Ham

by Dustin Stevens

  Grunting softly, Glenda removes another paper-wrapped utensil from the bag and places it down atop the table. Years of working with young girls and sick farm animals have imparted more medical knowledge than most EMT training programs, the woman moving without hesitation.

  “Amber, any a minute you’re going to feel a little sleepy,” Glenda says, looking over to the other table. “That’s normal. Just go ahead and lay down whenever you want.”

  Amber nods, it already apparent that the drug is starting to take hold. Her eyelids are drooping, her head beginning to sag.

  After a moment, she lowers herself to her elbows, body pitched at a low angle above the table.

  Less than a minute later, she goes all the way down, her eyes drifting shut.

  Waiting until she is sprawled flat, Glenda pulls on a pair of surgical gloves. Snapping them into place, she takes up the item she just removed from the bag and strips away the paper, peeling it back to reveal a stainless-steel scalpel.

  Holding it before her, she examines the blade for a moment. “There’s going to be a lot of blood with that area of the neck. I’m going to need you over here on mop-up duty.”

  Considering it a moment, I shake my head in the negative. “No. I should cut, you should clean.”

  Pulling her gaze up, the scalpel drops a few inches before her.

  “Why’s that?”

  The question isn’t posed as a challenge, though I can detect the slightest hints of one present. Which would make sense. The woman has much more experience with this sort of thing than I do, has probably done something similar a dozen times before.

  But what I have is knowledge of being on the other side. Of knowing how hard it is to ever find trust in someone, and how easily that can be shattered.

  Odds are, she and Amy will probably end up staying here for a while. Maybe a long while. And for that to work, for either of them to find healing, they both need to know they can trust Glenda.

  “Because when she wakes up and sees what happened, she’s going to ask who did it,” I reply.

  And it’s better if the answer is me.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Amber had told us that the spot the man sprayed on the back of her neck was about the size of a quarter. Having no way of knowing exactly where it was or even if her guess was accurate, Glenda and I agreed that we needed to remove the top layer of skin from a patch almost twice that in size.

  A job that no matter how slow I went, how careful I was, still left behind an ugly crater. A divot almost two inches square that in time will heal, with any luck becoming a minor discoloration instead of a nasty patch of gnarled gristle.

  Either way probably earns me her ire for life, that being the exact reason I took the scalpel away from Glenda.

  Peeled away in three uneven strips, the skin is now sealed in a plastic bag. Hanging from my fingers, I can still smell the coppery scent of the blood clinging to it, the aroma growing stronger under the late-afternoon sun filtering through the trees around me.

  Alone for the first time in days, I make my way quietly across the forest floor, my senses sharp, attuned to everything around me. One thing at a time, I register the smells of pine and damp soil, the sounds of birds and squirrels high above. Like white static, they serve as little more than background noise, my mind focused on the task at hand.

  For the first time in days, I am no longer playing defense. I’m not trying to extract or protect those around me, have no need to be cognizant of where I am or who might see or hear something.

  Instead, I can now finally tap into the burning venom I’ve been feeling since the moment Amy shared her story. I can let it spur me forward, intent to do what I must.

  I can be Ham.

  The lake was an excellent spot for stopping off and getting ourselves together, but it would never do for what comes next. Not with it being so close to town, always with the real possibility of vacationers or families looking for a place to spend the afternoon stopping by.

  Sending Glenda and the girls back to the farm in the truck, I turned west, following the state route almost a dozen miles before heading north. Not sure exactly where I was headed, I drove for almost half an hour, eventually spotting the narrow turnoff.

  Nothing more than a pair of ruts beaten into the earth long before, tall weeds had grown up over the tracks, telling me nobody had been by in quite some time. The last home I’d passed was miles before. Even the last car I’d seen in the rearview was more than fifteen minutes ago.

  Appearing to be little more than an old logging road, the trail wound for a quarter mile before ending abruptly at a homemade blockade, aging pine logs laid on their side and lashed together. Most of the impromptu structure was covered in moss, dense forestation crowded in from either side.

  Just as I was hoping to find. The perfect place to set a trap, to lure somebody in without worrying about if or when their body is ever found.

  Two hundred yards beyond the barricade, I come to a stop in the center of a small clearing. A rough circle no more than ten feet in diameter, I turn a slow revolution, feeling the warmth of the day on my back, the humidity of the forest beading on my forehead.

  A thin smile comes to my lips as I look around. The place is absolutely perfect, exactly as I would have drawn it up if given the chance.

  Exactly what a cop from LA would expect to find up here in the woods.

  The bastard will never know what hit him.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The last of the tamales Consuela Ramirez made sits in the middle of the coffee table. With the benefit of an extra day for the flavors to marry, the smell is even stronger than before, filling the space.

  Dwayne and Bocco sit on the couches to the either side of Hector Lima, each man with a tamale in hand. Eating slowly, they stare down at the table, the exhaustion all three of the men feel palpable.

  It has been a long day, one marked by strong sunshine and backbreaking labor, but it has been a good one. Another step forward on what they had set out to do months before.

  Sitting in silence, his clothes stained with peat moss and potting soil, Lima can’t help but replay the stretch in his head. The events that have led them to where they’re now sitting, only the benefit of hindsight providing any clarity.

  Luis Mendoza had grown up in the house between Lima’s and Bocco’s. The son of an immigrant mother, they both ended up living with his grandparents from the time he was no more than a toddler.

  Essentially an only child, the young boy had glommed onto Lima and Bocco, becoming the third leg in a tripod that would spend the next twenty-five years together. Elementary school years in the back of the classroom. High school football under the stadium lights.

  Even the semester they all gave junior college a shot, making the drive across town to Long Beach four days a week for something they all knew would never last.

  Without Luis, there was little doubt what would have probably happened to Lima and Bocco. They would have ended up on the same path that called to so many young Hispanic men in that part of Los Angeles. They likely would have had bandanas of any given color wrapped around their heads by the age of twelve. Tattoos would have adorned their arms and necks before they finished high school, all claiming loyalty until death.

  Which is how one or both would have ended up, that sort of life known to burn fast and bright before flaming out at an early age.

  The quiet one of the trio, the sole thing Luis ever demanded of them was that they not succumb to that life. It was long rumored that his father had been a member of one of the local factions. His parents’ relationship was a short-lived fling that saw the man disappear the instant he found out about the pregnancy, leaving his young girlfriend to fend for herself.

  And instilling a deep hatred for all things gang-related into Luis, the man absolutely refusing to allow himself or those closest to him to choose such a path. He demanded that they respect themselves and their parents enough to recognize the position they were in, the gi
fts and opportunities and responsibilities placed before them.

  Coming from most any other of their friends, the beliefs wouldn’t have carried much weight. They would have been nudged to the side, Lima peeking over the fence at the cash so many others his age always seemed to be flush with. At the swagger they displayed as they walked the streets, the handle of a gun visible for all to see.

  The belief was so strong in Luis, the conviction so pure, though, that it couldn’t be ignored.

  Right up to the point when a stray bullet caught him exiting a mini-mart one night.

  Surveillance cameras on the place showed that the shot was actually aimed for the guy entering the store as Luis was leaving, but that didn’t stop it from taking his life all the same. According to police, the man was known to be a local pusher, one that had allegedly been working the wrong corner and was targeted for elimination as a result.

  What they wrote off as the proverbial wrong place, wrong time.

  What Lima still sees as the ultimate cruel irony.

  In the wake of the accident, Lima would be lying if he said he didn’t spend a week trapped with every dark thought imaginable. Together he and Bocco had talked to every person at the mini-mart that night. They made arrangements to get their hands on a pair of handguns, intent to take out Luis’s shooters, their intended target, and anybody else they thought might be affiliated.

  A plan that evaporated as fast as it had come together by the actions of Anjelah Brandeis and the United Church, Luis watching out for them, keeping them on the straight and narrow, even in death.

  A plan replaced by the one they were now pursuing.

  “He would have liked what we did today,” Lima says, a faint smile crossing his lips. Gaze locked on the table before him, he is only vaguely aware of Dwayne and Bocco both looking his way, each pausing their work on the tamales.

  “Hell yeah,” Dwayne eventually adds.

  “Boy did always love a good barbecue,” Bocco concedes.

  The grin grows a bit larger as Lima considers the statement. By no means a tall man, Luis was definitely the pudgiest of their bunch. Someone that had no compunction making a late-night run for his beloved ice cream, was never without a jug of Tampico keeping cool in the fridge.

  More than that, he loved bringing people together. If there was no occasion, he would make one up. Every single person that was there today, that had passed through the room they were now sitting in, at one point or another was pulled into the fray by Luis.

  The man would have loved the shelter house and the landscaping they put around it. He would have even disappeared an hour before closing to get food for everyone, not letting a single person leave until they’d all sat down to eat together.

  “That’s a good idea,” Lima says, flicking his gaze up to Bocco. “We can make it an annual thing or something. Set up games on the lawn and shit.”

  “Annual?” Dwayne counters. “Hell, this is southern California. We can do it monthly, weekly even.”

  Snorting slightly, Lima feels his head rock back. Falling silent, he considers Dwayne’s proposal a moment, the man not wrong in his assessment. Whereas most of the country is forced indoors seven months of the year, they have the benefit of enjoying the weather regardless of the calendar.

  “Something like that won’t come cheap,” Bocco says, voicing the thought Lima was reaching a moment before he did. His tone iron, the underlying implication is clear, drawing Lima’s gaze his way.

  Like everything else that has happened in the last eight months, the decision to start working with Spiers was based on Luis as well. Just staying away from the life wasn’t enough. They needed to drive it away, actively dispel it from their community, ensure that no other stray bullets wrought such tragedy on those that called it home.

  And they needed the resulting funds to ensure that they could keep contributing, rebuilding, beautifying the place in the way they wanted.

  “Any word?” Lima asks, flicking a glance between them.

  “Not since he came strutting in like some swinging dick yesterday,” Dwayne replies.

  Nodding, Lima remembers back to the day before, to the false bravado the detective had walked in with, self-righteousness oozing from him.

  Like most of the cops he’s ever encountered.

  The last tip they’d given the man was the largest yet. Split between them, it would be well over two hundred large, enough to pay off the place they were sitting in. Maybe even host a barbecue down at the church afterwards.

  More than that, it was the first test in the still-fledgling partnership. It was the initial time that one side hadn’t performed their part of the agreement, calling into question how things would look moving forward.

  And if everything before had been nothing more than going through the motions, attempting to lull Lima and his crew into a place where they had no choice but to be complicit.

  “Said he’d have it,” Bocco adds. “How long should we give him?”

  The visit to Spiers and his partner’s houses had been two nights before. The response had been almost twenty-seven hours ago.

  In a town that moved as fast as Los Angeles, that was already starting to press the outer bounds of reasonableness.

  Lifting his phone, Lima squeezes the power button on the side, bringing the screen to life. Checking the time, he says, “Right now, it’s nine o’clock. If we haven’t heard from him by this time tomorrow night, we move on them.”

  Dropping the phone back onto the couch beside him, Lima allows his gaze to linger on his outstretched forearm. He looks at the ink splashed across the belly of it, Luis’s initials and dates etched into the skin, an exact copy of the one on Bocco’s arm beside him.

  The move to clean up the community was made as a pledge between them in remembrance of Luis, a vow that was aimed to scrub away any of the evil that had started to creep in.

  Whatever the source.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The man at least had the good sense to turn off his headlights, knowing that twin strobes striping the forest would eliminate any chance of sneaking up undetected. Where the dumbass messed up was attempting to drive back the narrow two-track anyway.

  Bouncing over the rough path in the dark, his vehicle sounds like a damn tank rolling through the darkness. Sitting just a few inches off the ground, weeds slap against the front bumper, thrashing against the undercarriage. Limbs and branches scrape against the sides, the sound of them rubbing against metal and glass unmistakable.

  Not to mention barely audible over the whine of the engine revving, the man having to gun it to get back through the dense foliage.

  Yet another mistake by a city boy far, far outside of his element.

  Perched a hundred yards from the small clearing I found early this afternoon, my body is curled along the base of a thick pine tree. Dark neoprene covers my arms, my hair tucked up beneath a watch cap. Grease paint is smeared along my jaw and forehead.

  On the ground by my feet is a pair of night-vision goggles should the need arise, though for the time being I am content without them. Years of living in the desert have trained my rods and cones to operate by moonlight, and this way I don’t need to sacrifice depth perception as I would with the optics.

  I have no idea what Mikey thought I needed to be prepared for, but apparently the full-service package is designed to be inclusive.

  Should I have any desire to return to Vietnam or engage in Siberian warfare, I’m sure there’s something squirreled away inside the enormous black duffel that can help me.

  It’s a wonder Taylor was even able to lift the thing.

  Perched on a knee, my body is tucked behind the tree. In one hand is a rock the size of a softball, a chunk of granite taken from the forest floor hours before. In the other is the SR1911, a fail-safe that I have no intention of using but need to be sure to have just in case.

  The plan — if it can even be considered as much — is pretty simple.

  The first hour after my
arrival in the woods was spent erecting the lean-to structure that currently stands in the center of the clearing. Borrowing some of the beams used for the barrier at the end of the path, I put together a simple structure, crafting it to look as crude as possible. The kind of thing someone with a young girl would put together on the fly, meant to keep the wind and rain off and little more.

  Once it was in place, the top draped with moss and pine boughs, I set up a teepee pyre, waiting until just after dark to light it.

  From there, it was merely a matter of tacking the plastic bag with Amber’s skin tag to the inside of the structure and sitting down to wait.

  A wait I would have thought would take a little longer than an hour and a half.

  Either this guy is severely pissed about what happened to his partner, or he is in one major hurry.

  Both of which I can easily use against the man. Feeling rushed and being emotional are the two biggest mistakes someone in this sort of work can make. They cause people to act impulsively, which is without fail foolish, leading them to believe something like driving blind into the woods is a good idea.

  In the air, I can make out the smell of wood smoke as I sit and wait. Without the benefit of headlights, it isn’t surprising in the least when I hear the front end of his car crash into the barricade, the sound of wood splintering and glass shattering clear.

  Piercing the darkness, it sets a flock of birds into flight above me. The instant the flutter of their wings fades, it is replaced by the metal hinges on his car door swinging open.

  Pitching my chin toward the ground, I close my eyes, preserving my night vision, until I hear it shut. Even as he attempts to do so quietly, the click of the hasp catching is so out of place here it is obvious, the corners of my lips playing upward for just an instant.

  As fast as the grin arrives, it fades, the reason for my being here now again coming to mind.

  For as much fun as toying with this man out here in the woods is, the simple truth is none of this should be happening. Amy should not be entangled with a man wanting to harm her, and I damned sure shouldn’t have brought her and her daughter all this way without ensuring there wasn’t a way to track them.