Raw Wounds

by Matt Hilton

  Rory threw open the door, and met Pinky coming at him. The pistol aimed at his gut didn’t faze the giant redneck. He made the stupid move of swiping it aside with one hairy forearm, and launched a punch at Pinky’s jaw. Except Pinky didn’t hang around for the lumbering fool to land either move. He stepped aside, and struck the barrel of the pistol dead centre on the giant’s blotchy pate. The skin split, and the blood that poured down his features was redder than the check in his tartan shirt. Rory’s hands went to his head as he attempted to stem the blood flow, and Pinky drove a shoulder into him, shoving him back against the hood of the pickup. A quick trip of his ankle and Rory went down on his back at Pinky’s feet.

  Tess watched it all unfold in a few shocking seconds, open-mouthed. Then she quickly glanced around, checking for witnesses, but the street was as deserted as Emilia’s home had been. Her attention returned to her friends’ exploits.

  ‘Now you stay down, you,’ Pinky warned as he leaned in and placed the muzzle of his pistol to the side of Rory’s neck, ‘an’ we can stay on friendly terms, us.’

  Po used the fulcrum of the driver’s tortured lip to flip the man flat on his back. He kneeled on the driver’s chest as his free hand went into the top of his boot and came out with a knife. Pinky, Tess assumed, must have supplied Po with the blade, because he certainly hadn’t flown here with it concealed on his person. Po released the lip, but only so there was room for him to insert the tip of his dagger in the driver’s flaring left nostril. ‘Don’t move,’ Po warned. ‘If you want to keep your looks you’d better be a good boy. Now I can promise you I’ve a steady hand, and I won’t cut you on purpose. But shake your head an inch and you lose your nose. Try to get up; it’s your own brain you’ll be spearing. You get me?’

  Before he was hauled out the pickup, the driver had been a picture of facetiousness, now he was simply terrified. His mouth was blanched of colour from the savage twisting Po had given it, now the remainder of his features had paled equally. ‘I … I … get you, bra.’

  ‘You going to be civil now and answer my questions? Nah-ah. Don’t nod,’ Po reminded him.

  ‘Wh … Whaddaya wanna know?’

  Po looked over at Emilia’s place.

  ‘You do know the woman who lives there. Was it you that kicked down her door and ransacked the place?’

  ‘No. I mean, yeah. I know her, but it wasn’ us who broke in.’

  ‘You’ve been inside though, right?’

  ‘We took a look, yeah. But that was all. Saw the place was trashed, Emilia wasn’t home, so we left again.’

  ‘And now you’re back. You and that ape over there.’

  The driver rolled his eyes, and could see his buddy Rory in a similar uncomfortable position through the gap beneath the pickup.

  Po turned the blade a fraction of an inch, and the driver’s attention switched back on him.

  ‘Why’d you come back?’

  ‘We were told to keep an eye on her place.’

  ‘I figured,’ said Po. ‘On whose order?’

  ‘Zeke Menon’s.’

  ‘Zeke Menon?’ Po’s eyelids pinched, and even from where she stood slightly disassociated from reality, like an observer of players on a stage, Tess saw recognition of the name in the tightening of his features. ‘What’s his interest in Emilia?’

  ‘I don’t know. Seriously, bra, I haven’t a clue. Zeke Menon isn’t the kinda guy you quiz. You get me?’

  ‘Seriously, bra, I’m not either. He must’ve told you why to watch for her.’

  ‘He didn’t. Swear to God, man. Just told me to take Rory and keep a watch on this place, an’ if the bitch come home, we’d to call him.’

  ‘So call him.’

  ‘Emilia ain’t back yet,’ the driver objected.

  ‘So tell Zeke I want to see him. See—’ Po leaned in a fraction and the man’s face almost collapsed in anticipation of the blade driving through his skull – ‘he’s looking for the same person I am, but I don’t believe his intentions are as good as mine. I’d like to know why, so you get him here for me.’

  ‘You might as well stab me in the face now,’ the driver whined. ‘If I help set Zeke up, Cleary will eat me alive, bra.’

  ‘Who is Cleary?’

  ‘A fuckin’ retard,’ said the driver, with a sudden flash of terror through his eyes. ‘Zeke’s brother, man. He’s not right, you get me? He’s scary wrong. You don’t believe me, ask Rory. Rory ain’t afraid of no man, but even he hides when Cleary’s around.’

  Po pursed his lips, unimpressed by Cleary Menon’s legend. ‘What was the deal with the gun? The one you were about to pull on me.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are, man. This is a bad neighbourhood …’

  ‘Made worse by a-holes like you pulling weapons on folks,’ Po told him. ‘You’re lucky I’m a reasonable man.’

  ‘I’m lying on my ass with a knife up my nose.’

  ‘Consider the alternative,’ Po said.

  Tess laid a hand softly on Po’s shoulder. He glanced at her, nodded softly. Withdrew the blade and stood. Neither man was a genuine threat to them. Torturing further information from them was only going to attract unwanted attention.

  ‘You OK over there, Pinky?’

  ‘Fatty knows his place,’ said Pinky, and he stepped away and his gun went back into its holster. To Rory, he said, ‘Get your butt back inside that truck, you, and no funny business.’

  The driver stayed on his back, but put tentative fingers to his face, checking for missing portions of his features. His bottom lip had swollen to twice its normal size, and he’d lost a few wispy hairs off his chin, but Po hadn’t seriously harmed him. His nostrils were still whole, despite a shallow nick in the one abused by Po’s blade.

  ‘You can get up,’ Po told him.

  ‘I’m not calling Zeke.’

  ‘Fair enough, I don’t want you to become dinner for his brother. But gimme his number.’

  ‘No way, bra. He’s gonna know who you got it from.’

  ‘Buddy, I can soon find his number by other methods, so you may as well give me it before your usefulness runs out.’

  Po wasn’t hinting at finding Zeke Menon’s number by way of Tess’s superlative detective skills. Feeling like a third wheel on a bicycle, Tess moved aside and left him to it. She was intensely uncomfortable at the way Po and Pinky had played things, but wasn’t about to complain. Being an ex-cop it sometimes felt alien taking off the gloves like that, but she couldn’t deny that her friends’ methods got results. They were nowhere nearer to finding Emilia, but in a few short minutes they’d determined why she was missing, and more importantly that she was still alive. Otherwise, why would her enemies – the Menon brothers – still be hunting her?

  Rory was back in the pickup, stemming the blood from his scalp with some wadded paper, still under the watchful gaze of Pinky. The driver was leaning against the cab as he plucked at his abused lip with one hand, the other digging in a pocket for his cellphone. Po stood nearby, nonchalant. The scene looked calm; an observer coming across them would have no idea of how desperate it had been only moments earlier.

  Po took the cellphone. Its owner complained, but Po simply flattened a palm against the man’s chest and pressed him back against the pickup. Perhaps he was afraid that Po was going to ring Zeke Menon directly from his personal phone, but Po only noted the number, committing it to memory. Po handed back the phone and the man looked at it as if it was a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. Tess couldn’t help feeling it was a decent metaphor for her own sense of the impending. The call that Po was sure to make would determine the future, for good or bad. Probably bad.

  She could overhear Po quizzing the man further. He’d claimed to know Emilia. Po asked how.

  ‘Just from around, bra.’

  ‘Around where?’

  ‘The scene. Y’know?’

  Po didn’t push him on ‘what’ scene; it didn’t take too much imagination to figure it out.

  ‘Who d
oes she usually hang with?’

  The guy was regaining some of his sneer now that the knife was no longer in his nostril. ‘She’s a popular gal, if you get my drift?’

  ‘She have a regular friend?’

  ‘The fuck would I know, man?’

  ‘So you’re only casting unfounded aspersions?’

  The man blinked at Po with a total lack of understanding.

  ‘You’re just talking shit,’ Po clarified for him.

  The facetious grin flickered back in place, light winking off the gold tooth.

  ‘Give me a name, then get the hell outta here,’ Po said.

  ‘I don’t know names of any of those limp dicks,’ said the young man, ‘but the chicks is another matter. Emilia hung out with a coupla girls we knew from when we was all back in high school. Jenna Cornell and Tracey Redding, but she was always besties with Rachel Paterno.’

  ‘I take it you’ve already been around and spoken to these girls about Emilia’s whereabouts?’

  ‘Not me, bra. Like I said, all I was told to do was keep an eye on her place, and let Zeke know if she showed up. Rest of it: nothing to do with me.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  The man only grinned, but his smile was uncertain, wondering how he should play things.

  Po told him. ‘Here’s what happens now. You and your buddy get the fuck outta here. You don’t come back. If Zeke isn’t happy with that, tell him I’ll be in touch and we can come to acceptable terms then.’

  ‘You can’t tell us what to do,’ the guy said, but he had no confidence in his proclamation.

  ‘There’s a big swamp just outside of town,’ Po reminded him. ‘A large number of people get lost in it all the time. How’d you and Rory like to become statistics?’

  ‘Fuck that, bra. I’m only being paid pocket change …’

  ‘Is that all your life’s worth to you?’

  The guy turned to get in the pickup.

  ‘Hold it.’ Po pushed him aside and delved in the footwell. He found the dropped revolver wedged against the gas pedal. As he weathered the driver’s baleful stare, he fed the revolver into his belt at the small of his back. ‘We don’t want any more stupidity from you, do we?’

  ‘Buddy,’ the driver said as he shoved the stick to drive. ‘I ain’t the stupid one. You bait those Menons, it’s you who needs to visit a shrink.’

  As the pickup roared off, billowing smoke, Tess looked up at Po. ‘That parting shot he made … first bit of sense I heard out of him.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Po said. ‘But it doesn’t make a difference. Zeke Menon is chasing Emilia, and I want to know why. And if I halt him in his tracks, she might stop running.’

  THIRTEEN

  ‘Where the hell have you got to now, Cleary?’

  Zeke Menon scanned the construction site. The working day was coming to an end, but there were still a number of guys in hard hats and fluorescent jackets clumping around, and a couple of large dumper trucks still sent up clouds of dust and diesel smoke as they added to the mounds of excavated dirt. Zeke squinted against the fume-filled clouds billowing around him, pulled down the peak of his ball cap, and tried to pinpoint the familiar – and very distinct – shape of his brother. Cleary was nowhere to be seen.

  It would have been better if he had taken Cleary with him when he’d visited the hospital earlier, even if it meant ordering him to stay in the pickup while he went inside alone. Cleary would have happily sat and read one of his books while Zeke saw to business. But he’d decided against it after leaving Al Keane’s trailer office and now Cleary was AWOL. Knowing his habits, Cleary had likely wandered off alone into the swamp. Searching for Cleary would have taken time and effort he could do without, but now it just meant he was looking for Cleary with no idea of where he could be. Cleary carried a cellphone, but he didn’t answer the damn thing when Zeke called: he had a unique take on reality, and often the actual world didn’t impinge upon his. Zeke left a voicemail message, though he was doubtful his brother would listen to it or respond unless he became so inclined. Dealing with Cleary could be frustrating. There were times when Zeke was tempted to take his brother by the throat and shake some sense into him, but he dared not. As much as he’d assumed control of their partnership, the alpha of their two-wolves pack, if Cleary ever challenged him for leadership then he knew his ass was grass. When he turned violent, Cleary had no off switch.

  If ever Cleary’s condition was diagnosed, Zeke believed it’d be somewhere high up the autistic spectrum. His brother was endowed with above-average intelligence. But it rarely manifested in a way acceptable in civilized society. As with other forms of autism Cleary exhibited a delay in motor skills, and through his lack of understanding when it came to the abstract use of language he was perfunctory and literal in his responses: the concepts of humour, irony and give-and-take were lost on him. He showed unhealthy levels of interest in specific items, and his reactions to a gamut of differing stimuli could set him off in different ways. Spotting the brightly coloured plumage of a bird could take him into the woods in pursuit, with a view to either petting it or ripping it limb from limb. But his brother hadn’t been diagnosed, and therefore he was simply known for being batshit crazy, and Zeke wasn’t medically qualified enough to disagree. Perhaps his condition had nothing to do with autism, and more to do with being in ‘the world according to Cleary Menon’ and that’s all there was to it. Their father used to apologize for Cleary when they were kids, usually stating, ‘Cleary has his own ways,’ as if that made him immune to acceptable behaviour, while Zeke had simply been ‘a nasty piece of shit’. Growing up with a father like theirs, the way they turned out was hardly surprising. Then again, maybe dear ol’ dad had a point: Zeke was under no illusion, he was a nasty piece of shit, and he worked hard to maintain the image. Nice guys didn’t get on in his business.

  Then again, neither did getting sidetracked on a personal vendetta. Al Keane was paying him to clear up a problem, and he should concentrate on finding Emilia Chatard, and shutting her up for good. Keane’s business arrangement with Nathaniel Corbin was jeopardized by Zeke’s failure to do that one simple task. Keane’s ire he could take with a pinch of salt, but he knew he was jabbing a hornets’ nest in pissing off Nate Corbin. He’d earlier boasted to Keane that he feared no man, but his words had been typical macho bullshit. You didn’t cross someone like Corbin, as much as it irked to admit it.

  Corbin wasn’t your typical tough guy, no crazy man who’d stick a gun in your face at his first displeasure, but he had plenty people on his payroll who would. Zeke could pretend he didn’t give a hoot for any of Corbin’s hired guns and – taken singly – he didn’t, but it was a different story entirely when Corbin was wealthy enough to send an army. For all Zeke and Cleary made a formidable pairing it didn’t mean a damn thing when hitters could be brought against them from all angles. To keep Corbin happy, he needed to keep Al Keane onside too. Keane he gave less regard to, but Keane was the one passing down the boss’s orders. In Zeke’s opinion, Keane was a dick, and a limp one at that: Corbin would be better off dealing directly with the Menons and do away with Keane. Except that wasn’t going to happen. Keane could offer equipment, premises, and a workforce required for Corbin’s operation here in New Iberia: what could Zeke offer by comparison? Jeez, right now he couldn’t even offer a crazy motherfucker that was guaranteed to terrify the opposition into surrender. Where the hell had Cleary gotten to?

  Zeke stood at the edge of the construction site, staring into the deep shadows beneath the nearest overhanging boughs. There wasn’t a hint of his brother forging a path through the undergrowth, any sound drowned beneath the thrum of the excavation equipment behind him. Tracking Cleary through the swamp was becoming unavoidable. Without him there was no way he was going up against Nicolas Villere and Pinky Leclerc, but it was his desire to do so that was causing the distraction to finding Emilia Chatard. Fate, he thought, was a fickle beast. What had brought his old enemies to his notice but for a
chance meeting in the hospital? If Emilia hadn’t stumbled upon the scene at the Thibodaux camp, she wouldn’t have gone into hiding and there would never have been a reason for Zeke to be in the hospital seeking her whereabouts from her sick mom. Villere and Leclerc could have come and gone again without him ever laying eyes on either. He would believe that the planets were aligning or some other such bullshit, if not for the fact his damned brother had gone and thwarted fate’s grand design with this no-show.

  He checked his phone again. There’d been no reply. He rang Cleary’s number but received an automated response stating the recipient was unavailable.

  ‘Son of a bitch.’ He glanced down at his new cowboy boots.

  Damnit if he wasn’t going to have to purchase new footwear.

  Muttering at the clinging muck, he went down the side of a heap of sticky dirt and immediately into the fringe of the swamp.

  ‘Cleary? Cleary? If you’re off chasing toads again, I’ll make you eat the damn things raw!’

  ‘Why you shouting, Zeke? I hear you fine.’

  Spinning around, he glared up at the mound of dirt he’d just clambered down. The broad-shouldered silhouette of his brother was vivid against the setting sun.

  ‘Goddamnit, Cleary! Where you been all this time?’

  ‘All this time.’

  ‘Yeah, all this goddamn time! I’ve been looking for you all over.’

  ‘No. You walked from Keane’s trailer to there.’ Cleary pointed at Zeke’s current position. ‘You haven’t been all over.’

  ‘You were watching me?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Watching you.’