This Wicked World

by RICHARD LANGE

  Taggert grips the wheel in one hand, the rifle in the other. At least he got out of Kentucky. At least he got to be boss. He fires the M-16, peppering the Silverado with bullets. Mando and the big man duck, but not fast enough. Both take rounds, jerk, and slump. Taggert can barely keep his eyes open. He dreams he’s back at the ranch, in bed with Olivia. What’d she say that day? “More good times than bad, baby, that’s all we can ask for. More good times than bad.”

  THE MEXICAN IN the cowboy hat bails out of the Silverado an instant before the Explorer plows into it. A spark hits gas somewhere, and an explosion blooms, its fiery petals unfurling into the lowering sky. Boone throws himself on top of Robo as bits of jagged steel gouge the mud around them. When he lifts his head, both vehicles are burning, the conflagration mirrored in a thousand flickering puddles.

  “You’re squishing me,” Robo says.

  Boone rolls off him and rises into a crouch, his rifle trained on the crash. Thick black smoke rises up to join the clouds. There’s no movement in the wreckage.

  “How you doing?” Boone asks Robo.

  “Great, ’cept for this hole in me,” Robo replies.

  He tries to sit up, but Boone puts a hand on his chest. “Hold it,” he says. “Someone’s still kicking.”

  The Mexican in the cowboy hat is lying next to the burning trucks. He raises his arms and yells, “Help me. Por Dios.”

  “Toss the gun away,” Boone shouts at him.

  A pistol arcs into the air and splashes down near the side of the road. First things first though. Boone looks around for Olivia. He spots her lying facedown in the mud and duckwalks to where she’s sprawled and turns her over.

  Her breathing is labored, and her eyes bulge with terror and pain. A glimpse of blue intestines and yellow fat makes Boone flinch. Something — a bullet, shrapnel from the explosion — has torn a hole in the girl’s stomach. Boone wipes mud from her face and brushes back her matted hair. He’ll have to work fast.

  “Can you hear me?” he asks.

  Olivia nods, white lips trembling.

  “We’re taking you to a hospital,” he says. “But first you need to tell me where Amy is.”

  Olivia shakes her head. “Hospital,” she grunts. “Now.”

  “Listen to me. Where is Amy?”

  Olivia grimaces, shakes her head again.

  Boone pulls the Ruger from his pocket and shows it to her. What he’s about to do sickens him, but he can’t think of any other way to go about it.

  “You’ve got a hole in you the size of my fist,” he says. “Tell me where Amy is, or I’m going to shove this gun in there and stir everything around until you do.”

  “Hospital,” Olivia hisses.

  Boone presses the pistol’s barrel to the wound. Olivia gasps and arches her back. Boone takes the gun away, and she settles into the mud.

  “Okay,” she gasps.

  “Tell me,” Boone says.

  “You love her, huh?”

  “Tell me.”

  Olivia swallows hard and whispers an address, then says, “Hospital. Now!”

  Boone stands and looks up at the warehouse. Carl eases the Xterra out of the ruin and starts down toward the depot.

  “A few more minutes,” Boone says to Olivia.

  He slips the M-16’s strap over his shoulder and covers the Mexican with his pistol as he approaches him. Both trucks are fully engulfed now, the flames like greedy, caressing fingers. Hot steel hisses under the steadily falling rain.

  The Mexican lifts his head. “Help me, amigo,” he says. “I got money, dope, whatever you want.”

  Looks like he’s been hit in the chest, the legs, both arms. Hard to tell with all the blood. His hat lies beside him in the mud.

  Boone hears splashing and turns to see that Robo has managed to get to his feet and is now staggering toward Taggert’s grocery bag and the stacks of bills scattered around it. The big man lowers himself to the ground next to the money just as the Xterra’s horn blows once, twice, again.

  “The fuck’s his problem,” Robo says.

  Carl is stopped on the bluff above town. He’s standing on the running board of the truck, waving frantically. Boone lifts his arms in a “What?” gesture.

  “Run!” Carl shouts.

  A grinding, frothing roar rises above the din of wind and rain, and the ground shakes beneath Boone’s feet. Thunder, he thinks. Or an earthquake. He looks to where Carl is pointing and sees a five-foot wall of brown water sluicing toward town down a previously dry wash. A flash flood triggered by the storm.

  He takes a step backward, bewildered, agog, then sprints to where Robo is shoving soggy bundles of cash into his pockets. Water is swirling around their ankles when he jerks the big man to his feet.

  “Whoa,” Robo says, shaking off his hand. He’s ready to fight until he spots the torrent bearing down on them. Frozen in place, he gapes at it, and Boone has to grab his T-shirt again to get him running toward the bluff.

  They pass Olivia. Her eyes are closed, and she isn’t moving. Boone considers dragging her along with them, but then Robo stumbles and almost goes down, and he’s forced to turn his attention back to him.

  They reach the rocky slope below the bluff and scramble up it as the flood slams into town and courses down the main road, sweeping away everything in its path. Robo is behind Boone, and the water quickly rises to his knees. The current sucks at him and threatens to yank him off his feet.

  Boone grabs his arm with both hands and pulls, heels braced against a boulder. The pain from his injured ankle makes him yell, but, step by shaky step, Robo emerges from the maelstrom, until he collapses beside Boone and enthusiastically thanks sweet Jesus for saving his life.

  Boone watches as the flood surges through the town. The vehicles have been pushed farther down the road and now lie wedged against the old stone post office, everything above the waterline still burning furiously.

  Olivia is nowhere to be seen, borne away to a muddy grave.

  The Mexican too. The counterfeit bills, what was left of Taggert’s money, all of it gone.

  Lightning flashes, followed by a heart-stopping peal of thunder. Carl appears above Boone and Robo at the top of the bluff and slides down to where they’re lying.

  “Y’all are some lucky motherfuckers,” he yells over the noise of the storm and flood.

  Boone wipes the mud off his face and watches a drowned cow float past. The water level is already dropping. The way these desert storms work, in an hour the torrent will be little more than a trickle. Nothing left but the scars.

  27

  ROBO STRETCHES OUT IN THE BACKSEAT OF THE XTERRA and lifts his T-shirt so Boone can examine his injury. Looks like the bullet passed right through a roll of fat, missing any organs. There’s not even much blood. Boone presses a bandanna to the wound and tells Robo to keep it there.

  Carl barrels through a puddle that turns out to be deeper than it appeared. Muddy water splashes up onto the windows, and the tires lose traction briefly before digging in and lifting the truck out of the bog.

  They’re headed north, toward the 15. The map showed more pavement that way. Even with all the luck in the world, though, it’ll still take at least three hours to get back to L.A. Boone settles into the passenger seat and adjusts the vent so that cool air blows in his face. He needs to ready himself for what’s coming next. Rescuing Amy could prove to be hairier than what he just went through. Close quarters, no idea of the layout or how many people he’s up against. A real learn-asyou-go situation.

  He rips the dirty bandage off his forehead and crumples it in his fist. The windshield wipers scrape across dry glass. The storm has eased up, and a band of brilliant blue in the distance augurs its passing.

  Robo is busy with the money he snatched from the mud.

  He counts the bills three times before announcing, “There’s almost forty grand here.”

  “That’ll do,” Carl says.

  The money makes Boone feel better. At least Robo and Ca
rl will get something for putting their asses on the line. He drops his head and grinds his palms into his eyes. “I want to apologize to you guys,” he says. “I have no idea what happened out there.”

  Robo slaps him in the head with a stack of hundreds and says, “I’ll tell you what happened: the strong survived, just like they’re supposed to.”

  Strong? The shit some people sell themselves. It can break your heart and make you laugh all at the same time.

  VIRGIL CHECKS HIS phone again, makes sure he’s got a signal. Olivia should be calling any time now to tell him how things went. He’s feeling a little muzzy today. Most of last night is a blur, but he knows that he ended up on Amy’s bed. At five this morning he awoke there beside her and lay confused as hell for a while before running to the toilet to puke himself empty. He’s pretty certain he didn’t fuck her, but he can’t be sure, and she’s not talking. Not a word all day. And she won’t eat either. He sure hopes he didn’t fuck her.

  He aims the remote at the TV and cycles through the channels. Nothing holds his interest for more than a few seconds, so he stands and walks to the front door. Tigger meows at him and leaps into the weeds when he steps outside. Olivia told him to bring in the mail every day while they’re here, so nobody wonders what’s up with Eton and decides to check on him. There’s nothing in the box but coupons for a Mexican supermarket.

  A silver Audi coupe pulls up to the curb in front of the house.

  The guy who climbs out of it is one of those Hollywood dickheads with the blond highlights and the Bluetooth. His jeans look like something a chick would wear.

  He stands on the cracked and stained sidewalk and says, “Eton around?”

  Virgil gives him a hard look. “He’s on vacation.”

  “Well, check it out” — the guy comes closer and lowers his voice — “you wouldn’t know where I could get some weed, would you?”

  Fucker could be a cop, but, no, not with those gay-ass sunglasses. Virgil decides that it ain’t no sin to make a little easy money while he waits for Olivia.

  “What do you need?” he asks Hollywood.

  “Just a quarter.”

  “Wait out here.”

  Virgil runs upstairs to Eton’s file cabinet, opens the top drawer, and sorts through his stash until he comes up with what looks to be a quarter ounce of marijuana sealed in a Ziploc bag. Hollywood is standing on the porch when Virgil returns, jumps when he opens the door.

  “That’ll be one fifty,” Virgil says, waving the bag.

  “Really?” the guy says. “Eton usually charges me one twenty.”

  “You see Eton anywhere?”

  Hollywood frowns but reaches for his wallet.

  When he drives off, Virgil decides to sneak upstairs to check on Amy. He’s a little worried that she might be up to something. She’s been acting awfully strange.

  He turns the TV up to cover the sound of his approach and ascends the stairs slowly, pausing on each step to count to ten. Once in the hallway, he drops to his hands and knees.

  A floorboard creaks beneath him. He waits, head down, but the only sounds that come to him are the TV and the wind outside.

  The door to the bedroom is ajar. He eases forward and peeks in. Amy is lying on the bed just like he left her, hands and feet tied to the bed frame. Her eyes are closed. Nothing fishy at all.

  He’s thinking he ought to wake her up anyway, double-check her bonds just to be sure, when a rustling gets his attention. He rests his cheek on the floor and squints into the dark cavern beneath the bed. Dust bunnies as big as his fist, a dead woman’s slippers, and a rat. A greasy black rat staring back at him.

  Virgil scrabbles to his feet, all sneakiness forgotten. He races down the hall and takes the stairs two at a time back to the living room, where he falls onto the couch and lifts both feet off the floor. He’s going to stay right here, smoking bowls and playing Call of Duty until Olivia shows up, and when she does, he’s checking into a Motel 6.

  BOONE WALKS PAST the house Olivia gave him the address to, the hood of his jacket up to hide his face. It’s a dilapidated Craftsman foundering on an overgrown lot. Two stories, boarded-up windows, a blue tarp nailed to the roof to stop a leak.

  Everything’s shut up tight, as far as Boone can see. The place looks deserted. He wonders if, as a final fuck you, Olivia sent him panting to a long-abandoned firetrap. Only one way to find out.

  He returns to the Olds, which is parked half a block away. He drove over as soon as Carl dropped him off at the bungalow. Carl offered to come with him, but Boone told him no, he’d already done enough, and someone had to pick Robo up from Doc Ock’s. He slips into the car, reaches under the seat for the Ruger Robo lent him, and stows it in the pocket of his jacket.

  A police car appears as he’s walking back to the house. He keeps his head up, eyes straight ahead. One foot in front of the other, nice and easy. The cruiser rolls past, the cop behind the wheel too busy jabbering into her phone to notice him.

  Boone steps through a breach in the broken-down picket fence and jogs to the corner of the house, one hand in his pocket to keep the pistol from bouncing out. Pressing his back to the wall, he listens for sounds from inside. That’s a television, for sure.

  He moves to a window and goes up on his toes to peer through it. Heavy drapes block most of the view, but a thin gap reveals Virgil lying on an overstuffed velvet sofa in the darkened living room, video-game controller in hand, a Glock on the coffee table. No sign of Amy.

  Boone creeps farther along the side of the house. The next window he comes to is covered with plywood, and the next. When he reaches the backyard, he draws the Ruger and thumbs the safety.

  Two steps lead up to the back door, which opens onto a cluttered utility room containing a washer, dryer, and water heater. The door is unlocked but held shut by a hook-and-eye fastener. Boone pulls the door open as far as it’ll go, then slides the blade of his pocketknife into the space between the door and the jamb and lifts the hook out of the eye.

  The door opens with a squeak. Boone pauses, alert for footsteps. Nothing but the sound of gunfire and explosions drifting out of the living room. The door between the utility room and the kitchen is wide open, and he steps through it.

  The sink is full of crusty dishes, and a dried-out slice of pizza sits in a delivery box on the counter. Boone’s shoes stick to the linoleum as he moves toward another door. He’s careful to avoid a puddle of brown liquid that’s leaked out of a trash bag slumped against the stove.

  He holds the Ruger in a two-handed grip, elbows bent so that it’s pointing at the ceiling. Sidestepping to the doorway, he leans over to peer through it, only his head exposed. The dining and living rooms flow together. Both are dark, cluttered with antique furniture and dusty knickknacks.

  Virgil is sitting cross-legged on the sofa, wrapped up in the game he’s playing. Boone pulls back into the kitchen to work through what comes next. There’s no stealthy way to take the kid out. It’s going to be all about speed and surprise. He picks up a can of SpaghettiOs off a shelf. He’ll toss it into the room as a diversion, then charge in and do his thing.

  He draws back the can, steps into the doorway, and comes face to face with Virgil, who is on his way into the kitchen. The kid yelps and drops the plastic cup he’s carrying. Before Boone can grab him, Virgil turns and runs. He heads across the dining room to a staircase leading to the second floor instead of toward the Glock.

  Boone is right on his tail, pounding up the stairs behind him. He gets a hold of the kid’s Rays jersey as Virgil reaches the upstairs hallway. Yanking him to a stop, Boone brings his other hand around to slam the gun into the side of the kid’s head. Virgil’s legs go all loosey-goosey, and he drops to the floor.

  Boone crouches next to him and swings the pistol from side to side to cover the doors opening onto the hallway. No movement, no sound but his own breathing.

  “Amy!” he shouts.

  “Jimmy,” comes the reply from the first door on the left.r />
  Boone grabs Virgil’s jersey again and drags the kid behind him down the hall. He opens the door, and there’s Amy, tied to a bed.

  “Is there anybody else in the house?” he asks.

  “Just him,” Amy says with a nod at Virgil.

  The kid moans as he comes back to consciousness, tries to sit up. Boone puts a foot between his shoulder blades and presses him to the floor.

  “Stay down,” he barks, and Virgil goes limp.

  Boone steps over to the bed and uses his knife to cut Amy loose. She sits up and rubs her wrists and ankles. Her hair is tangled, and dark circles ring her eyes.

  Boone places a hand on her arm and says, “You all right?”

  “Give me a second,” she replies, and Boone can feel her shaking.

  “Tell him I didn’t hurt you,” Virgil says from the floor.

  “Shut up!” Boone snaps.

  “You’re by yourself?” Amy says. “No police?”

  “No police,” Boone replies.

  “Should we call them?”

  “No,” Boone says.

  Amy stares at him long and hard, then shakes her head, disappointed. She stands gingerly, one hand clutching the bed frame until she can trust her legs to hold her up.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she says, anger and disgust in her voice. She pushes past Boone and steps over Virgil on her way out.

  I’ve lost her, Boone thinks.

  As soon as he hears the bathroom door close, he pulls Virgil to his feet. The kid whimpers and brings up his arms to protect his head. “This was all Olivia’s idea,” he says.

  Blood dribbles from a cut under his eye, and a lump is rising on his cheek. Boone contemplates slapping the piss out of him, giving him a beating he’ll never forget, but knows he’ll just regret it later. Instead, he pulls the kid close and hisses in his ear, “Time to go.”

  “Can I get my shit?”

  “You’ve got about five seconds.”

  Boone follows him into a room across the hall and stands over him while he frantically stuffs clothes into a Nike gym bag. When he’s finished, Boone takes hold of his jersey and pushes him downstairs.