'No way.'
Lee looked at Hernandez. 'What's the problem?' It felt weird talking to this guy as something like an equal. Weird, but good.
'You and the other kid I saw stand firm in the parking lot. This loser I just remember with duct tape around his mouth.'
'There were three of you and two of us,' Pete said. He sounded angry, which was rare. 'You want to go one on one, right now?'
Jesus but you're dumb, Pete, Brad was thinking. Three figures were now silhouetted in the lights of the distant car. Staying in the car sounds plenty good to me.
'No, thank you so much,' Hernandez said. He turned to Pete and smiled one of his bad smiles. 'Big guy like you, what chance would I have?'
Pete shut up.
'Get behind the wheel,' Lee said. 'Just in case.' He was pleased to see Hernandez nod. The older guy unzipped his bag and pulled out a gun. He handed it to Hudek.
Brad shook his head. 'How come we need that, if this is going to be so…'
'Brad, shut up.'
Lee slipped the gun in the back of his pants. He saw Hernandez reach behind and touch his own lower back, as if to check the position of a weapon there. Okay, so they were good to go.
The three of them got out of the car. Pete climbed over and into the driver's seat. 'Be careful,' he said.
Hernandez led the way. Lee walked a little behind and to the right, Brad to the left.
One of the guys at the other car called out. 'Hey, Emilio. Who's with you?'
'Friends,' Hernandez said. 'It's cool.'
Brad looked back and forth between the shadowed faces. One of the guys was probably Brad's age, and probably from a similar background. The other two looked older. One had a shaved head. There was something hinky about them. What was with the standing back, for example? There was a way of doing these things. You walked over, they walked over, you met halfway and swapped bags, maybe had a quick cigarette or shared a line in some ridiculous pretence of conviviality, then split.
Why weren't they coming forward?
Lee was thinking the same thing, but maybe these people thought they were proving something making them do the extra work. Some kind of petty power play, to make themselves look big. Lee didn't think that was going to happen, and he was right. Hernandez stopped walking forward. He and Brad stopped too.
'Okay guys,' Hernandez said. 'You stuck there, or what?'
None of them said anything, and something suddenly dropped into Lee's head like a hammer.
None of the three men was holding a bag.
'Hernandez…' he said.
Then they started shooting.
No warning, nothing said. Just arms suddenly out front, caps going off. Clack clack clack.
Lee stumbled backward, reaching for the gun in the back of his pants. Hernandez was much faster. He had his gun out and was firing shots towards the other car, scooting quickly out towards the right, heading for the trees.
Lee saw Brad frozen for a moment, and remembered the guy had no gun. He saw him try to work out what the fuck to do and then break into a run towards the left-hand side of the lot.
Lee yanked at his gun. It was stuck. Yanked it again—got it out and started firing.
Two of the guys had leapt into the back of the car. The other was hurrying around the back. He fired in Hernandez's direction, but missed.
Lee shot at him, once, twice. Missed both times.
Then the guy swivelled and let one off at Brad, who was going nowhere dangerous to them and didn't even have a gun and was only here because Lee had told him to be.
Lee saw Brad shudder and trip and fall. Saw him clatter into a tree and wallop over to hit the ground full length.
Then the car was rocketing past him, spraying him with flint. A final shot and Lee swore he felt it move the air above his head.
Forty-five seconds, at most. And it was over.
Lee stood a moment, feeling like the whole world had flipped, as if the universe had punched to negative. 'Oh, shit, Brad…'
He ran to the edge of the lot where Brad was face down, and was amazed to see his friend was still moving and that he was not covered in blood. He rolled over and his eyes were on Lee's. There was a lot to read in his face but it was not a story about pain.
Lee stared, grabbed him. 'Fuck, man—I thought they got you. I thought you were fucking nailed.'
Brad sat up, shook his head. 'Me too. Just tripped, though. Big rock. Just tripped.'
'It probably saved your life, man. Jesus.'
'Yeah. I got a lucky rock.'
They looked at each other, eyes wide, and laughed. It was a shaky laugh. It wasn't really a laugh.
Hernandez shouted from thirty yards. 'Is he shot?'
'No!' Lee shouted back. Adrenalin was still pumping through him like a jolt of uncut cocaine. 'But what the fuck just happened here?'
'I don't know,' Hernandez muttered. 'But we're leaving. Now.' He walked quickly towards Lee's car. 'We got to make some calls.'
Lee stuck a hand out and Brad grabbed it. Allowed himself to be pulled upright. Brad's brain really hadn't caught up with recent events. Most of it still lived in the world of sixty seconds ago. Evidently bad stuff had happened in between, but he felt like he'd missed most of it. He was somewhat amazed still to be around.
'Come on,' Lee said. 'Let's get out of here.'
Lee knew what they'd just experienced was something very significant. Hernandez was going to want to fuck those guys up bad. And Lee Hudek was going to be there with him. As of tonight he was not just one of the kids who turned up with the money.
He grabbed Brad's shoulder and helped him move faster.
Brad was limping heavily, but equally keen to be somewhere else. He did his best and hurried over towards the car. He was thinking that he wished the A would cut out for a moment, just so he could get his head together, when he noticed Hernandez had stopped a few yards short of Lee's car.
'What?' Brad said. He turned his head towards the vehicle.
There was something sitting in the driver's seat.
It was something awful. Something had come out of the forest and the night and sat in their car. It was terrible and it was ugly but it was very still.
It was Sleepy Pete.
'Oh Jesus,' Brad whispered. He looked at Lee, but Lee was staring at Pete. Brad forced himself to look again. 'Oh, no.'
Below the shoulders everything was okay. It was still Pete. He was sitting upright and the bag of Doritos was still in his hands. But one of the bullets meant for Hernandez or Lee or Brad had passed them by like a migrating bird ignores a hundred miles of sea, and found the place it had left the barrel to land. It had taken away about a quarter of Pete's head. It had entered the right side of his face halfway up and ploughed through the cheekbone and into the brain, tumbling out the other side at the top via a ragged hole. Pete's remaining eye was still open. The dregs of his nose were pulled out of true.
As Brad stared, he thought at first that the left eye was just glistening, still wet, and then he realized it was trying to move.
Then Pete's jaw dropped open. And a dark stain bloomed on his crotch. And Pete really was gone.
Chapter 9
'There's no choice,' Hernandez said. 'Listen to me.'
Brad was sitting on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees. He was on his third chain-smoked cigarette, which meant the conversation had been going at least ten minutes. Brad knew he had to listen but wanted no active part in it. When he tried to think it was like walking across hot coals, coals that stretched to infinity in every direction. Except the coals felt bitterly cold.
Lee shook his head. 'I went to school with this guy. There's got to be some other way.'
Hernandez's position was simple. The body had to disappear. They couldn't leave it here. It had to be got rid of. Soon as it was found, the cops would be all over it. Rich kid with his head blown off was not a situation that just went away. The event had to be erased. Lee had managed to muster a detachment that Brad found a
lmost incredible. Okay, his voice didn't sound completely steady all the time, and he was rubbing his lip with one finger and not looking at the front seat of his car any more often than anyone else. But he'd come up with the idea of somehow posing Pete's body somewhere it could be interpreted as a drive-by, or a mugging gone horrendous, or something. He was sticking with the notion but Hernandez was having none of it.
'Listen to me, Lee,' Hernandez said again. He spoke quietly and Hudek realized this was the first time the man had referred to him by name, rather than as 'kid' or 'hey you'. 'We don't have any more time. We're out of town but someone would have heard the shooting anyway. We've got to make this go away now.'
Lee nodded. Thought about it. 'Okay,' he said. 'Let's do it.'
They opened the driver's-side door and got Pete's body out, supporting it at first so that it came out gently but then the remains of the head lolled and something viscous started to slip out onto Brad's hand and he let go in a spasm at about the same time Lee did and the whole thing wound up falling out onto the gravel. Lee took his T-shirt off and used it to wipe the worst of the mess off the car seat while Brad and Hernandez took a foot each and pulled the body around to the back of the car. Slowly, so the head didn't bounce up and down. They opened the trunk and Hernandez got the beach towel out and wrapped it around Pete's neck and head and then they lifted the body up and bent it around so it would fit, which was not easy. Then they shut the trunk.
When the body was no longer visible it was better. Brad stood watching while Hernandez went around the car scuffing up the gravel, gathering bits with blood on them and scooping them up into the Doritos bag. He was very thorough.
Then they all got in the car. They drove out the way they'd come and then took a left to head up further into the hills. The park was shut and would have been a bad place anyway but they found an access road and drove along it for quite a while. Then they parked and got Pete out of the trunk and carried him or it along a walking trail for about half a mile. Pete had been big in life and he was very heavy in death. Heavy and hard to manage and still warm, with hands that seemed too big and made of fingers. By the time they cut off the trail and headed out into nowhere Brad's back ached like someone had driven a nail into the base of his spine.
Eventually Lee said this had to be far enough and they stopped and left the body by a tree. There had been no shovel in the car, of course, so they used their hands and the car jack. It took a time and was very tough work, even though the ground was not too hard and they went at it together. They dragged Pete across to the hole but he did not fit, so they rolled him out the other side and made it larger. In the end they got him in. There was some discussion about whether they should leave the towel in place. Lee thought it was as safe there as anywhere else. Hernandez said Lee should take it somewhere and get it burnt. Brad wanted it to stay in place so he would not have to look at Pete a final time, though he felt bad about feeling that way and would not have wanted to explain it to Pete. In the end, Lee won. It was a cheap towel. You could get one like it anywhere. Brad was glad.
Nobody was sure whether you could leave fingerprints on a body. They thought not but Lee used his bloody T-shirt to wipe it just in case and then threw it in. Then as an afterthought he rolled Pete over and used the T to tie his hands, to confuse matters in case it was ever found. They pushed most of the dirt back over the body and then each went in a different direction and found the biggest logs they could carry. They positioned them over the grave in a way that looked kind of random and Lee walked ten yards off and looked back and though it was hard to tell because it was dark he thought it would do. He threw the remainder of the hole dirt around. He stood for a moment, looking at what they'd done, and then just shook his head.
They walked back to the car without saying anything.
Lee kept the lights off until they were near civilization. He drove back down to town at a steady rate and pulled over to drop Hernandez off where he indicated.
The man stepped out onto the kerb and then turned back.
'I'm going to call some people right away,' he said. 'The man you met. I'll let you know how we're going to handle this. Tonight.'
Lee just nodded, looking straight ahead. Hernandez shut the door and walked quickly off down the street.
Lee put his foot down and hammered down to 101 and through Ventura and Oxnard. Then abruptly slowed and took a right and headed out to the beach.
They parked up and got out, still without speaking. It was impossible to know what to say except blunt monosyllabic words that didn't help. Lee brought the Doritos bag with him and as they climbed up over the dunes he dispersed the contents slowly and thinly, letting the wind carry as much as possible away. By the time they got to the shore the bag was empty but he walked straight into the sea with it and washed out the interior before shredding it into as many pieces as the shiny material would allow. He let these fall into the sea, the wind catching them like pieces of moonlight.
He walked back up to where Brad was standing swaying in the sand and the two of them stared at each other for a while.
'Sleepy Pete,' Lee said.
Brad just shook his head. 'Fuck, Lee. Fuck.'
They walked back up over the dunes. Lee found an old sweatshirt in the trunk and put it on and drove into town. They pulled over at the first Starbucks they saw and bought vanilla lattes and drank them in the car as they drove on to the big Frisbees on Jolacha Ave. They bought three big bags of burgers there, confused and scared by the bright lights and the strange noises made by the till, and the way other people just stood around talking and laughing and asking for barbecue sauce as if absolutely nothing had happened. They walked stiff-legged back to the car.
Drove through town and up to the Faircroft gate. 'Be cool,' Lee said, quietly. Brad smiled vaguely into space.
A security guy came over to the car. It was the one Lee had talked to when he first arrived at the party. The exchange was short and friendly. Lee offered him a burger and the guy nearly said yes but then evidently remembered he was supposed to be on Atkins or not accept stuff or maybe just hadn't finished a pizza in the booth, and contented himself with waving them on.
Lee drove away and into the estate, past all the big gates.
'Pull over,' Brad said, after they'd gone a few hundred yards. Lee pulled over. Brad got out and vomited on the side of the road. The vomit smelt of beer and sour blood, of stagnant water and forest dust.
He got back in the car and Lee drove the rest of the way.
When they turned into the Luchs driveway there were still plenty of cars. Lee parked up and killed the engine. Took his hands off the wheel and clenched and unclenched them a few times.
'Okay,' he said. 'Now we have to go to this party. Have some fun.'
'You're kidding.'
'I'm not. We have to be here, understand what I'm saying?'
Brad understood. They got out with the burgers and went around the side. There were still about thirty people hanging out and the party was still going and the mixing guy had reappeared and was doing his thing but it was different now. The music sounded flat and out of time. A few people homed in when they saw the Frisbees bags.
'Anybody seen Pete?' Lee asked, casually. 'His name's on one of these. Two, probably.'
And people laughed and said no, they hadn't seen him in a while, and someone said they thought he'd gone off to some other party.
Brad thought, Yeah, that pretty much covers it. Some whole other party altogether. He was glad he'd already thrown up.
Suddenly there was a hand in his, and Karen was by his side.
'Thought we'd lost you,' she said.
He smiled and said 'Nah' and handed her some fries.
•••
An hour and a half later Hudek pulled up in the street outside his parents' house. He checked the place for lights and thought about what he was going to do.
He had already gone to a 24-hour car wash. In fact, he had been to two. He'd done the first at a place
where they knew him and then driven twenty blocks to another, where they didn't. Only an exterior job each time, of course, and he'd only used the first location because none of the guys he recognized were on duty and so he was just another young guy in a nice car.
The bodywork was in good shape. Less so other parts. The driver's seat and upper part of the driver's side door, for example, which were okay to the naked eye but Lee knew this wasn't clean enough. He could sell the car in a little while. But not immediately, and he was surprised by how much difference it made, knowing one of your best friends had died right where you were sitting.
He could get it fixed in the morning, but he found it was something he wanted finished now. He wanted to be able to get up tomorrow and know this event was yesterday's thing. Of course it would not be. Pete would be missed, and soon. But if the car was sorted out then he could get on with just not knowing anything about anything.
To achieve this he had to tick some tasks off:
Check there were no stones or dust left in the treads of the tyres which could be traced back to that fucking parking lot, or the access road they'd driven to get to where they buried him.
Give the trunk a thorough clean for specks of gravel and blood. The towel around the head had been a good touch but it was soaked almost through by the time they pulled him back out. Destroy and replace the lining if necessary.
And clean the front seat and the rest of the interior. Clean it well.
The lessons of half-watched episodes of Forensic Detectives had not been lost on Lee, though he'd never realized these were things he had needed to learn. The garage at his house would be perfect for all of this. The lighting was good, clinical. But first he had in mind to stop by his parents' house, assuming there was life there. There were two reasons for this. His dad had stuff in the garage which would help in what he had to do. Cleaning materials, solvents, tools, Hudek Sr's car always looked just so, and he had the stuff in bulk so he wouldn't miss anything Lee took. The second reason was that Lee felt that being seen around was a good idea. Yeah, I saw him that night. No, he was fine, very relaxed, why do you ask? Oh no, that's impossible. Sorry, quite impossible.
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