by Amy Lane
It gave its last gasp as I pulled up to the bay, and I coasted it in next to the truck and waited for Sonny and Jai to poke themselves back from under the truck. Smart boys.
“He’s got a gun,” Sonny muttered. “In there with Alba!”
“Jai, go fetch Sonny’s car, okay?”
“What?”
“What in the—”
I held up my hand. “He’s hurt and he’s desperate,” I said levelly. “We’re going to give him transportation and let him get the fuck out of here. Odds are good he’s going to pass out in twenty minutes anyway, and if he’s not here, he can’t hurt us.”
“But someone on the road—” Sonny said, and my heart warmed. These last two years, he’d grown a little. Part of that growing meant he didn’t just look at me, or even just Alba and Jai. He looked a little bigger now.
But we couldn’t.
“Look—just get him the car. Maybe I can get rid of the gun and we can get him to the hospital or something, but first, let’s get him out of there with Alba!”
Bam!
If I hadn’t just taken my morning constitutional, I swear it would have been in my shorts. But I saw the sun shining through the hole in the auto bay and realized he’d fired over our heads.
“What’re you doing?” he screamed, and I glared at Jai to go do what I said, then turned and approached the cashier’s cubicle, palms out.
“Your car’s done for,” I told him. “We’re getting you one that runs.”
“What?”
I took a few more steps so I could see them. He had his arm around Alba’s shoulders, and she was holding on to his wrist and glaring at him. I suspected that if he pointed the gun anywhere but her one more time, he was going to be bleeding a damned sight more than he already was.
“Your car—last time I saw something like that, it took us a month and special parts flown in. It’s fuckin’ toast. We’re getting you my boyfriend’s car so you can get the fuck out of our lives.”
His face crumpled. “But that would be stealing,” he said nakedly. “I’m no thief.”
“What in the fuck did he just say?”
Oh God—Sonny was behind me, and I stepped to the right in an attempt to block him.
“Who’s that?” the kid asked in tears. “What does he want?”
“You’re not a thief? You come in here and hold a gun on a sixteen-year-old kid, and you think you’re some kind of a hero?”
Oh God.
“That,” I said distinctly, “is my boyfriend, who’s about to give up his car so you can get your gun away from our friend.”
“I just need a fuckin’ car!” the kid cried. “Man, they got my sister, and I had to run the drugs to Vegas and then get back with the money, but the guys in Vegas had guns, and they started shooting before I could even hand off the drugs, and the guys in Chula Vista got my sister and—” He let out a little whimper then, and the arm with the gun fell.
Alba put one fist in the other and elbowed him right in the chest, and that was when the gun went off. I felt a ripping pain through my leg, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing Sonny as he went hauling into the tiny cubicle with nothing but a tire iron in his hand. He caught me in the head with his upward swing, and that did it. I went down and didn’t wake up for twenty minutes.
“ACE?”
I was lying on my back in our little house, with a familiar weight on my chest and a small tongue licking my cheek. “Duke?” I said, confused. The Chihuahua didn’t usually talk.
“No, dammit, it’s me.”
I looked up at Sonny, who was sitting, red-eyed and repentant, on the floor next to the couch.
“Where’s Alba?”
“She’s fine. We closed up shop, and her mom came and got her. She’ll be back in tomorrow.”
My head ached fiercely, and I stared at him. “She’ll be what?”
“Was really sweet. Kept thanking us for trying to save her. Said it was real nice how we gave up my car to make sure she was okay.”
I was not tracking. “The kid…?” God. Poor kid. Desperation did not make people do nice things—but he’d been appalled by the realization that he was holding a gun on a young girl. Probably hadn’t thought of her as a person before that. Of course, if he’d hurt Alba or Sonny, I would have beaten his brains to powder and not given a shit.
“Jai wrapped his side—through and through, so he should be fine if he gets antibiotics. Then he put the kid and the drugs into my car and took off.”
I tried to process this. “Took… off? In your car?”
Sonny nodded soberly. “I think…. Ace, I think as long as the kid and his sister are okay, we’d better not ask too much about what happens after that, okay?”
Oh Lord. This wrong side of the law thing got murky. “The kid’s going to be okay?”
“Yeah. You went down, and he thought he’d shot you, and he just fell apart. Dropped the gun, cried. I got you into the house and checked your leg—it was a graze, by the way.” As he said it, I could feel the stinging pain of it. Hurt like a sumbitch too—but not as much as my head.
“Jesus, you really clocked me,” I mumbled.
Sonny nodded. “I did.” He put a bag of ice on my temple where the tire iron had caught me hardest, and the cold woke me up. “You need to stay awake, now that you’re up. I looked shit up on the computer—we’ve got some Tylenol with codeine, and you can have that as soon as you sit up.”
I struggled up, holding the ice compress to my head with one hand and moving Duke to my lap with the other. “Oh dear God,” I muttered. “This hurts. I remember this—this is no good.”
“Yeah.” Sonny let out a breath and thrust two tablets into my hand and followed it up with water. I felt better after I drank the water, even, and figured once the painkillers kicked in, I might be okay. For a moment I was quiet, and the only sounds in our little house were my breathing and Duke’s little dog whimpers as he relocated.
“I’m sorry,” Sonny said quietly. He’d climbed up on the couch when I hadn’t been paying attention, and I lifted my arm so he could put his head on my shoulder. His blond hair had grown shaggy in recent months, and I liked it that way. He didn’t look vulnerable or naked like he had when it had been shaved down to his scalp.
“Was an accident,” I said.
“Yeah, but the coming unglued part wasn’t. That was me just being me,” he said bitterly. “You had that kid calming down, and I just… you and Alba and the fucking gun and I lost it.”
I laughed a little. “Yeah, but you’ve lost it worse.” He had. He wasn’t great with people—never would be. “And you were afraid for Alba, and you didn’t used to give a shit.”
“But not for a long time,” he reminded me soberly.
“Yeah. I know. But makes me proud still. You were doing what I was doing, Sonny. Your best for your people.”
He sighed again. “I… I just gotta think better, you know?”
“Well, I put myself in the damned booth. I just thought… you know….”
“If we gave him the car he’d go the fuck away?”
“Well, yeah.” Because cause and effect, right?
“Well, it worked. He went the fuck away.” And right before I was going to ask about Jai, his phone buzzed. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out and grunted. “Jai’s fine,” he said. “Took the kid to the hospital.” The phone pinged. “And I need to call the police and report my car stolen.”
My eyes widened, sore head or not. “Here,” I said, flailing for my coveralls on the floor next to the couch. “Let me use my phone.”
I spun a story, oh yes I did. How the thief shot at me and missed, then whacked me on the head, and how we’d had the keys in Sonny’s little beater Corolla so we could move it around easy, and Sonny found me after he got back from the ampm across the street with sodas and took me inside to treat me.
The cops took it down, every word, the wound on my head and my leg to verify, and the car was registered all legal-like. The loc
al cops took down the info and grunted and asked me if I wanted to go to the doctor’s, but I wasn’t excited about that, so they left me alone.
As soon as they were gone, I collapsed on the couch and called Alba.
“Alba?”
“Mr. Ace?”
“You didn’t work today.”
“I’ll tell Mommy. Do I work tomorrow?”
“Do you still want to?” Because Jesus.
“You gave up your car for me. I think Jai’s killing people. I’m safe there. It’s good.”
She hung up, and I had to give the girl credit for practicality. I was a two-term veteran, and I didn’t think I could have been so casual.
Sonny had kicked up the air-conditioning in the house, and the sun was starting to go down by the time it was all done, and I was fine with sitting around in my boxers and letting television wash over me like the sea. Sonny was fine with feeding me and making sure I didn’t puke and petting me every now and then too.
Into that quiet, Sonny said, “So, where do you think Jai’s gonna hide the bodies?”
I grunted. “Sonny, that has got to be a question we never, ever ask him, okay?”
Sonny nodded soberly, but his lips were twisted up. “He said he got the girl away from the bad guys. Think he’s like a superhero?”
“Deadpool or the Punisher?” Because hadn’t those guys been sort of dark and below the law?
“Yeah!” Sonny said, eyes big. “We know Deadpool!”
I didn’t remind him that I’d been the Punisher a year and a half ago and that it wasn’t that glamorous. Then he said, “But I don’t care how many bodies he’s buried, he’s still not half the hero you are, for trying not to let things go south.” He kissed my cheek then, and I closed my eyes tiredly. So, okay. There was still blood and still crime and still shit we did not plan on, but at least Sonny appreciated trying not to kill people. And hey—I’d been out for twenty minutes, and he’d apparently kept his cool.
I was calling it a win.
But I was going to have to be really careful about not dying until I was sure he’d take that as well as he’d take knocking me on my ass for twenty minutes. You just never knew.
Fish in the Desert
ELLERY’S BLUE-BLOODED roots were never so apparent.
He stood in the auto bay of the tiny garage in the middle of Victoriana, California, and looked like a sweaty guy in a pricey suit. His normally slicked-back mahogany-brown hair hung straight and lank in his eyes, and his once-white shirt showed dust creases where he’d pushed it up around his elbows in the ungodly September heat. His suit—which would have been perfectly fine in Sacramento, where things were, thank God, in the eighties at the moment—was a prison down here in San Diego, and he kept doing a little shimmy like it was sticking to his creases.
Well, it was tight enough.
But still, he was trying to maintain professionalism, and Jackson tried to keep his eyes from rolling out of his head.
This interview was not going well.
Ace Atchison seemed like a decent enough guy. Although he sported a healing wound on his forehead that looked like it could have used stitches, and walked with a limp, that didn’t detract from a handsome young serviceman with dark brown hair, gold-brown eyes, square jaw, and a way of gritting his teeth, lowering his head, and glaring at the world straight. Between that and biceps the size of softballs—and as soft as hardballs—the guy was damned easy on the eyes. And amiable too, in a good old boy sort of way.
He’d been helpful in the extreme—lots of “Yes, sir,” and “I’m sorry sir,” and “Well, sir, Sonny and me, we woulda seen that, sir,” and not a drop of goddamned truth.
“Look, Mr. Atchison,” Ellery said for maybe the fourteenth time.
“Ace is fine,” he said, nodding and winking. “Now, I can see you’re getting upset, but I’m not sure what I can help you with here. Your guy, the one you’re trying to defend, says that he could not possibly have killed anybody in Sacramento because he was down here shooting a kid in Las Vegas. And that we would know that, because he heard the kid came by our little flea-shit shop to fix his broke car.”
Ellery nodded definitely. “That would be correct,” he rasped, wiping sweat from his eyes with a handkerchief that used to match his shirt.
Jackson had two bottles of water in the pocket of his cargo shorts, and he pulled one out, cracked it, and handed it over. Ellery took it without looking at him or even nodding thanks. Jackson rolled his eyes—and kicked Ellery in the ankle.
Ellery glared at him, but Ace kept talking. “Now, see, I don’t remember that. And I’da remembered that, ’cause you say the car was shot, and it’s hard to fix a shot-up car, sir, so I think maybe this kid stopped by another gas station.” He paused and raised his voice so it could carry over the knocking of wrenches coming from under a Dodge Caravan on the rails in the bay proper. “Sonny, do you remember a kid coming by here with a shot-up car?”
“No, Ace, I do not.” The words were staccato and wooden—and rehearsed.
“Jai, do you remember anything like that?”
“Nyet.” The Russian accent sounded wholly authentic. And deep and resonant enough for a big, big man.
Ace looked up at both of them and smiled a knee-melter of a lie. “Well, sir, you heard ’em. Sonny and Jai don’t remember, so it must not have happened.”
“But the police said you got shot and coldcocked by a thief—we have that on record!” Ellery’s voice cracked, and Jackson wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the man so discombobulated by a lie.
“Well, yeah. But, you know, I was coldcocked. I can’t remember much more than waking up. Alba wasn’t here. Jai and Sonny were out. The guy stole our money and Sonny’s car. Isn’t that right, guys?”
The two men in the auto bay both said “Yup!” and “Da!” at the same time.
Ace turned and smiled gamely. “And that’s what we told the police, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
The sound Jackson made was a cross between a snort and a “bullshit” and a cough, and Ellery glared at him again—but this time with his mouth open, and Jackson thought it was time to change tactics.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a smile. “My friend here has some other questions to ask you about that day, but I’m telling you, I gotta piss like a racehorse. Do you folks have a restroom here?”
ACE’S LOOK in Jackson’s direction had a smirk in it. Ace knew what Jackson was doing, Jackson knew that Ace knew, but Ace was pretty damned sure there was nothing to find. “That’s fine. Alba over there has the key to the john around the corner. Let us know if it’s not stocked or gross or anything. She prides herself in keeping that thing clean.”
“Thank you, sir. Ellery, be nice to Mr. Atchison. I have the feeling that’s about all he knows.” But he kept eye contact with Ace as he said it, so Ace would know that he knew that every word of his story was grade AAA bullshit.
The teenager behind the counter wore a bright turquoise T-shirt—a little tight but not uncomfortable—and a bright flowered comb in her glossy raven’s-wing hair. She had a schoolbook in front of her, but her eyes were all for Ellery and Ace in the center of the auto bay—and for the two sets of feet sticking out from under the Dodge Caravan.
“Heya,” he said, flashing his sweetest smile at her. “I understand you can give me the key to the bathroom.”
Her wide, expressive brown eyes went narrow and flat. “Did Ace tell you yes? I’m not doin’ nothin’ Ace didn’t say.”
“Yeah.” Jackson nodded sincerely. “Ace said it was fine. Told me to let you know if the paper wasn’t stocked.”
The girl—Alba—swore at him in Spanish. Jackson kept his face impassive, and she told him that if he said one goddamned word about the state of her pristine bathroom with the potpourri she picked out just for Ace, she would tell her gay cousin who lived in Twain Harte to come out of retirement as a brujo and curse off Jackson’s balls.
Jackson endured it all with a straight face u
ntil she got to the part about his balls—he was still a little sore from the thought of his poor cat.
“Your cousin can leave my balls out of it,” he said blandly in English. “Sweetheart, I just want to use the head.”
She made a face at him and gave him the key before she buried her nose back in her book, but Jackson wasn’t done yet.
“Chemistry?” he asked—in Spanish. “That’s good. You look like a smart girl.”
Alba looked up warily. She was a beautiful girl—but she probably heard that a lot. A girl who prided herself on her brains didn’t hear praise for it nearly often enough. “Ace, he’s going to send me to college,” she said in English. “He and Sonny, they’re good men.”
And then, as though she’d revealed too much of herself, she went back to Chemistry, and Jackson took the hint. As he walked away from the cashier’s window, he noticed that to the side of the garage sat a small white house. Someone was trying to grow grass and was growing algae instead, and a yapping dog was losing his shit from inside. But the swamp cooler was on, probably to keep the dog comfy, and there were curtains in what looked to be the kitchen window by the porch stairs. Who lived here, he wondered. Ace? Sonny? Jai?
Probably Ace. By himself?
He rounded the corner just in time to see a black-bearded, bald man-mountain in blue coveralls escape from the restroom, wiping his hands hurriedly on his ass. He was pretty sure this one wasn’t Sonny.
“Heya there,” he said with a smile, running to catch the door before it slammed shut.
Man-mountain slammed it shut and eyed Jackson impassively as he approached.
“Well, that was unfriendly,” he said.
“You walk stiffly,” the man said, his voice thick with accent. “You are either horny or injured.”
Jackson choked on a laugh. “Oddly enough, injured and not horny.”
Man-mountain nodded thoughtfully. “The silly man in the suit is not bad-looking. Is he yours?”
Jackson swallowed past the relationship panic he’d been fighting since he’d been forced to move in with Ellery while his house was being fixed. “For the time being.”
