***
CJ had to admit that ol' Hard Boiled was crafty. The boss man had sent him to Portland, with the Ghost's "sample batch" because he knew exactly where Sheriff Barclay and the others would be. CJ wished he could see the looks on their faces, but it was for the best that he wouldn't be there. Barclay was gonna be pissed… but what more could the sheriff really do? He could make life difficult but now that the real bitch beater was caught, there was one less thing hanging over CJ's head.
Yeah but you still killed your best friend.
Something else; think about something else… think about what you're here to do. Keep your head on straight and maybe you won't get killed.
He was in the City of Roses, though it sure as hell didn't look like it. Not this part of town, anyway— he had heard something about the north and northeast sections of Portland, where low mortgages or no lending had fucked property values and boosted crime.
The housing project had been scary enough when he pulled up outside. Half of the windows on the five-story ruin were boarded up. The other half were missing. Five black guys, just a bit younger than him, had been waiting at the curb under a broken streetlight. After he had removed a backpack from the hidden panel in the back of the truck, the sketchy characters had taken him through a door and up a staircase that smelled like a mixture of piss, shit, and vomit. Fucking trifecta.
From somewhere a loud—and what sounded like a very big dog—barked non-stop. The heavy bass of a muffled rap song shook the walls and floors. CJ was very much aware of the fact that aside from the two homeboys walking in front of him, two more followed close behind. Once on the fifth floor he was led past a small room where well-dressed white women snorted coke alongside grungy blacks. Further down the hall, sounds of hard-core fucking assailed him from behind a closed door. In another room, a fat white man in boxers and a tank top lay with his head hanging off the foot of the bed, puke splattered down the mattress and sprayed out across the floor.
At the end of the hall was a larger space, the entryway clouded in smoke. As he entered, CJ nearly tripped over someone passed out or dead on the floor. Further into the gloom, he could make out shadowy figures seated at a lopsided table snorting coke off a large pane of glass. Several more men and women were smoking weed out of pipes and bongs, seated on the floor or huddled in corners.
CJ stopped. A firm hand shoved him forward, toward a chair pointed at a miraculously intact window. In the chair sat a tall homie, knotted head of dreads tilted back. His legs were open wide. A skinny white girl in a dirty bra and panties kneeled in between, sucking his dick for all she was worth.
A husky voice behind CJ said "Mamba."
The head rotated slightly. "Boil's dude's here," the voice finished.
Mamba poked the girl on top of her head. She took the hint, removed her mouth from his dick, then stood and hurried off, vanishing into the smoke. Without bothering to tuck his junk back in his jeans—just buttoning the top button—Mamba stood and turned. He was damn near seven feet tall.
Don't look at his dick, don't look at his dick, don't—
The more CJ told himself not to do something, the more his body betrayed him. It had always been that way and right now wasn't any different. His eyes flicked down and yeah, this guy was named Mamba for a reason. His half-hard dick hovered, pointing at CJ as if ready to strike.
"You lookin at my dick, white boy?"
CJ raised his eyebrows and shook his head in what he hoped was a confident, relaxed manner.
"Go on and look, I don't give a fuck." Mamba took a step forward, and to CJ it seemed like he could cover half the room in one stride. Suddenly Mamba's dread-topped head was looking down at him. "Maybe you wanna suck on it too."
The two men behind CJ were breathing down his neck. The two men on either side of him were less than an inch away. He was boxed in, and he really didn't like the crazy look in Mamba's bloodshot eyes.
Get your business done and get the fuck outta here.
CJ had to scrunch up to give himself enough space to remove his backpack. "I brought some shit from Boil."
"I know you did," Mamba answered. "Why Boil think I need his shit?"
CJ tried to remember what the boss told him to say as he held the pack out to Mamba. "This is just a sample batch, for you to use and sell. Ten times better than what you get from the Dominguez Cartel." That's what Boil had said—CJ hadn't sampled it himself, not yet.
"That right?" Mamba yanked the pack from CJ's hand, unzipped it, and looked in. Then he leaned further down and CJ could smell fish on his breath. "What to say this shit ever made it here? What to say you made it here? Maybe your Casper ass had a accident on the way."
Someone next to him chuckled. CJ tried to find his voice. "Then you wouldn't get more," he said finally.
Mamba reached behind his back and removed a big ass Rambo knife. He held the tip just under CJ's left eye, tapping it against the skin above his cheek. "Who say I want a constant fucking supply? Maybe I let my boys go to work on you, huh? Maybe I take my big ol dick and fuck you with it. Whatchu think?"
CJ had run out of things to say. It seemed like whatever he said at this point wouldn't make a difference. He was going to die here, sliced up by a seven-foot gang leader with a giant snake dick.
Just then there was a sound of something hard hitting glass. Something had struck the window. Mamba turned and said "Will you look at that shit?"
The big man angled enough so CJ could see. There was a—what, raven? Crow? He could never tell the difference. Whatever it was it was sitting on the windowsill. It rapped its beak against the window again.
Mamba chuckled, a low rumble from his gut. He turned back to CJ and his face split into a wide grin revealing four gold teeth. "White boy got a black bird watchin' over his ass. Look like tonight your lucky night."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Bolt Cutter Inn was a two-story, oblong building on the Eastern edge of town. It had nearly collapsed a year ago, then Boil came and made the dilapidated structure his pet project. Just another way to win over the good people of Whisper Lake. Now those renovations were nearly complete.
The north face of the inn fronted Cedar Road. To the east was Depot Road, and across the street was a drive-up coffee stand. On that same side, further to the west, was a real estate office.
Sheriff Barclay waited in the coffee stand, where he had powered on the coffee maker and fixed himself a cup. He stood at the window, looking out, his two-way radio on the counter a few feet away.
Nothing. He glanced at his watch: eight minutes past midnight, and still nothing. They had been here since eleven o'clock. Lieutenant Embury was waiting in the real estate office. Deputy Sheriff Trumbull was parked a block and a half away, out of sight, probably dozing off in the driver's seat. Both officers had been skeptical when Ty had told them of the "intelligence" from CJ (as if CJ was capable of such a thing) but they humored him nonetheless and arranged with the real estate and coffee shop business owners to use their properties. The sheriff had wanted to tell Celine about the operation, but the less people who knew about it, the less chance of things going sideways.
Of course, there was no chance of the operation going sideways if Boil's shipment never arrived. Would CJ have lied, just to buy himself some time? Maybe Ty could no longer scare the kid by tying him to the beatings but there were still plenty of ways he could make CJ's life a living hell.
Just as Ty was musing the many ways to do exactly that, a set of headlights swept around the turn from Depot Road onto Cedar. An eighteen-wheeler came to a stop just outside the inn with a hiss of compressed air. BOIL TRUCKING was painted in black letters on the passenger door.
Trumbull's voice broke over the radio: "Should we move?"
Ty picked up the two-way and answered. "Not yet."
With the truck still running, the driver exited the vehicle, walked around to the back and swung open the rear doors. Just then, another vehicle turned in off Depot: this time it was Boil's BMW
. The Beamer pulled up to a spot just behind the trailer. Boil and another man exited the vehicle and walked in front, the BMW's headlights splashing the driver's shadows onto the open trailer. The men conversed, and Boil watched as the driver and the other man began removing large boxes from the back of the truck.
The sheriff keyed his radio: "Now! Now! Now!"
Trumbull's squad car raced onto Cedar Road. Halfway to the semi he fired up the siren and the light bar, before screeching to a halt beside the rear of the trailer and the nose of Boil's Beamer. Lieutenant Embury was already on the run and closing the distance from the real estate office. Ty was a bit slower, but he still managed to reach the suspects at roughly the same time as Trumbull, who had exited the vehicle and was yelling "Hands! Let me see those hands!"
What bothered the sheriff first was that Boil didn't look particularly surprised. All three suspects stood with their hands interlaced behind their heads while Trumbull and Embury searched them for weapons. Ty went to stand in front of Boil. At least the old crook wasn't wearing his stupid-ass glasses. The sheriff took a good look at his eyes; gray, but only a small ring of gray, because those pupils were huge. Ordinarily that might indicate drug use but Ty knew better, Hard Boiled never got high on his own supply. No, the dilation was a symptom of whatever eye problem the codger had. Still, looking into those peepers was like staring at the business end of a double-barrel shotgun.
Trumbull and Embury announced that they were all clean. "What's all this about?" the old turd asked, his voice as slick as grease.
Ty took hold and marched him to a spot outside the inn's front doors. "You just have a seat on the ground right here." Trumbull and Embury brought the other two. Embury stayed with the men while Trumbull and Ty went back to the open truck. The driver and Boil's lapdog had already pulled out a box. It was labeled "infusion pump." Trumbull ripped the box open, and as far as Ty could tell, the item inside was what the box label said it was. Drug paraphernalia? Maybe…
Inside the trailer were more boxes. Ty pulled out the next one, labeled with a brand name and "EKG." Upon opening the box the sheriff found what looked like an actual EKG machine. "What is this shit?" Trumbull barked, pulling IV bags from a third box.
"Hospital supplies," Boil called out. "Seein' as how I'm remodeling the medical clinic, thought it might be nice to stock it with the latest hardware. Planned on storing it here and surprising Doc Keen at the unveiling in a few days. City Council's well aware."
"That right?" Ty walked in front of the seated men, looking at Embury and jerking his head toward the truck. "Search it. Every inch. Look for stash spots."
Embury nodded and ran off.
"Stash spots?" Boil croaked a laugh. "I got nothin' to hide. You and your stormtroopers keep harassing me, I'll be forced to pursue some kinda' legal recourse."
Sheriff Barclay glared down at the old man. "You do that." He swept his gaze to the man in the middle, Boil's "right hand." Some people, you could tell just by looking at them, they had barbed wire for guts. There was murder in this guy's eyes as he glowered up at Ty. The sheriff angled the boy's driver's license to the light.
"Somethin' you want to say… Carter Roth?" The sheriff asked as he read the card and turned his eyes back to the punk.
"No sir," the guy answered. But the eyes said different. They said "I want to cut you up, old man, and piss on what's left."
A few minutes later, Lieutenant Embury walked up, slightly out of breath. "We've looked everywhere. No hidey holes; the boxes are just hospital supplies."
Boil was smiling. "Like I said, sheriff," he held up his hands like a magician who just made a coin disappear. "Nothing to hide."
Ty stared down at Boil. His voice was loose gravel as he said to Embury "Search it again."
***
CJ had driven from the housing project, heart still racing, to the nearest truck stop. There he had shot up with the last of his old supply, back to using his left thigh now that his right had developed two golf-ball size abscesses. After the sun woke him up, he drove back to Whisper Lake, circling the block twice to make sure Sheriff Barclay wasn't waiting to haul him in. The law dog was nowhere in sight, but CJ had no doubt he would see him soon.
His hands were shaking as he put the key in the lock. He would finish the last of his dope, he thought as he stepped through the front door, and then maybe he would try some of Ghost's new shit.
CJ wasn't looking as he tossed the keys onto the kitchen counter to his left, but something moved in his peripheral vision. He turned to the kitchen and froze. An old man was standing next to the sink. It was his same "hallucination" from outside the Slow N Go Truck Stop. He wore a black cowboy hat with a Native American band. The rust-colored skin of his face was deeply lined. He had on a funny shirt—denim, with red checkered shoulders and pocket flaps. His jeans were narrow around his bird-like legs, which ended in what looked to CJ like snakeskin boots.
CJ stepped closer and opened his mouth; as he spoke, the Native lifted his palm and blew. CJ managed to get out "Are you a hallucin—" before a cloud of white powder surrounded his head. His vision blurred, and then dimmed to black.
He barely felt the impact as he hit the floor, and then he felt nothing at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
To defeat an enemy, you had to understand your enemy; know your enemy. For Jason lycanthropy was the enemy, for Celine too, whether she chose to see it that way or not.
The past few days had been uneventful: frustrating. Jason couldn't continue sitting around doing nothing. Coming to town, going where he was going, it was a risk… but since Jason had been lying low just like Agent Clay had warned him to, there shouldn't be any shadowy government goons hunting him. The risk was there but it was small.
Out here in the clean air the constant Speakers' Mill headache had subsided. But his long walk to town had reinforced that time was of the essence. On his way out he had been reminded of that day in the cemetery, just before he had been shot, because the further away from Speakers' Mill he traveled the more individual scents he had been able to distinguish. It was as if there were separate compartments in his nose for each and every smell: nettle, clover, blackberry, salmonberry, sugar pine, spruce, fir, tomcats, muskrats, otters, foxes, cougars, elk… The smell of fresh and salt water also came to him, and closer to town the people smells: oil, smoke, grease, alcohol, cleaning supplies, rotting trash, sewage and a million other odors he couldn't even put a name to.
Jason finally arrived, standing on the stoop of the small white building. He stared up at the peaked roof and white cross, he thought briefly about how out of place he felt here, and then he pulled up his hood and stepped through the doors of the Blessed Heart Catholic Church.
He hadn't been inside anything resembling a church since the funeral service for Serrano, Szymczyk and Fitz. For that reason, among many others, including the tattoo on his stomach, he felt like an impostor here. He thought back to the conversation in which PFC Styles had told him he needed to get right with God. How could he get right with a God he didn't truly believe in?
You won't find any answers here.
Maybe, maybe not. But what real harm was there in trying?
Several rows of pews led to a raised area, with an altar in the center and a pulpit to the left. It was behind this that Father Dreiling stood, head bent as he read scripture, his lips moving silently. High on the wall behind him, beneath the vaulted ceiling hung a massive cross, and upon it the tortured form of Jesus. Statues of various saints filled nooks and corners throughout the space.
To Jason's immediate right was a font of holy water. To his left, tucked against the wall next to the front doors, was a confessional booth. It was a large wooden cabinet split in half, with two tight spaces to either side; one accessible by a door, the other by through a short curtain. Jason pulled the curtain aside, entered, drew the curtain, and sat on the small wooden bench and waited.
Father Dreiling entered on the other side of the partition a moment lat
er. He slid aside the small inner door, his profile faintly visible through the wooden screen. "Greetings, my son," Dreiling said.
"I know I'm supposed to say something about forgiveness," Jason began. "But that's not why I'm here."
"How may I help?" Father Dreiling answered.
"This'll sound strange, but I wanted to ask about gods. Not the God, but gods. From a long time ago… Greek gods, Babylonian gods—"
"Pagan deities," the priest offered.
"Yeah," Jason answered. "What does the church have to say about pagan gods?"
"Well, one of the Lord's commandments is that we shall have no false gods before him, for the Lord our God is a jealous God."
"So does the bible say that pagan deities were real?"
"The worship of them was very real," Dreiling said.
Jason chose his next words carefully, aware that he was about to sound insane. "If a pagan deity was… actually real, and it was trying to hurt someone. How could that someone fight it?"
"Fight it?" Father Dreiling sounded confused.
"What… weapon or strategy could someone use to stand up against a pagan god?" Jason asked.
There was a long moment of silence. Finally, Father Dreiling answered: "Well there's prayer, and then of course there's the most powerful weapon available to any and all of God's children… faith."
Faith.
Not exactly the answer he was looking for. What were you expecting? Not that, but maybe… maybe there was something to it.
"Thank you," Jason said finally and stood. "My son," Father Dreiling said before Jason could pull the curtain.
"Your Mother misses you."
***
She and her pack mates had been chasing the primitive humans again. Last night, in her dream, they had set off after a group of four or five. When she had caught up to the slowest one, a female, she had leapt onto the woman's back. She then arced her head around to gain a better angle on the neck, and had bitten deep. What had poured from the wound was sweeter, more fulfilling than anything she had ever known.
The Turning (Book 2): Whisper Lake Page 16
