Crosshairs

by Harry Hunsicker

  He wore a fedora with the brim pulled down, warm-up pants, sneakers, and a shiny bicycle chain dangling around his neck on top of a white T-shirt.

  I nodded hello and continued to talk and move closer.

  He said something to the other two.

  I stopped when I was about ten feet away, still jabbering into the cell phone. I swore and mentioned the name of a man in Dallas who controlled most of the narcotics and all of the prostitution in the eastern half of the county, and how he could go perform an anatomical impossibility on himself.

  All three were looking at me now. The one on the end, a fat guy in a Troy Aikman Cowboys jersey, had raised his gun. He lowered it when he heard the name mentioned.

  “Heya, homes.” Fedora squinted at me from under the brim of his hat. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I smiled and gave him that on-the-phone-gimme-a-second look, holding one finger in the air.

  “I’m talking to you.” Fedora’s eyes got big, his voice louder and impatient.

  “Hold on a minute, willya?” I spoke into the empty phone before pressing it against my chest. To Fedora and company, I said, “Do you jerkoffs have any idea of the shit you’re in on account of this little action today?”

  Fedora frowned. Troy Aikman cocked his head to one side.

  I looked at my watch. Forty-five seconds to go. I put the phone back to my ear. “Yeah, you were right. These guys are beyond stupid. Must be something in the water in Fort Worth. I gotta go.” I ended the fake call and turned to the men. “Who’s running your crew?”

  “Before we get to that,” Fedora said, “suppose you tell us who you are.”

  “You went freelance.” I shook my head. “Without getting clearance.”

  “Clearance?” Troy Aikman scratched an ear. “The fuck you talking about, bro?”

  “The guy that hired you. There’s a slight problem.”

  Troy Aikman looked at Fedora, who looked at the third guy and then at the trailer. The afternoon wind shifted and a cloud of black smoke blew between the three goons and me.

  “There’re people above you on the food chain,” I said, “and they are mighty pissed.”

  “The boss said it was cool.” Fedora licked his lips. “Guy paid cash.”

  The third goon, an older man in a pair of jeans and an untucked denim shirt, eased away from the other two, toward the tree line, in a flanking move.

  “Where’s the guy that hired you?” I looked at my watch. Fifteen seconds to go.

  “Out there somewhere.” Troy Aikman shrugged.

  “What’s in the trailer?” I nodded toward the Winnebago that wasn’t burning.

  “Split tail, bro.” Fedora grinned. “Gonna have us a party. Spoils of war and shit.”

  Troy Aikman laughed and grabbed his crotch.

  I heard the buckshot whiz by a millisecond before the report of the shotgun echoed across the compound. The older guy yelped, grabbed his face, and fell to the ground.

  Fedora and Troy dropped, too, as did I, right as the second blast ripped through the air.

  “Shit,” Troy said.

  “Fuck,” Fedora said back.

  “Told you some people were mighty pissed off.” I elbowed my way closer to Fedora.

  Troy hopped up on one knee and fired at the tree line with the fully automatic M-16 he’d been carrying.

  “What did the guy look like?” I tapped Fedora on the leg.

  “What?” He turned from the trees and looked at me.

  “The guy that hired you.”

  “Average-looking dude. Not young, not old. Nothing particular about him except the funny glasses.”

  “Glasses?”

  “Had like a mirror or some shit on them.”

  “Ohh, my eye,” the third man wailed.

  Something in the trailer farthest away exploded, showering the area with burning Winnebago parts and more black smoke.

  “Cover me.” Troy Aikman fired another burst into the trees. He got up and ran a zigzag pattern toward a small shed by one of the burning trailers.

  “Cover you, my ass.” Fedora popped his head up, looked around. “The hell he think this is, a 50 Cent video?”

  Troy disappeared into the woods.

  “I can’t see anything.” The third man stood up, one hand over his eye, blood streaming down his face. After a few seconds, he fell over and huddled in a ball.

  “Sucks to be you, don’t it?” Fedora said to his compatriot before turning to me. “That was a shotgun that fired at us.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Lucky to hit my boy in the face with a scattergun from that far away.” Fedora pushed himself to his feet, keeping his rifle pointed to the ground.

  I got up, too, but didn’t say anything. I pulled the Colt from my waistband and held it by my side.

  “Means the dog out there shooting at us ain’t a pro.” He cocked his head toward the woods. We were about five feet apart.

  “Good point.” I nodded. Fedora was not nearly as stupid as I wanted him to be. “But I am a pro. And you do not want to turn on the lights and find out what I’m selling.”

  “Shit, brother.” The man smiled. “Think you could take me?”

  I looked suddenly toward the Winnebago, as if I had heard something, and moved in with my left shoulder. Grabbed his hand holding the rifle with my left. Smashed the side of his fedora with my right, the barrel of the Colt connecting with a soft thud against the felt of his hat.

  He went down on his side, groaning. I held on to the rifle. I ejected the magazine, saw it was empty, and jacked open the chamber. Empty, too.

  “Hey, bro.” I tossed the weapon as far as possible toward one of the burning trailers. “Looks like you’re out of bullets.”

  Fedora pushed himself up on his hands and knees.

  I walked to where the third man lay and found his weapon. A Benelli assault shotgun. I slung it over my shoulder and returned to Fedora, who was trying to stand up. I put a foot on his rib cage and shoved him over.

  He looked at me without speaking.

  “Tell me about the guy.” I pointed the Smith at him. “What was he wearing? How did he contact you?”

  “He had on, like, khakis, you know.” Fedora rolled himself over and sat on the ground, holding one hand pressed against his head. “And a T-shirt. Dorky-looking dude, you ask me.”

  “Keep going.” I looked at the tree line but saw no sign of Troy or Petey or anybody else.

  “Boss called. Said a guy was coming here, recommended by some people connected to Ari in Dallas.”

  I grinned for a moment. Everybody in the life knew Ari, a four-and-a-half-foot-tall Armenian psychopath who ran a casino and bordello in the back room of a bar in East Dallas. The good thing about Ari was he would give up his grandmother to the Hell’s Angels for the right motivation.

  Fedora got up as another explosion ripped through the air, billowing out a cloud of black smoke that reminded me of nothing so much as the oil field fires in the Kuwaiti desert almost twenty years ago.

  “You leave now, you get to live,” I said.

  He stared at me for a long few moments before walking to where his partner lay and helping him stand. Together they limped toward the road leading out.

  After a few feet, Fedora stopped and turned around. “Guy was some kind of crazy, too.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “Went all apeshit when he saw a can of Raid in the back of my pickup.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “Hell if I know.” He shrugged. “Dude was all ‘environmental toxic’ this, and ‘poison that’ kinda shit. Weird-ass sunuvabitch, let me tell you.” He took a step toward the road but stopped again. “You and me,” he said. “We ain’t through.”

  “Sorry, bro.” I shook my head. “We most certainly are through.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I watched Fedora and the third man limp down the road leading out of the compound. I figured I didn’t have much time before they found a
nother gun or their boss got involved. For a moment I wondered how Petey was faring in the woods with Troy Aikman chasing him. Petey was a big boy; he could take care of himself.

  When they were out of sight, I started to turn to the surviving Winnebago but a movement at the edge of the woods caught my eye. A quick flash of neon red against the brown of the tree trunk. I took one glance at the trailer, grabbed the Benelli, and headed toward the woods at a run.

  The acrid smoke caught in my throat about midway to the tree line. By the time I got to the place where I thought I had seen movement, I was hacking and wheezing like a three-pack-a-day smoker struggling up Kilimanjaro.

  I leaned against a tree and coughed up a section of lung. When my breathing returned more or less to normal, I strained to hear movement and peered into the woods.

  Nothing to hear but the burning Winnebagos crackling and popping, and the ringing in my ears from the gunfire earlier. Nothing to see but trees and undergrowth, a canvas of earth tones, the only movement coming from the swaying of the vegetation in the wind.

  I put my hand on the tree to push off but yanked it back, spots of blood dappling my palm from the thorny vine growing on the trunk.

  A shot rang out, the direction of the sound hard to pinpoint because of the thick undergrowth.

  I left the shotgun at the edge of the wooded area, the brush so thick as to render it useless, and headed toward where I thought the shot came from. I pushed brush away with one hand, pulled out Bobby Ray’s .38 with the other.

  After twenty yards or so I stepped into a small clearing about half the size of a basketball court. At regular intervals a series of stone markers dotted a portion of the area. I knelt by the nearest one and saw that it was marked in an alphabet I didn’t recognize.

  The numbers were readable, though, and left no doubt as to what I had stumbled upon.

  A Traveler cemetery.

  I walked through the tombstones, doing a rough count. Maybe thirty or forty graves. As I reached the end of the graveyard, a coughing spasm erupted from deep within my chest. I dropped Bobby Ray’s pistol and bent over, hands on my knees, struggling to get enough oxygen in my lungs.

  When I looked up, the muzzle of a Beretta pistol was pointed at my face, about ten feet away. The man holding the weapon was Hispanic, in his midthirties, wearing jeans, combat boots, and a brown T-shirt.

  “Don’t move.”

  I held up my hands. The second revolver was in my back pocket, not visible to the man with the Beretta.

  “Step away from the gun.” The man nodded to Bobby Ray’s pistol lying on the ground.

  “I’ve got backup nearby.” My words didn’t even sound convincing to me.

  He ignored me and pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke a few words into it, too indistinct for me to hear. A staticy voice replied, and thirty seconds later two figures appeared from the woods on the far side of the clearing.

  The first man was handcuffed, wearing a red windbreaker with the words TOOGOODE CONSTRUCTION on the breast. He’d been hit several times in the face, cheeks bruised and bleeding, one eye blackened. A strip of masking tape had been stuck across his mouth.

  Behind him came a figure carrying an H&K MP5 machine gun, wearing what appeared to be a camouflaged hazmat suit complete with oxygen tank and full-face mask like the ones used by Everest climbers. He shoved the bound man to the ground and stepped to where I had dropped the revolver.

  Nobody said anything. The only sound in the clearing was the wheeze of the respirator attached to his oxygen mask.

  He kept the machine gun pointed my way but bent over and retrieved the .38 with one gloved hand.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  In one smooth motion he stood upright, pointed the muzzle of the .38 at the Hispanic man’s temple, and squeezed the trigger.

  “What the—” I flinched at the noise echoing through the trees and the spray of blood misting languidly on the slight breeze in the clearing.

  The man on the ground gyrated, trying to stand, groaning through the masking tape, his eyes wide.

  “Hands on top of your head.” Hazmat’s voice sounded like Darth Vader’s through the oxygen mask.

  I did as requested.

  “With the thumb and forefinger on your left hand, remove the pistol in your back pocket.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Or I’ll shoot you in the crotch.”

  I pulled the revolver from my pocket in the method he’d suggested.

  “Toss it behind you.”

  After I had complied, he walked to where the bound man lay and shot him twice in the back of the head with the .38. He turned to where I stood, still with my hands in the air.

  “A sad but necessary ending for Mr. Collin Toogoode,” he said.

  “What about me?”

  “You don’t know who I am, nor do you have any way to ID me.” He dropped the .38 into a plastic bag. “But I’ll keep this for insurance.” He held the bag up high. “Looks like it even has some of your blood on the grip.”

  I felt the two small wounds on my palm from the thorns earlier.

  “That will give the DNA boys something fun to play with.” He cocked his head toward the sound of a shotgun blast not too far away. “My, er, associates might have other plans for you, though.”

  “Why are you after Anita Nazari?”

  “Don’t be stupid and follow me.” He kept the MP5 pointed my way and walked backward to the edge of the clearing before turning and vanishing into the bramble.

  Several shots sounded in the wood; a bullet splintered into a tree on the far side from where I stood. I turned the opposite way the hazmat man had gone and ran, picking up the shotgun at the edge of the clearing.

  The surviving Winnebago was where I’d last seen it, and I headed that way. The vehicle was huge, as big as a Greyhound bus. A brown and gold awning matching the RV’s paint job was stretched over a makeshift patio consisting of a couple of plastic lawn chairs, a Weber charcoal grill, and a faded Igloo cooler.

  What looked like the main entrance to the vehicle was underneath the awning, too, next to a window starburst by a bullet.

  A curtain twitched in the window.

  I wondered how much they had seen of what had just occurred. I wondered whether they would trust me or not.

  I knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” I rapped again. “They’re not far behind me. We don’t have much time.”

  Nothing.

  “I’m a friend of Petey’s.” That was stretching it, but I figured under the circumstances it wouldn’t hurt.

  The lock rattled. The door opened a crack, and half of a woman’s face appeared in the gap. She was in her late thirties with reddish hair. Freckles on a long thin nose. Pale green eyes.

  “You need to get out of here.” I pointed to the woods. “They’re gonna come back.”

  “Who are you?” the woman said.

  “My name is Oswald. I’m a friend.”

  She raised one eyebrow a millimeter, a gesture that spoke volumes about her view of trust and friends.

  An automatic weapon chattered in the distance, sounding like Troy’s M-16. I hoped Petey was okay.

  “How do I know you’re not one of them?” The woman nodded toward the trees.

  “You don’t,” I said. “You’re gonna have to trust me.”

  “We’re not big on trust around here.” She spat the words out.

  “Then you can end up like Toogoode.” I turned and walked away.

  “Wait.”

  The door slammed shut. I turned around.

  “What do you know about my husband?” The woman stood underneath the awning. She wore a pair of khaki shorts, a white blouse, and too much makeup. I revised the age downward a little, maybe thirty-five.

  “He worked with his brother, didn’t he?” I spoke softly, unsure of how to handle meeting the wife.

  She nodded.

  “Who showed up here
yesterday?” I said. “Your husband or his brother?”

  “My brother-in-law.” Her voice was a whisper.

  The front door of the Winnebago opened, and a child about eight or nine years old stepped outside. She was dressed like a prepubescent call girl. Rhinestone-encrusted blouse. Tight red skirt. Hair teased into a big pouffy ball on top, long and flowing on the sides.

  And makeup.

  Lots and lots of makeup, more than you’d see on a sixty-year-old cocktail waitress in Vegas. Pink rouge and red lip gloss and purple eye-shadow, all thickly slathered on the child’s face.

  “Mama, is Daddy back?” She clutched a doll under her arm.

  The woman turned her head and spoke to the child. “Mary, go back inside.”

  “Who’s that?” The girl stared at me with wide eyes.

  The woman spoke in the Traveler language. The anger in her tone was clear, and the girl darted back to the interior of the RV.

  “Your husband and his brother had a job in Plano this past weekend, didn’t they?” I said.

  She nodded, tears welling in her hazel eyes.

  “But only your brother-in-law came back, and then all hell breaks loose today.”

  “Collin wouldn’t say what happened.” She closed her eyes tightly.

  “Patrick have a U2 concert T-shirt?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No. Can’t be.” Her voice was a whisper.

  I shook my head slowly, feeling the grief come off her in a wave.

  “He was a decent man.” Tears streamed down her face. “A good provider.”

  “I’m sure he was,” I said. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  More gunfire, closer this time. A few seconds later another explosion ripped from one of the trailers. More black smoke, burning debris, a surreal battlefield on the plains of northwest Texas.

  “Will this thing drive?” I pointed to the Winnebago.

  “We can’t leave without Collin.”

  “He can’t be helped right now,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not coming back either.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Oh, no. Not him, too.” Her eyes filled with fresh tears. “He slipped out when the first ones showed up, said it was him they wanted and that we’d be okay if he was gone.”