by Harvey, JM
“Quit riding me, Deaf,” Zeke said petulantly. “Can’t you see this asshole wrecked daddy’s truck? Broke my hand too.” He held it up gingerly. It hung like a dead bird from his wrist, but it got no sympathy from Deaf.
“No harm meant, Zeke, I’m just funning with you,” he said cheerfully as he rotated his head toward Valentine.
Val recognized the man as Jasper ‘Deaf’ Smith, a shot caller in the Dirty White Boys prison gang. Smith had been Lamar Sutton’s cellmate in Huntsville State Prison. At the time, Smith was serving a twenty year sentence for a pair of barroom homicides that had been pled down to manslaughter in the second degree. Smith, who was openly and antagonistically homosexual, liked to prowl the goat-roper bars looking to provoke a confrontation that would leave some poor redneck maimed or dead. If the stories could be believed, he’d killed more than a dozen men, inside and outside of prison.
“Why, I recognize you!” Smith pointed a finger at Val and narrowed his eyes in thought. “Killer Christmas, right? Or is it Evil Easter?” He frowned. “Horrible Hanukah, maybe?” He threw his head back and laughed.
“What are you doing out of prison, Jasper?” Val replied, unamused. “You tunnel under the wire or rat somebody out?” Years behind a badge and gun had taught Val not to play nice with men like Jasper. True psychopaths couldn’t be treated like human beings. You’re best bargaining position with them was with your boot on their throat. Fear was the only emotion they understood. Their only motivator.
But Jasper wasn’t afraid. He cocked his head and kept grinning. “The way Garland tells it you’re lucky that you didn’t get a bus ticket to Huntsville your own self. But I guess a cop can gun down whoever he likes and walk away from it. I had to do a whole ten years for my killings. But, I got my parole six weeks ago. State of Texas says I’m rehabilitated. A changed man.”
“I never killed anyone that didn’t deserve it, Smith,” Val replied, instantly bristling at the accusation.
Jesus, now he was debating morality with a pit viper.
Jasper’s grin widened. “Let me tell you a secret,” he said. “They’re all asking for it. Every damned one of them, me and you included.” Typical convict psycho-shit. But Val was done listening.
“Where’s Garland?”
Jasper’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, I reckon he’s putting out the tea and cookies, Mr. Justice. It ain’t often that we receive celebrity callers.” Smith stepped out of the doorway, the silver dollar heels of his boots crunching gravel. He made a flourish at the door with one big hand. “Why’nt you step into the parlor, as the spider said to the fly,”
“Come on, Zeke,” Val said, grabbing the smaller man by the elbow. He swung Zeke around and propelled him across the gravel and through the front door, but Val didn’t follow him inside. He paused there to look Smith in the eye. “Ladies first, Jasper.”
For a split second Smith lost the smile. His eyes took on a hard shine and his tongue flicked past teeth as gray as concrete. But the moment passed and the smile came back, a big, shit-eating grin.
“You do have a surly mouth on you, Mr. Justice,” he said. “But I like that. I reckon you and me are going to get along just fine!” He turned abruptly and ducked through the clubhouse door. Val followed a few steps behind.
The changes inside the clubhouse were just as radical as the exterior. The last time Val had rousted the place it had looked like your typical redneck bar: neon beer signs, banged up wooden tables and rickety chairs all coated with a haze of nicotine. But all of that had been replaced with tan office cubicles, fluorescent lights and dark blue carpet. A dozen computer monitors flickered inside the cubicles, manned by a dozen men, all of whom wore the pasty prison pallor and tight haircuts of the recently paroled felon.
The hubbub of conversation died as Val’s eyes skimmed over the crew, his gaze flat and steady, the uncompromising glare of a lion tamer. He recognized three of the men as ex Confederate Syndicate members, but none of the others looked familiar. Val glanced at Jasper and raised an eyebrow.
“A passel of sinners doing the Lord’s work,” Jasper explained mockingly. He waved a hand at a row of stacked cardboard boxes lined up along the wall. “You need a bible? Some Holy Water? All of it blessed by the Reverend Sutton personally.”
Zeke was halfway across the room by then, making a beeline for a door set in the pine paneling of the back wall, cradling his broken hand against his chest. He shoved the door open without knocking and disappeared inside as Jasper continued his sales pitch.
“This here water wards off all manners of evils and sins and brings riches to the righteous. Guaranteed! And the bibles! The bibles have all the whoring and drinking parts underlined for easy reference.”
Cheap Bibles and holy tap water and all of it one hundred percent legal. But Val made no comment. It wasn’t any of his business. He just said, “Where’s Garland?”
Jasper shrugged indifferently. “I didn’t figure you for the praying sort,” he said as he turned and headed for the door that Zeke had left open behind him.
Val stuck close to Jasper as they crossed the room. A dank, feral odor drifted off the ex-con like the smell of a dog kennel. The back pockets of the man’s jeans had been cut away leaving darker blue squares, a prison punk affectation, but there was nothing feminine about the way Jasper moved. He had the swaggering, shoulder back strut of a man looking for a fight.
Zeke was talking when Val reached the door. “—son of a bitch wrecked your Rover! And look at what he done to my hand!”
The room was a small office with your standard two guest chairs, a filing cabinet and a desk, but that’s where the similarity ended. A huge bible lay open on a lectern behind the desk and the walls were covered with crucifixes in various colors and styles. There must have been hundreds of them. The spaces between the crosses held an assortment of photos. All of them were of Confederate Syndicate MC members flying their colors, sitting astride Harleys or leaning against trucks, brandishing weapons or posing with girls with fake boobs and tired eyes. Lamar and Lemuel Sutton were prominently featured in many of the photos.
“Kiss the boo-boo, daddy,” Jasper hooted as he crossed the narrow room and dropped to a seat on the corner of the desk. He cocked his left boot behind his right knee and eyed Zeke scornfully.
Garland Sutton was sitting behind the desk, his boot heels propped on top of it among a mess of plastic cups and fast food wrappers. It looked like he and Jasper had just finished lunch. The smell of greasy chicken hung in the air mixing with Jasper’s animal funk.
Garland dropped his feet to the floor, his boot heels making a hollow ring on the concrete. “Welcome, Mr. Justice, and may Jesus shine his light on your soul,” he boomed in his tent-revival voice as he rose and circled the desk, right hand outthrust. Garland was short, five-foot-six at best, with a thick head of steel-colored hair shaped into a southern-Pentecostal coiffure. Dressed in an un-tucked white dress shirt, pressed blue jeans, a gold Rolex circling his left wrist, he didn’t look like an ex-con with six felonies on his record; he looked like a very successful businessman. Maybe a used car wholesaler. A very tough one, and the cars were probably stolen, but a businessman, still.
Garland’s jovial greeting caught Val flatfooted. Without thought, he took the offered hand.
“Daddy, he wrecked your Rover!” Zeke said again.
“I heard you the first time Ezekiel,” Garland said, his hard little eyes never wavering from Valentine.
“He broke my wrist—”
“Heard that part too,” Garland cut his son off. He was still wringing Val’s hand. Still smiling. “Seems like Mr. Justice just plain don’t like us Suttons,” he said as he released his grip. He turned to Zeke, gave him a sour frown and pointed at the door. “Go get Gene to drive you to the hospital.”
Zeke started to say something else, but a glare from Garland silenced him. He turned and slunk out the door without another word.
Garland turned, circled his desk and flopped back into his ch
air. He pointed Val at a metal folding chair.
Val didn’t want to sit, especially with Jasper perched on the corner of the desk like an impatient vulture, but he did it anyway. He’d stick to being cordial for as long as Garland did the same. But Val was tense. He stayed on the edge of the seat, keeping his feet under him and his hand near the little .25 in his hip pocket.
Garland was silent as he picked up a small bible that lay at the center of his desk and thumbed it open. “Zeke ain’t much,” he finally said, scowling at the bible page. “You killed the pick of the litter. Left me with nothing but a crippled bitch and a junkie.” His jaw ground and his face twisted in on itself like he was swallowing shattered glass. But he choked it down and plastered a paper-thin smile on his face when he looked up at Val. “The past is the past. Forgiveness is a blessing for both the sinner and them that’s been sinned against.”
“Skip the bible lesson and get to the point, Garland,” Val said impatiently. “What do you want?”
Garland sighed. “The money,” he said. “Lamar and Lemuel’s money. The money they stole before you shot them down like dogs. Fifteen million dollars in cash and gold.” He paused meaningfully, his dingy eyes searching Val’s face. “It was never found. But Abby came by here last week and told me a little story. She said that you took it. That you still have it. Ain’t spent a cent.” Garland blinked once slowly, like a lizard. “Now, why would Abby think that, Mr. Justice?”
Valentine stared back at Garland in utter confusion. He’d heard many accusations over the last four years: that he was a murderer, a dirty cop who tampered with evidence and lied under oath, that he had intentionally crippled a teenage girl, but he had never been accused of being a thief.
Garland filled the silence. “It was never found. The money or the gold,” he said again.
“We assumed that someone was holding it. Someone inside the Confederate Syndicate,” Val replied pointedly. He wasn’t telling Garland anything the old man didn’t already know. Birch had rousted Garland and busted up this very clubhouse in a search for the cash and gold coins.
“That ain’t likely. Lamar wasn’t one for trusting people,” Jasper interjected. “He’d have kept the money close to hand. And you were in the house with Abby that day.” Smith scooted forward on the desk and started kicking the air with the pointed toe of one boot, his unblinking gaze fixed on Val. “You had already murdered Lamar and Lemuel. It was just you and her and all that money.”
Val stood abruptly. He had heard enough from this pair of lowlifes. “The money wasn’t there and I wasn’t in any shape to cart it off,” he said. He turned and went to the door, stopped on the threshold and turned back. “I don’t like having the Confederate Syndicate in my rearview,” he said, his flat gaze shifting between the two men. “It scares me. And when I get scared, I do scary things.”
“Like crippling little girls and gunning down unarmed men?” Jasper asked, tilting his head to the side, smiling lazily. “I kinda wonder how you’d do in a stand up fight.”
Val held Jasper’s gaze. “There’s only one way to find out, Jasper,” he replied. It was a stupid thing to say. Challenging a psycho like Smith was like skipping rope with a water moccasin, but Val had never been any good at backing away from a fight.
Jasper seemed to think about that for a moment before he nodded slowly. “I reckon you’re right,” he said as he eased off the edge of the desk, moving with a slow grace. His smile was still fixed in place, but his muddy-green eyes were hard and his oversized hands were knotted into fists; his knuckles the size of walnuts. “You want to take this outside or do it up right here?”
“Hold it now!” Garland barked as he jumped out of his chair, hurried around the desk and planted himself between the two taller men like a referee in a boxing ring. “Now, y’all just hold it right there,” he said looking back and forth between them. “You’re getting off on the wrong foot here. We’re all white Christians. Let Jesus—”
“I know exactly what Jasper is,” Val cut Garland off, “and it’s got nothing to do with Jesus.”
“No, sir,” Garland replied with an emphatic shake of his head, “No, sir. You know what Deaf was.” He turned to Jasper and waved one hand at the big man’s torso. “Show him, Deaf. Show him the stigmata. Make him see.”
For a moment Jasper didn’t move, then he shrugged stiffly and reached for the hem of his shirt. The tension never left his body as he shucked the shirt over his head in one smooth motion. He lifted his arms and made a slow turn, showing a muscular torso, back and arms that were covered in horrible, gnarled and knotted burns that looked like cattle brands, each one in the crude shape of a crucifix. The positioning of the branded crosses seemed haphazard until Val noticed that bits and pieces of old tattoos showed through the burns. Swastikas, SS lightning bolts and the Stars and Bars had all been blotted out in the most painful fashion possible. Only the Dirty white Boys tattoo, an interlocked DWB on Jasper’s neck remained un-charred.
“All this,” Garland made a sweeping gesture at the crucifixes mounted on the walls and then at the ones seared into Jasper’s torso, “is Deaf’s own doing. His vision. A vision from Yahweh.” Garland pointed at the ceiling. “The tattoos he wore were symbols of the poison and hatred that once ruled his mind. But he burned that poison out. He accepted the Lord.” Garland paused a half-beat then dropped his voice when he continued. “And so can you, Mr. Justice.”
Val was repulsed by the burns, but the emotion never revealed itself on his face. His eyes settled back on Jasper Smith’s. He didn’t see Jesus there, just hatred and a promise of imminent violence. Probably the same thing that Jasper saw in Val’s eyes.
Suddenly, the tension went out of Jasper. He grinned, sat back down on the desk corner and crossed his arms over his bare chest.
“Preach it, Garland,” Jasper said. “Turn that wolf into a lamb.”
Garland ignored Jasper. “We ain’t trying to take more than our share, Mr. Justice,” he said with upturned palms. “We’re just looking for a little contribution. A show of good faith.”
“I don’t have the money,” Val said one last time, knowing it was a waste of breath. Nothing he was going to say would make a difference to these two. He turned on his heel and exited the office. But Garland’s voice followed him.
“I ain’t looking for an answer today. Why don’t you take some time and think about it? Think of all the good that money could do! Reflect on that!”
Val kept walking. He passed the cubicles, ignoring the eyes that followed him, and reached the front door only to find it blocked by a pair of beefy convicts standing shoulder to shoulder.
The duo looked like twins from their identical gray buzz-cuts to their overdeveloped shoulders and flabby guts. A pair of overfed junkyard dogs looking for someone to stomp.
“Remember me?” the one on the right asked, thrusting his head forward, working his jaw like he had something stuck in his throat. “About sixteen years ago? Sixteen years and seventy-seven days to be exact.”
It took Val only a second to place the face. Add a patchy beard and a greasy ponytail and you had Ansel Haskell, a scumbag rapist that Val had arrested for complicity in a dope-homicide. Ansel had gotten twenty years. He had deserved lethal injection.
Val had been pushed enough for one day. First Zeke, then Jasper Smith and now Ansel Haskell. A point had to be made. A line drawn in the sand. And, with guys like this, that meant someone had to get hurt.
“Do you remember every cockroach you step on?” Val asked, turning himself slightly to the right, his left shoulder coming up to protect his chin, his hands loose at his sides.
Ansel snarled and threw a looping, brick-sized right fist at Val’s jaw, a punch that was so clearly telegraphed that it seemed to hang in the air for half an hour. Val shuffle-stepped left, easily slipping the punch, ducked inside Ansel’s guard and snapped an elbow into the ex-con’s nose. Cartilage crunched as Ansel’s nose collapsed in a spray of blood, the blow rocking the big man bac
k on his heels. Ansel’s eyes went screwy and his guard drooped, leaving his sagging gut exposed to the right hook that Val drove wrist deep into the prison flab.
Ansel’s breath exploded from his lungs as he jackknifed around the punch, his head arcing down just as Val’s knee came up, slamming into the man’s already wrecked nose. Ansel went over backward, hitting the concrete with a meaty thud, out cold.
Ansel’s sidekick hadn’t made a move; he was just standing there, jaw hanging, hands limp at his side. Maybe it had all happened too fast for his simian brain to process - the entire fight had taken less than three seconds - or maybe he had decided that it really wasn’t his fight after all. Val didn’t give a damn; the guy had bought a ticket, he was damned sure going to take the ride.
Val took a step forward. Asshole number two took a step back, shook his head and held his hands up, palms out. Val snagged one of those hands and wrenched it up and under, spinning the bigger man around and separating the shoulder from its socket with a wet ‘pop.’ The ex-con screamed and went to his knees. But that scream was nothing compared to the one that blasted from his throat when Val chopped down on his forearm, fracturing his ulna in a twisting spiral, an injury that was ten times more painful than a clean break. Val kicked him between the shoulder blades and he flopped face-first to the concrete beside Ansel. He stayed down, sobbing and clutching his broken arm.
Val turned to face the room. He raked his eyes over the men still seated in their cubicles.
“Anyone else got a grievance?” he asked, staring them down one man at a time. Nobody said anything, nobody even blinked, but a slow, sarcastic clapping came from the doorway to Garland’s office where Jasper Smith was leaning in the doorframe, looking mildly amused.
“How about you?” Val asked. “Plenty of room left on the floor, Jasper.”
