Sometimes the Wolf

by Urban Waite

“I don’t know what to say to that. Neck tattoos are pretty popular these days.”

  “Not that popular,” Driscoll said. “Not the best choice either, especially if you want to go around smashing people’s heads in.”

  “How does self-defense sound?”

  “I’m not your lawyer,” Driscoll said. “I don’t really care. All I care about is how much time you’re doing in here and if you’re willing to reduce that time by helping me out.”

  “Who are you?”

  “DEA.”

  “They didn’t tell me that.” John looked behind him at the guard. “DEA?”

  Driscoll snapped his fingers. “You have trouble keeping your eyes on the chalkboard when you went to school, John?”

  John turned around and looked Driscoll over. “This is when you make the joke about Asians being good at math.”

  Driscoll didn’t say anything. He had the two mug shots of the escaped killers facedown on the table in front of him. Their combined crimes included seven counts of murder, one count of arson, two counts of armed robbery, and one count of kidnapping. One of the men was guilty of killing his parents, his uncle, and his grandmother in their sleep, then burning the house to the ground to cover up the murders. “Until a week ago you were Patrick Drake’s cell mate, weren’t you?” Driscoll asked.

  John looked back over at the DEA agent. “Pat? What does this have to do with him?”

  “Two people were found murdered a quarter mile from where he was staying in Silver Lake.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “No one is saying you do.”

  “Well, you can never be too careful, you know. I’ve been mistaken for things before.”

  Driscoll looked past the inmate to the guard who had brought him in. Perhaps just looking for some sign that John could give a real answer from time to time. The guard just shrugged, a smile beginning to show on his face before he dropped his eyes to his shoes.

  Driscoll brought his attention back to the man before him. “You know these men?” Driscoll asked. He turned each mug shot over one at a time.

  “I know them,” John said. His voice diminished, pulled back somewhere into the shadows.

  “These guys scare you?” Driscoll asked.

  “What are you offering me here? I’m not too crazy about how this is starting to look if someone finds out I’m talking to you.”

  “The warden is the only one who knows what we’re doing here. The guards all think I’m a lawyer here for a meeting with you. Well, they did until you yelled out to that guard back there.”

  “Sometimes my mouth gets me into trouble.”

  “I can imagine,” Driscoll said. “What I can do is send that guard an early Christmas present this year. You know, the kind that makes sure he keeps his mouth shut.”

  “You’re kind of dirty for a DEA agent.”

  “I can’t protect you from any others you want to tell about this, but I can help you out if you’re willing.”

  “Okay,” John said. “What are you looking for?”

  “What’s Patrick’s relationship to these two men?”

  “That’s a big question with a lot of zeros behind it.”

  “I know about the money,” Driscoll said.

  “Well then it makes sense that a lot of us in here knew about it, too,” John said. “It wasn’t common knowledge, but when you sleep in the bunk above Pat for as many years as I have, it gets out. Pat would have never said anything, but something like that gets out. He wasn’t exactly running the show in here, but he wasn’t wanting for anything, either. Pat wants something done, it gets done. Respect will do that, but mostly it’s power, and in Pat’s case that power came from the money he was supposed to have on the outside.”

  “He kept himself safe.”

  “That’s all he did. Counting the days till he could get out.”

  “He never told you anything about the money?”

  “I saw a bit of it from time to time. Someone was bringing it in for him. Just enough to keep people satisfied.”

  “So, you don’t know where it is?”

  “Would you tell someone where you’d hidden that kind of money?”

  “Two hundred thousand isn’t as much as you think it is these days.”

  “Who said anything about two hundred thousand?” John said. He leaned back in his chair and grinned at the DEA agent.

  “How much?”

  “I’ve got another nine years on my sentence,” John said.

  “You’ll be out in four,” Driscoll said. He was leaning into the table now, waiting on John. Behind him, the door opened and the warden appeared. He whispered something to the guard and then asked to see Driscoll in the hall for a moment.

  “We’re in the middle of something,” Driscoll said.

  The warden shot him a sharp look. “There are people waiting to talk with you, Driscoll.”

  John said something under his breath.

  “What did you say?” Driscoll asked.

  “Marshals,” John said.

  The warden was still waiting on him but he couldn’t move. “How do you know about them?”

  “They were here yesterday,” John said. “I thought with how close you always seemed to Patrick, visiting him once a year, you’d have shown before them.” John was smiling now, looking across the table at Driscoll, a wild look in his eyes.

  The warden tried to get Driscoll’s attention again but Driscoll waved him off. “Just give me a few more seconds.” Driscoll waited for the warden to leave before turning to John. “You knew I’d come?”

  “Patrick was like family to you.”

  Driscoll didn’t look away. “He was something to me but it wasn’t that.”

  “What happens when you catch up to him?”

  “I don’t know, but I can tell you it will be a lot better than what will happen if the marshals or those two killers get him first.”

  “Patrick is a good guy,” John said. “He helped me when I first got here. Everyone needs someone like that, you know?”

  “You paying for protection like he was?” Driscoll asked.

  “No,” John said. “I wasn’t a sheriff either, though. I don’t have the same kind of bills Pat probably does.”

  “He must have built up a pretty big debt by now.”

  “Twelve years,” John said. “What do you think?”

  “So what would you do?” Driscoll asked. “What would you do to find Patrick?”

  “Are you serious about getting me out of here?”

  “Like you said, I’m kind of dirty, but if it’s within my power I’ll do what I can for you.”

  John looked around to the guard, the low, muted hum of the halogen lights overhead. When John looked back to Driscoll he took his time, rolling his nails on the table as he thought it over. “I hope you can help Pat out. I really do,” John said. “I wouldn’t have told the marshals this, but when Patrick got here twelve years ago he needed someone just like I did.”

  Driscoll thought that over. “For a criminal you’re not that bad.”

  “I’m not a criminal,” he said. “I’m an innocent man.”

  “So you keep saying,” Driscoll said.

  PATRICK ROLLED OVER and put his feet to the floor. The sun was coming in through the front windows and the clutter of Maurice’s house looked even worse in the day than it had in the night. He rested his elbows on his knees and cupped his hands together, running his fingers over his face. The smell of the girl still on his skin and a memory of the night before like a cruel act from his childhood he hadn’t quite forgiven himself for.

  He was hungover and when he got up to use the bathroom and splash water over his face, he could see Maurice still asleep in his bed, the covers pushed down to the footboard, and the man laid out full on his stomach still wearing his gray sweatpants. The windows covered up and the sun-warmed air in the room dead still and smelling of dust. His cell phone, keys, and wallet on the nightstand next to him.

  H
e watched Maurice for a time and then walked away to the kitchen and filled a coffee cup with water and drank it full. He had one hand held down on the counter and the other around the empty cup as he looked out the window above the sink. He was thinking it all through again. The girl on top of him, the way she had felt, Patrick trying to resist what his body had wanted most. Something about it all not quite right, a nagging thought trying to break through the clouds. The cell phone on Maurice’s nightstand not where it had been a few hours before.

  He went back to the room and looked in on his friend. Careful not to wake Maurice, Patrick took the cell off the nightstand and brought it out to the living room. After toggling through the menu for a second he found the number Maurice had called at two A.M.

  Fuck, Patrick thought. There wasn’t one good reason he could think of for Maurice to call someone at that hour.

  He stared at the number on the phone’s display for the better part of a minute before he pushed the send button and listened as the call went through. On the third ring someone picked up. In the background the dull fuzz of a car in motion. No one spoke to him and Patrick listened without saying a word. He was thinking it all through again. He was thinking about Maurice last night and how he’d seemed so disinterested in anything related to the money. Money Maurice had been waiting on twelve years.

  An ambulance went by on the main street a block up from Maurice’s house, the sirens blaring and then fading away again as the emergency vehicle moved on. Ten seconds later Patrick heard the same siren begin to wail from the earpiece of the phone he held in his hand.

  Patrick turned the phone off and moved for Maurice’s room. No time. He put the phone down on the nightstand and grabbed up the truck keys. Maurice turned slightly on the bed but didn’t wake.

  With the keys in his hand Patrick came out the front door of the house and took the steps two at a time, jumping the last three and moving for the truck. He had the door open and the engine running almost before he knew what he was doing. With one arm pushed back over the passenger seat he reversed the truck out of the drive and locked the brakes, bringing the truck to a rough stop in the middle of the street. He put the truck in gear and floored the pedal. His eyes focused up on the rearview mirror and the main street behind. Nothing to be seen but the traffic going by as Patrick took the corner at almost forty miles per hour.

  MORGAN RAISED HIS eyes and studied the sky. He held the last snare in his hand and the shotgun in the other. A dome of high blue from one horizon to the next and the sun distant and cold. For a while he just stood there watching the slight breeze work across the land, rolling over the far hills before it came washing over him.

  Morgan looked over the path he’d taken. The grass shoots bent where he’d come through. But the trail gradually receding back into the landscape like footprints left in the sand of a beach. Nothing to say he’d been there fifteen minutes before.

  After it was all done, after he’d shown Drake the money and explained everything to him and Drake had made whatever peace with it he’d needed to make, he asked Morgan if he felt like some sort of castaway out here. “All these rolling hills,” Drake said. “You might as well be lost at sea.”

  Morgan thought that over. He was smiling already at the thought. Sharks circling, trying to take what they could from him. “If I was I’d be yelling at the heavens.” He laughed, snorting a bit and trying to catch his breath. He felt relief. He felt like he’d held the money for so long without anyone to tell about it. And now he had and he felt good about it all.

  “Still,” Drake said, “I’d feel better if you stayed away from this place for a day or two. Go into town. Spend a few nights with that friend from the post office.”

  Morgan thought about that. He knelt and set the last snare. When he was done he rose and watched the hills again. Lost at sea. He looked up at the sky again. When night came there would be stars thick as buttermilk.

  Chapter 12

  JOHN WESLEY HELD SHERI by an arm and rapped a knuckle against the door. Through a side window he saw Maurice rise from his seat on the couch and turn his head toward the window. He looked the big man over for a second, then turned and ran for the back. Twenty seconds later Maurice was at the front door again with Bean standing there behind him and the Walther pressed to Maurice’s skull, just behind the ear. The door came open and Maurice stepped aside to let John Wesley and Sheri through. As he passed John Wesley thanked him and then came into the house and stood looking at all the magazines stacked in piles around the living room.

  He sat Sheri on the couch and then turned to take in what he could of the house. Messy and unkempt, the room had spiderwebs in the corners and some of the magazines showed a thin filament of dust over their glossy covers. He picked one up and thumbed the pages. A good-natured smile across his face as he came to the pictures he liked.

  Bean pushed Maurice into the living room and told him to sit. “I’m guessing Patrick isn’t here,” Bean said.

  “Why’s that?” Maurice said.

  “Because someone called us from your phone and it wasn’t you.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t me?”

  “You’re wasting time,” Bean said. He gave the gun to John Wesley and left the room. John Wesley looked at Maurice and then looked toward the direction Bean had gone. There was the sound of the closet in Maurice’s bedroom being opened and the lamp on his nightstand being flipped; a dresser went over next.

  “Come on,” Maurice said. “This is my grandma’s place.”

  Bean came out of the back hallway breathing hard. He looked around the room. “Your grandma like you? Likes looking at whatever the fuck this is?” He bent and picked a magazine off the closest pile. He put it down without comment. “Where’s Patrick, Maurice?”

  “He’s not in the closet back there?” A smile on Maurice’s face and his white teeth showing.

  In less than a second Bean was on top of him. He beat him three or four times across the face in quick succession and then remained where he was, one knee into Maurice’s belly. “Where’s Patrick?”

  There was blood on Maurice’s teeth now, he was looking up at Bean and he was smiling a big grin. “You mean he wasn’t behind the dresser, either?”

  Bean beat Maurice with a savage intensity while John Wesley went into the kitchen and came back with some spray cheese and a package of crackers beneath his arm. The Walther now tucked in the back of his waistband. In his other hand John Wesley carried a bottle of water and when Bean rose from the couch, he used both hands to push his blond hair into place, smoothing his palms over it several times before John Wesley handed him the water.

  John Wesley ate a cracker and watched Bean. He offered one to Sheri but she was too traumatized to move, all the way against the opposite side of the couch.

  “He’s not here,” Maurice said, propping himself up on one hand to wipe at the blood on his lips with the other. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if he was?”

  “I don’t know what you’d do,” Bean said. “You tried to sell out your old friend for a cut of his money. I don’t know what that is.”

  “I tried to help us out.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “Shit if I know,” Maurice said. “He took off with my truck, though, took it right out from under me while I was asleep. We did six years together and that’s how he does me.”

  “You see the humor in this, Maurice?” Bean said. “You here on the couch saying how Patrick screwed you over.”

  “Shit, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. You feel me, Bean?”

  “But you don’t know where he is now and you don’t know where the money is?” Bean looked to John Wesley and John Wesley placed the crackers and cheese spread down next to the television and started going through the room closing all the shades.

  “He could show back up here,” Maurice said. His eyes tracked John Wesley as he made his way through the room, then they went back to Bean. “He doesn’t have anywhere to go. He told me that.”
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  Bean bent to the coffee table and shifted his hand through the mess there, searching through magazines and old fast-food wrappers. Maurice watched him and John Wesley continued to work his way through the room closing the blinds. He was at the window by the front door when Bean found what he was looking for and stabbed Maurice three times in the side with a ballpoint pen and then stepped back. A gasp was audible from Sheri but nothing more. She had risen up off the couch and stood now looking down at Maurice while Bean hovered over him, the pen held in his fist with his thumb pressed down over the blunt end. Maurice was crying and looking at his side where the blood was beginning to show.

  “He’s not coming back here,” Bean said.

  “He doesn’t have anywhere to go,” Maurice said, but even his voice sounded like it didn’t believe him. He was shaking his head and holding a hand tight to his side. “Okay,” he said, his other hand held prostrate in the air.

  Bean moved toward him again and Maurice pushed himself off the couch and faltered a bit as he tried to get his feet beneath him. He was holding one hand to his side and when he turned away from Bean, John Wesley was there.

  There was a brief sob and John Wesley felt the weight of Maurice’s body fall against him, but there was little else for John Wesley to do but stand there. Bean drawn up behind Maurice and the blood now on the floor at John Wesley’s feet as Maurice collapsed into him and Bean went to work with the ballpoint.

  When it was done Bean rose and let the pen roll off his fingers and fall to the floor. Blood was on Bean’s face and in his hair. He ran one hand through the loose blond strands that had come out of place but it only helped to smear the blood farther along through his hair.

  John Wesley looked away and then went back to the television, where he’d left the cheese and crackers. He sat on the edge of the coffee table and ate them one at a time. Bean was in the bathroom and John Wesley listened to the water come on as Bean cleaned the blood from his hands and face.

  Sheri had moved to one corner of the room, where John Wesley—eating crackers, making an effort to put cheese spread on each—watched her slide down the wall till she crumpled into herself on the floor, her knees pulled to her chest and her eyes buried in her bare arms. “He tried to hurt Patrick,” was all John Wesley could think to say.