A muffled voice at the other end of the house called a question as blood splatters ran down the walls. “Miss Adriana, está todo bien?”
Anthony pitched the bat between the bodies, drew the .22 from his pocket, and moved quickly to the door. Using one finger, he pushed it almost closed and waited in the darkness, peering into the hallway.
In khakis and an undershirt, a barefoot young man came down the hallway, hair sticking upright from sleep. Startled awake by a noise he couldn’t identify, he held a revolver loosely in his hand, pointing at the floor. When he reached the doorway, he paused to listen. If they had accidentally knocked something onto the floor while engaging in what he thought of as “marital relations,” it would be embarrassing to disturb the jefe and his missus. Hearing nothing, he respectfully lowered his head and quietly knocked with a knuckle.
“Senor? Con permiso?” He waited for a response. He asked a second time. “Está todo bien?”
Anthony jerked the door open and stuck the .22’s muzzle against the startled bodyguard’s forehead. The shot was sharp and loud. The man’s head snapped back and he collapsed onto the floor as if his legs had turned to noodles. The carpet quickly absorbed a wash of pumping blood.
The house still lay hushed. Anthony allowed himself to relax, breathing through his mouth and listening intently for any sound. Silence meant he hadn’t miscounted the bodyguards, and the children were still asleep.
Gritting his teeth and dreading the next step, he reentered the hallway and approached the boys’ room. Their door was closed, and when he gently pushed it open, the kids slept deeply in separate beds. Moonlight spilled through the open blinds into the air-conditioned room. A plastic General Electric radio glowed on the nightstand between them. Tuned low, a rock ’n’ roll song explained why the boys hadn’t stirred at the sound of the gunshot.
The still-warm .22 hanging loosely in his sweating hand, Anthony stopped between their beds.
One slept on his stomach, facing the wall; the other was on his back with his mouth wide open. Anthony glanced around, making out baseball and travel pennants thumbtacked to the walls. Sandy Koufax and Ernie Banks posters filled the wall over one bed, held by bright thumbtacks that reflected the streetlight shining through the window. Above the other, a tattered Beatles poster joined a line of pictures ripped from Tiger Beat magazine. Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith smiled in the darkness at the man who’d only moments before killed the kids’ parents.
He raised the pistol that suddenly weighed a hundred pounds and placed the muzzle above the ear of the baseball-loving boy asleep on his stomach.
“We don’t do kids, Mr. Best.”
“Nits to lice. You work for me.”
His stomach clenched.
If I don’t do this, Malachi Best will leave what’s left of my body in the desert.
Anthony was Family. The Family took care of its own, but they also exacted terrible revenge for wrongs or betrayals.
After all, they’re Cuban children who don’t mean anything to me.
He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and for the first time in his life, Anthony’s hands shook on the job.
Do this and I’ll be a lieutenant.
His temples pounded and his mouth felt dry as desert sand. He took a deep breath, trying to separate himself from what he was about to do.
Two pulls on the trigger and he could walk out to join Malachi’s elite leadership team.
His mind found a safe closet, and Anthony squeezed the trigger.
A sharp snap was the only result when the firing pin struck a faulty round. Sleeping deeply as only children can, neither of the twelve-year-olds moved.
Shocked, Anthony held the pistol in the moonlight and looked at it as if he suddenly found a live snake in his hand.
With a shudder, he dropped the weapon into his pocket, hurried out of the room. He fled to the kitchen and grabbed a dishtowel.
Minutes later, his hands and face wiped clean, the dishtowel and his blood-splattered coveralls were in a neighbor’s trashcan and he drove away, his life and those of the twins changed forever.
Chapter Two
Center Springs, in northeast Texas, looked just like the pictures of Kentucky I’d seen in Field & Stream. I crept through the woods like Daniel Boone in the newest episode from the night before. The BB gun in my hands was a poor imitation of the Tennessee long rifle Fess Parker carried in the show. Even though I was nearly fourteen, I wasn’t old enough to take a rifle or shotgun yet without Grandpa, Uncle Cody, or Uncle James.
The early fall grass was soft and spongy. Dampness soaked my genuine leather Indian moccasins. Uncle Cody brought them back to me when he took Norma Faye on a trip down Route 66 for a short vacation after we all got back from south Texas a few months earlier.
In no time my feet were soaking wet, but discomfort was the way of the mountain man, so I was righteous in my misery. My Brittany spaniel, Hootie, ran around like he had good sense, sticking his nose into every bunch of grass and pile of dead limbs he could find. He’d already busted two coveys and wanted to chase them when they flushed, but I hollered him back. Hootie didn’t need to get into any bad habits, or Uncle Cody wouldn’t take him hunting come quail season.
I stepped into a little bunch of shin oaks. The grass underfoot gave way to leaves that crackled like a forest fire. No way could I creep up on any Indians this way, so I struck off for a low spot where pine trees grew tall and shaded the ground.
Something caught my attention. A nearby flash of blue told me the search was over. There was my prey. I took careful aim at a leg sticking out from behind a wide sycamore and pulled the trigger.
The pump action air gun cracked and the copper BB slapped Pepper’s jeaned leg. “Ouch! Shit! You dumb bastard, that hurt!” My thirteen-year-old girl cousin bent to rub her calf.
“But I told you I was going to try and shoot you for an Indian, if I saw you.”
Her long brown hair hung forward, barely held back by a leather headband she’d taken to wearing. “Well, I didn’t think you’d actually shoot me where it’d hurt. That ain’t cool, man.”
“Of course it’s gonna sting. What did you expect?”
“I didn’t expect you to really do it.” She held out a hand. “Give me that gun and let me shoot you, then we’ll see what you say.”
“Uh, uh.” I wasn’t a fool. I’d been through a lot in thirteen years on the planet, and I didn’t intend to give her my air gun. “C’mon and let’s hunt for a while.”
I could tell she wasn’t as much into our game as I was. She’d started to change a little in the last several months, and when I asked my Uncle Cody about it, he threw his head back and laughed. “I got news for you Bud, she’s growing up. Girls get there faster than boys, so she’s gonna be ahead of you for a while.”
The whole idea of Pepper not sharing the things I liked to do bothered me a lot. She was my best friend, and had been since I came to live with Grandpa Ned and Miss Becky not long after my parents were killed in a car wreck.
After I got here, I realized that I didn’t have much in common with most of the other boys in Center Springs. Like them, I enjoyed hunting and fishing, but there wasn’t one other person I liked enough to hang out with, so when Pepper wasn’t around, I either read books or helped Grandpa with the farm, doing the things I was big enough to handle.
Pepper dug our shared transistor radio out of her hip pocket and rolled the switch with her thumb. “Can’t Buy Me Love” by the Beatles filled the air. She backed the dial down until it wasn’t so loud and shoved it into her Levis. She stuck her fingers in the pockets of her jeans and followed along behind like she didn’t want to be there.
We struck out past the slough where Uncle Cody and I planned to hunt ducks when they finally moved down for the winter. Like the mountain men, I again moved silently through the forest,
keeping a sharp eye for squirrels in the trees above. I knew my BB gun wasn’t strong enough to kill one, but it was good practice.
A covey of quail exploded under my feet with a whir, scaring me so badly I almost dropped the gun. It made me mad, and I needed to blame someone. “Hootie! How come you missed this covey and busted up them others?”
It was Pepper’s turn to snicker. “Titty baby. Them little old birds scared the pee waddlin’ out of you.”
My temper rose fast. “You better watch your mouth. You’ve been cussing a lot more lately, and you’re gonna get a whuppin’ for it soon enough.”
“I’m too big to spank now.” Pepper grabbed the pockets of her shirt and squeezed. “I have these, so nobody is gonna give me another whuppin’.”
I was so embarrassed my face burned at what my cousin had done. For a moment, I didn’t know what to say. I stood there, mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Well, Miss Becky can still wash your mouth out with soap.”
“She won’t do that neither.”
For a second, I studied the glint in her eye and realized that we could stand there and argue until the cows came home, and she still wouldn’t listen. “C’mon, I’m thirsty. Let’s go down on the branch and get a drink.”
We weren’t far from Center Spring Branch, where the cool water flowed pure and clear over rocks and gravel. It was our old arrowhead-hunting grounds, but we’d shied away from it since The Skinner was killing folks back a couple of years before.
Pepper followed as I led the way. “I ain’t drinking that nasty water.”
“It’s purified when it runs over gravel and sand.”
“How do you know that?”
I hated it when she questioned me, and she did it all the time because pestering me tickled her to death. “I read it somewhere.”
“Most of what you read in them stupid books of yours is probably wrong.”
“Don’t rear up at me. I read it in a magazine.”
“Which one?”
“Outdoor Life, when we went to the barbershop in Chisum.” I kept an eye out for arrowheads. Uncle Cody liked to tell stories about how the Indians had camped along this same branch when they traded with the white men who settled our community of Center Springs back around 1880. “Besides, the water we drink at the house comes right out of the ground. It’s the same thing.”
She quit arguing, because folks with wells not half a mile away from our house have cloudy water that tastes sandy. Sometimes in the summer, they have to let it settle before it’s drinkable. Our well water is the cleanest, sweetest water in the county, according to my grandmother, Miss Becky.
The rest of the walk only took a few minutes. We crossed a pasture full of dying bull nettles and milkweed, and then came to the trees lining Center Spring Branch. A sandstone ledge full of fossilized oysters jutted over the trickling water and I dropped to my stomach to drink, sticking my face in the cold water and slurping like a horse.
I rose and brushed the sand off my shirt. “Tastes better than well water.”
“Far out, but I’ll drink out of the dipper when we get back to the house.”
Hootie’s tongue was hanging out, but instead of drinking, he stopped and perked his ears. Something rustled upstream and Pepper froze like a terrified deer. We weren’t far from where The Skinner had taken us, and fear prickled my neck. A high-pitched moan floated through the air and I realized it came from my tomboy cousin, who wasn’t as tough as she liked to believe. I found her hand in mine, and we backed up one terrorized step, then another. Hootie didn’t growl, but he didn’t wag his tail, either.
Another rustle sounded closer, and neither of us moved.
Then a skinny, half-starved calf stepped into the open and ran across the branch.
I breathed out, not realizing I’d been holding my breath. The calf bawled and crashed through the brush.
Pepper panted like Hootie for a moment, and then got hold of herself, the terror gone. “I was so scared I was about to run like a striped-ass baboon! That poor little thing. I wonder where its mama is?”
“Who knows?” We followed the calf upstream, jumping from one side to the other as the narrow trickle of water snaked through the woods.
Less than fifty yards from where I’d been drinking, the breeze shifted and brought the thick, familiar odor of death.
“The Skinner’s back for sure.” Pepper’s voice was a high whine. Her eyes were wide and white, like a terrified animal.
“You know better’n that.”
“What’s that stink, then?”
We rounded a bend in the stream and found the source of the smell. The rotten carcass of a cow lay across the stream, damming it so that a small pool gathered above the body and swirled inside her gaping stomach.
Relieved at what we’d found, because dead animals are a part of life in the country, we stood there for a few seconds, trying to regain our composure.
“Shit, that stinks.” Pepper pinched her nose. “I was scared for a minute there.”
“Me too.” With the threat gone, I gave the dead cow a good looking over. She’d been there a long time.
The action of the water flowing through the rotting body carved a hole the size of a #3 wash tub in the soft sand and gravel behind the cow. Drowned maggots roiled in the swirl before being swept downstream.
I thought about that while running my tongue over my teeth.
Then I thought about laying on my belly downstream and taking a long, deep drink that was still wet on my lips.
I thought about where that water had been, and the maggots, and the stench of the rotting cow washed over us again. Then I did what any normal person would do under those same circumstances. A jet of vomit splashed into the water and disappeared while Pepper shrieked with laughter.
My stomach clenched and I puked again.
And again.
And again.
“I’ve never seen anyone puke so much at one time. That’s groovy.” Pepper held her flat belly and laughed so hard tears rolled down her cheeks. “Hey, mountain man, does your pure, clean water taste as good coming up as it did going down?”
Hootie gave me a quizzical look, then loped a few yards upstream from the carcass and lapped long and deep.
Finally gaining control of my convulsing stomach, I turned toward our farmhouse for Miss Becky’s help and the sympathy that I knew was waiting there. A soft breeze moved the leaves. The smell of rotting cow wrapped itself on my face like a physical presence, making me puke some more.
We took ten steps, and I repeated the process, accompanied by Pepper’s maniacal laugh track and the Beach Boys singing “Good Vibrations.” She used her thumb to roll the volume dial, probably to drown out the sound of me throwing up. “You sound like Uncle Frank that night after the dance when he tried to drink all the whiskey in Lamar County.”
I needed to get away from the smell, so I launched away from the branch in a wobbly run toward fresh air. It took forever to cross the steamy meadow and work our way through the thin grove of trees lining the road.
Pepper wouldn’t leave it alone. “Hey, you know, I was thinkin’ them maggots looked like the rice Miss Becky cooked us for breakfast this morning.”
She was right, and I gagged some more.
The meadow gave way to the thick strip of woods between us and the two-lane road that ran beside the house. Brambles and thorns tore at my jeans and shirt as I bulled through the tangle. Breaking free, I staggered onto the grass shoulder at the same time Uncle Cody slowed his El Camino to turn into Grandpa’s gravel drive.
Startled at our sudden appearance, he slammed on the brakes and stopped in his lane. The fear in his face left when he saw Pepper laughing behind me, so he stuck his elbow through the open window. “Goddlemighty boy, you’re a sight. What’s the matter with you?”
I gulped air. “What makes you
think something’s wrong?”
The constable’s badge on his shirt winked in the light when he leaned forward and turned his radio down, cutting off Buck Owens. “You look like you’ve been string-haltered, you’re dragging the barrel of your air gun in the dirt, and you’re white as a sheet. It looks like a bull got aholt of you.”
Pepper beamed at our favorite uncle and slapped me on the shoulder. “Tell him, mountain man.”
Uncle Cody flicked a finger. “First you turn that noise down in your pocket.”
She frowned and lowered the volume. I opened my mouth to find the words, and the thought of what had happened caused my stomach to convulse yet again. Hands on my knees, I leaned over, but by that time, it was mostly bile followed by the dry heaves.
Concerned, Uncle Cody turned his attention to Pepper. “What?”
“He got a big ol’ drink from the branch, and then when we walked upstream, we saw a rotten cow in the water. He’s been puking ever since.”
Uncle Cody tilted the Stetson off his forehead and threw his head back to laugh loud and long while I suffered. “Did you learn anything?”
I gulped and choked down another gag. “Yeah, after you get a drink, don’t walk upstream.”
Chapter Three
Barely twenty minutes after his pistol misfired, Anthony Agrioli hung up the pay phone and returned to his car. The call to the police department would get officers there before the kids woke up and found their parents.
He owed them that much.
By habit, he drove to Fremont Street and found an empty parking space between the Mint and the Horseshoe casinos. The air was still when he leaned against the fender of his Pontiac and drew a deep breath under a flashing storm of bright lights. He bit a Lucky out of the pack and snapped his Zippo alight with quivering hands.
Glitter Gulch transformed the night into day. Across the street at the Golden Nugget, coins rattled into tin receivers that beckoned people on the street to come in and try their luck.
Vengeance is Mine Page 2
