Death is Not Forever (Barefield Book Book 3)

by Trey R. Barker

  I lost one, too. I lost her mother. Then I lost her.

  Because he’d been chasing the dime. Hell, a damned sight more than a dime. He’d been chasing the promise of dimes, tens of thousands, if not millions, of dimes. He’d been thirty miles away, enjoying cigars and Tequila Don Julio and making promises to powerful men whose wallets he needed to finance his campaign. He’d missed what should have been the most important night in his life and the resultant guilt, thick and heavy and all-consuming, kept his boots clacking down the highway every day and night since then.

  Bean took a deep breath. “What makes you think I know?”

  “Give me a fucking break. You know everybody.”

  “In certain worlds. And from time to time, I hear things from those worlds.” Bean told the detective what he knew, then said, “You understand all this information adds up to quite the little favor.”

  The detective nodded.

  “And that favor is going deep in my pocket.”

  “I get it, Judge, I get it. Something you’ll need if you and the law ever cross again.”

  “If?”

  The Judge flexed his calf, relieved at the feel of the .380 Sig in his boot. Another suggestion from Digger. Though Bean had never actually been convicted of anything, he knew it wasn’t particularly intelligent of him to roam the state armed. But while Barefield had once been home, now it was where he felt most naked. Thus the .380 and the bullet-proof vest and sometimes his Glock 26 subcompact at the small of his back.

  Shouldn’t’a left the Glock at home...dumbass.

  He’d told Digger the .380 was a just-in-case gun; a pistol just-in-case he need to blast someone to hell and back. That had been the truth, but not quite all of the truth.

  The truth was that he was tired of being alone. That he was tired of a twenty-one-year death and a seven-year death and he was pretty sure it was just about time for him to cash everything in.

  But also? He could feel it coming: the madness that had simmered in his blood since birth. It was beginning to boil. It was the same madness that had scalded his great-grandfather and his grandmother and his father. He’d known since childhood it would burn him just like it had them.

  It’s coming. It’s in my bones and muscle, in my nerves and blood. It’s a cancer and no amount of chemo or radiation will fix it.

  So before the madness left him babbling and pissing down his leg and unable to remember wife or daughter, he’d planned to snap back that hammer and lay that fucking .380’s trigger down.

  “Judge? You okay?”

  Except now it was different. Now there was a note and a picture of a badge.

  Wait for me, Mariana, I’ll be a little while longer yet.

  A mortal sin, Jeremiah, but I will wait for you forever.

  The detective stared at the Judge’s hand, which bounced over the table. “I’m missing something.”

  “Need me to find it for you?”

  The Judge narrowed his eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the man who lost his son? Are you anymore adept at finding missing trucks?”

  For a span of heartbeats, the detective glared at the judge. For a moment, the Judge thought he might get up and leave. Instead, the man wiped his face and kept his trembling hands on the table. “A truck?”

  “Should have been here an hour ago. A delivery...all points south and more than a few north.”

  The detective picked at his fingernails. “How about I stay out of whatever illegal shit you’re distributing all over the western half of the fucking state.”

  “Yeah...probably best.”

  Around them, Johnny’s was mostly silent, the outdoor patio peopled with only a few customers. This was the Judge’s favorite table and had been since long before he’d been forced to flee Barefield and set up shop in the far desert of the Texas-Mexico border. From this table everything that was anything in Barefield was visible. All the movers and shakers, all the cops and political robbers, the wildcat drillers—what few were left—the bankers and swindlers.

  Frequently the same people, the Judge thought, the same motherfuckers who dictated his life after Mariana.

  Calm down. Water under the burning bridge.

  “Don’t understand the empty holster,” the detective said.

  The Judge swallowed some ice.

  “I mean, come on, this is Texas. We let anybody carry a gun. Hell, we almost force them to.”

  “So you think it’d be a good idea for Judge Royy Bean, II to openly carry? In this particular town? I think I’ve pushed certain Barefield citizens just about as far as they’re going to let me.” He laughed. Mariana always said his laugh had an edge sharp enough to cut a throat.

  The detective shook his head. “Well...fair point.”

  Again, not the total truth about the empty holster he always carried, but enough for this detective.

  The Judge shoved a forkful of brisket in his mouth, chased it with thick, buttered toast. Bean was irritated. The detective’s face was so alive with want, so riddled with anxiety about his son. You want to know where your grown son is? And if he really shot a cop? Was he really carrying around a dismembered foot he believed to be his biological father’s? Had he really left a church in ruins beneath fires and automatic weapons fire?

  Well, maybe he did want to know that, but that at least meant this man had a child who could get himself into a nightmare of bullshit.

  The Judge didn’t have that.

  Not anymore.

  Sometimes, when the days left him bathed in heat and sweat and the nights’ relief could only be measured by multiple fingers of Tequila Don Julio, the Judge imagined both of his women alive. A few healthy belts and Mariana hadn’t died in childbirth and their daughter hadn’t died in a house fire.

  Let me tell you about the World, the Judge wanted to say. Let me tell you—

  The words died in his throat because he finally heard it.

  The hulking thrum of eighteen wheels against asphalt. Could have been any of a million different trucks, each running cargo through Barefield to somewhere else. But something about this truck sounded familiar, though the Judge had never seen the truck before and what did that matter? A truck was a truck was a truck. But as the sound grew, easing up from faint to distant, then to near and then distinct, he knew. The air split with the whine of engine braking and the purple nose came around the corner a short block away.

  “Bassi.” His voice was a relieved whisper.

  “Judge?” the detective said.

  “The day just got better, my friend.”

  The truck stopped, clearly visible across the outdoor seating area. Johnny’s few early lunch customers looked at the gleaming white trailer. “Streets of America Caskets” was painted in huge, powerful black letters along the side. The letters flowed over the top of a soft, Norman Rockwell road. The road wound its way into a quintessentially American small town dotted with flags and cafes and a cop directing traffic and kids playing baseball. On the far side of town, the roadway lifted and faded into Heaven. A trailer designed to disappear, to escape notice. Supposed to leave a trail wholly unremarkable and unmemorable.

  The truck’s engine rattled to a silent death and then?

  Not a goddamned thing.

  The Judge waited for the driver’s door to open. It never cracked. The window was down, the driver’s arm hanging out and deeply tanned, but Bassi never moved to open the door.

  The Judge’s jaw tightened.

  This was wrong. All wrong.

  A sliver of sunlight gave Bean a glimpse of Bassi, hidden deep in the truck’s cab, his head turned slightly as though he was looking in one of the mirrors, or listening to someone else in the cab.

  “You have someone with you, Bassi?”

  Even with his face in shadows, the Judge knew Bassi was staring at him. Was he answering that question by his very silence?

  “Damnit,” the Judge said.

  This was not going to play well.

  Not at all.
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  5

  “Judge?” The detective never looked over his shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “What...uh...what’s the problem?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “What’s nothing?”

  “Nothing is nothing.” The Judge drank deeply, crunched some ice even as hot, fresh blood pounded into his limbs.

  The .380 gun in his boot whispered in his ear, “I can help you outta this mess...whatever it might be.”

  Jeremiah, no more killing. Enough is enough.

  But this might require killing, Mariana. This might require killing a man the world could well do without.

  You are not God, Jeremiah, you don’t get to make those decisions.

  It is not my decision, love. The decision is wholly his...and I have no idea his intention.

  God is God. Life and death belong to God, not you.

  Her saying, her belief. She said it to him anytime the blackness came on and left him bruised and whimpering like a trashy dog kicked down the road.

  “I’m the Judge...next best thing to God.”

  If she’d been at his side, she’d have warmed his cheek with a harsh slap.

  I promise to try not to kill him. It is the best I can do.

  If that is your best, Jeremiah, I will take it...but I will also pray for you.

  Casually, without a care in the world, the Judge crossed right leg over left on his thigh. The heaviness of the weapon, steel and plastic, lead and brass, calmed him. From here, if need be, he could yank his jeans, clear the gun before Bassi realized what was happening, put a couple rounds center mass, and be out the door before too many heartbeats had passed.

  The heat grew, magnified by Bassi’s stillness. Sweat popped on the Judge’s skin.

  “You okay, Your Honor?”

  Sure, he wanted to say. Except I might have to blast this prick bloody because I don’t know what he’s doing, but I damn sure know everything’s vibing wrong. Instead, he said, “Fine, thank you for asking.” He crunched more ice, flooded his mouth with the cold. “A bit warm today.”

  “A bit warm?” the detective asked. “What are you—Judge, this is Barefield. A bit warm? It’s a hundred damned degrees.”

  In the truck, Bassi moved his arm from the window and a second later, the cab door opened slowly.

  In the thick air, the Judge heard an imaginary orchestra, playing the lost, lonely strains of Ennio Morricone’s music. The sound track to Italian deserts heavy with cowboys while two men faced off. Music for those about to die in a hail of bullets, for the dispossessed.

  The door stayed open, nothing else moving. Cars and trucks passed on Big Spring Street, going deeper into, and further out of, the heart of Barefield. Their clank banged through the air, stumbled off the sides of buildings.

  Still Bassi sat. If it was Bassi in the truck. Hell, given Bassi’s bad decision making, he could be long since dead, his body heaved into a ditch or pulverized down the drill hole of an oil rig. This might be some other cowboy looking to jack up the Judge and snag the entire shipment for himself.

  Come on, the Judge thought. Fucking come on.

  The traffic quieted, the clink of silverware against plates quieted, even the breath of Johnny’s customers quieted.

  Lay your hand, damnit. Let’s see your cards.

  The Judge bit his tongue, swallowed into a throat of grit.

  And finally, Bassi jumped from the cab. He landed, flat-footed, hard on the asphalt. He stared at the Judge, but eventually closed the cab door. It thunked, a hammering metallic sound.

  The Judge swallowed his ice, laid a hand on his boot.

  Bassi’s chest rose and fell, his T-shirt stained at the pits.

  For the first time, the Judge was uncertain. Bassi had always been Bassi, easy to handle, but every criminal in the world made a move at some point, didn’t they? Every criminal, be it the cheap convenience store thug or the lieutenant-level cog in a drug machine, looked up the ladder at some point. Or got railroaded into cooperating with the Feds or a local task force. Hell, that was why so many of them had ended up on their knees in front of Barefield Justice of the Peace Jeremiah Bean’s bench.

  Was this Bassi’s moment?

  “Make your play, then, fucker.”

  Bassi spit and started across the street. A car honked. He ignored it, his gaze welded to the Judge’s.

  There will be killing, Mariana. I will do it unapologetically, as I have always done. I will own the killing, as I have always done. As I have always owned all of my mistakes.

  Yeah, you always have, baby.

  And you, Mariana? Do you own all your mistakes? What about lies? Do you own your lies...or is there a lingering lie between us?

  She was gone. He could feed her answers all day long and let the imaginary her regurgitate them back, but he couldn’t give her answers he didn’t know.

  At the sidewalk, just beyond the knee-high iron fence surrounding Johnny’s outdoor patio, Bassi stopped. When his arm flashed, a blur toward his back, the Judge nearly shit. He yanked his jeans leg up and had his hand on the .380 before he realized Bassi had stopped.

  Bassi spat.

  “Damnit,” the Judge said.

  Bassi had played him and now the .380 was no surprise.

  With a smirk like a gashed scar across his face, Bassi strode to the Judge’s table and leaned over the middle. In a gentle whisper, he said, “My dope, bitch.”

  “What?” The Judge’s voice exploded. It was a booming instrument and once upon a time, Mariana had loved listening to him sing.

  Every head swiveled, every eye suddenly scared; the familiar smell of criminals who came before his bench.

  No more anxiety. He knew the play, understood Bassi’s lack of imagination. Bassi was late not because he’d stopped for a taste of the exotic sex he so craved, he’d stopped so he could work up the courage to steal from the Judge.

  “The fuck it is.” Casually, the Judge touched his boot.

  “You got your little gun in your boot? That little gun you laid on your desk to scare me when you hired me? Well, it don’t scare me at all. Neither do you, asshole.”

  This wasn’t Bassi. This was some new guy, some guy with balls and a bit of steel in his spine, no longer taffy.

  “You said you’d solve my problem.”

  “I said I’d try, Mr. Bassi. A problem like yours is hard to solve.”

  “Fuck that, you said you’d fix it. Told me to drive the truck. Make a few deliveries. Dump the last of it in Amarillo with Little Lenny. Told me you’d fix things if I drove the truck.” He leaned close to the Judge and dropped his voice. “There’s your fucking truck. I still got my problem.”

  He’s crowding me. Pushing me. Why would he do that? He knows my history, knows where I’ll take this.

  “How do you know that?” the cop asked.

  Bassi never took his eyes from the Judge. “He called me, you asshole.”

  The Judge took a long moment before answering. “And what is this gentleman’s name, Mr. Bassi?”

  “Gentleman?” Bassi frowned. “Are you stupid? It was fucking Stanton. Threatened to kill me. Called me from your office in Langtry.”

  “Well...perhaps it was a mistake for you to cut the country club take seventy-thirty.”

  Bassi’s eyes narrowed, slits of anger. “I set that fucking job up. I decide how the take gets split.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have introduced his fifteen-year-old daughter to the wonderland that is your penis.”

  “I’ll decide whose hole I dick. You ain’t nothing but some shitty lawyer couldn’t keep his hand outta the till anyway.” His laugh burned with contempt. “Working the border with fucking wetbacks. Judge Royy Bean. What a load of bullcrap.”

  Bassi’s breath was onions and French fries. Stale and rotted and the Judge wondered if Bassi hadn’t actually climbed out of one of the coffins in the trailer, long since dead yet shambling from one disaster to another.

  Bassi kept try
ing to crowd him. A weak-ass intimidation, one that made the Judge want to laugh. The customers stared, goggle-eyed, but it was all bad theater now. Bassi had made his play, had made the Judge momentarily nervous, the only thing left was the histrionics.

  Over the detective’s shoulder, the Judge watched Johnny. The joint’s owner stood just inside the kitchen door, one hand on the phone, the other hovering at the waistband at his back. Cars and trucks roared on the nearby streets, while the delicate bell over Johnny’s door tinkled with another customer coming for hot links. Under it all was the steady tick of everyone’s heart.

  Eventually, after seeing everyone on the patio, seeing the cars pass, hearing dogs bark somewhere distant, the Judge returned Bassi’s stare.

  He says he’s not scared, but I think he is. I think, if I put that .380 right the fuck between his eyes, he’ll be plenty scared.

  “You need to back up, Mr. Bassi, I’m not getting any fresh air.”

  “What? You saying I stink? That’s what you’re going with?”

  The Judge didn’t hesitate, didn’t play coy about his pistol. He yanked his jeans, shoved his hand into his boot, felt metal, and—

  “Should’a fixed it, you son of a bitch.” Bassi drew from his lower back.

  At the same time, he hammered the Judge with a hard left to the chin. Pain exploded like a ball-peen hammer cracking his teeth and the Judge hit the ground hard.

  This is how it ends, Mariana. In a puddle of my own blood and Johnny’s spicy sauce. A piece of shit gets the drop on me and this is how it ends.

  Over the top of the detective’s shouted, “Shit,” was an explosion of gunfire.

  At least I’ll be able to hold you again.

  You ain’t done yet, lover. Get up, Jeremiah. If you die now, I will not be waiting.

  But Mariana, I—

  No, you have work to do.

  The man with the mustache.

  GET UP!

  The Judge rolled, tried to get his gun. Bullets thunked the concrete, peppering his face and hands with stinging shards.

  Bassi and the detective fired, their guns barking, while screaming customers dove for cover under tables and through the doors back into the restaurant. Two men, dressed alike in the uniform of Jehovah’s Witnesses, hopped the short fence and disappeared down the street into the summer heat.