No Good Brother

by Tyler Keevil

  En route he drained his beer and crushed the can, then tugged open the door. The storm had really picked up out there: snowflakes cycloned around us and the wind surged over the porch in blistering waves. We reached the porch steps just as they came up. Mark Delaney was in the front, and that helped. Jake grabbed his hand and pumped it repeatedly, acting juiced up and energized, asking Mark how the hell it was going, slapping his back with his other hand. He had to talk loudly, over the wind. ‘Good to see you,’ he said. I stood just behind him with this weird and rigid grin on my face, like some sort of village idiot.

  The others appeared behind Mark. In the dark, and the kaleidoscope of snow, it was difficult to make out faces, but Pat Delaney emerged next. Jake went for his hand, too. Pat didn’t offer it but Jake seized it all the same, spouting something about what a nice crib they had, just blowing a little smoke up their asses, blowing it everywhere, really. Throwing up this smokescreen of movement, smiles, chatter.

  I don’t know what they were expecting. Not this. Not to be welcomed at their own ranch by Jake, playing the part of concierge. He waved them all on (two other guys were coming up behind the Delaneys) and pointed towards the door. ‘Come on in, boys,’ Jake said. ‘Damn it’s cold out here. You want a hand with anything?’

  We backed up a few feet (he’d basically hemmed them in on the steps until then) and they followed us onto the porch. Third in line was that Ukrainian, Novak. He had one hand in his coat pocket, and looked from me to my brother, as if assessing our positions. I thought he might pull out a gun and just shoot us. I figured maybe that’s what they’d talked about, in the car. Doing to us what they’d done to those other guys. On the porch. Bam. And maybe they had intended that. But Jake had made the right play. He was walking alongside Mark, his shoulders hunched against the cold, asking him about the ride down, driving in the snow.

  I reached the door first. I opened it just as they got there and held it wide, polite as a doorman. The funny part was that they all accepted this; nobody considered it odd or even looked at me, really. I was simply this nonentity. Mark and Jake passed by, followed by Pat Delaney and Novak, and at the rear came a heavy-set guy laden with a lot of luggage, moving more slowly. The mule. He was dressed in a loose pinstripe suit and the falling snow stuck to the shoulders like flakes of dandruff.

  Once they were all inside, I stepped in there, too.

  Jake was already walking around, blowing on his hands to warm them. The table had a few beers on it, but we’d turned off the music and cleared the remains of the meal, at least.

  ‘What a fucking night,’ Jake said. ‘The snow is what, half a foot deep now?’

  ‘At least,’ Mark said. He’d gone to stand by the table, leaning on the back of a chair. ‘It got pretty hairy on the track coming up.’

  ‘No shit?’ Jake said. ‘You got four-wheel drive on those things, though?’

  ‘We got four-wheel drive.’

  ‘Good thing you came down early, though. We were worried you’d get snowed out. We got lots to talk about. Fuck. Hey,’ he said, as if it had just occurred to him. ‘You guys want a beer? Tim got beer. What’d you get, Tim?’

  ‘Olympia. It’s good stuff.’

  Novak said, ‘Horse piss.’

  ‘Sure – but good horse piss.’

  Mark laughed. Not Novak. He lurked in the corner, watching, his face flat and expressionless as a shovel.

  ‘You want some horse piss?’ Jake asked Mark.

  He held out a can to Mark, who took it without opening it. Jake tossed one to me and I did something weird. I cracked it and handed it to the heavy-set guy, who had tan skin and might have been Hispanic. He shrugged and took a big swig, but Pat looked at him, hard. So he stopped and put it to one side, on the windowsill, like a kid caught eating candy. This whole time Pat hadn’t said anything. He was prowling around the place. He checked in the lounge, in the games room at the pool table, and padded into the kitchen. Sensing something amiss. Even when he was silent he was a big presence. You could tell the other guys were waiting on him. Novak still had his hand in his pocket.

  ‘Where the fuck is my microwave?’ Delaney asked.

  ‘On the porch,’ Jake said. ‘Maria broke it.’

  Mark giggled, and looked out the window. ‘It’s there all right,’ he said.

  ‘And where the fuck is she, then?’

  ‘I think she’s upstairs. I heard them up there a while ago,’ Jake said.

  ‘What are you two jokers doing in the house?’

  Jake held out his hands. ‘Hey – it’s cold, man. Your bunkhouse is like a fridge. The goddamn heater doesn’t work. So we came up to have a few drinks.’

  ‘It is pretty cold down there,’ Mark said, agreeably.

  ‘So you just come in here, eating my food, drinking my beer?’

  ‘We bought the beer,’ Jake said.

  ‘Shut up about the fucking beer.’

  Novak moved from his place in the corner and stood in front of the door, deliberately blocking it. For a few seconds it was extremely quiet.

  Then Delaney said, ‘You punk.’

  He was talking to Jake. Like I said, I was incidental. I was just a tagalong.

  Jake held up his hands. ‘I didn’t mean to infringe or whatever the fuck. Me and my brother just wanted to warm up. No disrespect, all right? Your house is your house.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Jake said, and laughed. ‘You’re not still mad about that phone call, are you? Hey – I’ll be the first to admit, we said some heated things. I was under duress, man. But look. It’s all good. The horse is here. Okay? The horse is here. We did it.’

  ‘You did it, all right. And your face is all over the news.’

  ‘But not my name, yet.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Mark said.

  ‘How the fuck long will it take them to ID you?’

  ‘My face, my problem.’

  Delaney shook his head, this violent jerk, and said no, no – this was his problem. Because people knew there was a connection, so people would know who was behind it.

  ‘What connection?’ Jake said. ‘I’m nobody. I’m just some bum.’

  ‘People talk.’

  ‘People talk shit all the time.’

  At the door, Novak shifted and said, ‘What do you want me to do with these guys?’

  ‘Hey,’ Jake said, looking at Mark. ‘Hey.’

  We heard footsteps on the stairs, and a voice: ‘Patrick?’

  From the shadow of the stairwell, Maria appeared. Her hair was all mussed up and she looked puffy-cheeked, vacant-eyed. I thought she’d gone and done more methadone, but then I understood it was an act, put on for us. She smiled at Pat, at Mark, at all of them.

  ‘It’s good to see you boys,’ she said.

  She went to Pat and gave him a kiss and casually picked up one of the cans of beer and cracked it and took a sip. She was acting as if everything was normal, which made it hard to act as if everything wasn’t.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

  ‘Putting Sam to bed. When d’you get here?’

  ‘Just now.’

  ‘Have you seen the horse?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Pat said.

  ‘It’s in the stable,’ I said, hopefully.

  ‘We were just talking,’ Pat said, to Maria. ‘Me and your friend Jake.’

  He was trying to tell her to leave, but she pretended not to understand.

  ‘You should go see it,’ she said. ‘It’s really something.’

  ‘Since when are you interested in horses?’

  ‘This one is different.’

  Pat stood, tense and bristling, for another few seconds. Then he said, ‘So let’s go and see the fucking horse, then.’ He pointed at Jake. ‘Just me and you. Just the two of us.’

  They got their boots on, and stepped back outside. I had to watch through the window as Jake hiked down there with him, veiled by the snow and dark. At that point
I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen. I had to trust that Jake could talk his way out of it, and I believed that he could. When he needed to – for example, when his life depended on it – my brother could be uncommonly charming and congenial.

  ‘You boys want some food?’ Maria asked. ‘We barbecued ribs and steaks.’

  Mark made an appreciative sound, and patted his belly.

  ‘What about you, Ricky?’

  Apparently that was the heavy-set guy. ‘Hell, yeah,’ he said. ‘We didn’t stop to eat.’

  He sat down at the table, and Mark joined him – placing the beer I’d given him aside, still without opening it. I went, too. I went and sat with them, trying to act nonchalant about it all: about us having leftovers while the fate of my brother and I was being decided. Maria brought out the ribs and steaks and the remains of the potatoes we’d had. She put a plate in front of me as well but was very careful not to treat me any differently to the others. Mark and Ricky helped themselves and tore into the whisky-grilled ribs appreciatively, chewing loudly and making smacking noises with their lips. I listened to that and every so often looked at the window, where Novak was stationed, peering out, attentive as a terrier.

  ‘This is fucking good,’ Mark said.

  His mouth was full, and the cold had given his voice an odd rasp, as if he’d had asthma as a kid.

  Ricky nodded and said, ‘Tastes like my mother’s.’

  Mark said, ‘You taste your mother?’

  Then he wheezed, and slapped me. ‘This fucking guy tastes his mother!’

  I smiled, politely, but maybe didn’t laugh as hard as he would have liked.

  ‘What’s up?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Your brother seems pissed.’

  ‘It was a long ride. He’ll get over it.’

  They gnawed at their ribs, Novak stood watch, and I waited. About ten minutes later, footsteps sounded on the porch. Jake and Pat were back, coming towards the door. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, but when they stepped inside Pat was smiling. He saw the food and came over and picked up a rib – holding it like a drumstick – and ripped a chunk of meat off with his teeth. Then, after tossing the bone down, he jerked a thumb at Jake and said, ‘You know these jokers brought that horse down on a boat?’

  Mark spat out a mouthful of potato. ‘A fucking boat?’

  ‘A fishing boat.’

  ‘My brother’s boat,’ Jake said.

  ‘That’s genius.’

  Pat sat down by his brother, and started helping himself to the food. He didn’t comment on it. He just accepted the food was there, and his, like everything else in that house. ‘You know what’s genius?’ he said. ‘We could shift a lot of product that way.’

  Mark said, ‘I heard the Triads are doing that.’

  ‘Beats the hippy hikers, or fucking air drops.’

  Ricky said, ‘The Angels run the docks.’

  Jake pulled up a chair and turned it around, straddling it. ‘Talk to my bro,’ he said, nodding at me. ‘He’s on the boats. And he’s a hell of a captain. Piloted us through a bitch of a storm on the strait. What fucking strait was it again, Tim?’

  They all looked at me, as if noticing me for the first time.

  ‘Juan de Fuca,’ I said. ‘But they call it Juan de Puke-a.’

  ‘Forget puking. I was shitting myself.’

  Mark giggled. He had a smear of whisky sauce on his chin. ‘I can’t believe you put a horse on a boat.’

  He wanted to know the details and practicalities, so we told them about turning around at the border, and thinking maybe we’d take the horse back, except the cops had already been there at the stables. So we ended up at the docks, with no place left to go.

  ‘Hey,’ Mark said. ‘We’re sorry about that. Our guy at the border wet the bed.’

  Pat grunted. ‘He’s a dead man, that guy. Dead.’

  ‘Well, we found a way.’

  We told them about loading the horse, and clearing customs, and when we got to the bit about Shenzao going overboard, and us catching her in the seine net, they were laughing. Even Novak. That bastard still wanted to shoot us – clearly – but he couldn’t help laughing. We didn’t mention the hen party, and all the footage they had of us, for obvious reasons.

  ‘You clowns,’ Pat said, shaking his head. ‘You fucking clowns.’

  Mark finally cracked the beer that was in front of him. It was like a signal. Ricky and Pat started drinking, too. Pat took a long pull and burped and attacked another rib.

  He said to Maria, ‘Where the hell did you get this meat?’

  ‘Jake cooked it,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He looked at Jake, appraisingly.

  Then he said, ‘You’re a good fucking cook.’ He slapped Jake on the back, hard, and laughed, and all the other guys laughed, too. As they did, Jake and I made eye contact across the table. Just a look. Just enough to say, ‘Okay – so what the hell happens next?’

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  What happened next, as it turned out, was crokinole. The board they kept down there was the same make as the one in Vancouver: a high-end mahogany model with a smoothly lacquered veneer. Pat had brought his personal set of shooting discs from home. He began to lay those out reverently on the table where they kept the board. He even had this special wax powder that you sprinkle on the playing surface to ensure the discs slide smoothly.

  On the wall above the table hung a chalkboard for tallying up snooker scores and Pat used it to create a grid for a round robin tournament, with each of our names on it. He didn’t ask us if we wanted to play. That was simply a given. It was like being in the presence of a very demanding and very dangerous child: a tyrant prince.

  We had to do what he wanted, or else.

  ‘Who the fuck wants a shot of Jack Daniel’s?’ he said, brandishing a twenty-sixer.

  We said that we did, except Maria (she had withdrawn into the kitchen) and Novak, who simply sat in a chair and didn’t drink anything and observed – patient and careful as a sentinel – as we each took a turn swigging from the twixer.

  ‘What are the stakes?’ Mark said, wiping his mouth.

  ‘The usual.’

  ‘Two C-notes to buy-in.’

  Jake and I looked at each other.

  ‘We don’t got that kind of money on us,’ Jake said.

  Mark giggled. ‘Ricky don’t neither.’

  ‘I got an eight ball,’ Ricky said.

  ‘Forget it,’ Pat told Jake. ‘You can take it from what we owe you.’

  He said it in a sly, insincere way, and looked at his guys – as if to say, these losers still think we’re actually going to pay them.

  ‘Sure,’ Jake said.

  Pat turned to me. ‘What about you? Three fingers enough to play with?’

  ‘Enough to jerk off with,’ Ricky said.

  He’d been waiting to burn somebody, ever since Mark’s comment about his mother. But he said it in a kind of friendly way. I mimed tugging at my crotch with my bad hand.

  ‘I ain’t good,’ I said, ‘but I can still give it a go.’

  Mark laughed and shook the discs from the bag (nobody else was allowed to use Pat’s discs) and they clattered out onto the table. We began to sort them, separating the light wood pieces from the dark. While this went on, Pat changed the music and cranked up some drum and bass – boom boom boom – and on the table next to the board he and Ricky started cutting up Ricky’s eight ball: creating long fat lines of coke, like albino banana slugs. They snorted one each before the game started. After pawing at his nose, Pat made this weird hiccupping, gagging sound in the back of his throat.

  ‘Hell yeah,’ he said, cracking his knuckles. ‘I’m gonna school you tools!’

  We settled down around the table. Crokinole isn’t complicated: you just have to flick the discs towards a hole in the centre of the board. The closer you get, the higher your score. But the other guy can knock your discs off, so in that way it’s a lot like table-top cu
rling.

  ‘Twenty-shot to see who starts,’ Mark said.

  Ricky’s disc was closer, so he got first shot. He used it to nestle up behind one of the peg-guards. Jake was rusty and sent his own disc careening off the peg into the gutter. But by his second shot he had settled and managed a double-clear. Pat snapped in appreciation.

  ‘Look at this fucking southpaw,’ he said.

  They went back and forth, shot-for-shot, clearing each other’s discs pretty cleanly. As the game continued, I looked around for Maria. She was hovering in the kitchen, watching. She caught my eye and beckoned. I announced I was going to get myself a drink, but nobody paid me much mind: they were engrossed in the game. I sidled on through. Maria greeted me in an overly polite way, and said she was making vodka sodas and asked if I might like one.

  ‘Why, sure,’ I said, just as formally. ‘I appreciate that, ma’am.’

  As she mixed the drinks, Maria spoke without looking at me: just talking low and hurriedly under her breath.

  ‘You got to get out,’ she said.

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Here.’

  She laid something on the counter, behind the toaster. The keys to the truck.

  ‘What about Sam?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll tell her.’

  ‘You still want us to take her?’

  ‘If nothing else, just get her away from here.’

  I heard footsteps on the hardwood. Novak had come into the kitchen. He crossed to the sink and filled up his glass with water. He turned and stared at us and drank it, slowly.

  ‘You want a beer, man?’ I asked.

  He didn’t even say no, or shake his head. It was like I hadn’t spoken. When he’d finished the water he filled the glass up again and walked back out. The guy was unsettling as all hell.

  ‘I’ll tell Jake,’ I said to Maria.

  I slid the keys across the counter and casually put them in my pocket. I wanted to reassure her but thought Novak might still be keeping tabs on us, so I just met her eyes one last time and took the drink she’d made me back out to the crokinole table. Jake was on his last shot. He cleared Ricky off the board and left himself in the centre circle, sealing the win.

  ‘Jake owned you, Rick!’ Mark said, sounding unnaturally excited.