by David Berens
The bang from the gun going off was so shockingly loud, it took Prosperity a few seconds to recover from the sound. And then there was the sound of Country screaming.
“She shot my balls off! Oh, sweet Jesus, she shot my balls!”
She jumped up in the commotion and ran. With Jed at the front door and Country flailing around between her and the back door, her only chance was to get to Troy ... and as far as she knew, he was still in the cellar. She ran down the hall and found the door. She turned the knob and went down the steps as fast as she could.
“Troy,” she hissed, trying to be loud enough for him to hear her but not alert the others to her location.
Both men were armed, and she didn’t want them trapping both of them downstairs. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, there was no sign of Troy. He wasn’t there. But she realized the shelf had been pushed away from the secret door—which was closed. She pounded on the door. Surely, that sound would get through.
“It’s over, young lady.” Jed’s voice came from behind her. “Now, turn around real slow or I’m gonna put a bullet in your head.”
She turned around and raised her hands. Jed led her back up the stairs where she could hear Country still thrashing around. When he saw them come into the room, he lunged at her. She instinctively leaned back and the unexpected movement made Jed fall backward. She ran away from the two men, which led her to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. In a fit of panic, she dove into the linen closet, slammed the door behind her, and waited.
The muffled sounds of two men running through the house in a frantic chase filtered up to her, but they didn’t seem to be getting closer. They don’t know where I am, she thought.
“She got out,” she heard Country say. “I think she got out somehow.”
“Sonofabitch. This isn’t good.”
“Dude, I need help.”
She heard more shuffling around, then heard Country moaning.
“My balls. She shot mah balls.”
“Christ, man,” Jed said. “That’s a lot of blood. You need a hospital.”
“Oh, God. Help me, Jed.”
“Tourniquet. Tie something around your, um … well, your testicles. I’ll grab something to put under you to keep you from bleeding all over my damn car.”
Prosperity heard Country scream and then the soft sounds of someone climbing the stairs. She glanced up and realized she was sitting under a big stack of fresh, white towels.
Part II
Pool Balls
“Brother, can you spare a dime?
I gotta girl with a curl at the end of the line.”
-Ronnie “Wayfarer” Hobgood
15
The Man In The Cellar
Troy was sure he heard someone banging on the cellar door. He banged back and yelled. It had to be Prosperity and though he couldn’t hear anything, he didn’t think she’d be knocking like that if all was well.
“Pros, can you hear me?” He pressed his ear to the door.
Nothing. He beat on it a few more times, but now all was quiet. Maybe it had been his imagination. Just ten minutes ago, he’d come down to see what was really going on in the secret room in the basement. Prosperity had been right, there were crates filled with rifles, huge stacks of dope, and a hell of a lot of cash. And quite the unfortunate smell in the room, which he quickly found was coming from a woman’s dead body. The reek coming from her meant she had probably been there a while. He didn’t dare lift the blanket covering most of her body. Nothing he cared to see under there.
He had made a mental note of all the stuff he saw for his report to the police and turned to head back upstairs. When he reached the secret door, he found it closed. Had he closed it? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to push it open, but it didn’t move. He pushed harder. Nothing happened. He looked for a handle to pull but found none. There was no latch, no knob, nothing to hold onto at all. He put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It didn’t move an inch. That’s when he thought he heard the banging on the other side.
It was low and muffled, and maybe wasn’t sound as much as vibration emanating from the door. He kicked the door and immediately regretted doing it. His flip-flop offered little protection and his toes suffered a jolt. He hopped on one foot, massaging his bruised big toe, and leaned on the door listening. All was quiet.
“Think, Troy,” he said, stepping back to assess the door situation. “No handle. Gotta maybe be a mag lock or somethin’.”
He laid his hand flat to the side of the door and ran it up and down on the wall, looking for some kind of release. Typically, a mag lock—or magnetic door—had a release that was activated by laying a card or key against a spot on the wall to open the latch. He found what he was looking for quickly, a small metal square that was set into the concrete wall. It had to be in there.
“Now, I just need a key,” he muttered, stepping back from the door.
The gap in the door where the lock was positioned was thin, a hairline at best. Troy new from his days back in Vegas, that most locks like this had a magnetic force of over a thousand pounds. No moving that. But if you could separate the door a bit from the magnet, the force was reduced by a lot.
He glanced around the room. He’d seen a few guys beat locks like this with a pack of cigarettes, but he didn’t see any of those lying around. He remembered another guy saying he could do it with a credit card. He reached down into his back pocket but found that his wallet wasn’t there. He’d changed clothes but hadn’t put his wallet back in his pocket. Dangit.
He roamed around the room, searching for something thin but stiff enough to shove into the crack of the door. He grabbed a couple of hundred dollar bills from the loose stacks of money and tried folding them into a wedge, but it was too flimsy. It crumpled every time he slid it in. He put the bills back and moved on. His eyes fell onto the woman’s feet poking out from under the blanket.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he said, pulling the cover back.
He gagged and stumbled back away from her as the smell and gore of her decay wafted out. He covered his nose with his hand and tried to breathe small, shallow breaths into his mouth.
The woman was wearing a green shirt like the one Prosperity had been wearing when he first met her. She had on a long navy skirt and white tennis shoes. Her skin was green and beginning to slack, and her teeth were starting to drop out of her mouth. She was close to liquifying all together. On the waistband of her skirt, Troy saw a springy cord with a set of keys and a slim wallet.
Jed jerked open the door of the closet he’d seen in the hall and thrust his hand in to grab a stack of towels. The yelp from the back made him jump, until he realized he’d found the girl. He reached down and grabbed her by the wrists. She was still locked in his handcuffs, so he pulled her out of the closet with one swift jerk. She screamed, so he kicked her in the head. The girl went limp. He threw her over his shoulder along with a few towels and walked back downstairs.
Country was lying flat on his back in the front yard, his hands holding a purple bandana tightly over his blood-soaked crotch. Jed had dragged him outside to keep as little of his blood from getting in the house as possible. It was a lot of blood.
“Country, you gonna be okay?”
“I’m doomed. They’re gonna have to cut my wang off. I ain’t never gonna have no kids now!” he moaned.
Maybe not such a bad thing, Jed thought.
He opened the door of his cruiser and laid the girl inside on the back seat. Then he spread the towels over the passenger’s side, making sure the redneck’s blood wouldn’t get on it. He walked over to Country and leaned down, hooking his hands under his arms.
“Can you stand up?”
“I’m afraid to let go of my balls. They’re gonna fall off, man.”
“Shit. Here. Let me see.”
Jed pulled Country’s hands away from his crotch. The man had already taken off his jeans, and the bandana he’d been using to staunch the bleeding
was black through and through from all the blood. He peeled it back and saw a bloody mess, but the testicles were still there, as was everything else. He could see that the bullet had actually grazed his left testicle, but it hadn’t done much more than put a pretty good gash in the skin.
“Dude, you’re going to be alright. Everything’s still attached. You just need a couple of stitches to stop the bleeding.”
“Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus,” Country moaned. “You gotta get me to the hospital, Jed.”
“That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Now, come on and help me get you up.”
Country rolled to his side and crawled to his feet. He slumped into the car, breathing in heavy gasps.
Jed started up the car.
“Now, shut up a minute while I call in. The station will be wondering what’s going on out here.”
He made the call and clicked the receiver back into its cradle. He pulled the car out of the driveway and onto the road.
“Okay, when we get close to the hospital, I’m going to let you out and you’ll have to walk the last hundred yards or so.”
“What? I cain’t do that,” Country complained. “Jed, I cain’t barely stand up.”
“Well, you’re going to have to,” he said. “I can’t let anyone up there see my car. They all know who I am and I can’t be seen with you.”
“What am I gonna tell ’em?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Jed said as the hospital lights appeared up ahead. “Tell ’em you cut yourself shaving.”
Troy grabbed the woman’s wallet and flipped through the contents. He found a driver’s license, a debit card, and a library card. He ran to the door and tried them each. The library card was too thin and flimsy, but he was able to get it in slightly. The driver’s license proved to be the ideal thinness and firmness. He jammed it in beside the library card. Then using the two as a wedge, he shoved the thicker debit card between them. When he did, he saw the crack of the door noticeably widen. He put his shoulder on the door and shoved hard. It moved. He put his palm on the debit card, pushed the door with his shoulder again, and shoved the card in further.
When he did, the door let go in a rush and he fell through.
16
Frank ‘N’ Buff
Troy took the stairs up to the house three at a time, stumbling only once. His bad knee scraped down two of the steps, burning a big gash into his shin. He winced, but held on and bounded through the door into the house.
“Prosperity? Hey! Where are you?” he yelled, but only got an echo as a response.
He ran from room to room, his worry slipping into anxiety, his anxiety turning into fear. He had rescued her only to have her disappear again. The bedrooms were all empty and looked undisturbed. He jogged back down the stairs, and he saw the living room had been ransacked. The coffee table was turned over and had a big splintered hole in it. The back door was smashed and there was blood—blood mixed in with the glass, and a trail of dark blood drops leading from the recliner to the front door.
She must have fought with them and maybe they threw her through the back door. God, that had to have hurt her pretty bad. From the looks of the spattered blood leading out of the house, she’d lost quite a bit. He cursed himself for leaving her alone.
“Good work, Troy,” he said, slapping his leg. “Save the girl. Lose the girl. All in a matter of minutes.”
But what the heck had happened?
One minute they were working on getting the police out here, and the next … The police. He knew instantly they had made a mistake. The cop he’d seen at the Black Dog Tavern was obviously working for Boonesborough. It was likely that there were quite a few in the department on the take.
From the looks of things, she had struggled with the cop, gotten away, and run downstairs to find him. But he had been locked behind the secret door in the basement—in the soundproof drug room. He walked out on the porch and saw a pool of blood in the driveway. He cursed himself again for letting this happen to her.
A trail of blood led from the screen door to the middle of the driveway. This was probably where the cop had parked, and Troy was sure that he had taken Prosperity away from the house this time. The cop had been the one to kidnap and now probably kill the girl.
He gritted his teeth and stared off down the driveway. It was the moment of truth. He’d been here before. Like Caesar crossing the Rubicon mountains, or something like that. There was no turning back now. Boonesborough and his cronies wanted a war. They were gonna get one.
He took two steps back toward the house and saw a dark cloth lying in the driveway at his feet. He knelt down and picked it up with two fingers. It was soaking wet. In the dim light, he could see it was a bandana. Something threatened to spark in his memory, but his anger pushed it back down. He had work to do.
Troy reached up behind a rolled up blanket in the top of the closet. The shoebox he had brought with him when he arrived in Martha’s Vineyard was still there. He brought it down and opened it up. It took less than twenty seconds for him to load the gun with his last five bullets. The M1911 had come to him courtesy of a package stowed in a private plane from Key West. His brother Ryan had sent him a gift and it looked like it was going to come in handy.
Though he hoped he wouldn’t have to fire the gun, he slid the magazine home and wondered if five shots would do the trick. An image of the crates full of guns in the basement popped into his head and he almost went down to retrieve one. But this wasn’t Afghanistan. He decided his Colt Government would be all he would need.
He clicked the thumb safety and slid the gun into his waistband behind his back. He walked back out to the driveway, unsure of where he was going, but decided the best place to start would be at the center of all the dirty deeds—McCorker’s campaign headquarters. It was just after eight o’clock, but he figured with the election coming up soon, it would be all hands on deck tonight.
He hopped into Prosperity’s Volkswagen, started the car, and stomped the gas pedal. The car screeched and jerked, the driver’s side tires edging off the driveway. Mud and gravel flew up behind him, but he didn’t care. He turned into the road without slowing down, and a car swerved and honked as it passed.
He raised his hand to apologize, but he didn’t really care. He took the quickest route to McCorker’s place and was there in less than fifteen minutes.
As he expected, the office was open, but it wasn’t exactly the hubbub of activity that he had thought. Through the windows on the front of the building, he could see there were maybe four people hunched over desks with old-style telephone receivers pressed to their ears. Toward the back of the room stood two men, Boonesborough and McCorker. Boonesborough was wearing his trademark pale blue suit with a skinny navy tie. He had a look on his face that danced between anxiety and elation. He had one hand on his hip and the other dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.
Next to him stood Frank McCorker, the candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. McCorker was standing at what reminded Troy of attention—as in ten-hut attention. His shirt was a sweat-stained, light brown. His pants were darker brown. His tie was gone and his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. Apparently, he’d gotten a fresh haircut today looking toward television appearances.
“Can I help you?” a girl near the front asked him as she stood.
He held up his palm to stop her. His face must have looked pretty grim, because she squeaked and lowered her head to study her phone. He took two more steps, and the two men he was walking toward stopped their conversation. McCorker turned toward Troy and squinted his eyes. And the lightbulb went off in Troy’s head. He recognized McCorker.
The shockwave that hit him was almost enough to knock him off his feet. He stumbled sideways and had to catch himself on a desk. The man sitting there stood and reached out to help him.
“Sir, are you okay?”
“All good, son,” Troy tipped his cap.
He had lowered it in a mock gesture to the man, but what he was
really trying to do was cover his face from the man who was calling himself Frank McCorker.
“Just trying to get up to my apartment,” Troy pointed at the stairway to the left of the two men. “I live upstairs and I really need to get some sleep.”
“I hear ya,” the man took Troy by the elbow and led him toward the stairs. “We’ve all been burning the midnight oil around here.”
He ushered through the door and Troy jogged up the steps. He opened the door to the one room apartment and slumped down on the cot in the corner.
“If that don’t beat all,” he said to the empty room. “Never thought I’d see that fella again after the war.”
The man who would be governor of Massachusetts was none other than his former commanding officer—disgraced and discharged commanding officer—in Afghanistan, Buff Summerton.
“What in the world are you up to, Buff?” Troy scratched his chin.
This whole thing had just taken a very unexpected turn. He would have to tread lightly now, knowing what he knew about former General Summerton. The man turned out to be a real slimeball in charge of that whole deal back in the war. It was obvious he was back at it again, but what was the play this time?
He had come here to confront the men tonight, but now he wasn’t so sure. These were power players, and Troy realized he was going to need some help. But without help from his buddy at the CIA, he was going to have to find someone else. But who?
He closed the blinds and laid his head back on the cot to give it some thought. He was asleep in seconds.
The next morning he woke to the sound of a truck rumbling outside. He slid a finger through the blinds to see Country’s rusty truck—with his boat on a trailer behind—idling downstairs in front of the building. McCorker was leaning into the driver’s side window talking to him. When their conversation was through, he rapped his knuckles on the side of the truck and Country pulled away.
