This Wicked World

by RICHARD LANGE

  Buck’s handler scrambles to his feet and approaches the dogs again. Taking hold of Trooper’s hind legs, he pulls him off Buck and tosses him aside. Buck tries to stand, a gash in his neck spurting rhythmically. His handler gathers him up and rushes him out of the pit. Stank, meanwhile, has beaten his opponent to the ground and now grabs the exhausted Trooper and hoists him into the air as the ref declares the dog the winner of the bout.

  The spectators stream out of the barn for fresh air and cigarettes. Virgil opens another beer and gulps down half of it to wash the dust from his throat. His ears are ringing from all the shouting, but he’s stoked at having doubled the hundred he bet on the match. He drifts over to the kennels where Taggert’s dogs are kept and stops in front of Butcher Boy’s cage.

  “What up, motherfucker?” he says.

  The dog paces back and forth, unsettled by the noise and unfamiliar scents. Virgil kneels in front of the pen and pours beer onto his fingers. He presses his hand to the gate, and the dog glares at him with his one good eye before slinking over to lick his thumb.

  “You like that, huh?” Virgil says. “Not gonna bite me now, are you?”

  He dribbles more beer onto his fingers, and again the dog laps it up.

  “Good boy,” Virgil coos.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Virgil spins to find Taggert standing over him, his blank black eyes flashing with rage, like distant bombs exploding in the night.

  “Nothing,” Virgil replies quickly.

  Bam. He’s on his back on the ground, and for a few weird seconds he thinks he’s been shot. Then the pain coalesces on the left side of his face, where Taggert’s fist caught him, and his eyes gush tears.

  “I should fucking kill you,” Taggert rages. “What are you thinking, giving that dog beer when he’ll be fighting in an hour?”

  “I’m sorry,” Virgil blubbers, more humiliated than hurt. Taggert draws back a leg to kick him, and Virgil curls into a ball, arms whipping up to protect his head.

  The kick never comes. Instead, Taggert growls, “Get out of my barn, you worthless piece of shit.”

  Virgil crawls on all fours until he’s beyond Taggert’s range, then rises to his feet and sprints for the door.

  The cooler air outside is like a reviving slap. He weaves through the loudmouthed drunks haw-hawing in front of the barn on his way to the house. His anger toward Taggert fills him with false courage. He’ll burn the place down. He’ll blow it to shit. He’ll get a gun and shoot Taggert dead. Put bullets in both kneecaps to make him suffer, then another right between those evil-ass eyes of his.

  BOONE PULLS OVER at the intersection of Amboy Road and Cholla, a dirt track leading to several properties set back in the hills to the east. The last trace of daylight is fading fast, and more stars pop into the sky every second. When he rolls down the window of the Olds, the smell of sage fills the car. He checks the address he got from Unc against the reflective numbers on the sides of the mailboxes lined up at the intersection and finds one that matches.

  The original plan was to park somewhere nearby for the night, then visit Taggert’s place bright and early tomorrow. Now that he’s here, though, he’s thinking why not take a walk up the road a ways, do a little recon? It can’t hurt to get the lay of the land before putting himself into a potentially volatile situation. Makes good sense to have as much information as possible. And what else is he going to do to kill time tonight?

  He decides he’s got more reasons for doing something stupid than any man needs to have, so he continues along Amboy for a hundred yards or so before pulling onto the shoulder. After eating one of the sandwiches and drinking a Red Bull in the gathering dark, he stuffs his backpack with the water, a Snickers bar, a penlight, and a pair of binoculars.

  He steps out of the car and slips his arms through the backpack’s straps. Lifting the top strand of a sagging barbed-wire fence, he steps over the middle strand onto private property. The sandwich sits like a stone in his stomach as he trots along at double time, following the fence.

  A half moon hanging just above the horizon provides enough light to navigate by, an eerie glow that permeates the sand and throws the chaparral into spiky relief. He stumbles once, crossing a rocky dry wash, and once he stops and spins around, certain he’s being stalked by some kind of predator. Nothing shows itself, though, and he decides that the sound he heard must have been his own blood whooshing past his ears.

  Upon reaching Cholla Road, he crouches in the moon shadow of an enormous Joshua tree to rest a minute and drink some water. He has no idea how far up the dirt track the turnoff to Taggert’s place is. Could be a quarter mile, could be five. He glances at his watch. A little before nine. He’ll walk for half an hour. If he hasn’t reached the ranch by then, he’ll turn back and fly blind tomorrow.

  The whine and clatter of a vehicle approaching from the direction of the ranch breaks the silence. A pair of headlights rise like twin suns, and Boone hides behind the Joshua tree and closes his eyes to protect his night vision. A pickup races past in a swirl of dust. Its taillights flash as the driver stops briefly at the intersection before swinging out onto Amboy Road, headed toward town.

  Boone resumes his trek, paralleling Cholla now, but keeping a safe distance from the road, in case of more traffic. Five minutes of walking brings him to the crest of a low rise and a narrower road that branches off Cholla and snakes up another hill toward a cluster of structures awash in white light, a bright oasis wrested from the surrounding darkness. The numbers nailed to a post at the turnoff match those on the mailbox below. It’s Taggert’s place.

  Boone moves out into the desert away from the road and drops to his knees to scan the compound with his binoculars. Some sort of gathering is in progress. Dusty pickups and SUVs are parked helter-skelter all over the property, and groups of men mill about in front of what looks to be a barn. There’s another permanent structure, a house, and also a mobile home, a small trailer, and a corrugated steel water tower.

  The breeze shifts toward Boone, and borne upon it are scraps of sound: the rhythmic rise and fall of boisterous conversations; barking dogs; a man’s jagged laughter, the kind that cuts through everything else. Unc said that Taggert hosted dogfights, and that must be what’s going on tonight.

  Boone knows he should turn back, steer clear of the commotion, but he’s come this far already, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to sneak up to the perimeter of the compound for a closer look. If he breaks off now, he’s going to regret it as soon as he gets back to the Olds, see it as a failure of nerve. Cursing his bullheadedness, he tightens the backpack’s straps, ducks low to the ground, and sets off at a jog toward the ranch.

  17

  THE SECOND MATCH OF THE EVENING IS ABOUT TO BEGIN. Two twenty-five-pound dogs, Tombstone and Scarface. Spiller throws a hundred on Tombstone at two to one, even though it’s the dog’s first fight. He wants to make back the fifty he lost on Buck.

  The kid, Virgil, isn’t at the bar like he’s supposed to be, so Spiller helps himself to two cans of beer and pushes his way to the wall of the pit as the ref calls for the handlers to face their dogs.

  Scarface is a nervous black wriggler who bounces up and down between his handler’s knees. Tombstone, on the other hand, stands stock-still, no barking, no whining, eyes locked on his opponent. A real killer, Spiller’s sure. This one is definitely in the bag.

  “Let go!” the ref shouts.

  “Tear him up, Tombstone!” Spiller yells.

  The dogs meet in the center of the pit. After a few minutes of exchanging holds, Scarface grabs Tombstone’s chest and flips him onto his back. Tombstone wriggles free but turns while doing so.

  Spiller claps his hands and says, “That’s okay. That’s just fine,” as the handlers return the dogs to their corners.

  Twenty-five seconds later they face the dogs again. Tombstone is released first and races for the scratch line. Before crossing it, though, he veers suddenly to the left, le
aps over the pit wall, and sprints for the barn door, dodging the kicks and stomps of angry spectators.

  Spiller howls along with the rest of the crowd as Scarface is named the winner. Fucking Tombstone turned out to be nothing but a two-balled bitch. Spiller slams his fist into the wall of the pit and snorts at his luck. T.K. pops up beside him and waves a fan of twenties in his face.

  “Always bet on the black,” he taunts.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Spiller replies.

  He pops open his second beer and makes his way through the crowd to the door. Time for a piss. On his way out he passes Taggert and Miguel. Taggert’s all worked up. One of his dogs is fighting in the next bout, and he’ll be handling him.

  “What about the first-aid kit?” Taggert asks the kid.

  Miguel grimaces and fidgets.

  “What?” Taggert says.

  “I left it in the trailer,” Miguel replies.

  “Well, get the fuck over there,” Taggert says. “But first, grab me a bottle of water from the box by the bench.”

  Spiller decides then and there to bet against Taggert’s dog. It’s only a hunch, but a strong one, the kind he’s always reminding himself to listen to.

  In front of the barn men drink and smoke and bullshit as they wait for the next fight to start. At the edge of the ragged circle of light cast by the bulb over the barn door, Spiller comes upon a small group set apart from the rest: two men standing and one sitting in the dirt, cradling a bloody dog. The dog is Buck, the man holding his lifeless body, his handler.

  “You did everything you could,” one of the standing men says.

  “I know,” the handler replies. A few tears have blazed muddy trails down his cheeks.

  “He was a toughie,” the other standing man says. “Game right to the end.”

  “He sure was,” the handler says.

  Pathetic, Spiller thinks. Crying over a fucking dog, an animal that eats its own shit.

  He moves past them into the moonlit scrub in search of a private spot to take a leak. His heart shudders as he thinks about all the critters out there hunting under cover of darkness. Coyotes, mountain lions, snakes. Better to stay close to the light than be attacked by a rabid possum. Who cares if anybody sees?

  He tilts his head back as he pisses. There are so many stars in the sky, it makes him woozy, and he almost topples over. He surveys Taggert’s spread, and something catches his eye over near the little trailer where Miguel stays, movement in the chaparral.

  He shakes off and buttons his jeans, squinting for a better look. Yup, yup, there it is. A figure dressed in dark clothing creeps out of the shadows to try the door of the trailer. Finding it unlocked, he opens it and slips inside.

  Spiller jumps at the sound of approaching footsteps and turns to see Miguel running up the path to the trailer to fetch the first-aid kit. He almost shouts a warning, but why spook the prowler and scare him off? It’d be much better to catch the guy and bring him to Taggert. That’d for sure be worth a few extra points on the next job.

  He slips his Hawg from his ankle holster and moves deeper into the brush, keeping low and to the darkness, any fear of marauding animals shunted aside as greed takes over.

  * * *

  BOONE MAKES A final dash to a small trailer at the edge of Taggert’s compound and squats beside it. He’s fifty yards from the barn now and can clearly hear the conversations of the men gathered there. It’s a dogfight, as he suspected. The talk is of bets won and lost, grand champions, and spectacularly violent past matches.

  Boone lifts his binoculars to his eyes and glasses the rest of the property. The house is quiet, as is the mobile home. Maribel said that Oscar lived in a trailer on the ranch where he worked. Could be the one he’s leaning against right now. Might as well take a look inside, see what there is to see.

  He pushes himself to his feet and runs for the door, exposed for a long second to any roving eyes in the crowd. Nobody calls him out, so he ducks in the shadow cast by the water tower and reaches up to knock lightly on the door. No answer. He tries the knob, which turns easily, then opens the door and slithers inside.

  Pulling the door shut behind him, he crouches in the darkness, sweat dripping off his face, and flashes back to the cabinet-shop burglary in Oildale. All the years since have taught him nothing. Here he is again, sneaking around somewhere he shouldn’t be, fear drying his mouth and straining the muscles in his neck.

  He thumbs the penlight and cups the beam to contain it. The trailer is tiny, even smaller than Morrison’s. Just enough room for a two-burner propane stove, a sink, and a narrow bunk. It’s clean, though, immaculate even. Bed made, clothes hanging in the small closet and folded neatly in the drawers of abuilt-in dresser, cans of beans and Styrofoam cups of ramen noodles stacked in the cupboard. A picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe shares a wall with a magazine shot of a Ferrari.

  Boone picks up a Spanish Bible off the counter. A photo slips from between the pages and falls to the floor. He snatches it up, shines his light on it. A Polaroid of Oscar, Maribel, and little Alex. Looks like it was taken at a barbecue. Boone rides a momentary rush. He’s done it, definitely established that the kid was here.

  The door rattles. Someone is coming in. Boone switches off the flashlight, but there’s nowhere to hide. As soon as the door opens, he reaches out and grabs the shirt of the figure standing on the threshold, yanks him inside. Driving the intruder backward until he flops onto the bunk, Boone pins him to the mattress with a knee to the groin and a hand pressed to his mouth.

  In the dim light filtering in from outside he sees that he’s jumped a kid, Mexican or something. The boy doesn’t struggle, just lies there looking up at him with big, scared eyes.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Boone says. “Okay?”

  The kid nods once.

  “I’ll take my hand away now, let you up,” Boone says.

  The kid nods again, and Boone lifts his palm from his mouth. When the boy doesn’t raise holy hell, Boone backs off and allows him to sit on the edge of the bunk. The kid rubs his lips, his eyes locked on Boone. Boone picks up the photo of Oscar and Maribel and shows it to him.

  “You know who this is?”

  The kid shakes his head no.

  “It was in your Bible.”

  “Thas not my Bible,” the kid replies.

  “Whose is it?”

  The kid wrinkles his nose, a nervous tic. “Some guy use to work here,” he says.

  “Oscar? Oscar Rosales?”

  The kid looks down at the floor and nods. Boone moves in on him to intimidate him some.

  “What happened to Oscar?” he asks.

  “He quit. Went away.”

  “Why? Why’d he quit?”

  The kid begins to fidget, his knee bouncing uncontrollably. “I got to get back,” he says. “The boss is waiting.”

  “Taggert?” Boone says.

  The kid nods again.

  Boone realizes that any chance of stealth has been blown. As soon as he lets the kid go, there’ll be nothing stopping him from running to Taggert and reporting what happened here. When Boone returns tomorrow, Taggert will be ready for him, loaded for bear. Either that or he’ll make himself scarce. Better to confront him now. With all these people around, things can only get so wild.

  “Take me to Taggert,” Boone says to the kid.

  “I got to get the first-aid kit,” the kid replies, gesturing toward his bed.

  “Go on,” Boone says.

  He watches as the boy slides a plastic storage tub from under the bunk. The kid then moves to the door, opens it, and steps outside. Boone is right on his heels.

  Boone has barely cleared the trailer when a donkey kicks him in the head, almost sending him to his knees. He sees a little redheaded turd with tattoos and a ponytail draw back a length of pipe for another swing and throws up an arm to deflect it, but his reflexes have been scrambled by the first whack, and the pipe slams into his skull above his ear.

  The stars overhea
d grow painfully bright, then abruptly die, like someone blowing out a candle. Boone crumples onto the sand, and the last thing he hears before he slips away is a dog’s angry bark.

  OLIVIA IS HOLED up in the bedroom, guzzling rum and fuming over being duped again. It’s time to face the fact that Taggert is never going to let her join the crew. She has the TV up so loud, to drown out the noise from the dogfight, that she almost doesn’t hear the knock at the bedroom door. Lowering the volume with the remote, she calls out, “What?”

  Her brother slips into the room. His eyes are red and swollen, like he’s been crying, and there’s a walnut-size lump on his left cheek that’s on its way to purple.

  “What happened?” Olivia asks as Virgil sits on the edge of the bed.

  “Your boyfriend worked me over.”

  “What do you mean? What for?”

  Virgil shrugs. “He caught me messing with one of his dogs.”

  He tries to shake Olivia off when she grabs his chin, but she bats his hand away and turns his face toward her to get a better look at his injury.

  “That motherfucker,” she says. “I’ll get some ice.”

  Virgil reaches out to stop her. “Fuck that,” he says. “I’m here to tell you something. You’re gonna be mad I didn’t tell you earlier, but I couldn’t.”

  A numbness spreads through Olivia, moving up from her toes to her legs to her stomach. It’s something that happens whenever she knows she’s about to hear bad news.

  “Go on,” she says.

  Virgil launches himself off the bed and walks toward the TV but spins around to look at her with frightened eyes before he gets there.

  “Eton’s dead,” he says in a loud whisper.

  Olivia half smiles, not wanting to believe what she heard. “What?”

  “Spiller and T.K. killed him.”

  “Why?”

  “Something about some money he owed Bill,” Virgil says. “T.K. and Spiller came to collect and told Eton he had to get out of the house. He freaked and pulled a gun, and they blew him away.”