I caught Cope, urged him to listen.
“Yeah, Darcy. I lost him.” Kurston’s voice was weary.
Cope’s face emptied, refilled quickly with an anger I’d never seen. His nostrils flared, his lips pinched down to a single line, his fingers tweaked the bridge of his nose. “Y’all fucking lied to me.”
“I never lied.” I said it softly. “I just didn’t lay it all out.”
“Cheap way not to be a liar.”
“I don’t know where to look, Judge,” Kurston said.
The Judge took a deep breath. “What makes you think I know?”
“Give me a fucking break. You know exactly where he is and exactly what happened. You’ve got contacts.”
“In certain worlds. And from time to time, I hear things from those worlds.”
Again, that terrible, stifling silence, smothering out everything. In between the clink and clank of the twins’ silverware, I heard sobbing I’d only heard once before. When Mama died. At the service, when Kurston went to his knees in the first pew and let it go.
Now, sitting in this grease-stained pit, he cried again.
“I lost him and something happened. After he left. He drove off with that son of a bitch and something happened.”
“You are a good policeman, Detective, you always have been. You may not want to admit it, but you know what happened.”
“Good, huh? Then why haven’t I ever brought you in? Why haven’t I ever dragged my skinny butt down to the border and hauled your ass back home to Barefield?”
The thought was a jolt of low-grade electricity. There had been someone, a dope slinger no less, that Kurston had knowingly not arrested? All I’d ever heard about Kurston was that he always got his man, always closed his cases, always filed away the color-coded folders with a Direct-filed D.A. stamp across the front.
“I need to know where he is, Judge.”
“Why?”
To arrest him, I knew he’d say. Instead, there was a long, terrible silence. Eventually, one of them drank, set his tumbler on the table.
“Last night,” the Judge said. “There was an incident in Ft. Stockton.”
It was all there. The bar and split nose, the chase with the woman, the crash into the radio station. But there was more. The Judge told Kurston about the bank in Andrews, the savings and loan in Kermit. He told Kurston how I asked each bank about Fagan. Kurston cried at that point.
“There was another thing, one I don’t quite understand. A church. The Church of the Bloody Souls. I think it was a retreat for spiritual redemption.”
“Aren’t all churches?” Kurston asked.
“But membership was limited to those who’ve spilled blood.”
“Damnit,” Kurston said.
“He spent a few weeks there. Beating himself with a whip. Trying to atone, I would guess.”
“For?”
“One of two things, maybe both. One, for leaving you on that porch. From what I hear, it has torn him to pieces.”
How the hell does the man know that?
“Then why hasn’t he called me? Why hasn’t he gotten in touch? If he’s so upset about it, why the silence? He had a chance to talk to me but he only said a few words and then hung up.”
“He’s scared to death.”
I could easily imagine the frown across Kurston’s face. “Of what?”
“The second thing: The killing.”
“The killing? Jesus fucking Christ. What are you talking about?”
“Darcy Kurston killed his father, Detective.”
“I am his father.”
Then there was a pause and in it, I knew Kurston understood it all.
“Christ on a shingle. Fagan.”
The Judge crunched a mouthful of ice. “Keeps the man’s foot with him, too.”
“What?”
“Darcy woke up in a blood-soaked room, money everywhere, and Fagan’s foot in his back pocket.”
How the fuck did this guy, this Judge who delivered dope to cooks, this man who I’d never met or even heard of, know everything? Isn’t that the shits? You thought Kurston would know it all and it turns out to be a dope-slinging Judge.
“There was no money there,” Kurston said. “The room was bloody, yeah, bloodiest thing I’ve ever seen. But there wasn’t any money...at least not when I got there.”
“Sounds like you have a thief in the woodpile, Detective.”
“Darcy?”
“Not the way I hear it. In fact, part of the trouble in Ft. Stockton might well have been because a woman went to Darcy trying to get that money.”
Cope shook his head. “She wanted the plates,” he mouthed.
I nodded. So the Judge’s information wasn’t complete.
“There was a bank guard in Marathon, too,” the Judge said. “Tried to shake Darcy down for money, but—”
“Yeah, he’s dead.”
“Darcy again?”
“He was there.” Kurston took a deep breath in and out; I heard every awful thing that had happened in the last weeks. Every slight, every bad decision, every moment that had brought Fagan and me closer together, but at the same time had isolated Kurston from the only family he had left.
From the side street, a block down, the sound of a truck thundered in the late morning air. As it pulled up on the side street, its purple nose pointed toward Spring Street, the few customers outside all looked up. The trailer was a gleaming white thing, a grounded wingless plane. Streets of America Caskets, written huge and powerful on the trailer’s side in flowing black letters. Beneath that was a picturesque roadway disappearing into a quintessential American small town: Flags and cafes and postmen and a policeman directing traffic and kids playing. On the far side of the town, the roadway lifted and eventually disappeared toward the sky.
The engine died in a rattling, old man’s final cough. The driver stayed inside the cab, turned his head, visible through the open window, and stared at the crowd, a glare in his eyes and a stiletto-blade grin on his tight lips.
“The fuck is this now?” Cope said. “Man, this don’t feel good at all.”
“No, shit.”
Silence spread to every customer on the patio, like a single drop of blood spreading in the water. The twins didn’t seem to have noticed the truck or the driver. Their heads were down in their plates, their fingers and chins covered in sauce.
“Darcy, I gotta get outta here. Too much law. I ain’t ready to go up yet. Ain’t yet.”
There it is. Just like Fagan. Leave me in the dust, no problem.
I flicked a hand. “Get the fuck out then. I don’t need you. But believe this: You won’t get very far.”
Cope’s face changed and I want to say it was surprise at my boldness for talking to him that way. But I think it was actually disappointment, as though he’d expected something different. “All the way out the door, boy, they don’t know they’re looking for me.”
“Soon as I tell them.” I regretted it immediately.
“That how it is, then?” Cope nodded, leaned back in his chair. With an old man’s formality, he wiped his chin clean.
“You were leaving me first.” A childish retort. Anger sat like a towering black iceberg in the roiling sea in my head and I couldn’t not crash into it.
“Think that sun done baked y’all’s brain, White-Boy.” One corner of his mouth twitched; not quite a smile, but not a grimace either. “I ain’t leaving nobody here, y’all fuck ever’thing up if I do. We ain’t partin’ just yet.”
“Why?”
“Ain’t finished saving y’all’s soul.”
“Thought I was doing that myself.”
Cope laughed. “Y’all ain’t doing so well, White-Boy.”
Finally, the driver hopped out of the cab and strode toward the patio. He passed our table and stopped at the Judge’s. “My dope, bitch.”
“What?” The Judge’s voice was a roar, a hurricane deep inland. “The fuck it is.”
Chairs scraped and there was a fl
urry of grunts and shoves. I turned my head as far as I dared, still not wanting Kurston to see me.
“Get your hands off me,” the Judge said. His voice was still a roar but cooler, more disciplined. That controlled edge made me damned nervous.
I heard a metallic click.
“Son of a bitch,” Cope said. “Fucker’s gunned up. Man, this is bad.”
“Shut the hell up, nigger,” the driver said.
“Please, sir,” Kurston said toward Cope. “Keep your chair.”
“Ain’t twitchin’ a muscle, Captain.”
“You said you’d solve my problem,” the driver said.
“I said I’d try, Mr. Bassi. A problem like yours is hard to solve.”
“Fuck that, you said you’d fix it. Told me to drive the truck, Langtry to Amarillo, stop in Barefield. Told me you’d fix things if I drove the truck.” He nodded toward the truck. “There’s the fucking truck and I still got my problem.”
“How do you know that?” Kurston said.
“He called me, you asshole. Stanton fucking called me, threatened to kill me. He called me from your office, you fuckass son of a bitch.”
“Perhaps it was a mistake for you to cut the country club take seventy-thirty and then introduce his twelve-year-old daughter to the wonderland that is your penis.”
Bassi banged his fist against his chest. “I set that fucking job up. I decide how the take gets split and I decide whose hole I dick.” His voice dropped to a steeled-edge. “You ain’t nothing, but some shitty lawyer couldn’t keep his hand outta the till.” A snarly laugh slipped out. “Working the border with fucking wetbacks. Judge Royy Bean. What a load of bullcrap.”
A squeeze bottle of barbecue sauce frozen in my hand, I turned all the way around. Still sitting, Kurston was in front of me, the Judge on the far side of their table. Bassi was right next to the Judge. On the patio, the twins sat unmoving, riveted to the scene. Johnny stood just inside the building, one hand on the phone, the other floating near his waistband at his back.
Johnny’s armed, too. Everybody here packing?
The move was in Bassi’s eyes long before the man even knew it. I saw it and knew Kurston saw it. It was naked and scared and raw on Bassi’s craggy features. Didn’t matter the telegraph though, Bassi moved fast.
In a breath, his left hand came up hard, slammed into the Judge’s chin. Blood exploded into the air, carried along with the Judge’s howl. The Judge fell backward, his knees buckling.
Bassi stepped back, brought the gun up. “You should’a fucking fixed it.”
“Shit.” Kurston yanked his weapon and blasted three shots toward Bassi.
Somewhere in the restaurant, a woman screamed. I was vaguely aware of customers fleeing, shouting, diving for cover.
The Judge rolled away as Bassi stumbled backward, landed hard on the concrete. Kurston jumped on him while trying to jam his gun back in his holster.
“Crazy motherfucker,” the Judge said. He hopped to his feet, his mouth running blood, and dashed for the truck.
“That’s my dope,” Bassi yelled.
He and Kurston, locked together with one arm while trying to pound each other with their free hand, rolled behind the outdoor soda fountain. Canisters of syrup and CO2 clanged around them, tumbled down over them, and rolled onto the patio.
“Let’s go,” Cope called as the truck started up. “Get the fuck outta here.”
But Kurston was on the bottom of the pile.
“What y’all going to do then?” Cope said. “Gonna get in that fight, save his ass?”
I hesitated. “Maybe I can help.”
“Maybe y’all gonna be president one day, too. But this ain’t that day.”
I went, trying not to see Kurston’s face, hoping like hell Kurston didn’t see mine. But near the pile, Bassi’s hand shot out, searching for something to bash in Kurston’s head. What he found was my ankle. He grabbed and pulled and I went down in a painful tumble.
It was as though the world were made of nothing but arms and legs, of bloody faces and screaming voices. Someone grabbed me around the neck, pulled me away from where Kurston had been. Someone else grabbed one of my arms and tried to pull me toward Kurston. Then Cope tried to pull me out of the pile.
“Y’all let go, motherfuck.”
I dove into the pile, smacking the side of Bassi’s face with an ear of corn. Butter and kernels flew like shrapnel and blood. Bassi shoved the old man off and rolled away from him and Kurston both, me locked tightly in his grip.
“Fucking get away,” he shouted at Kurston. “Fucking get away or I’ll kill his ass deader’n shit.”
Kurston looked up, finally saw my face, and what I saw in Kurston’s eyes made me nearly beg Bassi to end it all.
Twenty-Two Hours Ago
“My God,” Kurston said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Shut up,” Bassi said. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Bassi dragged me backward. The gun bit painfully into my shoulder blades. One shot and this son of a bitch would tear my heart out.
“Darcy,” Kurston said. But he stopped short and I knew he didn’t want to let Bassi know I was his son. His hands went up, palms out, assuring Bassi he wasn’t a threat. “We’re cool, Mr. Bassi, we’re cool.”
Cope’s gaze bounced between me and Kurston. From the threshold, Johnny looked on. The twins’ eyes were huge, their chins still sauce covered. Their hands were on either side of their plates, unmoving.
“We’re cool,” Kurston repeated. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“You calling me stupid? They teach you that in the academy? To call the man with the gun stupid?”
“I apologize, Mr. Bassi. I meant to say, don’t do anything that is going to put any of us in the jackpot.”
“Fuck off, cop, I ain’t listening to you. I ain’t going back to prison either, you get that? I’ll fuck it all right here. I ain’t going back.”
Kurston nodded. “I hear you, I hear you. If we’re talking about Huntsville, I know Warden Turnbull. Maybe I can yank on some strings, get you someplace a little more comfortable.”
“Ain’t you listening? Comfy don’t matter ’cause I ain’t going.”
The man’s heart was a jackhammer pounding against my back. I tensed a bit, ready to shove myself free.
Bassi tightened his grip. “Go on and do it, fucker. I ain’t killed nobody all day, I’m getting behind on my count.”
“No, no.” Kurston’s eyes bulged. “He isn’t doing anything. He’s just standing there; he’s doing exactly what you say. No one’s going to get hurt. And prison doesn’t have to be in the cards. After all, you haven’t done anything wrong here.”
“Except that suit y’all wearing,” Cope said. “Man must’a been dressed by Helen Keller.”
“They gonna find a dead nigger pretty quick,” Bassi said.
“Relax, everyone just calm down,” Kurston said. “Look, Mr. Bassi, we’re talking about a disorderly conduct charge, nothing more.”
“Dis con? I fucking drove that truck from the border. It’s packed with dope, asshole. One hundred coffins, hundred pounds of weed in every one. That ain’t dis con.”
“Ain’t your truck, either,” Cope said, jerking a thumb toward the street.
Two blocks down, the Judge had the thing idling. He was running. Get the rig across Spring Street and onto surface streets, then head south, away from the main roads and sure as hell away from the coming cops.
“Hey,” Bassi said. “Fuck that, that’s my truck.”
When Bassi’s attention slipped to the truck, his grip on the gun slipped. I spun, brought the bottle of barbecue sauce up, squeezed as hard as I could.
Blood-red sauce, dotted with the black of herbs and pepper, shot into Bassi’s eyes. He screamed, fell backward, and fired blindly. He managed to wipe his face just enough to see the truck and lay some lead into it. Holes dotted the trailer and the engine housing. One hole demolished the front windshield, another ban
ged through the radiator.
Kurston didn’t hesitate. He fired at Bassi while he dove behind a busing station. His bullets peppered the walls, tore through the beer signs. Neon shattered above the twins, sprayed them. They yelped and hit the concrete floor, their napkins still hanging from their shirt fronts and flapping in the breeze.
Bassi ducked, fired, his gun bopping back and forth from cop to truck, while he stumbled around looking for cover.
“Don’t shoot up my place,” Johnny said. He pulled his hand out from behind him. Not a gun. A phone. His finger jabbed hard three times and I knew the 9-1-1 call center had just logged a new entry.
Fuck. Cops would be one, maybe two, minutes out.
Bassi and Kurston kept firing and they reminded me of two kids playing at a video game. Ketchup and mustard bottles exploded, spattering yellow and red in a surrealist’s vision of condiment hell, while pitchers of tea and soda shattered and covered everything in sticky, brown liquid. Empty dishes danced up and down until they were just pieces of empty dishes, but none of it seemed real.
It was play-acting, a bad movie where there just hadn’t been enough money to do the fight scene realistically. And when it got to where the hero got shot, everything slowed down, just as it would have in that bad movie. A bullet came out of Bassi’s gun, split the yellowed noontime air, spun—left twist—wobbled at the tip. Everyone saw the bullet come out; everyone knew the bullet was headed for Kurston.
A sideways twist, another, a duck. Then a yell but no blood. Nothing at all.
So Kurston stared at Bassi, his eyes on fire, and emptied his entire fucking magazine at the man.
Six. Seven. Eight shots.
Seven. Eight. Nine shots.
Not a single shot hit Bassi and the man’s laugh spiraled up into the air, reminding me of Fagan’s screech after each blast of whiskey at Staind Skin. “Are you fucking kidding me? Barefield’s finest?”
Bassi’s concentration turned toward the truck, lumbering toward Barefield’s main business artery. The massive engine churned up huge gouts of noise as it tried to get the load moving. Bassi fired twice, maybe three times. One into the engine again and the other into the trailer.
That trailer was now on fire. It had started near the front and now flames ate through the coffins.
Exit Blood (Barefield Book 2) Page 14
