by Laird Barron
“The gang version of a filibuster,” I said. “Same deal with the Outfit.”
“About the size of it. As you might imagine, the Bureau has a singular interest and that is in retrieving our informant and debriefing him. My stake is personal.” Bellow leaned over and scratched Minerva behind the ears. “Commendations don’t mean squat. I know Martinez. He’s a tough guy, a criminal. He’s also got a wife and kids. A dog.”
I smiled at him.
“A dog? In that case . . .”
“He’s a friend and I want him safe.” Bellow exhaled a plume of smoke. “Maybe now you understand why we asked you to keep clear of this thing. God knows what’ll come of your visit to the Wigwam. You really stirred the pot.”
“Why didn’t you pull the guy out before? He’s got the goods on Modine and others. Isn’t a murder rap enough? Why wait?”
“Short answer? The Bureau is greedy. They want Talon too. Talon is slick; we could never pin anything on him. Martinez tried to get close. Got himself assigned to the man’s entourage. Talon was never around when the dirty deals transpired. I swear, my mother was right when she said Satan looks after his own.”
“We’re gonna find Reba,” Lionel said. “Sorry if that interferes with your snipe hunt.”
“It’s not a snipe hunt,” Bellow said. His eyes narrowed and he scowled. The most emotion I’d seen from him. The bland mask snapped into place again. “This man’s life is in imminent danger. You’ve got Reba, I’ve got Phil.”
“Any leads?” I said.
“Martinez vanished the same afternoon as the Walker girl. His handler received a text from him around one p.m. Message said shit had hit the fan and he was dropping below the radar with his boys Yellowknife and Stephens. Suggested this relocation might be at gunpoint. He intended to reestablish contact asap. Last we’ve heard.”
“He could be dead. Him and Reba have something in common there.”
I didn’t think his worry creases could deepen, but they did.
“Yeah. I’m exploring all possibilities. The best outcome would be, if they’re alive, Reba is with them. The real wild card in this is Donnie Talon. I haven’t ascertained his angle. Thirty-three, married, two children in a local private school. Son of a prominent businessman of the Algonquian Nation. His father owns controlling interest in several casinos. Father seems clean, though. Donnie may have originally joined the Manitou as an act of youthful rebellion. Had to bust free of paternal bondage and trust fund drudgery.”
“I empathize. Alas, Donnie seems to be the worst of both worlds.”
Bellow puffed on his cigarette.
“All we know is, he’s spent time in the pen for the usual rackets—extortion, money laundering, and assault. Boss Modine likes the kid’s style and has fast-tracked him up the food chain. Talon is a major player; he’s pro expansion by any means necessary. I get the idea he’d love to seize the throne.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” I said.
“Yeah? Modine might be sorry he’s given the lad such a big hatchet. One last bit—Talon, Modine, the whole lot of them, spell trouble. Even Deluca treads lightly around these guys. The Manitou is checked only by a fractured hierarchy and internecine warfare among its local clans. This is a vicious organization, Coleridge. They practice the kind of brutality you see in war-torn regions of Africa, Mexico, South America, and the Middle East. Think of the slaughter in Juárez. The skinning and beheading, the acid vats.”
“Punji stakes. I read you, Bellow. I’ve seen it at close range. And Dr. Peyton’s murder—”
“Let it lie. You pressured Peyton to give up a name, I’d guess. Am I close? Don’t much care either. He got into bed with the wrong crowd. Case closed.” The agent sighed with a world of weariness. “I don’t have much to report about your girl either. We combed her computer. Double-checked our info with the local PD. The last call on her cell was made before noon on the day she went missing. Went to the farm, but no actual message.”
I took a breath and dove in.
“Agent, about your undercover informant. Who is aware of his existence?”
“Me, my direct supervisor, and the guy above him. Tight loop.”
“Nobody else? Your partner?”
“I’m old, not senile. Especially not Noonan.”
That explained a thing or two. Noonan would’ve blown Martinez’s cover in a hot second. I wasn’t sure how to break the news to Bellow about his partner or whether it served any purpose to do so.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. Agent Bellow rose and said his good-byes. He promised or threatened, depending upon one’s point of view, to be in touch.
Lionel propped his boots on the table and drained his glass.
“Think the Manitou slagged the Three Amigos?” His unvoiced corollary being, if so, Reba might’ve been eliminated as well.
“I suspect it wouldn’t end with those three. We’d hear about it if the purge were under way.”
In my experience, syndicates took pains to keep purges and bloodletting secret from the public. A housecleaning of this scale would be a different matter. Bodies were bound to surface. Until that happened, we still had time. Less and less, though.
THIRTY-SIX
I slept in a haze of pain and sluggish, half-formed dreams. Meg called the next afternoon and I gave her a severely edited version of my adventures.
“See you in an hour,” she said. “Hang tough, I’ll bring you a sandwich.”
Good as her word, she sauntered in an hour and a quarter later with a picnic basket of chicken salad sandwiches and a four-pack of beer. She’d pawned her son off on the housemate.
“Hmm, cozy,” Meg said upon crossing the threshold of my humble cabin. I couldn’t determine whether or not she meant the comment sarcastically. She’d honed ambiguity to a needlepoint. She wore a paint-spattered tee, sweats, and tennis shoes. A touch of lipstick and the faintest whiff of perfume.
“Minerva, this is Meg.” My puppy crept from beneath the table and sniffed Meg’s ankle.
“Hi, Minerva.” She gave Minerva a piece of chicken. They were fast friends after that.
I ate a sandwich and washed it down with a beer. My head swam between beer, blood loss, and Meg resting her knees against my thigh on the bed. Darkness filled in the windows. She lit a candle and came back and sat a little closer.
“The thing about you that turns me on . . . You’re a wolf that walked off the pages of a Grimm’s fairy tale. You might be capable of anything.” Her hand touched mine. “Why’d you do it? Take on a gang like that? Crazy.”
I considered a typically wry answer, then I looked into her eyes. I also considered admitting that I would happily torch The Battery and shoot a hundred lowlife bangers as they ran out in exchange for one more afternoon wandering the tundra with Achilles. I kept it simple.
“I miss my dog.”
“Heck of a dog.”
“He was. They all are.”
“Yep.” She leaned into me. “Good grief, Coleridge, you love to mix it up, huh? Can’t get it out of your system.” Her index finger traced the battered contours of my face. Her other hand went into my shirt, rested warm against my belly.
“Why, you want to go a couple rounds?”
Meg laughed and raised her arms and slipped off her tee, then helped me with mine. Her eyes widened when she beheld my stripes and scars, the bloody shroud around my waist.
“You’d get whipped again. Not good for your ego. It might be the only thing keeping you alive.”
“My ego is the only part of me that isn’t bruised.” I kissed her. She tasted salty from the beer. My heart beat heavily. That great black wind whistled in my mind, far off across the ice. The cabin, our shelter, dwindled to a point of light in the vastness of an indifferent universe.
“It’s okay,” she said, hot into my mouth. “I’ll let you win this one
.”
More like a draw. That was fine by me.
THIRTY-SEVEN
My favorite cop called with breaking news. The red Suburban had been found torched on a vacant lot in Highland. Forensics had the vehicle sitting there for at least ten days. No bodies, but Reba’s purse, cell phone, and wallet were among the cindered remnants.
After an uncomfortable pause, Detective Rourke cleared his throat.
“Chief, that episode the other day wasn’t personal. No hard feelings, I hope.”
“Business is business.”
“Smart man. We’ll move the Walker girl up on the docket.”
I thought of the past two and a half weeks, the many hours Virgil and Jade spent on the phone, their countless trips into town to paper telephone poles with missing-person flyers. My lip curled.
“Terrific. Treat yourself to a bear claw while you’re at it.”
I walked past the main house and saw Jade and Dawn through the window. The women sat on the couch, holding each other and sobbing. I hung my head.
* * *
—
TWO DAYS PASSED. My amazing capacity to regenerate didn’t fail me. I felt better and stronger, physically. Ready to take it to the street again. Well, maybe the sidewalk. I swam in the pond and squeezed the squash ball and took long walks with Minerva. Ate and slept.
Inside my head, things weren’t so copacetic. Icebergs scraped a valley through my brain. The extended downtime meant too much time to dwell upon certain mysteries that had perplexed me. Boredom and idleness make for a particularly bad combination in my case.
“What is it between you and Valens?” I said to Lionel. The dossiers hadn’t revealed as much as I’d hoped.
Midday sun steamed the green earth. We’d trekked into the pasture to repair a break in the fence. Actually, Lionel performed the labor while I stood around and observed.
Lionel lit a cigarette. He pushed back his Stetson.
“Valens is my enemy.”
“Yeah, yeah. You locked horns. Not what I’m asking.”
“Then ask.”
“The odds of you landing here in his stomping grounds . . .”
“Got ahold of my jacket? Yeah, you did.” He blew smoke and glanced toward the trees. “Thought we were busy enough hunting Reba. This ain’t got a damned thing to do with that business.”
“Funny how things are all connected. Or tangled in a web.”
“Tell me, Hoss. You the only one allowed to have secrets?” He waited for what I might say and when I said nothing, he scowled and wiped the sweat from his cheek with his sleeve.
“I cashed out of the Corps after Helmand. Did a tour with Black Dog. That went to shit pretty quick, so I came home and bummed around. Went broke. Caused a ruckus here and there. Wound up in Toledo, where I slept with a married woman. Did a spell in lockup for beating down the husband when he objected. Coulda been worse. He had a star in his pocket. Woe is fucking me, the streets of Toledo are cold in winter.
“Kept traveling east. Cops rousted me while I was living in my car in Kingston. Somebody on the street mentioned this place. The Walkers have that Mother Teresa reputation, y’know. I offered my services as a handyman and found a home.”
“When did Valens approach you?”
“Last fall. Ran into him at the liquor store. Took me out to dinner and laid it on the table. Wanted to bury the hatchet between us. Asked me to join his crew. Made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, but I did refuse the fucker. He let it go.” He was holding back. I recognized his cadences. Not precisely lying except by omission.
“Nothing since?” I said.
“Besides having his squad beat the dog shit outta me? Nah, Hoss.”
Lionel Robard represented precisely the kind of man corporate headhunters, such as those behind Black Dog, preyed upon. He possessed sniper skills, combat experience, and toughness. He’d also isolated himself from society in a meaningful sense. Valens could swoop in as the savior with a lucrative job and a ready-made family. Many soldiers would succumb to the pitch and consent, in time, to any damned filthy mission. But not Lionel. Not so far.
Valens, doubtless on specific orders from Black Dog HQ, would persist via a spectrum of approaches to subvert resistance and, if that failed, escalate. Whenever I looked at Lionel, I couldn’t help but consider The Manchurian Candidate or The Boys from Brazil. In a good way, mainly.
That left the puzzle of Dad’s involvement. Why had he sent the data on Valens if he didn’t plan to admit their former association? Sentimentality? No way. Guilt? Possibly. Or, maybe it was a double fake move—pretend to juke left, then actually go left, kind of gambit? Dad loved mind games. His overture might conceal a trap or be precisely the olive branch it seemed. I doubted the mystery would resolve itself anytime soon.
Lionel crushed the butt of his cigarette underfoot.
“Someday, when we’re even with our chores, I’d enjoy getting to the bottom of Black Dog’s game.”
“Never fear,” I said. “We’ll sort them out. It’s on my to-do list.”
“That list gets any longer, you’re gonna need a secretary.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
No matter the outcome of my time on this world, the death of my mother will always remain unfinished business. Whether by guile or brute force, none of my attempts to resolve the mystery have borne fruit. That failure haunts me down through the days of my life. It is a shadow that follows me.
A few months after my twenty-second birthday, I got royally pissed on Glenrothes and convinced a pair of goon comrades to escort me across Anchorage to my old man’s place off Elmendorf. Back then, he didn’t bother with a nice home on a vast plot. Condos and town houses suited his itinerate lifestyle to a T.
In any event, I hadn’t seen Dad for about two years and a friend whispered in my ear that Mervin had blown back into town after a lengthy trip abroad. Finally, the golden opportunity to avenge Mom.
We were real brave fellows. Me, built heavy as a middle linebacker, the slender waif of the three. Each of us already a hardened killer despite our youth. The old man might as well say his prayers because he had a three-part curb stomping in his near future.
Drunk, seething with a young man’s perfect rage, I swaggered into the front yard of the crappy town house and called Dad out. Four a.m. and the neighbors called the cops. The boys in blue rolled up but didn’t know what to do with my crew, as we were widely known to work for the infamous Mr. Apollo. Ironically, had Mr. Apollo known me and the goon squad were raising hell in front of Colonel Coleridge’s house, he would have skinned us alive.
Dad stalked into the street, remarkably composed for a silver-haired dude who’d spent half the night drinking and screwing. He wore a bathrobe and a pair of boxers with little U.S. flags on them and unlaced combat boots. Wiry and leather tough, maybe half the steroid bulk of my partners. Those days I benched four hundred pounds for reps, did fifteen to twenty wind sprints every morning, and ate five pounds of red meat for dinner. This was going to be a massacre.
A pair of Dad’s whores lounged in nightgowns on the steps, sharing a cigarette, greedy-eyed as ravens. He told the cops to get back into their cruiser, he’d sort these stupid cock knockers himself.
The bigger of my two friends didn’t appreciate being referred to as a cock knocker and made a precipitous move. He specialized in clamping his lobster claws on his victims and shaking them until their bones separated. Dad kicked his left knee backward. The kid’s shrieks caused every light along the block to snap on. My other friend had boxed. He tried his luck with a haymaker. Now, this dude fought heavyweight in statewide tough-guy competitions, even took third place at the nationals in Vegas when he was nineteen. He hit you, you were in a coma.
The boxer hammered Mervin directly between the eyes the way it’s done to steers down at the slaughterhouse; made a dull thump that curled my toes in empathy, and
I’m not certain how it didn’t break his neck. Dad fell to his knee. Made it easier for him to drive his fist into the guy’s balls. My boxer pal went down for the count.
Arrogantly, I let Dad gain his feet before I went at him, elbows, knees, and teeth. Stupid, stupid.
Sunrise bled all over the Eklutna Flats and brought me awake to pain. My body felt as if it had been tenderized by a giant mallet. Dad rolled me out of the back of the truck and I got a mouthful of sand upon hitting the beach face-first. I crawled toward a driftwood log. He followed me, a wooden kayak oar in hand.
“Always on about your mom. You a giant mama’s boy, ain’t you?” Whack with the oar across my shoulders. “You a giant girl’s blouse, ain’t you?” Whack.
The old man had it right, damn his eyes. Seven years since Mom didn’t return from their moonlight row across Black Loon Lake. Seven years since the homicide detectives, the newspaper articles, the battery of rumors, the eventual subsidence and sympathy for my bereaved father from his Air Force cronies and all the good ol’ boy ass kissers who owed him allegiance. Seven years of fighting in street gangs, and then college on Apollo’s dime, which I now repaid every day by stooping, bowing, and calculated acts of violence. All through it, I’d thought of Mom and feared Dad. This was to have been my graduation from that fear, the confrontation that slew the boogeyman and put paid to a childhood of unjust misery.
Once again, the gods had their laugh.
I’d love to say I gathered myself, gained a second wind, or summoned the eye of the tiger and rose from the mat to teach the grizzled bully a lesson. Unfortunately, that’s not how it went. Blinded by agony and humiliation, I kept crawling while Dad harangued me and occasionally clobbered me with that oar.
In the end, I collapsed and he rolled me over and laid the blade of the oar against my throat. He leaned on it while I thrashed.
