by Matthew Iden
Baby Boy cocked his head, listening. “Sounds like thunder.”
Randy went to a window and opened a blind. “Hmph. We’ve got company, bud.”
“What?” Baby Boy said, alarmed.
“There are thirty damn bikers on Harleys making their way up the driveway right now.”
Baby Boy relaxed his grip on Lee’s arm and started to say, “What the—” when Lee reached down to his back pocket, palmed the butcher knife, and in a twisting motion, slammed it as hard as he could into Baby Boy’s side. Baby Boy let out a roar and swung at Lee, but the strength seemed sapped from his arms and he missed. He pawed at the SIG Sauer buried under his jacket but dropped it when it was halfway out, the lancing pain in his side making his whole body spasm.
Lee shoved him as hard as he could, though it was like moving a mountain, and dove for the pistol. He heard Becky scream his name and heard two quick shots—pop, pop. Glass and chunks of the antler chandelier rained down on the table, the chairs, and Lee.
Not thinking, not stopping, Lee grabbed for the pistol and prayed there was a round in the chamber. He rolled over, lying flat on his back, to see Randy walking forward with the Glock extended. Another pop and he felt the air as the bullet flew past his neck and hit the wooden table leg behind him, splinters flecking his cheek. Halfway through raising the SIG Sauer, he knew in his heart it was too late.
A deafening explosion rocked the room. Randy was lifted off his feet and slammed into the wall as if swatted by a giant hand. The Glock went spinning as he crumpled to the floor, leaving a red streak of blood on the wall. For one stunned second, Lee stared at the space where Randy had been, then turned around on Baby Boy, but he was already through the door, his own bloody smears covering the handle and the wall by the front entrance. Lee crawled to his feet, feeling nauseous. Becky, her face white, let the shotgun slip from her hands and slide to her knees, cradling her right arm. Jason was on the floor moaning, his hands over his head. Lee resisted the urge to go to Becky and checked on Randy instead, pistol ready.
There was no need to be cautious. His friend’s body was slumped behind the couch, his left side laid wide open by the twelve-gauge shot, destroyed by a shotgun blast from less than ten feet away. Lee grimaced as he got closer. Randy’s eyes stared back at Lee and his mouth was open and the lips pulled back, looking for all the world like he was grinning.
From outside, a voice called to the house. Jason got to his feet and stumbled to the entrance, yelling back, “Chico! Grant!”
A chorus of voices rose outside the house. “Are you okay?” “Who the hell was that?” and “He’s driving right down the hillside.”
“That guy, the one in the truck. He just tried to kill us,” Jason called from the doorway. “Run his ass down. We’ll call the cops.” A few seconds later, the air was filled with the sound of motorcycle engines revving, then thundering away.
Lee was hardly aware of any of it. He dropped the pistol on the couch and slid down next to Becky. He put his arm around her and she leaned in, resting her head on his chest, shuddering.
“You’re sure you’re all right with this?” Becky asked, looking at Jason. Three days later, she was still aching, with her arm in a sling—the kick from the shotgun had broken her collarbone and bruised her entire shoulder. Jason looked as good as new. He’d had a great time after the danger had passed, high-fiving his Hawgs, telling them how they were heroes and bad-asses.
“We had a good time together,” he said. “But we were a Hollywood couple, y’know? Never would’ve lasted. I can see you and Lee have something cooking. I’m not going to stand in the way.”
“I appreciate you not telling the police everything,” she said. It had taken some quick thinking, but by the time the state police arrived, they had their stories straight. Lee was a biker, come to see Sturgis for the first time. Hearing about it, old friends of his—Russell and Randy—had decided to follow along in Russell’s truck. After Lee had struck up a friendship with Becky, they’d made their move. They’d conveniently left out any details about stealing bikes.
Jason waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. Consider it me purchasing his rights.”
“His rights?” Becky asked, eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, this is going to make one hell of a movie. Beats Billy Budd. Mel has a dozen new investors begging to get in on it.”
Becky kissed Jason on the cheek. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said. As she turned away, he said, “Y’know, you do look great in those chaps.”
She smiled. “Thanks. I’m getting to like them.” She walked the rest of the way to Lee’s bike and got on the back, holding on to him with her good arm. Lee raised a hand to Jason then kick-started the engine.
He looked over his shoulder. “Where to?”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, then sat back with a grin. “Wherever we want, but…can we fly? I don’t think I’m cut out for the biker life.”
Epilogue
No one in Brumley was quite sure how to take the sudden influx—of people, of money, of activity. Strangers flew in from LA, making the long trip from LAX to Roanoke’s little airport, then overland by rented car to Brumley. There wasn’t enough room in town to house them all, so hotel rooms for several miles around, as well as in Appalachia and Powell, were rented for the slick-looking, fast-talking folks from Hollywood. The newcomers bustled around in ways the locals didn’t understand, offering to rent whole businesses for a couple of weeks. The money was good and nothing quite as exciting had happened in Brumley since word of Randy Watson getting shot and Baby Boy Jenkins getting knifed by Lee Baylor had reached them. Most people took the money gladly and headed off for Opryland or the Outer Banks or just sat at home and watched TV, coming to town every few days to see what the movie people were doing. There was talk that Snyder’s (no one called it Baylor’s) garage had been bought by the studio and that it was going to be made into a big Hollywood set.
Then the bikers rolled into town on their Harleys, fifteen or twenty mean-looking boys in leather and chains. It scared some of the townsfolk enough that they asked the mayor to talk to Mr. Ford, but he was unavailable most of the time and his assistant assured them that the bikers, although they weren’t actors, were friends of Mr. Ford’s and would be on their best behavior. And, as it turned out, most of them were lawyers and bankers just playing a part—weekend warriors who were there on a lark, shooting a movie for just the hell of it. One of them, Chico, told a few of the boys at Bubba’s the juicy details of the shoot-out at Sturgis and kept the boozers enthralled for hours with his rendition of chasing Baby Boy along Highway 90.
Raylene remained aloof from the whole thing, though secretly she didn’t mind being the center of the gossip. People pointed at her when she walked around Brumley, or passed by in her Mustang. More boys than ever were calling her, asking her out, but she was very selective and refused to date them again if they talked too much about “the calamity,” as she called it. She worried a little about her brother, but figured he was capable of handling himself. So far, the cops hadn’t caught him or gotten the money back and she hoped they never would. She imagined he’d send her a card or get word to her sometime. Hopefully he was smart enough not to call her cell phone.
She was still living in the trailer, with no plans to move out soon. She’d received a note in the mail back in September, postmarked from New Jersey:
Raylene—
Sorry, but I won’t be back. Please go ahead and start dating again. I imagine you already have. The trailer is paid off and you might as well enjoy it. Sorry about Baby Boy, but he didn’t give me much of a choice. Hope everything is good with you.
Best,
Lee
She’d kicked and screamed awhile but, after she’d calmed down, realized she felt pretty happy with things. Lee had always driven her crazy in some ways and she liked the idea of being single again. So, inside of a month, she had all of his stuff out of the trailer and had
the place put together the way she wanted.
In fact, she was putting the finishing touches on the living room—dressed in cutoff jeans and the smallest cherry-red halter top—when there was a knock on the thin aluminum door. She opened it, curious. Outside was a good-looking older man with a dynamite smile. He looked like California: tan, tousled blond hair, small waist, and chic, tight-fitting clothes.
“Hi there,” he said. “Are you Raylene? Raylene Jenkins?”
She smiled back and tilted her head. “That’s me. Who’s asking?”
“I’m Jason Ford,” he said, eyes crinkling in a pleasant kind of way. “I’m the producer and director of the movie we’re making about that throw-down in South Dakota.”
“Oh,” she said, a little uncertainly. She curled a finger around a lock of hair and twirled it. “What can I do for you?”
He glanced at her appraisingly, once up, then down. He looked thoughtful, considering. Finally, he said, “I heard you were Lee Baylor’s girlfriend, so I was going to interview you for some background, but…well, have you ever done any acting?”
She looked at him, astonished, then her face broke into a coy smile. “Why don’t you come in and set awhile, Mr. Ford. Mind if I call you Jason?”
Please continue reading to sample the first book in the best-selling Marty Singer Mystery series, A Reason to Live.
i.
I’ll be leaving soon.
I’ve had time to think. So much time. I was lost for most of it. Scared that I didn’t have purpose, not knowing what to do with the anger and the energy and the life that’s left to me.
But I know now. I know how to put my life back together. What it will take. The sacrifices, the actions. I think you know, too.
It’s what’s kept me alive, you know. Not your interventions. Protecting the body is just half the equation. The spirit has to have a reason to go on, too. And now I have mine.
Please. Don’t try to stop me. I need to do this.
Chapter One
“Detective Singer?”
“Not any more,” I said without thinking—and regretted it. The words stuck in my mouth after the sound was gone, rolling around like stones. Hard. Unwelcome. Bitter. I couldn’t spit them out and couldn’t swallow them.
I was killing time at a coffee shop, slouched in an overstuffed chair that had been beaten into submission years earlier. The café—I don’t know the name, Middle Grounds or Mean Bean or something precious—was a grungy, brown stain of a place flanked by a failing Cajun restaurant on one side and a check-cashing store on the other. A crowd of Hispanic guys hung around out front looking simultaneously aimless and expectant, hoping their next job was about to pull up to the curb.
I looked up from my cup and stared at the girl who’d called me by name. She was slim, with delicate brown hair worn past the shoulders and intense, dark eyes set in a face so pale Poe would’ve written stories about it. She wore black tights and a long tunic the color of beach sand, with only a ragged jean jacket to guard against the bite of early December. Her arms hugged two books to her chest and she toted a massive black backpack so heavy it had her hunched over like a miner.
My answer hung in the air and the silence stretched thin. The girl hesitated, floundering.
I let her. I was in a bad mood. A meaningless Thanksgiving was a week past and all morning I’d looked for something productive to do while my day dragged itself across the floor of my life. When the productivity failed to materialize and my thoughts started to crowd in, I’d come to the coffee shop to forget, not remember. And I’d almost done it, my mind gone gloriously blank until this girl had brought my thoughts tumbling around me like a mid-air collision. She opened her mouth to explain, maybe, or apologize. Her face was bright and full of enthusiasm. Energy and purpose radiated from her, wearying me. I waited to hear whatever it was she thought was important enough to reel me in from daydream land.
She never got to it. A shout from the street—a single, loud cry of frustration, rage, and raw emotion—shut her down and froze every person in the café. Cups stopped halfway to mouths, heads cocked like hunting dogs’. Anything the girl might’ve said—anything anyone was saying—took a backseat to that sound.
More shouts from the street swelled to envelop the first one and I found myself at the window with everyone else, the girl forgotten, peering through the glass, looking over shoulders, drawn to the potential of violence or drama. I wasn’t alone. People reading Sartre and sipping no-foam lattes a second before now jostled each other, all asking “What’s happening?”
What’s happening was unclear. The shout had come from the crowd of guys in front of the check-cashing store. They were dressed in the ubiquitous outfit of local Salvadoran or Guatemalan day laborers: tattered baseball caps, paint-spattered jeans, ripped sweatshirts. Two of the six were shouting at each other, their hands stabbing the air as they spoke, their jaws thrust forward. The body language didn’t look good and I was on my way outside—forgetting that this wasn’t my job anymore—when I heard someone from inside the café yell, “Holy shit!”
I was late. By the time I’d pushed the door open, the shorter one—stained gray sweatshirt, shoulders like a running back—had pulled a knife and was swinging at the other guy, his arm whipping back and forth. On the third arc, he connected, cutting the other guy open like he’d been unzipped from hip to belly button. A scream, high and long , split the air and the ring of onlookers melted away. The man who’d been cut glanced down at his own body with a look of disbelief, then staggered down the street, bouncing off parked cars and telephone poles, his arms hugging his stomach.
I kept my attention on the short guy who’d done the slicing. A wicked-looking linoleum knife—needle-like point, a forward curve, teeth at the base—dangled from his hand. His eyes were wide, the whites very white, the irises a bottomless dark brown. He hissed something in Spanish and waved the knife around like a conductor’s baton. Common sense told me to run back into the coffee shop. Instead, I sidled closer, talking low and slow in terrible Spanish. I don’t even know what I was saying to him. I was trying to ask him to calm down and give me the knife, but he erupted into tears the third time I asked, then came at me with wild, full-arm sweeps. The point of the knife winked in the flat December sun. It took no imagination to see it hooking into my gut and cutting clean through, making my other problems seem like small beans.
A trio of desperate twists got me out of range of one, two, three swipes, then I stepped forward, slipping inside his reach. He tried a quick backhanded slash, but I was too close for him to get any muscle behind it. With my chest to his back, I snaked my arm inside his elbow like I wanted to square-dance, then grabbed a handful of sweatshirt between his shoulder blades. With my other hand, I snatched at his free arm. Not a bad move, and the improvised armlock had neutralized the knife, but it wasn’t going to last long. Teeth gnashed near my ear as he tried to bite me and when he started to flex those shoulders, my grip started to go, fast.
I didn’t wait to see where that was going. I heaved one way, twisted my hips the other, and put him on the ground with an ankle sweep. Desperation made me follow through harder than I meant to and—without a hand to stop his fall—the guy’s forehead hit the sidewalk with the sound of a watermelon dropped on a kitchen floor. His grip on the knife went slack, just like the rest of him.
Our scrap was over in seconds. Which was a good thing, since I wasn’t in much better shape than the guy with the knife. My bit of pseudo-judo had taken me to the ground, too, and I lay there next to him, arms still tangled with his, my chest heaving. I was dizzy and would’ve fallen down if I hadn’t already been lying on my back. My breath rasped like an old steam engine trying to take a hill and my elbow throbbed from where I’d banged it on the concrete. The bricks were cold beneath me. Clouds passed across the sky. Sirens threaded the air in the distance.
And the sound of footsteps scuffed close. I turned my head, hoping it wasn’t one of the guy’s compadres coming to ge
t in a free lick while I was down. But the face that bent over me belonged to the girl from the coffee shop. I seemed to remember she’d wanted to talk to me about a million years ago. Her hair swung forward as she knelt down and she reflexively tucked it behind one ear, only to have it fall back again. Her eyes were dark with worry.
“Mr. Singer?” she asked. “Are you...are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said from the ground. I closed my eyes. The sirens that had sounded distant a second before now closed in, wailing like a demented wolf pack on the run. “I just wish I was still getting paid to do this.”
. . .
It took me an hour to clear things up with the Arlington PD. It would’ve taken longer, but a dozen people had watched the whole thing from the safety of the coffee shop and vouched that my little dance might’ve saved someone’s life. Nice of them to say it, but I shrugged off the accolades when I found out that the guy with the knife was an illegal immigrant from southern Mexico who’d learned this morning he was being deported back to Juarez. He’d drunk everything in his pocket, then gone off the deep end at something his amigos had said to him. The guy he’d cut had a fifty-fifty chance of making it. No winners here.
I gave my statement to the cops, the ambulances left, and the crowd faded away. A busboy came out from the Cajun restaurant and threw a bucket of soapy water on the blood from the first knife-fight, creating a rust-colored puddle that pushed its way down the sidewalk. I watched it for a moment, then turned and headed back towards the coffee shop when I saw the jean-jacket girl standing to one side of the café door, looking uncomfortable. She’d waited through the entire escapade. Whatever it was she wanted to talk about must be important. She took a step forward, intercepting me as I reached the door.
