Straw Man

by Gerry Boyle

  As I came out of the truck, Slick was reaching for his waistband, saying, “What the—,” but Louis was on him, jabbed him with the stun gun. Slick stumbled as I ran up, and we each got a hand under an arm, dragged him to the truck, yanked the door open, and slung him in. The dog, in the cargo compartment, barked and jumped in place. Louis was leaning over Slick, turning him, fastening his hands behind his back.

  A length of tape over his mouth and we were gone.

  He’d been reaching for a knife, had decided not to carry a gun with the ATF all over him.

  We knew this because Slick told us. He was in the backseat of the Tahoe, which was parked in a pullout across from some tennis courts in Franklin Park, a couple of miles west of Gucci’s house. Louis found the spot on Google Earth, then checked it out on street view. They used satellite maps a lot in Iraq, he said. This location was private and deserted, and the rain-spattered windows were like a double layer of privacy glass.

  The three of us were sitting in the backseat, Slick in the middle. Louis was holding a KA-BAR commando knife. The dog was standing up behind Slick. He was growling, his warm breath on the back of Slick’s neck.

  Louis had ripped the tape off but, unlike Semi, Slick hadn’t made a peep. He just looked at us, hands still fastened behind his back, and said, “Who the fuck are you? What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Do you know who the fuck I am?”

  “We’re from Maine,” I said. “We have some questions. About Trigger and AJ and what happened up there.”

  “You have some questions?” Slick said. “I’ll tell you the question you should be asking. Am I gonna die today or tomorrow? Are they gonna shoot me in the head once, or shoot the whole fucking clip? Those are the only questions going on here. Those are the—”

  “Enough,” Louis said.

  Slick looked at him and said, “What is this? Some fucking gonzo white Maine militia? Crawling around the woods with fucking shoe polish on your face? Well, baby, you ain’t in Maine now. My boys, they’ll blow your goddamn face off. I mean, are you serious? Two crackers come down here and—”

  Louis waited again. “We ask,” he said. “You answer.”

  “Listen,” I said. “What’s your name? Your real name, I mean.”

  “My gov’ment? What you want that for?”

  “I like to know who I’m talking to.”

  “You’re talking to Thomas Lincoln Pierce. As in Paul.”

  “Okay, Thomas,” I said. “Abram Snyder. He’s Mennonite, but they call him Amish.”

  “I don’t give a shit what they call him.”

  “Your boys up in Maine were buying guns from a guy named Semi. Amish and Semi were buying the guns. Now Abram is dead. Somebody killed him yesterday, carved the word ‘rat’ in his forehead.”

  Slick looked at me.

  “And this Amish guy’s some friend of yours. And you’re out to get revenge.”

  “I want to know who it was,” I said.

  “And this guy here is your psycho muscle? Dragged some whack job outta the woods? Take him down to the ’hood, beat the truth outta some gangbanga?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “How’d you find this house?”

  “Hotel. In Maine. They had this address.”

  “You get Gooch to text me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Just sat on the house. Figured you’d show up.”

  He looked at me. “She’s work, but she’s worth it. You know she’s gonna be a nurse? A real nurse, not some CNA shit. You in the hospital, wake up with her staring down at you. You say, ‘If this is heaven, let me in.’ That chick’s beautiful and smart. Even got me thinkin’ maybe I’ll go into the medical field. Physical therapist, maybe. Got my GED. All I need is—”

  “Abram,” I said.

  Slick looked at me, then at Louis, then back at me.

  “You think I capped some Amish? Didn’t cap no Amish. Didn’t cap no white boy up in Maine, neither. Carving stuff into people’s heads? What do you think I am—a fuckin’ savage?”

  “Why should we believe you?” I said.

  “ ’Cause anybody wasted Amish, they got it wrong. R-A-T on his head? That’s bullshit. Rat bitches got Trig and AJ busted, they ain’t in Maine. They’re here. And I know who those bitches are.”

  “How do you know the snitches are from here?” I said.

  “My team picked it up.”

  “From where?”

  “The bricks.”

  “Inside?”

  “Them rat bitches running their mouth, thinking I won’t know? Confidential rat-bitch informant? Yo, there ain’t nothin’ confidential. Confidential informant, that’s an oxy fuckin’ moron.”

  I looked at him.

  “So what happens to them?”

  “Hey, natural selection, baby. Charles Darwin. I loved reading that in school. Liked biology. All the science shit. But Darwin, that dude had the big picture. You a weak rat bitch, you get cut out of the fuckin’ herd. You strong, you survive. Natural selection, baby. Going on all around us, all the time.”

  We sat. The dog yawned. Slick said, “Your smelly dog ain’t droolin’ on my back, is he?”

  “What about Semi?” Louis said. “You saying he killed Abram?”

  “Semi? I barely know that motherfucker’s name. He’s the help, you know what I’m saying? Some hillbilly the boys bring in to move some drugs, buy some guns. That’s it.”

  “You don’t think he’d kill Abram to keep him from talking?”

  Slick shrugged. “Ask him.”

  “So why did you go to Maine?” I said.

  “Hey, I don’t go, something goes wrong, we got nothing to show. This way, two vehicles, they get a couple of boys, the load. They don’t get the money. They don’t get the other fourteen hammers. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket. And the old lady, her boards is coming up. She needed a vacation.”

  “And you didn’t kill Abram?”

  Slick shook his head, smiled, rolled his eyes.

  “Kill him? I barely heard of him. Never met him. Never touched him. Never spoke to him. There’s levels in this business, you know? Ain’t you ever watched The Wire? I thought all white people watched The Wire. Think it gives them the real thug life. After a few episodes, they go around saying ‘motherfucker’ all the time. It’s pathetic. But you seen it, right? You think the managerial level is down there chitchatting with the shrimps on the street? Shit, no. There’s a hierarchy, you know what I’m saying? Some gun picker in Maine? That’s nothin’.”

  I looked hard at him and he stared back.

  “Who you judging, looking at me like that?” Slick said. “Piss me off. White folks create this fucking prison for black people to live in, keep us locked up in it last hundred years, then shake their heads when we do what we have to do to survive.”

  He looked at me, gave a snort of disdain.

  “You try walking in my skin. Try living in my world.”

  I didn’t answer. He kept on.

  “Been on my own since I was fuckin’ eight. Father hauled off to prison. You know for what? Standing on the corner, Bronx, New York. Hunts fuckin’ Point. Cop driving by, he stops, says, ‘What you doing? Selling drugs? Move your ass outta here.’ My father says, ‘I have a right to stand here.’ He’s like Rosa Parks on the bus. He ain’t budgin’. The cop, he starts pushing him. My father stands his ground. He always said, ‘Be peaceful. Obey the law. Respect everyone. But if someone puts a hand on you, send him to the cemetery.’ ”

  “Malcolm X,” Louis said.

  We looked at him.

  “Yo, an educated cracker from the Maine wilderness,” Slick said.

  “Did a paper on him,” Louis said.

  “Get you a medal.”

  “He was talking about striking back at whites,” Louis said, “not black kids in your own neighborhood.”

  Slick gave him a long, cold stare. “I love you white people,” he said. “Run this apartheid country for three hundred years, keep throwi
ng us crumbs, fenced in the fucking ghetto, falling-down houses, falling-down schools, crap everywhere, cops rounding us up when we go off the reservation. It’s like, shut two of us in a fucking cage with food enough for one, then say, ‘Whoa. Look at them darkies. They’re killing each other. What’s wrong with them people? Guess we better lock their black asses up. Getting paid by the head, get them cattle in the pen.’ Well, fuck that.”

  He paused, then looked back at me.

  “The cop whacks my daddy with a baton and then he puts a hand on him. My father fights back, thank you, Malcolm X. The cop pepper-sprays the shit out of him, then gives him a beat down. Charge my daddy with aggravated assault because he won’t buckle, ain’t gonna grovel, say yessir, nossir. Never did. Never got out, either. Killed a man in prison, defending himself, shipped him off to fuckin’ Ohio. Me and my mama moved up here, be near her aunt. But my daddy, he stands his ground. Won’t kneel for no man.”

  He paused.

  “And you won’t either?” I said.

  “Not for you, not for nobody.”

  “You kill Amish?” Louis said.

  Slick snorted.

  “I told you. Besides, I respect those buggy people. Telling the rest of the world to fuck off.”

  Their eyes locked and they stared, like they were searching each other for clues. And then Louis looked at me and said, “He’s right. And he’s telling the truth.”

  “About time you crackers wised the fuck up,” Slick said. “Now you better start running for home, while you still got time.”

  28

  We’d crossed the Tobin Bridge and were heading north on Route 1, silent since Dorchester. After a couple of miles of fast-food and liquor stores, Louis said, “What’s that leave?”

  “Semi,” I said.

  “Scenario?”

  “Abram decides to push back about Miriam. He won’t be blackmailed. They argue and get in a fight, and maybe Abram is getting the best of him. He was a strong guy. All that farm work. So Semi reaches for something, whacks him and kills him. He panics and does the thing with the R-A-T, makes it look like the gang guys did it.”

  “He was the first one to go for the gun in the woods,” Louis said.

  “Dumb and violent,” I said.

  “So what next?”

  “Go home. See if he shows up.”

  “You think he’ll come back?”

  “It’s all he knows,” I said. “The same twenty square miles his whole life.”

  “They usually come home?”

  “Find them in the back of their sister’s closet. Under their grandmother’s bed.”

  “Cops’ll be sitting on those places,” Louis said.

  “And mine,” I said.

  We were quiet for a few more miles. I swung off of Route 1 onto the interstate and continued north. There was farmland filled with trailers, signs showing the way to more fast food. I felt the same urge that Semi would feel, the need to get back to my own little sleepy hollow, familiar roads and trees and barns, all leading to Sophie and Roxanne.

  Louis looked over at me, then away.

  “How’s she about all this?” he said, like both he and the dog had a sixth sense.

  “Not happy,” I said.

  “You could just let it all go. I mean, you’ve got a nice life. Nice wife, cute little girl, house in the country.”

  “Haven’t gotten around to building the picket fence,” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Fence could keep out the psychopath sex pervert,” I said. “Or the guy who kills someone and then carves words in his head. Or the trust-fund goat farmer who’s hitting on my wife. Or the Mennonite Bishop who hates my guts, or would if it weren’t a sin.”

  “Pickets with razor wire, maybe,” Louis said.

  “Electrified,” I said.

  “With surveillance cameras.”

  “And a guard dog.”

  “Got that covered,” Louis said.

  We dumped the Tahoe, headed north. It was a little after five when we swung off the highway in Augusta, a straight shot up Route 3 to the northeast, forty miles from home. Ten miles north—thinned woods running up a ridge on the left, a lake glimmering through the trees to the right. I remembered my phone, took it out of the door holder, and turned it on.

  It was booting up when Louis, at the wheel, said, “Billy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a felon.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “What if he got guns from Semi? What if Abram found out and didn’t like it? Possession of a firearm by a felon, that’ll get you a couple of years. And Billy’s capable of killing, carving the letters. Any of it.”

  “We can tell Cook,” I said, “make sure he has him on the—”

  A buzzing, like a snake. My phone.

  I picked it up and looked. Three missed calls. A message. Roxanne.

  I listened, her voice fading in and out.

  She’d been at school. She’d had a meeting, and now Sophie and Salandra wanted pizza. Sophie and Salandra. That meant a foursome. They’d be home late, after six. She’d told Clair.

  Her tone was businesslike, like she was calling her admin with an updated schedule. She didn’t say good-bye.

  We were in Vassalboro, twenty minutes out. I called Clair, but we were in a dead spot, a valley between wooded hills, and the call kept dropping. I asked Louis to drive faster and he did.

  Nobody spoke as Palermo passed. Wooded hills with squares of pasture. Sinking farmhouses, trailers swallowed up by brush. Louis blew by trucks stuffed with camping gear, cars festooned with bicycles, coast-bound tourists searching for the last pure place. Good luck.

  Past Lake St. George, we swung north into Montville, climbed the long hills, passed crossroads named for dead people, the road like a winding and overgrown cemetery. No crossroads for Abram.

  It was twilight when we wended our way into Prosperity from the south. I called Clair, got voice mail. I told him about Roxanne and the pizza, asked if he was on it. Our ETA at my house was four minutes.

  And then we were there, Louis slamming the Jeep over the potholes, lifting over the rises. He turned and slid into the dooryard. Stopped and we both looked.

  The house was still. We sat for a minute and it remained so. Goldfinches were fluttering in the thistle and goldenrod. We sat another few seconds and the dog whined.

  “Has to pee,” Louis said. “Just be a minute.”

  I got out, reached under the seat for the Glock. Louis and the dog got out on the other side and the dog made for the lilacs, started to sniff. “Hurry it up,” Louis said. I went to the shed door and stepped inside, fumbled for my key to unlock the door to the kitchen.

  The door creaked open and I stepped inside. The air was cool and still. It smelled like cigarettes.

  I froze. Sniffed. Cigarettes and body odor. Not mine.

  I turned back to see if Louis was behind me, to warn him, could hear him talking to the dog. I looked back to the kitchen, took a step in. Another. Slid a round into the chamber, the click reverberating in the stillness.

  And then it was still again.

  I moved through the kitchen, looked through the study to the sliding-glass door to the deck. It was broken open, the glass cracked, the metal frame bent at the lock. I turned, sniffed. The odor was fainter here. I backtracked, moved silently through the center hall. Heard Louis calling to the dog, closer now.

  I kept moving.

  The living room was empty. The dining room, too. Nowhere to hide in either.

  I moved to the base of the stairs, looked up. Sniffed.

  He’d been here.

  I put one foot on the first stair, weighting it gradually. No creak. Another step and a pause. I listened. Heard the palpable stillness. My own heart. Stepped again.

  A loud creak, three-quarters of the way up. I waited. Listened. Sniffed. Kept moving. From outside I could hear Louis. He was calling the dog. They were closer.

  I was about to go back down when I he
ard a scratch. Boot on the wooden floor. Our bedroom.

  I raised the gun, softly squeezed the trigger. Took the last three steps and pressed against the wall outside the closed bedroom door. Inhaled slowly, smelled his smell, stronger now.

  Swallowed. Listened. Turned.

  Wheeled into the room, gun swiveling left and right.

  Nothing.

  I eased my way into the room, around the end of the bed. Nothing on the floor. I turned. Looked at the closed closet doors. They slid both ways, Roxanne’s stuff on the left, mine on the right. I sniffed, the smell still there, the body odor stronger now.

  I raised the gun, took two steps, started to extend my left arm.

  Smack, a hole the size of a half-dollar had shattered in the closet door.

  I dove to the right, rolled, came up, and fired two shots at the hole, black spots in the painted wood. Another blast from inside, a foot to the left of the first. I fired once, hit an inch from the big hole, lunged to the bed.

  Heard clunks inside the closet, him moving.

  “Give it up,” I shouted, and moved left. He fired at the sound of my voice, the bullet pocking the wall to my right.

  And then there was scrabbling on the stairs, the dog showing first. Louis stepped in, gun raised. A shot from behind the door, a pock in the doorframe next to his head.

  He moved two quick steps, wheeled, and fired. A yard left of the big holes, then a yard to the right. Then closer, the shots coming fast, the rifle barrel swinging. Six shots, then three more, the holes patterned like dots on a graph. When they converged at the center Louis stopped.

  The room reverberated. And then it was still.

  Louis moved quickly along the wall to the end of the closet, looked at me and nodded. I raised the Glock and he slipped his fingers inside the crack of the door, shoved it hard. It caught on the splintered wood. Louis gave it a hard kick with his boot.

  Billy fell out.

  He landed face-first, the gun, a big revolver, hammering the floor. There was a bloody softball-size circle between his shoulder blades. Blood pooled under his neck, then ran over the first floorboard and into the crack. The dog watched the blood.

  “Did a lot of doors in Iraq,” Louis said.