Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels Book 3)

by Owen Laukkanen

  Merton Cullins operated out of Laclede County and had made it clear that he would have no truck with outsiders. Luster had learned this when one of Roy’s salesmen came back from Laclede with both arms broken. Fella’s wife had to wipe his ass for two months. They were divorced now, which Luster attributed to the ass wiping. That was the sort of thing that would kill the romance in a relationship good and permanent.

  “Just surprised,” Luster said. “Merton’s a hard man to deal with.”

  Spider pushed his sunglasses back up on his nose and smiled. “You know me. I’m a people person. I like to see these conflicts resolved once and for all.”

  Luster watched Spider drive away, then tossed the package in the passenger seat and headed out to Delroy’s place. Delroy lived in a farmhouse way out in the boonies, so he settled in for a long drive.

  Luster couldn’t help but think about the package. It was probably money, payment for either drugs or guns. It didn’t weigh much. And the comment about more where that came from suggested it wasn’t a full payment.

  Luster decided it was a test. If he came through for Spider this time, the man would trust him with the bigger payments in the future. And if Spider had found a way to get a piece of Merton’s action then there were definitely going to be some big payments.

  That was when Luster intended to fuck Spider over but good. One big score. That was all he needed. Then he and Alva could skip town, leave Spider in the shit. With a big enough stake Luster could start up his own operation. No way he was going to keep working for that crippled bastard.

  A half-dozen hard looking men were outside when Luster pulled up in front of the house. Most of them were seated on the porch out of the sun, but one man paced the yard with his cell phone to his ear. A big bearded man sat at a weathered picnic table hacking at it with a knife the size of Luster’s forearm.

  Luster got out with the package under his arm. He could feel their eyes on him as he crossed the yard.

  The guy on the phone swore and hung up. “Goddamn voicemail again,” he said to the group. “I’m starting to have some serious concerns. He never goes this long without checking in.”

  “I’m looking for Cole,” Luster called out.

  The man turned and looked at him. “That’s me. What the fuck do you want?”

  Luster ran through Spider’s message in his head, tried to get it exactly right. “This here is from Merton. He says if you keep on the way you are there’ll be plenty more where that came from.” Luster smiled, satisfied that he’d nailed it.

  Cole took the package and tore at the paper. The other men came down from the porch eager to get a look. They stared over Cole’s shoulder like kids watching someone else open a present and wishing it was theirs.

  Luster noticed the man at the picnic table seemed disinterested. He just kept chipping away with his knife. The table was scarred up all the way around with little notches like maybe his whittling at it was some kind of hobby.

  Cole said, “Oh, shit.”

  Luster looked back and saw the package hit the ground and something tumbled out. It took Luster a moment to recognize the contents.

  It was a right hand cut off smoothly at the wrist, and when it landed palm down in the grass it looked like a pale, thick-legged spider. Tattooed on the backs of the first three fingers were the letters D, E, and L.

  Luster couldn’t manage to process what he was seeing. He glanced back at his car in confusion. For a second he had the crazy thought that he’d grabbed the wrong package.

  When he turned back the men were closing on him. Even Whittling Man had taken enough of an interest to get up from his beloved picnic table.

  “Hold on, boys,” Luster said. “This wasn’t me. I just-”

  Somebody hit him in the side of the head. Felt like a baseball bat, maybe a two-by-four. Luster couldn’t tell, and the pain kept him from giving it much consideration. The second blow made stars explode behind his eyes, and he fell to the ground.

  Luster heard the men cussing at him, felt them kicking him. He tried to tell them this was Spider’s doing, but he couldn’t move his shattered jaw. He couldn’t even spit out the teeth he felt floating around in his mouth. Then he felt hands grabbing him, lifting him up, and for just a second it was like he was floating away.

  “Get him on the table,” Cole said. “If Merton wants to play it this way, that’s just fine.”

  Luster wanted to tell these boys going after Merton was the wrong move. They were just giving Spider what he wanted. Then he realized that wasn’t exactly true.

  His head banged against the tabletop as the men dropped him. Luster saw Whittling Man looking down at him. The dead stare and half-smile on his face told Luster he was about to learn the man’s real hobby.

  Luster thought about Spider tooling around in the new car he’d probably been convinced to buy. Making this power play he’d been led to make, just like Luster had been led.

  Luster had to laugh, choking on blood as he did. All those months ago, when he’d first said the words, he never realized how right he was. What Alva wants, Alva gets.

  Time Enough To Kill

  Kent Gowran

  Jackie White’s eyes start to blink.

  Dead on the floor with a rusty hatchet buried in his head and the son of a bitch’s eyes start blinking.

  Cookie sees it at the same time I do and yanks a checkered tablecloth off one of the Laugh Hole’s tables and covers Jackie with it. “Better?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We should get going.”

  “We’ve got time.”

  “Not much.”

  “Plenty of it.”

  He turns away from me and moves to hover over Max who is doing a less than half-assed job of wiping Jackie’s blood off his face.

  “This is the trouble with you, Max,” Cookie says. “This is why the Laugh Hole is going down the tubes.”

  Max stops wiping and looks at Cookie. “What’re you talking about?”

  “You’ve got no class.” He holds his arms out like all of a sudden he’s Jesus and is about to impart some wisdom from on high but all he comes out with is: “This place has no class.”

  “Give me a break.” Max looks over at me for support or some kind of input contrary to Cookie’s own and I take a sudden interest counting the bottles behind the bar. Max snorts and waves his hand in the general direction of the corpse on the floor. “It’s not like I go slamming guys in the head with an axe on a nightly basis.”

  “Hatchet,” Cookie says.

  “What?”

  “It’s a hatchet. You hit Jackie in the head with a hatchet.”

  “Whatever. Just the same, Cookie...” Max is wheezing. “I’m all worked up here.”

  “Probably not good for your heart.”

  “No shit.” He starts to cough and it looks to me like he might pass out. “This is all your fault anyway.”

  Cookie smiles like it’s just what he wanted to hear. “Don’t forget my associate over there.” He points at me just in case Max has forgotten I’m standing ten feet away. “He drove me here.”

  Max doesn’t bother looking at me. I can see he’s in bad shape, and so can Cookie. Which is the whole point of our visit to the Laugh Hole.

  Cookie helps Max sit down at a table. “You want something to drink?”

  “Whiskey.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Max nods. “The good stuff.”

  Cookie comes over to the bar and says, “Give me a bottle of whatever’s the best.”

  I look at the bottles and realize no matter which one I grab it isn’t going to be what anyone would ever call the best. I pick one with a label I used to know a little too well and push it across the bar to Cookie.

  “Give me a couple glasses, too.”

  I put two shot glasses on the bar. “How far are you going to let this go? He needs help.”

  “I’ve got a handle on it.” He gives me a wink and takes the booze over to the table.

&nb
sp; The last of the Friday night crowd left hours ago, and according to the digital clock set into the gaping maw of an oversize laughing mouth hanging above the bar the sun will be up shortly.

  Cookie sits down. “Looks like it’s the last time either of us will be drinking here.” He pours the whiskey. “What’re we drinking to?”

  “My wife,” Max says. They knock their glasses together and drink.

  Cookie looks over at me. “Bring those pictures over here.”

  “He already saw them,” I say even as I pick up the stack of photos and head toward their table.

  “Give ‘em here.” Cookie snatches them away from he. He spreads them out across the table in front of Max. It’s like watching an execution.

  In each one Max sees Tiffany looking directly at the camera. Almost like she’s looking at him, like she knows he’ll be sitting there unable to look away. “Maybe they’re old.”

  “Look at that one there,” Cookie says and stabs at a one of the shots with his finger. “See her hand there? Pumping away on poor dead Jackie’s dick? There’s that big ass rock of a wedding ring you put on her finger.”

  The last of the color drains from Max’s face. “I’m glad I killed him.”

  “I bet you are.”

  Max goes on looking at each picture over and over.

  “I never made her laugh,” Cookie says.

  Max looks up. “What do you mean?”

  “Tiffany. I never made her laugh when we were together.” Cookie smiles. “But you sure did, Max.” He refills their glasses. “You want to know something?”

  Max stays quiet. Probably knows Cookie will go on talking no matter what he says.

  “I always wanted to get you.”

  “Get me?”

  “Make you pay.”

  “Jesus...”

  “For taking her from me.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Eleven years.”

  “Like I said...”

  “I know how to hold a grudge.”

  Max’s eyes open a little wider. Like now he’s getting it loud and clear, if a little too late. “This was all you wasn’t it?”

  Cookie cocks his head in the direction of the body on the floor. “Jackie helped some.”

  “You took these pictures.”

  “Nah, my cousin Dot took them.”

  “The cat photographer?” He almost laughs.

  “That’s her.” Cookie picks up a couple of the pictures and lets loose a low whistle. “After I saw these, I told Dot she should refocus her pussy snapping business.”

  Max shifts in his seat and starts to massage his chest. “Call me an ambulance.”

  “You’re an ambulance.”

  “That’s my punch line,” Max says. “You don’t sell it.”

  “You’re the great comedian,” Cookie says and it’s not the biggest exaggeration ever. People used to know who Max was, before they knew him as just the fat guy who owns the Laugh Hole.

  He leans across the table and puts a big hand on Cookie’s arm. “I got a joke for you...”

  Cookie looks amused. “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  Max licks his lips. “Give me a minute here.”

  He looks around the Laugh Hole. He looks at Jackie’s expensive armadillo skin cowboy boots sticking out from under the tablecloth. He looks at the bottle of whiskey and I can almost hear him wishing he’d stocked the bar with something better. He looks at the blood from Jackie’s ruined head as it soaks through the tablecloth. Finally he gets around to me, and he looks at me like I should’ve done something to stop all of this.

  “It’s almost time for breakfast,” Cookie says.

  Max looks at him. He shuffles through the pictures of Tiffany and Jackie again.

  “You going to tell the joke or not?”

  Max doesn’t say anything. He just smiles and then does what fat comedians do.

  Copas

  Hector Acosta

  The kid’s first mistake was cursing at the Mexican cop. His second mistake happened midway through the stream of profanity coming out of his mouth, when the kid lost all color, hunched over, and spewed more than just curse words all over the fat cop’s shoes.

  “Ese gringo lla se chingo,” the bartender said, placing a beer in front of me.

  I didn’t need him to tell me the guy was fucked. Sprinkling some salt and lime on the rim of the can, I flinched when the federal pushed the drunken kid down to the sidewalk and started kicking him. The other people in the bar barely paid any attention to the scene outside, having long ago grown used to this type of display.

  Turning my back to the action, I tried to do the same, but the sound of steel tipped shoe meeting flesh made the beer taste vile. With a sigh I pulled my stool back and threw a couple of dollars on the counter for the unfinished drink.

  Not even out of the bar and already my decision to help was costing me.

  “Te voy a hacer que me limpies los zapatos con tu lengua,” I heard the cop say, landing another kick on the American. I think if the offer was really on the table, the kid would have gladly licked the cop’s shoes clean to stop the beating.

  Everyone in the streets gave the two a wide berth, happy to pretend that a teenager getting kicked to death was an everyday occurrence. And while Juarez had gotten pretty bad, it wasn’t at the daylight-murders stage yet. A small group stood across the street from the cop, some with their phones out and filming the whole thing.

  “Lo vas a matar,” I said, approaching the cop with my hands up in the air to show I wasn’t carrying a weapon. You only need to have a group of cops pull their guns on you once before you start to learn the best ways to approach them. Technically, the best way to approach a Mexican cop was with your wallet out and in clear view, but I wasn’t feeling that much of a good Samaritan just yet.

  “No te metas,” the cop said. At least I got him to stop kicking the kid.

  “Come on Pedro, you know I’m right. A few more kicks and you’re going to have a ton of paperwork to fill out.” I stuck to Spanish, just so that Pedro couldn’t later say that there was a miscommunication between us.

  “Pendejo ruined my shoes. You want me to just let him go?”

  “I want you not to kill him.” I glanced down to the kid lying on the concrete. He looked all of sixteen, with hair so blond it might as well have been white, blue eyes, and pale skin that reminded me of the color of the milky horchata drink you could order in any taco stand around here. I wondered how much his looks played into Pedro’s beating.

  Pedro was the type of guy that joined the police force because he had a power complex that beating whores just wasn’t satisfying anymore. And he’d only gotten worse ever since the Mexican army arrived in the city with their jeeps, tanks, and automatic weapons, like a child that threw a fit when a new kid showed up to the playground with a better and flashier toy than the one he had.

  “You proved your point,” I said.

  Pedro narrowed his eyes. “What do you care what happens? What’s your angle here, Thursday?”

  I flinched at the name, reminded once more that I had my parents to blame for how my life turned out. Name a kid Thursday, and his chances of becoming president or finding the cure for cancer immediately went down the crapper.

  “No angle. Just don’t want to see a kid dead. That would probably get the bar shut down for at least a couple of days, and I like coming here.”

  The kid moaned, earning him another kick from Pedro.

  “Stop.” The firmness of my voice surprised even me.

  Pedro grinned, showing two rows of pristine, clean teeth. Corruption at least paid well enough for dental checkups. “Or you’ll do what, Thursday?” he asked.

  Good question. If Pedro didn’t want to stop the beating, he didn’t have to. Despite people filming him, Pedro could kill the kid and know there would be little to no repercussions from higher ups. They had a number of ways they could spin a story like this so that Pedro came out clean. Their favorite as
of late was to have the newspapers publish editorials of how the Americans that came to Juarez for the cheap beers were to blame for the drug business that had recently swept up the entire state of Chihuahua. How without the Americans and their money there wouldn’t be as much of a demand for the drugs that the cartels passed through the border every day. And many Mexicans, especially the ones that served, cooked, or worked for Americans either here in Juarez or across the border Paso ate it all up.

  So I briefly considered heading back inside the bar before I made things any worse, when I caught another glimpse of the phone cameras and got an idea.

  “Walk away or I make sure that people see the video,” I leaned in and whispered to Pedro.

  A good lie is all about presentation. The best ones work because they’re served in the most direct manner possible. The gambits and elaborate con games that you see in movies and televisions rarely work in real life, because people are too lazy to follow along and keep track of all the deceit. The best way to lie is straight to the person’s face, starting off with something so small and inconsequential that like a fish to bait, they can’t help but be hooked from the start.

  What the hell are you talking?”

  “Walk away or people get to see you go into Gabriela’s apartment.” I crouched next to the kid and looked him over, noting that most of Pedro’s work had gone into the stomach and sides, which, if there was no internal bleeding, would be a good thing for the kid-easier to hide those types of bruises. I also knew that Pedro was looking down at me, so I added, “I’m sorry, does he go by Gabriel when he’s off duty?”

  Juarez had its share of prostitutes, most of them congregating around el centro. They came out once the sun went down and the neon signs of the discotecas came on, flocks of them slowing down traffic and milling around sidewalks or venturing out to the streets, car horns drowning out the high heels pounding the pavements. And out of all the prostitutes, Gabriela was, if not the most well-known, certainly one that stood out just by sight alone. Easy to do when you were 6’2 and wore an extra four inches of heels. Then there was the fact that no amount of make up or eye catching wigs could hide her Adam’s apple.