The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  The attack took only seconds.

  The one Son left, Little Stick, recovered from the shock and raised his gun and fired at Drago. He missed and blasted a boxed air filter that popped and danced up in the air.

  He took better aim this time.

  Still on the floor, I pivoted on my hip, swung around, and kicked his leg just below the knee as hard as I could. Something snapped. He went down in an uncontrolled heap. The gun clattered to the floor.

  One of the Sons got loose and pummeled Drago on the back with his fists. He got to his feet, pulled back, and kicked him. Nothing worked. The man grabbed a chromed tire rim and raised it high over his head to bash Drago’s brains out.

  I grabbed the gun Little Stick dropped and shot the man right between the shoulder blades.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  HE FELL OVER onto the writhing pile. I struggled to my feet, moved over, and stuck the gun against the back of Dead Dick’s leg and pulled the trigger twice. He screamed.

  I shot Dogman in both feet.

  That ended the fight.

  But not for Drago.

  Drago disengaged from the bodies, grabbed Dead Dick by the throat, and pounded his face with his fist.

  “Okay,” I said, “that’s enough. They’re done.” Dead Dick lay unconscious and Dogman rocked in pain, cradling one foot.

  Drago stood, a wild look in his eye. “Gimme the gun. Gimme it, I’ll finish it. We gotta finish it or these four assholes will keep on comin’.”

  “No. It’s over.” I couldn’t stomach mass murder. I’d shot one of them in the back, but that came out of self-preservation. Just like I had with Ol’ Hector and . . . and Bosco.

  Blood spread under and around the clutter of auto parts, black plastic pieces, black rubber belts, nuts and bolts, and the scattered mass of hundred-dollar bills. The green currency soaked up the blood. Turk, the one Son not shot, stayed frozen on top of the fallen shelving, his hands out and in plain sight. He knew he sat on the razor’s edge of being gunned.

  Drago held out his hand to me, wanting the .45. “Come on, man, don’t be a pussy, let me finish this now. These guys are part of the cancer that messed with your boy.”

  I shook my head. If I had to become a serial killer to stop them, then it wasn’t worth it. I didn’t have it in me.

  I turned around to deal with Jumbo. His back to me, he struggled, using his arms to climb up a counter. Once on his feet, he grabbed his balls and groaned. “I told them dumbasses,” he said, still facing the cabinets. “Oow, shit. I told ’em, you heard me tell ’em, Bruno. I gave ’em fair warning. The dumbasses.”

  I couldn’t see his hands. Guns didn’t kill, the hands did. “Turn around, Jumbo.”

  He did, holding his little popgun. He wore that same ugly smile, like he owned the world.

  I pointed my gun at him. “Come on, don’t do this.”

  I really couldn’t afford to shoot him. He knew too much about the drone and the missiles. We had to get him to talk.

  Drago turned to face Jumbo.

  “Don’t,” I said to Drago. “Let me handle this.”

  Drago still possessed pent-up anger from his inability to protect me by gunning The Sons. He took a long step around the men at his feet and the strewn and bloody auto parts.

  “I’ll shoot his ass. You better tell him to stop, Bruno. I swear to God I’ll cap his sorry ass. Tell him, Bruno. Tell him.”

  “Drago, stop, don’t.”

  Drago kept moving toward Jumbo.

  Jumbo fired.

  His gun didn’t boom like the one in my hand had when I shot The Sons. It popped.

  And popped again.

  Drago didn’t flinch as his bulk absorbed the two impacts, taking in the small lead pellets that had been fired at eight hundred and fifty feet per second, penetrating fat and muscle, tunneling deep. The contact slapped his body and sent a wave of fat in a concentric circle like a shock wave, easy to see even through his Raiders football jersey.

  Drago grabbed the gun before it fired a third time. He socked Jumbo in the face. Jumbo’s head snapped back. He wilted back to the floor, his eyes unfocused.

  I rushed over. “Hey, hey, you okay, buddy? I’ll get paramedics rolling.” I took out the FBI phone.

  Drago looked at me, still angry. “You need to sack up or you’re not gonna survive this shit. I’m tellin’ ya, man. And I’m fine. Get what you need from this little pinhead and let’s get the hell outta here.”

  “How can I get what I need from him after you knocked the piss outta him?” I took a breath, stepped over to Drago, and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t talk to you that way. Thank you for saving my life, again. I’m just worried about you. You’ve been shot twice. You need medical aid.” I took the .25 auto from him and put it in my pocket.

  Without looking over at the last biker with “Turk” embroderied on his Levi cut, who’d started to quietly pick his way off the shelves, Drago pointed at him with a beefy finger. “You make another move and you’ll get exactly what your friends got.” Drago shifted and kicked Dogman in the face, knocking him out. He shifted back and raised his black Raiders football jersey to show me. The two .25 cal bullets had hit him in the lower right abdomen, right in the tattooed breasts of a beautiful woman with long black hair. The beautiful, perfect breasts now had two red eyes.

  Tattoos covered every square inch of his skin, all of them done in black ink. Jailhouse tattoos of Vikings, a large battle-ax, a Celtic cross, and several women.

  Blood trickled out of both wounds and it looked like the breasts wept red.

  “You’re right,” I said, “they don’t look so bad on the outside, but you don’t know what kinda damage they did inside.”

  Without the use of his hands and using his stomach muscles only, he rolled his immense belly. “Nope, don’t feel like they hit nothin’ important. Come on, let’s get this shit goin’ so we can blow this pop stand.” He walked over to a stack of yellow gallon containers of antifreeze and picked up one. He reached into his pocket, took out a knife, and punctured a gaping wound in the container as he moved back to Jumbo.

  “Hey—” I’d started to tell Drago that that stuff would kill Jumbo and realized Drago probably already knew.

  Drago poured the luminescent green liquid right on Jumbo’s face. The green contrasted with Jumbo’s pale white skin. He coughed and choked, rolled to his side, and threw up. The act probably saved him from a torturous death by poison.

  Drago continued to slowly pour the liquid, which Jumbo tried unsuccessfully to bat away, the green mixing with the blood and cash and black auto parts on the polished concrete floor.

  Drago finished off the bottle and threw it down on Jumbo, who coughed and gagged. “Are you crazy? You’re one crazy son of a bitch, that shit’ll kill ya.”

  I moved over and, with my foot, shoved him back down. I put my shoe on his face and ground the sole in. “You’re going to tell us all about the train heist with the military drone.”

  He tried to push my shoe off and couldn’t. He spoke around it, his words muffled by my sole. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Get the hell off me, Bruno.”

  I pushed harder.

  “Aaahee—”

  “Tell me.”

  “I can’t tell you something I don’t know.”

  “Drago, get another one of those bottles of antifreeze. We’re gonna make sure Jumbo’s radiator doesn’t overheat this summer.”

  “No, man, no. Wait. Okay, okay, get off. I’ll tell you.”

  “I don’t have the time to dick around here, Jumbo. I let off, you better tell me or so help me—” I took a breath. “You get one chance, you understand? You shot my best friend, and I owe you for that.”

  “All right already, asshole. I said I’d give it up.”

  I let off and stepped back. Drago held a hand over his gut where the bullets had gone in. I said to him, “You’re a bad liar, my friend, and you are going to the hospital.” I looked back
at Jumbo. “When’s the meet for the exchange and where?”

  “Tonight at nine at the steak house over in The Negro, off Hospitality Lane.”

  “The where?”

  He tried to get up. I shoved him down into the viscous green and red.

  “In San Bernarnegro, man, come on. San Bernardino. That’s what they call it now ’cause all the blacks took over the whole city.” He shoved my foot away. “Now let me up.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  “YOU BETTER BE tellin’ it straight, ’cause we’re not letting you go until after the meet.”

  “Ah, come on, man, I got shit to do. I got my businesses ta deal with. I’m a businessman.”

  “Tough.”

  Drago, still holding his gut with one hand, reached down and grabbed a handful of Jumbo’s shirt and yanked him to his feet. With the minor movement, Drago grunted a little. He said, “Where’s your office?”

  “Why, fat man? I told you what you wanted ta know, now leave me go.”

  Drago swung the full gallon jug of antifreeze he’d retrieved when I’d asked him to and knocked Jumbo in the air. He landed and slid seven or eight feet in the floor’s hyper-slickness. He slid all the way over to the back door, leaving a snail path of green and red and balled-up cash in his wake.

  Drago pulled back and threw the gallon jug. The yellow container struck Dogman with a thud. He yelped. Drago went over to Jumbo and grabbed him by the foot. “You gonna tell me where your office is or am I gonna have to tear this leg off at the root?”

  “I’ll show ya. Back off your dog, Bruno. I said I’d tell ya, just lemme up.”

  “Point to it.”

  He pointed.

  Drago walked in that direction, pulling Jumbo along like a prone water-skier. “You—” He pointed at Turk, the uninjured biker. “You lead, keep your hands where I can see ’em.”

  Drago came by me and stopped. “What?”

  I held my arms out wide. “Look at this place. What’d I tell ya just before we came in here? No Destructo-Man, remember?”

  He grinned for the first time since we walked in. “Good thing I didn’t listen to you about that and about that bullshit ‘no self-initiated actions,’ huh?”

  “Hey, hey,” Jumbo said, lying on his back with his foot held up by Drago. “You two wanna get a room or something? Jesus H.”

  Drago and I both laughed as we headed to the office, Drago dragging his charge.

  It felt good to laugh.

  In the office, Drago told Turk to sit on his ass in the corner. Then he put Jumbo in a chicken-wing wrestling hold and made him open the digital combination to his safe.

  The tall double doors swung wide and revealed stacks of cash and guns. I looked at Drago. “We robbin’ him, butch?”

  “Nope. He owes you, remember? And I’m gonna tax the shit outta the big-eared runt for shootin’ me, how’s that?”

  “Fine by me.” From a stack next to the wall, I dumped out a box of Valvoline oilcans, the ones on sale out in the window. They clattered to the floor. I filled the box with cash.

  “Hey, hey, I only owe you a hundred and twenty-five thousand. There’s close to three hundert grand there.”

  Drago put his paw on Jumbo’s face and shoved him. He bounced off the wall. Drago shoved him again when he rebounded back.

  “Come on, knock it off,” Jumbo yelled.

  Drago stopped playing handball.

  I stopped loading the box. “I’ll make a deal with you. You tell me about Agent Larry Gerber of the ATF, and I’ll only take what’s owed me.” I looked over at Drago. “You good with that?” I’d give him my whole one twenty-five. He deserved it.

  He shrugged.

  Jumbo looked over at Turk, who sat quietly taking it all in.

  “Can’t do it,” Jumbo said.

  “Drago, take that guy outta here, would ya please?”

  Drago grabbed Turk by the shirt and jerked him to his feet. He escorted the biker out of the room.

  “Don’t hurt him,” I said.

  Outside the room, the wall shook. Drago must’ve knocked the guy out by banging his head against the drywall.

  I looked back at Jumbo. “Now spill it.”

  “I told you all I know, back at the Sears. This Gerber’s got a case on me hangin’ over my head.”

  “No, he doesn’t. You’re lying. I don’t know why I didn’t see it the first time you fed that fat lie to me.”

  “Whatta ya talkin’ about? I didn’t lie, I’m tellin’ ya true.”

  Drago came back into the room and said it for me. “’Cause you never touch any of the contraband or the money during your deals. You keep your hands clean. You have your intermediaries handle the deals.”

  I tossed the box of cash onto the desk and took a step closer to him.

  He held up his hands to fend me off. “Okay, okay, what do you wanna know?”

  “How’d you get that big drone off that lowboy train car without anyone seeing you?”

  “Trade secret. I’ll tell you anything else. You don’t need to know that, anyway. I tell you, then the government will seal up that weak spot, and the way it’s going, I’m not going to get a dime outta this shit caper. Even after all the time and money I put in it.”

  “Who has the drone?”

  “That fatass Bobby Ray. He said we’d be partners, fifty-fifty. He fucked me like an altar boy. His guys did the heavy lifting, but it was my gig all the way. You know how that works. We did it on the computer chips, remember?”

  He mentioned the computer chips deal as a way to remind me, a way to bring us together as compadres, so I couldn’t so easily abuse him or kill him. Wrong on both counts.

  “Where’s the drone right now?” I knew the answer but had to try.

  “Bobby Ray’s got it and won’t let me near it. Got it loaded up in some kinda truck so it’s easy to move. Once he sees the money, he’ll hand over the keys and tell the buyer where to find it.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Who was in that van at Sears watchin’ us?”

  Jumbo squirmed a little. “Ah . . . ah alright. I already told you way too much anyway. I’m in this up to my nose now.”

  Drago said, “More like to those big floppy ears.”

  Jumbo scowled at Drago. He looked back at me and said, “Bobby Ray was in the van watchin’.”

  “Bobby Ray? That doesn’t make any sense. Why was he there?”

  Jumbo shrugged. “Bobby Ray said the fed’s are all over him. He’s gonna do the deal tonight and wanted a test run to see who’d show up. A test to kinda see how much the feds knew exactly. Kinda a smart idea you ask me. Wish I woulda thought of it. You can bet I’ll do something like that in the future.”

  “So the thing with Larry Gerber, the dirty ATF agent, is all a sham? He never arrested you and he doesn’t have a case against you?”

  “Never heard his name until Bobby Ray told it to me and said to feed it to you, but not until you’d put a little pressure on me.”

  I’d been played right from the start and never saw it. And I didn’t like it one bit. I wanted to have a little talk with Bobby Ray, up close and personal, just like the way he’d said about the guy who’d tossed Bosco into the traffic—me.

  Drago sat on the edge of the desk. “It might’ve been a test to see how many agencies were on his tail. Or maybe even to see if the cartel was on him ready to do a rip, get the drone without turning over the money. Smart, real smart. But he also had you handle the deal at the Sears. He wanted to see which way you’d jump. I know I’d smell a rat if you all of a sudden showed up wanting to talk to my wife, which happens to be your ex-girlfriend. Too convenient, you showin’ up right outta the blue when this deal was set to go down.”

  “You really think,” I said, “that Bobby Ray’s that smart?”

  “He’s president of the Goths, ain’t he?” Jumbo said.

  I marveled at the beauty of it. “So he sent that fifty grand out as bait just to see what kind of predator would bite. Fifty
grand he was willing to lose just to mark the players in his game.” Then it hit me. “Oh, man.”

  “What?” Drago asked.

  “If this little weasel’s right, and Bobby Ray was in that van at Sears, then I really did misread him in a big way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because he should’ve been at the hospital with Bosco, not out testing the water for his future deal. Not out doing an integrity check on me. He’s one cold son of a bitch.”

  Drago said, “Ah, shit.”

  “What?”

  “Marie’s all alone with his grandson.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  I WANTED TO get back to Marie in a hurry. I dialed Dan’s FBI phone. Dan picked up on the first ring. “What’s going on in there? Is everything all right?”

  “We’re comin’ out, meet us out front, two vehicles, make one of them your Suburban.”

  “Be there in thirty seconds.”

  I hung up. “Come on, let’s get outta here.” I picked up the Valvoline box of cash. I stuck the .45 Smith and Wesson in my back waistband and pulled my shirt over it.

  Drago didn’t have to, but he grabbed hold of Jumbo by the nape and shook him a little with each step as we walked through the store to the front door.

  “Ouch, come on, man, leave go. I told you everything you wanted to know. And you got my money, for Christ’s sake. Tell ’im, Bruno, tell ’im to leave me go.”

  “Jumbo, you shot him twice. Count yourself lucky you’re still breathin’.”

  We got to the front door.

  Locked.

  A ball of keys hung from the lock. I turned the keys to open the door but not fast enough for Drago. He banged Jumbo off the door like a sock puppet again and again until I got it open. Jumbo went a little limp, his eyes glazed over.

  The sunlight seemed much brighter and the nausea returned.

  From off to the left, the dark-blue Suburban slid up in front of us. The two doors on the passenger side opened. Dan stepped out with another agent, a new guy dressed in a blue suit and a white dress shirt. Drago handed him Jumbo, then took out his sunglasses, put them on, and climbed into the Suburban.