Everybody Pays

by Andrew Vachss

  “Not a match, goddamn it. A . . . flashlight or something. I want to look close.”

  When he did, Billy Ray saw it for himself. He pulled out a penknife and went to work.

  “This is a new rail,” he told Manny, gesturing at a piece of what looked like black rubber. “A new rail under the old cloth. Whoever did it, he’s got the best hands I ever saw. This is fucking perfect. Even if I was looking for it, I don’t think I would’ve seen it.”

  “So you mean . . . ?”

  “Yeah. Somebody got in here. This place don’t close until two in the morning, officially. And it stays open way past that sometimes, especially when I got a game. When did you set this up?”

  “About three weeks ago. I was in the Double X and Buddha—”

  “Three weeks. Plenty of time. Whoever did this, they knew exactly what they were doing. And they knew me, too. Knew my game. Knew what table we’d be using. Knew it all.”

  “All that for twenty grand?” Manny wondered. “That don’t seem like Cross at all.”

  “They didn’t even cheat me,” Billy Ray said, mostly to himself. “I mean, I was gonna do them that same way. And the monster . . . he did make the shot. It’s even a bigger risk than you say. What if he’d missed? I still would’ve won the money. You know I would. So why would they . . . ?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Manny snapped at him. “All I know is I’m out twenty grand. And Buddha, he’d kill his mother for twenty large.”

  “Kill his mother-in-law for nothing, way I understand it,” a Latin guy lounging against the wall said, laughing.

  “You know him?” Manny asked.

  “I served with him. Same outfit. He was an evil little motherfucker even then.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “What you want me to say, patrón? You the big man, you running the show, putting up the money. You need me to tell you what Buddha is?”

  “You promised!” Princess sulked in the front seat of the car. They had followed him to a spot where he’d ditched the Harley. Rhino’s bulk loomed in the back.

  “Look, Princess,” Buddha said, “what I told you was—”

  “You said if I was good, if I didn’t cause no problems, we could race. You said it! Didn’t he, Rhino?”

  “You did say it,” the monster-man spoke to Buddha, his voice an incongruous high-pitched squeak.

  “I’m not saying I fucking didn’t say it, okay? I just didn’t say it would be tonight, all right?”

  “I wanna do it now,” Princess demanded.

  “Fuck me,” Buddha said softly, his eyes toward the heavens.

  Forty minutes later, Buddha was working the shark car through a maze of twisted streets near the Badlands. The road surface was cobbled from neglect. When citizens don’t vote, road repair is very slow. And when a neighborhood has no citizens . . .

  Buddha’s touch on the small-diameter, thick-rimmed wheel was as delicate as a surgeon’s. “I’m not promising anything,” he said to no one in particular. “Maybe we’ll get some action, maybe we won’t.”

  “You said—”

  “Princess, gimme a break, okay? This is street racing, not the fucking Indy 500. Sometimes the players are around, sometimes they’re not.”

  “Try the back of the diner,” Rhino advised.

  Buddha turned and shot him a look. Rhino stared back impassively. Buddha sighed. “I just put a whole new suspension underneath. Full-time four. Gotta have it, you want the beast to handle on slick roads. But I don’t know if she’ll tolerate a nitrous shock like a solid rear axle would, and . . .”

  “Might as well find out now,” Rhino said implacably. “When there’s no risk.”

  “No risk? Fuck you talking about? The Man is down on street racing now, big-time. Too much stuff about it on the wire. They even got that damn newsletter making the rounds, giving the rankings and the handicaps and all. You let people bet money in this town on anything, you open up the action, and you don’t let the cops dip their beaks; you know what’s gonna happen next.”

  “So it’s a ticket. Big deal.”

  “A ticket? Listen, Rhino. They’d pop me for Driving to Endanger. And I’m carrying. You too. And probably this maniac,” he continued, nodding his head in Princess’ direction, “for all I know. You’re talking felony beefs for all of us.”

  “No. If that happens, Princess and I will get gone. It’ll just be you.”

  “Isn’t that special? They’d hold me for—”

  “—a few days, max,” Rhino assured him. “And nothing’s going to happen to you at the County. Just make sure they know you’re with Cross. You’re the only one with papers, Buddha. A fall comes, you got to take it. This isn’t news to you. You make bail, we juice the cops, their memory isn’t so good; our shyster pleads you to some nonsense, we pay a fine, and that’s all. Don’t get excited.”

  “You think I’m worried about a few days in jail?” the pudgy man snapped. “Fuck that. What’s gonna happen to my car? And who’s gonna tell So Long why I didn’t come home?”

  “The car’s no problem,” Rhino assured him. “It’s registered, it’ll go to the Impound Lot. Cost us some money, that’s all.”

  “And So Long . . .”

  “Uh . . . you could call her from the County. They got pay phones there. Somebody’ll know Cross, get you right to the front of the line.”

  “Thanks a fucking lot, pal.”

  Rhino shrugged. He wasn’t going to visit So Long no matter what the inducement. And sending Princess would be . . . too gruesome to contemplate.

  The shark car rolled into the dimly lit parking lot behind an aluminum-sided diner with no name that had been perched on the edge of the Badlands for as long as anyone could remember. Nobody ever ate there—it was a trading post on the outskirts of a hostile nation.

  About two dozen cars were arrayed in no particular pattern around the back lot. They ranged from flamboyant to drab, but they all had one thing in common—the hardcore stance of the street racer: monstrous rear tires and skinny fronts. Superchargers poked conspicuously from some hoods. Others had painted flames pouring out of louvers. A few actually looked near-stock.

  “I don’t like this,” Buddha said to Rhino. “Most of those ponies are back-halved. Blowers right out in the open. Look like a bunch of trailer queens too, even with the plates. Probably some running alky, too. This thing ain’t no drag racer. And none of those quarter horses are going for the twisties. They’ll only take on straight-line stuff, maybe even want to do eighths. If I could get them to go from a standing start, we might be able to pull a little, get off first. But they all want to run thirty-tromp now, ’cause they can’t get all that torque to hook up.”

  “Rhino, what does he mean?” Princess asked.

  “That the other cars are faster than this one.”

  “Hey, fuck that, all right? I never said that. I was just . . . There’s horses for courses, you understand what I’m saying? Like, come on, Princess . . . look at it like this: What if I was gonna race a helicopter against a jet, how fair would that be?”

  “But these are all cars!”

  “Fine,” Buddha mumbled darkly. “Let me see if any of these clowns want to dance.” He got out of the shark car and leaned against the driver’s door, lighting a cigarette.

  Within five minutes, a small crowd approached.

  “What you running?” one asked.

  “A 698 Elephant.”

  “Heinous! You on the bottle?”

  “Sure.”

  “Fuel?”

  “Right outa the pump. 76 straight, not even av-gas. This is a street car, sonny. No tubs, no tubes, got real seats, all that. And it’s all-steel, too—no fiberglass, no carbon, no titanium.”

  “Damn! This thing must weigh two and a half.”

  “Three and a piece,” Buddha replied. “There’s a four-wheel drive underneath, viscous coupling, full-time torque-splitter, air bags instead of springs. . . .”

  “You still working o
n it,” one young man asked, looking over the shark car’s gray-black-primer flanks, “or are you going suede?”

  Buddha ignored him, his eyes only on the target.

  “You see the Nova over there? The blue one with the red flames?” the target asked.

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Wanna go?”

  “Against that?” Buddha laughed. “What’d you do, have it trailered over, waiting for a sucker? You running a Rat, right?”

  “Nah. Small-block, 406 huffed.”

  “I’m a Mopar man myself.”

  “Yeah, well, want to show me something?”

  “For how much?”

  “You say.”

  “Got five?”

  “Hundred?”

  “Thousand.”

  “Oh.” The young man looked around, caught a few nods. “Yeah, I got it covered.”

  “Okay. How many lengths I get?”

  “Lengths? Nobody said nothing about lengths. We run to thirty, get in sync, go past the white post—we’ll show you—then get on it to the next white post. First over takes it.”

  “Right,” Buddha said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “You got—you say you got—a bored-out small-block, a blower, and that’s all, right? And I got maybe a few liters’ displacement on you. No blower, and—”

  “You got the nitrous.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Right. Bottom line, you got a—what?—nine-second car there? Weighs—what?—twenty-two hundred, tops? I got same-size rubber all around. I don’t even have a solid rear axle, like I told you.”

  “Bullshit,” the young man said flatly.

  “See for yourself,” Buddha told him, handing over a large black flashlight.

  Several players crouched down as the young man played the light under the shark car’s bumper. Another man grabbed the flashlight from him, lay down on his back, and pushed himself underneath with the soles of his feet. “He ain’t lying,” he told the others when he emerged. “I never seen nothing like it. I mean, it’s supertrick under there all right, but that’s an independent rear suspension, period.”

  “Now what you gonna do?” Buddha asked the young man. “You know there ain’t no way I can even stomp it down without blowing that rear out, right? I got a throttle stop behind the pedal, just to be sure.”

  “So what’d you set it up like that for?”

  “It’s for the curves, not the straights. For hauling stuff, get it? I never raced against no quarter-mile pro, like you. I gotta get lengths . . . and the bust.”

  Princess suddenly emerged from the passenger seat. “Hey, Buddha, we gonna race or what?”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” one of them exclaimed. “What is that?”

  Princess approached the crowd, grinning broadly. “Oh, man, this is gonna be great!”

  “This ain’t no game for—” one of them started to say, stopping when his friend elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Shut the fuck up,” his friend hissed. “I know who that is. Hell, I even know what this all is now. That’s the shark car.”

  “The what?”

  “Come on over here,” he said, pulling his friend into the darkness.

  When the haggling finished, they agreed to a standing start with Buddha getting a two-length lead on a quarter-mile distance. The guy and his friend got some bets down too. On Buddha.

  “Oh, man! We’re gonna race!” Princess yelled, pounding the dash in excitement.

  “Will you fucking calm down?” Buddha snapped at him. “You’re gonna smash her all up. And you’re gonna watch, not race.”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, you heard Rhino. If anything happens, if the car breaks or something, then you guys gotta fade. Besides, the less weight I gotta carry the better.”

  “But I won’t be able to see nothing!”

  “Hey, look, this was your fucking idea. At least give me a chance to—”

  “We’ll all stay,” Rhino squeaked.

  “All right!” from Princess.

  From Buddha, silence.

  It was a good ten minutes before both drivers were satisfied with their starting positions. They were over the Border now, deep enough into the Badlands that some of the teenage vulture packs were watching from the shadows cast by burnouts and abandoned buildings. Money changed hands there, too.

  The unmuffled roar of the Nova pawed at the night. The shark car was almost silent in response, Buddha disdaining throttle-blipping games, uninterested in impressing the crowd.

  “Want bleach?” the starter asked, a kid in a Day-Glo–orange jacket.

  “No burnouts,” Buddha said flatly. “We’re already staged. Tell that boy, he didn’t want to give me the bust, we gotta leave the same time, I said okay. But that’s fucking it. If he still wants to go, let’s do it. He wants to fry his tires for the fans, I got business elsewhere.”

  The guy in the Nova listened. The starter waved his arms, as if holding off a threat. Finally, the starter took his position between the two cars. He took off his jacket and waved it at the Nova. The driver held up a thumb out the window. The starter pointed at Buddha, who did the same.

  “How come we don’t rev it—?”

  “Shut up, Princess,” Buddha said quietly. “We launch at nineteen hundred. I’m line-locked right now. Any more, we just sit here and spin. So we don’t need no fucking big noise, okay? Just watch that flag. . . .”

  The flag dropped. The Nova lunged forward so violently that only its wheelie bars kept it from standing on end. But the shark car had already disappeared into the night. As the digital readout for the tachometer hit 6600, Buddha slapped home the plunger on the silver-nitrous bottle sitting on the transmission tunnel and the shark car shot forward like a staged rocket. The race wasn’t close.

  Buddha wheeled his mount back to the staging area. He and Princess got out together. “Pay up,” he told the man holding the stake.

  “That ain’t no car,” one of the watching teenagers told the others.

  As in the poolroom, Buddha didn’t count the money.

  “Told ya, James,” the skinny black kid whispered to his friend. They were both lying on their stomachs, hands gripping the edge of the building ledge, looking down.

  “Man!” is all his friend contributed to the conversation, his eyes wide with fascination at the scene below. Which was . . .

  A bodybuilder with a grotesquely overdeveloped physique bounced a basketball with his left hand several times, as if getting the feel of a foreign object. Then he reached across his body and gently tossed the ball to a point several feet above his head. As the ball descended, the bodybuilder stepped forward on his left foot and launched into a spinning back-fist—his clenched hand caught the ball as it bounced up from the concrete floor of the deserted basketball court and sent it flying in the general direction of the chain-netted hoop.

  From somewhere in the darkness, a massive lump of . . . something . . . tossed another basketball toward the bodybuilder, who deftly caught it on the first bounce and repeated the same maneuver. Again, the ball soared toward the hoop, this time missing the entire backboard by a dozen feet.

  “Aahhh!” the bodybuilder said. “Come on, Rhino, send me another.”

  “We’ve used them all up,” a high-pitched squeaky voice responded. “Fifty balls. Now we have to grab them all and get back, remember?”

  “Can’t we do it just one more—?” the bodybuilder pleaded.

  “Princess, we had a deal,” the massive lump spoke. As the lump moved forward, the watching boys could see it was a man. A huge, shapeless man in a rust-colored jumpsuit that blended perfectly into the mottled light. This camouflage was meaningless in view of his partner’s appearance. Not only was the hyperdeveloped man wearing a neon-orange tank top over bright-yellow parachute pants and electric-blue sneakers, he was wearing enough makeup to cover a girls’ boarding school.

  “Rhino, I’m telling you, I can do this,” the bodybuilder said.


  “I know you can,” the massive boulder of a man replied. “And I’m helping you, just like I promised, right? But you don’t want to go to the gym because people might see you, remember?”

  “Yeah! This has gotta be a secret. I hit this shot, we’re rich, right? A trick, just like Buddha’s always pulling.”

  “Princess,” the massive man said, his patience matching his size, “if you hit it on a bet, sure, we could make a lot of money. But you have to hit it that exact time, understand?”

  “Sure, I understand. Why else you think I’m gonna practice till I can do it maybe ten times in a row first?”

  “You haven’t even—”

  “And I been getting closer too, right?”

  “Yes,” the massive man sighed. “Now let’s gather up these balls, okay?”

  “They does this every night?” the boy called James asked his pal.

  “Every night, bro. They comes about two, three in the morning, when it’s all empty-like. They does this for about an hour, maybe. Then they just go away.”

  “White guys . . .”

  “Oh, man, did you see them? Who’s gonna bother ’em? Besides, I was here once when the Rajaz came down.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Maybe a dozen, man. It was nasty. The one with the bald head . . . with all the girl’s makeup . . . he kept asking them if they wanted to play a little two-on-everybody. No lie! Anyway, one of the Rajaz, he shows them a piece, asks them if they know they in somebody’s turf. The monster-guy, he shows them a piece too. I seen one before, man. An Uzi. The monster, he got it on a chain around his neck, like it’s a little charm or something. The guy with the muscles, he just keep picking up the basketballs. Nobody say nothing. Nobody do nothing. Then the Rajaz booked, just like that.”

  “That’s a pair of crazy monster motherfuckers.”

  “You right, bro. But here they is again. And I don’t see nobody running them off the court, neither.”

  “One thousand yards.”

  ”One klick,” the man in camouflage gear and matching cap said.

  “Either you trying to play soldier boy or you trying to cheat. Either way, forget it.”

  “Look, Buddha, I was just saying—”