't afraid of guns. Been shot already, hadn't he, and survived.

  Flash picked up the phone and dialled.

  Hilda stared at the phone, tail wagging. Looked like he was about to attack the handset. Pearce picked it up and said, "Speak."

  "Seen what happened?" a voice he vaguely recognised said.

  Pearce waited but he couldn't place the voice and it didn't say anything else so he hung up.

  Seconds later, the phone rang again. "The fuck you hang up for, amigo?" the same voice sad. "That's Pearce, isn't it?"

  Baxter's son. The one who was still walking. The one Pearce had threatened to castrate. Pearce said, "I said no."

  He hung up again. Bent down, scooped up Hilda, tucked him under

  his arm. He went through to the bedroom, stood by the window, looked out across the Firth stroking Hilda's head. Another hot clear day. Too hot to be bothered with this kind of hassle.

  Wallace. Devil Daddy. The Baxter's nemesis. Shot Big Rodge's knees full of lead. The fuck was wrong with the mad fucker? What did Rodge do to upset him? The big guy would be in hospital for a while and, according to the newspapers, when he did get out, it'd be in a wheelchair. Probably wouldn't ever walk again.

  But was it Wallace? Highly possible that Rodge could have pissed off somebody else. Somebody with that kind of sadistic temper, though? Somebody harbouring sufficient rage to break into your home and fire a couple of bullets into you? Pearce could think of one or two candidates. Suitably provoked, Cooper would do that without blinking. But then, he was in prison. And Seamus, Pearce's old cellmate, wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Mind you, handguns weren't his weapon of choice. People he didn't like, he used to slice chunks of their torsos off with a machete. While they were alive.

  After lockdown, Pearce sometimes had trouble sleeping knowing Seamus was in the same room, machete or no.

  Pearce held out till evening. Then he gave in. He'd slotted the photo of May in a drawer in the kitchen once he'd decided Baxter's offer wasn't for him. Hadn't been able to toss the photo in the bin, though he wasn't sure why. He dug it out now, smoothing out the slight crease in the top right-hand corner.

  He flipped it over, dialled the number on the back.

  A girl answered.

  Pearce said, "Who's this?"

  "May." She sounded tired.

  "Can I speak to Baxter?"

  "Who do you want? Flash or Dad?"

  "I'll have Dad, please."

  When Baxter came to the phone, Pearce said, "I need to talk to you."

  "What about?"

  "Wallace," Pearce said.

  "You changed your mind?"

  "I didn't say that. I just want to talk to you."

  "You want to come over?"

  "Nope."

  After a minute, Baxter said, "Oh, I get it. I'm on my way."

  The Baxters had had fish for dinner. Pearce smelled it on them the minute they walked in the door. So did Hilda. He appeared from the sitting room, had a quick look round, wagging his tail like a demented rattlesnake, and then went back to his basket.

  "Weird dog," Flash said. "What sort is it?"

  Pearce told him. Flash had never heard of a Dandie Dinmont. He was slouching so hard with his hands in his pockets he looked like he was going to collapse into his own stomach.

  The dad offered Pearce his hand. He, at least, had some semblance of politeness. His face reminded Pearce of a car thief he'd shared a cell with for a month. Guy called Rocky. You could have cut off his nose and sewn it back on upside down and it would have been an improvement. Rocky didn't have those dark bruises under his eyes, though.

  "Wasn't expecting the pair of you," Pearce said.

  "Flash is as concerned about May as I am," Baxter said.

  "Where is she now?"

  "Visiting our brother in hospital," Flash said. "Where Wallace put him."

  "Is she safe?"

  "Course she is," Baxter said. "Public place. She's with a friend of mine. And we're picking them up after we leave here."

  Pearce asked, "The baby okay?"

  "May's upset," Baxter said. "We all are. But on this occasion the damage to May has been psychological. Physically, she's fine."

  "Good," Pearce said. He asked Flash, "Got a knife with you this time, hard man?"

  Flash's hand moved in front of his crotch. He said nothing.

  Pearce turned, led the way into the sitting room. The Baxters carried the smell of fish with them as they followed. And Pearce realised why he'd been thinking about Rocky. You see, Rocky had claimed that a skate was the perfect sexual substitute for a woman. He swore by it. Just like the real thing, apparently. Advised Pearce to go to Deep Sea World at North Queensferry just to see if he wasn't telling the truth. "It's cool there," Rocky said. "Scores of flat fish swimming over your head in these glass-ceilinged tunnels. Honest, pal, they have remarkably fanny-looking fannies. And if you want to touch and not just look, I know a good fishmonger in Slateford."

  Pearce couldn't help but wonder if the Baxters had been diddling a skate.

  "What's funny?" Jacob Baxter said, arms folded, standing in front of Pearce.

  Pearce shook his head. "Take a seat," he said. Then, to distract him, "How's the wife?"

  Baxter glared at him. "She's dead," he said.

  "Oh," Pearce said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Happened a while ago," Baxter told him. "I'm over the worst of it."

  Pearce folded his arms. "And Rodge?"

  Baxter shrugged. "Won't be walking again any time soon." He breathed out heavily. "But he's alive. Mind if I smoke?"

  "As long as you don't mind me coming over to your house and pissing all over your carpet," Pearce told him.

  "I forgot," Baxter said. "What did you want to speak to us about?"

  "I know what happened," Pearce said. "I read the newspapers. What I'd like you to do is tell me why."

  Baxter stood for a while longer, then finally decided to plonk his arse down on Pearce's mum's settee. He wiped the cushion first, as if there were crumbs or dog hairs on it. There weren't dog hairs on it, cause Pearce didn't let Hilda up on the settee. They had an understanding. The wee bastard had his own basket over by the window and Pearce never tried to get into it.

  Although Flash might. He was walking over there now. Bending over, muttering to Hilda. Hilda opened his mouth, let his tongue loll out. Flash stared at him, fascinated by the missing leg. Hilda's tail was off again. When the dog wasn't a coward, it was a whore.

  Pearce focused on Baxter again. Baxter sniffed, stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, withdrew it, empty. He ran the palm of his hand across his brow.

  "Nobody going to say anything?" Pearce said.

  Flash straightened, shifted his weight, what little there was of it, from one foot to the other, but didn't look like opening his mouth anytime soon.

  "Does it matter?" Baxter said.

  "Tell me. Then I'll decide."

  "Christ's sake, Pearce, you saw what he did to the dog."

  Pearce, huh? What happened to the ‘mister'? "I did," Pearce said. "But I wasn't asking about the dog."

  Baxter's lips were pursed, deep wrinkles running down his jaw. "And Rodge? What was that? A forgivable fit of temper?"

  "How do you know Wallace was responsible?"

  "You serious?"

  "Perfectly."

  Baxter leaned back in the settee, stretched. Then he sat forward suddenly. "This goes no further than us," he said.

  After Pearce nodded, Baxter proceeded to tell him about Rodge trying to kill Wallace. About Rodge failing. About Wal
lace getting hold of the gun. About Wallace threatening to shoot Rodge in the kneecaps.

  Pearce said, "So, let me get this straight. Rodge intended killing Wallace?"

  Flash approached Pearce, hands thrust in his pockets. "Too fucking right."

  "And he fucked up?"

  Flash nodded.

  "And Wallace taught him a lesson by pumping a couple of slugs in him?"

  "Well, that's not how I'd look at it, Mr Pearce."

  "But that's how Wallace would look at it."

  Silence for a while. Then Baxter said, "The important question is, how do you look at it?"

  Pearce smacked his lips, then said, "Rodge was asking for it."

  Ten o'clock, Pearce took Hilda out for a bedtime stroll. Walked down to the end of the street, passed a tiny old lady all dolled up, hair in a high coiffure, teetering from one side of the pavement to the other. Whether the poor balance was a result of her high heels or alcohol was anybody's guess. She looked happy, though.

  He let Hilda off the lead at the steps down to the beach. Looked over to his left, saw a guy in a pink suit, maybe red, hard to tell under the outside light from the pub on the corner. The guy was hefting a suitcase and looked like a freak.

  Pearce didn't want any hassle. Hoped the freak didn't follow him down to the beach.

  Hilda bounced off into the distance, sniffing at the sand, snorting. Any minute he'd start barking at the slow-winking light from the lighthouse on the island over to the west.

  Pearce followed, heading towards the sea, crossing over the loose-packed sand towards the firmer footing further out. A flock of birds took off on his left, too far away to be able to tell what kind they were, glided over the water and out of sight. The waves slapped and splashed and made a sound like rustling paper.

  Overhead, the drone of a plane. He resisted the temptation to look up.

  "Hilda," he said, not loudly. He meant the dog, but he started thinking of his mother. She'd lived in Edinburgh all her life, but he never remembered her taking him to the beach.

  "All that sand."

  "Yeah, Mum."

  "Gets in your shoes."

  "Yeah. Take them off."

  "Yuck. All that grit between your toes."

  "Yeah. I know."

  "In your hair. In everything."

  "I know." She'd have loved it, though.

  Waves rolled towards him. Each one a birth and a death. He stared into the distance. Getting melancholic. A birth and a death? Fuck that. They were fucking waves. He should get back home. Hilda had had long enough to take a piss. Where was the little fucker? "Hilda," he said, in a mock-serious tone.

  He turned, looked behind him. Footprints in the sand. The streetlamps along the promenade created a weird orange glow all around. He peered through slitted eyes, which made no difference, and shouted on the dog again. Next he knew, Hilda was ten feet away and closing, big grin on his face, bouncing on his two back legs, hopping on the front one.

  "Jump," Pearce said, when Hilda was close enough.

  Hilda gave a little yap, leapt into the air.

  Pearce caught him, got a faceful of dog tongue, wet sand all over his arm. Not bad. The little guy had potential. That hadn't taken him too long to learn. Not long at all. And he hardly ever fell over now.

  Flash spoke to Dad in the car and told him his plan but Dad wasn't listening, he'd been to see the doctor about his nose, got it taped up now, so Flash had to tell it to him again and said, you know, that it was probably the craziest plan Dad had ever heard, but Dad said he'd heard crazier and that it was worth a try cause they had nothing to lose and they didn't have enough spare cash to interest anyone in killing Wallace, so why not?

  "You mean it?" Flash felt good, felt like he was doing something at last.

  Dad nodded and Flash felt even better. By the time they got to the hospital, Flash was feeling guilty about feeling so good. Wished he could share his plan with Rodge, but it wasn't appropriate under the circumstances.

  It had been tough, not just for Rodge but for everybody. Flash's first reaction had been to go straight over to Wallace's and kill the jizzwad, and he'd asked Dad if he could get another gun and let him have a go but Dad had said no, he wasn't risking having another son crippled or worse, cause he felt bad enough about Rodge as it was.

  So not being able to take direct action against Wallace was pretty shitty, but what made it worse was that there was the police to deal with. Now those fuckers didn't believe a word of their claim that Wallace was responsible for the shooting, said it was all hearsay and that there was absolutely no evidence to suppose that Wallace had anything to do with it and of course Flash couldn't say anything to the police about Rodge having intended whacking Wallace because then he'd get banged up for attempted murder or something, which nobody wanted, so they had to keep their mouths shut on Wallace's real motivation and try to persuade the police that he was pissed off from their earlier visit, which the police had a record of. But since it was Wallace who'd filed the complaint on the previous occasion, and since it was Flash, Rodge and Dad who'd ended up in jail, the police saw Wallace as the innocent victim in all this, and it didn't help their case that his wife had left him on account of getting pregnant with somebody else's baby. Or that he'd been threatened.

  It was clear that the bastard police didn't have any other suspects, but Flash had pointed all this out anyway. They wouldn't be swayed.

  "A burglar, most likely," the detective had said to him. Window had been left open, which was careless, really fucking careless, and Flash had complained to Dad about it and Dad had said, "You saying Rodge brought this on himself?" and Flash had shut up because if Rodge had been responsible for leaving the window open then that's exactly what he was saying and it was a pretty fucking horrible thing to say.

  Anyway, the police weren't going to find anybody, cause it was Wallace and he was the one person they wouldn't look for. Who else had a gun and was fucked up enough to shoot somebody in the kneecaps? A fucking burglar? Give the boys in blue a slow handclap. Fact was, Wallace had been waiting for an opportunity and when it came his way, he'd seized it. Fucker was no doubt laughing his balls off, planning his next move.

  They arrived at the hospital a little early. Dad wanted to go in, see Rodge again instead of waiting for May and Norrie outside as they'd agreed and Flash said he'd stay in the car cause seeing his hermano in such a bad way was upsetting, but Dad persuaded him to accompany him cause Rodge would be more upset if Flash wasn't there than Flash would be if he was.

  Flash wasn't sure if Dad was right, though, cause just seeing Flash was enough to trigger Rodge's waterworks and that wasn't going to do anybody any favours, was it? Big brother had had five operations already and was pumped full of morphine and God knows what else – a nurse was busy right now doing stuff with a tube and a syringe – and there were more operations and more drugs to come, lots more, and the doctors still couldn't predict the lasting damage although they'd predicted that it would be lasting. Sort of.

  Flash grabbed hold of Rodge's hand, thinking that once upon a time he'd have found the fact that Dad and Rodge both had their noses taped up really funny, but it didn't seem funny in the least right now. Once the nurse had finished her flusterings, Flash followed her out of the room and asked her the question none of the doctors were prepared to answer. "Will he be able to walk again?"

  "I'm not a doctor," she said.

  "I know," Flash said. "That's the reason I'm asking."

  She put her hand to her forehead, peered at Flash as if she was weighing him up, and finally said, "It's possible that he might be able to get around, slowly, with a couple of canes after a long, long time, assuming there isn't too much muscle damage."

  See, both Rodge's kneecaps were shattered beyond repair. Didn't bear thinking about. Flash imagined being struck on the kneecap by a hammer. Then he imagined being struck hard enough to break the bone. Then he imagined being struck hard enough to shatter the patella (couldn't forget that word, i
t sounded Spanish) so badly that the surgeon had to pick dozens of pieces of bone fragments out of the surrounding tissue.

  The nurse said, "But he's not going to be winning any marathons."

  If she'd been male, Flash would have thumped her.

  She disappeared before Flash could change his mind about the male thing and he returned to Rodge's room in time to hear Norrie ask, "We going to get moving?"

  Flash would have liked to stay, now that Rodge was dry-eyed if not bushy-tailed, sit next to Rodge and chat to him for a while, tell him everything was going to be fine, that he had the situation under control. But May was just that bit more vulnerable if Flash wasn't with her – she'd lost one of her protectors now with Rodge in hospital. Although Flash reckoned that if Wallace were to try anything, he'd do the same as he'd done with Rodge and strike in a quiet spot, when they least expected it and in any case Flash reckoned that Wallace was still enjoying what had happened to Rodge too much to deflect attention from it. Anyway, Flash wasn't going to stay behind again, cause last night Rodge hadn't felt like speaking, said it hurt him to talk and at first Flash didn't understand how that could be because although Rodge's nose had taken a serious crunching, his mouth was okay – apart from the stitches, but they were just above his lip and the wound seemed to be on the mend again after Wallace had messed with it – but then he realised that Rodge had meant it hurt him emotionally and that there was no physical pain from speaking as such but that the very act of moving his lips, shaping words, deciding what to say – those were what hurt, because they reminded him of what had happened, reminded him of the other pain, the pain of being shot and the pain of putting his shattered legs back together again.