The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  Only the driver’s-side wiper worked in the Explorer, but the storm was breaking up anyway. The blanket of clouds had unraveled in the west, revealing a patch of battered sky. At a long light Petty reached for a Christmas card that had fallen off the dash. On the front was a nativity scene—Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus—and inside was a note written in carefully looped cursive. Petty let the card drop without reading it. He didn’t want to know any more about the cowboy than he already did.

  A cricket chirped louder than the engine, louder than the lone wiper. Petty looked around for it before realizing that the sound was a ringtone. He reached into the bag for the cowboy’s phone. The call was from the 305 area code. Miami, and Petty recognized Avi’s number.

  So Avi was in on the double cross, too. In fact he had to be the brains behind it. He’d never play second fiddle to anyone, much less a broken-down has-been like Don. Petty thought about answering. How you doin’, motherfucker? But that would be stupid. That would give the man everything he needed to plow him under. Instead he opened his door at the next red, dropped the phone to the pavement, and stomped it to pieces.

  When they got to Home Depot he sent Tony in to buy two shovels; let him be the one on the security cameras. The orange parking-lot lights sparked the drizzle into liquid fire that poured down on the handymen pushing carts piled high with plastic sheeting and roofing tar, on the day laborers in their driveway exile, on a fat security guard wearing soggy reindeer horns.

  Petty adjusted the heater vents so that hot air blasted his wet shoes. He cleared his throat and called Tinafey.

  “Hey, baby,” he said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Still working. It looks like I won’t be back until late.”

  “Uh-huh. And what am I supposed to do? I been locked up here all day, watchin’ TV, watchin’ it rain.”

  “Go out to dinner,” Petty said. “Go to a movie.” He shut one eye and looked at the world through a raindrop clinging to the windshield, everything turned upside down.

  “I’m lonely,” Tinafey said.

  “You can’t be lonely when someone’s thinking about you,” Petty said.

  “Who’s that? You? Well, I’m thinkin’ about you, too.”

  “Good. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “You better be, ’cause it ain’t like you’re the only man on the face of the earth.”

  The rain began to beat down again with a hiss like radio static. Petty cracked his window so the windshield wouldn’t fog, and the air that rushed in reeked of gasoline and scorched rubber. Driving a dead man’s car. He was driving a dead man’s car.

  “Listen,” he said to Tinafey. “I put some money in the room safe. I want you to have the combination.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “In case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Get a pen or put it in your phone or something.”

  “Why you tryin’ to scare me?”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of. You never know what might happen, that’s all.”

  The sound of the TV in the background on Tinafey’s end faded away. “What’s goin’ on?” she said.

  “You ready?” he said.

  “Don’t ignore me,” she said.

  “The combination is 9229. Got it?”

  “I said don’t ignore me.”

  Petty was sweating from the effort of pushing around in his head all the different ways things could go wrong. He turned down the heater.

  “If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow night, take the money in the safe and go to Memphis,” he said.

  “So you’re gonna order me around now, too?” Tinafey said.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he said.

  He ended the call. A rubber gorilla, a toy, hung from the rearview mirror. He punched it like he was hitting a speed bag, one fist, then the other, over and over, faster and faster, concentrating, not letting anything else in.

  13

  THE MOON EMERGED BRIGHT WHITE AND MERCILESS AS PETTY crested the Cajon Pass. The veil of clouds that previously concealed it had been torn to shreds by a bullying wind that rocked the cowboy’s Explorer every time it gusted. Petty tightened his grip on the wheel and tapped the brakes to slow his descent into Victorville, which flickered like a bucket of embers strewn across the desert. He checked his rearview mirror for the lights of Tony’s pickup, and there they were.

  After racing through a kaleidoscope of fast-food joints and big-box stores, the two men found themselves again in the wilderness, what passed for civilization out here giving way to rushing darkness. Ten minutes out of town, Petty’s phone prompted him that the exit for Sidewinder Road lay ahead. He put on his turn signal, slowed, and slid into the right-hand lane behind a big rig. Tony tucked in behind him.

  They got off the freeway and crossed over it to pick up Sidewinder, which devolved quickly from pavement to graded dirt. Petty slowed way down after bottoming out in a puddle that turned out to be deeper than it looked. The parched ground had already soaked up most of the day’s rain, but water still stood in potholes and washes. The wind continued to buffet the truck, and tumbleweeds bounded across the road, flashing in the headlights like fleeing animals.

  Motorcycle and ATV trails crisscrossed the surrounding hills, a delicate tracery under the moonlight. Petty, followed by Tony, drove until he came to the turnoff he’d noted on the map. It was a narrower, rougher road than the one they were on. They’d have to take it slow.

  Thanks to the rain, there was little dust, so Tony was able to stay close as they bounced along the rutted track. The road ran along the base of the scarred hills, circling them to end in a wide, flat expanse of hardpan that served as a shooting range and a party spot for off-roaders. Broken beer bottles, empty shotgun shells, and other trash littered the site, and a ring of blackened stones formed a fire pit. Massive boulders, defaced by graffiti, hulked nearby. Petty had wanted to bury the cowboy in a less trafficked spot, but this would have to do. It was no night to go rattling around in search of somewhere better.

  He pulled up to the fire pit. Tony did the same. It was colder than Petty had expected when he stepped out of the truck, dark-side-of-the-moon cold, and all he had on was a T-shirt, the safety vest, and a hoodie.

  “Fuck!” Tony said. “I shoulda brought a coat.”

  Petty moved away from the vehicles and peered into the darkness. The cooling engines ticked, and the wind moaned whenever it ramped up to full strength. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked Tony.

  The kid passed him his keys, which had a tiny Maglite dangling from the ring. Petty twisted the light to turn it on and kicked his way toward open desert, probing for softer ground in which to do their digging. Hardpan gave way to sand at the edge of the gathering place, but Petty continued out into the scrub for some distance before calling for the shovels.

  Tony carried them over his shoulder. “Here?” he said when he reached Petty.

  “It’s far enough away if we go deep.”

  “Roger that.”

  They dug in the dark, scooping a rough rectangle. It was frustrating at first. Sand rushed back into the hole every time Petty lifted out a load. A foot down, the soil was more compacted and began to hold the shape of the grave. The two men worked in silence except for the huffing of their breath, which plumed blue-white. When Petty’s conscience nagged him in the quiet, asking, What the fuck did you get yourself into? he drowned it out by counting. One shovelful, two shovelfuls, three.

  The cadence superseded time. One, two, three. One, two, three. A minute, an hour, a lifetime. Sand, wind, stars. The fugue was interrupted when Tony threw down his shovel and sat heavily on the edge of the grave.

  “I gotta. Take. A break,” he said, panting.

  Petty stopped digging, too, cupped his hands on the rounded end of his shovel’s handle and rested his chin on them. He felt a sting in his palm and discovered a blister, already torn. A polar gust chilled the sweat sliming his face and neck and arms, and he
was cold again. He spit mud and cleared his nostrils of black snot. Tony lay back with a loud groan.

  “We’re down about, what, three feet?” he said.

  “About that,” Petty said.

  “Does he deserve three more?”

  It didn’t matter what he deserved. What was important was that he stay buried.

  Petty couldn’t get his rhythm back when they resumed digging. Every second dragged, and every scoop was distinct, painful in its own way. Petty’s hands hurt, his back, his shoulders. He got sloppy, whacking Tony with the blade of his shovel and dropping dirt. They decided to take turns in the hole, ten-minute shifts, so that whoever was digging would have room to maneuver.

  During his breaks Petty sat on the mound humped around the grave and let his heart slow to normal. The one time he looked up at the stars, he felt like he was falling into them, so he kept his eyes on the ground.

  The deeper they dug, the more difficult it was for Tony, with his prosthesis, to get in and out of the grave. Petty had to lie back and pull with all his weight to haul him onto the lip of the hole, then the kid would crawl the rest of the way out. When they got down to five feet, Petty started having trouble climbing out himself, even with the toeholds they’d chopped into the wall. They’d been digging for more than three hours. No critter, no matter how hungry, was going to work that hard to get at the body. Petty tossed a last scoop of dirt over his shoulder and announced, fuck it, they were finished.

  They limped their way back to Tony’s truck. The kid turned the heater on high. Petty could have sat there forever, warming his hands at the vent, but it was past midnight. There was no time to rest if they wanted to be gone by sunrise.

  Tony pulled two bottles of water from behind the seat and passed one to Petty. Petty gulped it down.

  “At least covering him’ll be easier,” Tony said. His face was smeared with dirt, his T-shirt black with it.

  “Let’s hope,” Petty said. He ran his fingers along the dashboard. “Nice truck.”

  “They had a fund-raiser at my high school when I got back,” Tony said. “Everyone pitched in.”

  “That was cool,” Petty said.

  “Yeah,” Tony said, then his face crumpled. “But now I’ve fucking blown it.”

  “Trouble found you,” Petty said. “It happens.”

  “What kind of advice is that?”

  “Calm down,” Petty said. “Keep it together.”

  “I am keeping it together.”

  “Good. Let’s finish this.”

  They lifted the cowboy’s wrapped corpse, already beginning to stiffen, from the back of Tony’s truck. Petty thought he had the head, but for some stupid reason wanted to be sure. He reached down and felt an ear through the plastic and wished he hadn’t been so curious. When they got to the grave they stood holding the body over it, unsure how to proceed.

  “Drop it on three,” Petty finally said.

  “Drop it?” Tony said.

  “One, two…”

  The corpse hit bottom with a thud, and the moon showed it lying in the grave. It fit perfectly. Petty went back to the truck for the bag containing the guns and the wallet and threw that in the hole, too.

  The filling went faster than the digging. Petty waited to check their progress until they’d been working for a while. By then the body had been covered by sand. Petty took this as the first step toward forgetting about it.

  In a little more than an hour they were stomping on the grave a final time to pack the dirt. When that was done, they scattered rocks around the site and swept away their footprints. In the dark you could barely tell the ground had been disturbed. A couple of days of sun and scouring wind, and all traces of their dirty work would be obliterated.

  Next on the agenda was getting rid of the cowboy’s Explorer. Tony suggested they drop it at a chop shop run by a friend of his, but Petty pointed out it wouldn’t be smart to involve anybody else. He also rejected the idea of torching the truck nearby, worried that a fire in the night would attract attention. They finally decided to ditch the Explorer at the Indian casino in San Bernardino. The casino was only a couple-mile detour on their way back to L.A., and Petty knew gamblers who lived out of their cars during weeklong binges at those places, so a vehicle sitting in the lot for an extended period of time wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.

  The casino was one of those designed to look more like a desert resort than another sad, smoky grind joint. The faux adobe building sported heavy wood beams, natural stone columns, and subdued signage. Petty backed the Explorer into a spot on the second floor of the parking structure and wiped down the steering wheel and dashboard with a T-shirt from the cowboy’s duffel. When he was finished, he pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and jogged down a flight of stairs to a door that opened onto the driveway.

  The pavement was still wet from the rain, and water murmured in the gutters and dripped from the trees. Tony was waiting two blocks away, parked on a dark side street. While he drove them back to the freeway, Petty reviewed his mental checklist. As far as he could figure, he’d done everything he could to cover his tracks. Now it was down to Tony. If the kid kept his mouth shut, they’d both be in the clear.

  As they approached the on-ramp Tony turned into a Shell station for gas. Petty told him to pay cash. After inserting the nozzle into the tank, the kid motioned for Petty to open his door.

  “I’m so hungry I’m about to pass out,” he said. He pointed to a Denny’s across the street. “You want to get something to eat?”

  Petty was bone-tired, but it was important he keep the kid happy. People who felt like they were alone often made selfish decisions, and Tony would be less likely to blow this if he thought Petty had his back.

  So: “Sure,” Petty said. “I could handle a Grand Slam.”

  They washed up in the restaurant’s bathroom and got a booth by the window. Petty ordered egg whites and turkey bacon, and Tony asked for chicken-fried steak. Their waiter had a glass eye. At 3:00 a.m. there were only two other customers—an old man reading a newspaper at the counter and a woman doing something on her phone. Mexican music leaked into the dining room from the kitchen.

  Tony poked at a blister on the web between his thumb and forefinger. His lips moved slightly, like he was whispering to himself.

  “You okay?” Petty asked, stirring sugar into his coffee.

  Tony reached for the sugar, too. “I’m fine,” he said. “What’s next?”

  “Nothing,” Petty said. “You go on with your life, I go on with mine, and we forget this ever happened.”

  “That’s what I’m gonna do,” the kid said. “I’m gonna go on with my life.”

  Petty sipped his coffee. He’d never tasted anything so good.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said to Tony. “How the fuck did you get into this?”

  “It was my cousin,” Tony said. “He called last year from Afghanistan. I hadn’t heard from him in forever, not even when I got wounded. ‘How’d you like to make some money?’ he said. ‘You know what happened to me, right?’ I said. ‘That’s why I picked you,’ he said. ‘Time for your payback.’ That sounded good to me, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Pretty soon after that FedEx started dropping off boxes of money every month or so.”

  “Next time, ask more questions,” Petty said.

  “There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Tony said. “When Mando gets back and I get my cut, I’m moving away.”

  “You don’t like L.A.?”

  “I been living here all my life, but after Afghanistan, I’m too jumpy. A car backfires, I have a heart attack.”

  “The V.A. has shrinks.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Go see one. Maybe it’ll help.”

  “I’m not crazy,” Tony said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I just don’t like noise and shit. And all the fucking punks who think they’re hard ’cause the abuelitas in the neighborhood are scared of them. I’d like to drop them into Helmand and see how ba
dass they’d be. The fucking hajis’d cut their heads off and put it on YouTube.”

  The kid kicked Petty with his fake foot under the table and sloshed coffee over the rim of his cup when he lifted it to drink. He was getting worked up.

  “You know what’s weird, though?” he continued. “What happened to me wasn’t even the hajis’ fault. It was the Russians. The mine I stepped on was one of theirs from the eighties or whatever. Can you fucking believe it?”

  “That’s fucked up,” Petty said.

  “Yeah, but at least I still got my dick,” Tony said. “A lot of dudes got their dicks blown off, their balls, their assholes.”

  The waiter delivered their food. Petty watched the kid tear into his breakfast. It was a shame what had happened to him over there, but he was nothing but trouble, and Petty knew the sooner he cut him loose, the better.

  “So this is the last time we’re gonna see each other,” he said.

  “You breaking up with me?” Tony said, mouth full of hash browns.

  “I’m serious,” Petty said. “But I need to tell you some things before I go.”

  “So tell me,” the kid said.

  “The guy who sent the cowboy, he might not give up.”

  “That Don dude you wanted to call?”

  “It’s not Don you have to worry about. It’s another guy, a guy named Avi.”

  “What do you mean, worry?”

  “I mean the cowboy was probably reporting to Avi, so Avi probably knows where you live, which means more assholes might show up on your doorstep, looking for the money.”

  “It’s not there, though,” Tony said. “It’s somewhere else.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Petty said. “They’re gonna come to your place, and you’re gonna have to deal with them.”