Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Out with Buddy.”

  Loren grunted. He wadded up his shirt and tossed it into the hamper. He changed, buckled on his gun, and kissed Debra. Then he walked into the living room on his way to the phone in the kitchen.

  “Daddy?” Kelly bounced up from the couch and followed Loren into the kitchen. Skywalker reached over to press the Pause control on the remote. “Mrs. Trujillo called and wanted me to baby-sit.”

  “No.” Loren reached for the phone.

  “Why not? She’ll pay five dollars an hour.”

  “No.”

  “I told her I’d have to ask you.”

  Loren looked at her. “Why make me the heavy? Why couldn’t you find some excuse?”

  Kelly looked exasperated. “Daddy. You are the heavy.”

  “Thanks.” Loren looked down at the phone. He figured it said something about the state of his existence that he actually had the emergency room on speed dial. He pressed the button and rapid-fire tones sounded in his ear. He turned to Kelly. “Tell her you’ve got to do something for church.”

  “On a Saturday night?”

  “They’re Episcopalian. They don’t know anything about when we do our church stuff.”

  “God.“ She made it two syllables, Gah-ahd. “Whoever heard of a Trujillo from Taco Town being an Episcopalian?”

  Loren opened his mouth to reprimand Kelly both for taking the Lord’s name in vain and for using offensive phrases like “Taco Town,” but the nurse at the emergency room answered and Loren had to deal with business for a while.

  “Thanks,” he said. He hung up the phone and looked at Debra.

  “Karen’s already there, having a fit probably. Buchinsky’s still in X ray.”

  Some of the tension left Debra’s face. “Glad I don’t have to make any phone calls.”

  “I think you better. To Mrs. Trujillo.”

  Debra looked fierce. “Damn it, Loren!”

  He started heading for the door. He didn’t want to deal with this. “Make up something. I don’t care what.”

  Debra followed him. “I wish you’d tell us what this is all about.”

  “Can’t. Sorry.” He considered kissing her goodbye but concluded she wasn’t in the mood, and furthermore neither was he. He’d just had a fight with the world’s meanest Apache, and even his own family wasn’t going to cut him any slack. “I’ll be back around three,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”

  “Bye, Mr. Hawn,” Skywalker said as he left.

  There was juniper smoke in the air and a background hum of resentment in Loren’s heart. Loren backed the Fury out of the driveway, then listened carefully to the police radio as he drove back to Central. There weren’t any calls. Maybe the night’s violence had peaked. Maybe all the troublemakers would realize they couldn’t top George Gileno if they tried.

  As Loren pulled up to the stop sign on Central, a jacked-up Charger roared by in the westbound lane dragging little animal corpses on a line, and Loren knew his brief fling with optimism was over.

  Loren pulled the Charger over into the high school parking lot, under the HOME OF THE MINERS sign. The rear bumper featured a profusion of weathered bumper stickers, one saying PARTY ANIMAL, another that advertised Coors, and one with the Playboy rabbit symbol.

  Assholes, Loren thought, always advertise.

  Also attached to the rear bumper was a length of barbed wire with eight dead cats strung on it. Some of the cats had collars and tags, and all had been shot. Sickness warred with anger in Loren’s belly as he approached the driver’s door, his flashlight in his hand. He’d been dealing with this kind of small-town crap for far too long.

  Loren was not surprised that the driver was A.J. Dunlop, the seventeen-year-old scion of one of Atocha’s best-known white-trash families. Loren had been arresting various members of the Dunlop clan all his professional career, and before that he’d had frequent occasion to knock A.J.’s dad around the high school yard with his fists.

  A.J.’s passenger was another seventeen-year-old, Len Bonniwell, for whom Loren still had hopes.

  “Hi, A.J.,” Loren said. He shined the flashlight into A.J.’s eyes. “You’re busted, you little piece of shit.”

  A.J. grinned up at him, his eyes narrow in the light of the flash. He wore a dusty green gimme cap with the brim turned back over his neck in the International Sign of the Loser, and a black heavy-metal T-shirt that featured an animated corpse armed with a kitchen knife.

  “Read me my rights, cocksucker,” he said.

  Loren turned the flashlight beam into the car and saw the pair of opened Budweiser talls sitting in Bonniwell’s lap, the half-empty fifth of Early Times lying on the back seat next to the .22 target rifle that had killed the cats. The area in front of the back seat was full of crumpled fast-food cartons, empty bourbon miniatures, and crushed beer cans.

  “Out of the car, both of you,” Loren said. “Let’s see you walk a straight line, A.J.”

  “Fuck this,” A.J. said. He reached for the glove compartment. “I’ve got something here that’ll take care of you.”

  A sudden onslaught of terror ignited a thermite rage in Loren’s chest. He dropped his flashlight, lunged into the car window, dragged A.J. out through the window frame with his big hands, set the terrified boy on his feet, then popped him a left in the nose. The skinny kid went back, cap falling off his head, and then bounced forward off the car. Loren’s right cross caught him on the rebound and put him down; and then Loren was jumping up onto the Charger’s hood, trying to get to Len Bonniwell before Bonniwell got to whatever was in the glove box.

  Bonniwell was half out of the car, eyes wide, as Loren jumped down off the car hood. Loren couldn’t see if he had anything in his hands. He kicked the door with all his strength and the swinging door caught the boy in the crotch. Bonniwell’s breath went out of him. The door rebounded and Loren danced around it. He grabbed Bonniwell’s ears and yanked the kid’s head down as he brought up a knee into the boy’s face.

  Bright halogen light blinded Loren just at the instant he heard the crunch of the boy’s breaking nose. Bonniwell spilled to the surface of the parking lot like the contents of a torn sack. Loren blinked, blinded, breathing hard, his pulse hammering in his ears. Running feet crunched on gravel.

  “Is there a problem, sir?”

  The speaker was a thick-necked man in a jacket, the lights haloing him from behind. Loren dragged cool air into his lungs. ATL goons, he thought, oh, boy.

  “Kids made a move on me,” Loren said. “They had a gun.”

  The man seemed to reserve judgment. “I saw you hit that little skinny one and figured someone for sure needed help.”

  Loren looked down at Bonniwell. The boy didn’t have anything in his hands. He shaded his eyes against the glare and looked into the open door. A can of beer was slowly draining itself on the fake fur cover of the front passenger seat. “Can you turn off your lights?” he asked.

  “Jack.” The man called back over his shoulder. “Cut the lights, will you? Everything’s okay.”

  Bonniwell moaned and tried to sit up. His face was webbed with blood and mucus. The stranger knelt by him, gently touched the boy’s face. “You likely got yourself a broken nose, bud,” he said.

  The halogen lights winked off. Loren blinked to clear his vision. He reached for the glove box and opened it.

  There was only junk inside. That, some loose change, and a couple crumpled twenty-dollar bills.

  A.J. had been reaching for a bribe.

  Bile rose in Loren’s throat as he picked the bills up. “Shit,” he said. He threw the twenties down in the pool of beer on the passenger seat.

  The other ATL man got out of the jeep and moved forward. “Let me look at the other one,” he said.

  “Stupid,” Loren said. Adrenaline-fear whirled through his mind. “Real stupid.”

  He walked around the Charger. Jack, the other ATL man, was kneeling by A.J. Dunlop.

  “Broken jaw here, Elton,” he said.


  Loren stood above the sprawled boy. A stiletto of guilt stabbed him to the heart. “Stupid,” he said.

  Jack stood up. “You want us to call an ambulance?”

  “Didn’t think I’d hit him that hard.”

  “You outweigh him by how much? Eighty pounds?”

  Guilt did a dance through Loren’s blood. He looked down at his hands. His knuckles were scraped and bleeding. “I thought he was going for a gun.”

  Jack’s face was without expression. “Better call that ambulance, Elton,” he said.

  Elton started walking back to his Blazer. Loren wondered what stories they were going to tell when they went back to their little suburb, how they’d tell their boss, William Patience, that they’d seen the police chief, the big ex-boxer, beating up a couple of kids in the high school parking lot. Said they’d tried to pull a gun.

  A residue of anger crackled through him. What the hell was he feeling bad about? He was just doing his job.

  “Put them in the back of my car,” he said. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt and cuffed A.J.’s hands behind him.

  “Are you sure about this?” Jack said. “This kid’s out like a light.”

  “He’ll wake up. And when he wakes up, I want him in restraints.” He looked in the direction of Len Bonniwell, who had risen groggily to his feet, hands over his bloody face. “The other one won’t be any trouble. You got any wire cutters?”

  It turned out they had. The ATL men watched in silence as Loren cut the barbed wire off the Charger’s bumper, then put the dead cats in the back seat of his car next to Len Bonniwell. He put the .22 in the front seat, along with the beer cans, the bottle of Early Times, and the two soaked twenties. By that time A.J. was awake, and Loren, with Elton helping, hoisted him into the Fury’s back seat next to the dead cats.

  “This is weird stuff, man,” Jack said under his breath. He was talking to Elton.

  “Small-town Saturday night,” Loren said, and wondered why he felt compelled to explain any of this. “Bored white trash looking for something to do. You shoot a cat with a .22, he jumps about eight feet in the air and then runs half a block before he knows he’s dead. Some people think it’s entertaining.”

  Elton and Jack looked at him, then at each other.

  “Beats what kids get up to in big cities these days,” Loren said.

  “We’ll follow you to the hospital,” said Elton.

  “You don’t have to. And thanks for helping.”

  A studied shrug. “We might as well.”

  Loren knew why they were following him— they were afraid Loren would inflict further damage on his prisoners if he wasn’t supervised. Resentment hummed through him at the thought.

  Still. If he’d seen what they had, maybe he wouldn’t have acted any different.

  And maybe they were right, anyway.

  *

  “Mack. I get you up?”

  “Yeah, you did. Who is this?” Len Bonniwell’s father sounded as if he were getting an early start on Saturday morning’s hangover. Loren knew he’d been laid off just that afternoon.

  Loren identified himself. “I thought I’d better let you know that I just arrested your kid.”

  “Aw, shit.”

  “He was shooting cats with A.J. Dunlop. Then they resisted when I tried to arrest them.”

  “Jesus, Loren.”

  “You’re going to have to come in tomorrow and bail him out.”

  Mack Bonniwell gave a heavy sigh. Loren gazed at his desk calendar, at the little red tick marks that represented the Days of Atonement.

  “Can you go bail, Mack? I know you got laid off.’’

  “Guess I’ll have to.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll send a note to Judge Denver to go easy.”

  Another sigh. “Thanks, Loren. I know the kid doesn’t deserve it, but-”

  “Just don’t let him keep running around with the Dunlop boy, okay? That whole family’s bad news, lived in Picketwire forever. A.J.’ll get Len in trouble surer than anything.”

  “I’ll try, Loren.” Doubtfully. “But I don’t know how I can—”

  “And ground his ass till he pays off the fine.”

  “Yeah. I’ll do that. Thanks again.”

  “See you in church.”

  “Yeah. See you then.”

  Loren hung up and looked at the red tick marks on his calendar again and tried to fight off the restless tension he felt gnawing at him. The Lord was testing his servants.

  He’d booked the boys for resisting rather than attempted bribery. You didn’t break jaws and noses for bribery. Resistance, particularly if the resistance was complicated by the presence of a firearm, would make the visits to the E-room look a lot more understandable.

  He looked down at his desk. On top was a form he hadn’t noticed before, the printout of a LAWSAT report. The alert for the white Chevy van and its cargo of drugs had been called off.

  Well. At least there was one little something he didn’t have to worry about anymore.

  There was a hasty knock on his door, then Sanchez bustled in before Loren could answer.

  “Call just came, Chief. Two guys with shotguns just held up the Copper Country.”

  Loren rose from his seat and ran out to the Fury.

  The Lord was testing his servants pretty damn good tonight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “They even robbed the table,” Cipriano said. “I can’t fucking believe it.”

  Police and a couple of the sheriff’s posse, wearing flak vests, were cluttering the Copper Country’s back hall with Remington 870 shotguns propped on their hips. If the two robbers were stupid enough to return to the scene of the crime, they’d be dead meat.

  “Hey!” Loren yelled. “Everybody but the witnesses get out of here!”

  Cipriano Dominguez rightly concluded that this command did not include him. He let the officers and bystanders file out, then led Loren down the back hall with its cheap paneling, then through a door marked with a cardboard sign that said EMPLOYEES ONLY in fading red letters.

  A wide poker table sat like a bright green mesa beneath a circular imitation-Tiffany hanging lamp. The last hand still lay where the players— mostly graying cowboys, along with a few miners tossing away their last paychecks— had thrown down their cards. The place smelled like a century’s consumption of cigarette smoke, and there were honest-to-God brass spittoons on the floor for those who dipped snuff.

  Loren saw a possible diamond flush and turned over the hole card. Two of clubs, no help.

  “Okay,” he said. “How much was on the table?”

  “A few hundred.”

  “More’n that.”

  “Five, six hundred, anyway.”

  Loren watched while the cowboys argued about that for a while. Taken all together they were the laziest men Loren knew, boozy, shiftless, and rarely employed. The ranches in the neighborhood knew them all too well and had started to supply themselves with wetback Mexican vaqueros who worked a lot harder and spent a lot less time romancing waitresses in places like the Copper Country. The local cowboys lived chiefly off women–– the women, most of them waitresses here at the Copper Country, provided them with the principal part of their gambling money in the form of tips. There should be a bumper sticker, Loren thought: REAL COWBOYS DON’T WORK, THEY LIVE OFF WAITRESSES.

  Still, there seemed no lack of waitresses to support these cowboys, real or not. And Loren could never figure out how men who worked so little and drank so much still had those slim hips that looked so good on a dance floor. Loren considered it unjust that he probably got a lot more regular physical activity than these guys and still carried twenty too many pounds.

  “Okay,” he said, after the argument rattled around for a while. “I guess it doesn’t much matter. Who saw the perpetrators first?”

  “Bill Forsythe,” Cipriano said, before the cowboys could start arguing about it again.

  Forsythe was the man who had owned the Copper Country and
its illegal, perpetual poker game for the last twelve years, having taken over both from the previous owner.

  “Where’s he?” Loren asked.

  “In his office.”

  Forsythe’s office was a small room walled in the same cheap paneling he’d used on his back hall. The empty safe stood open behind his desk. He was a gangly man, with wavy iron-colored hair. He wore a western shirt with pearl buttons. He normally augmented this with a silver and turquoise squash-blossom necklace and a big matching bracelet on his left wrist, but the stickup men had taken them. He kept rubbing his wrist as if he missed the bracelet.

  He’d spent most of the evening playing poker, occasionally leaving the table to check on the bar, make a phone call, or transfer money from the cash registers to the safe. After last call at one-thirty he’d left the game to go to the bar and collect the excess cash receipts. He’d gone down the back hall to his office to put the receipts in the safe till Monday morning. Two men in ski masks were waiting for him. One of them had a sawed-off shotgun.

  “Was the other armed?” Loren asked.

  “I only had eyes for that sawed-off,” Forsythe said. “I didn’t notice if the other guy was packing when he came in, but he is now.” He cleared his throat. “I had a .38 Chief’s Special in the safe, just in case this kind of thing happened, but when I saw that shotgun I knew I didn’t want to use it.” He seemed mildly embarrassed by the fact he hadn’t turned Clint Eastwood in the clutch.

  “Very smart,” Cipriano said.

  “Yeah,” Loren said. “If you’d resisted, we would’ve had to scrape you up with a shovel.”

  Forsythe’s eyes got bigger. Any trace of embarrassment vanished.

  After taking the night’s receipts and the other contents of the safe, the robbers had marched Forsythe to the back room and stolen the poker bank. “Even took the dimes and quarters,” he said.

  “Description? Start with the guy with the weapon.”

  “He looked like King Kong with that goddamn gun.”

  “Sure it wasn’t Mighty Joe Young?”

  Forsythe looked blank. People in shock, Loren thought, never understand when you tried to make a joke.

  “Forget it,” he said. “Let’s start with his shirt. Just close your eyes and think for a minute. What kind of shirt did he have on?”