Authors: Scott Cook
“A couple,” Crowe said petulantly, thinking of the Wild Rose membership.
Worrell smiled and shook his head. “You’re a cranky hardass, Crowe, but that’s why I love you. I left the final piece on the desktop of the right-hand monitor. It’s called ‘Wolfe video.’”
Crowe saw the file and double-clicked on it. Up came a black-and-white security video of a man signing a motel register. Worrell had taken the liberty of zooming in. Even in the grainy digital video, Crowe could clearly see it was a clean-shaven, dyed-blonde Alex Dunn.
Worrell laced his fingers together and extended his arms to crack his knuckles. The girls were returning his favor, stroking his own boobs under his tee-shirt. They were both doing an excellent job of making it look like they were enjoying themselves, God bless them. “I’d say that’s worthy of a bonus, wouldn’t you?”
Crowe folded the piece of paper and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans with the other information. He reached into his front pocket, withdrew a thick wad of twenties, and threw it at Worrell as he passed the sofa on his way to the stairs. He had to watch his spending these days, but this was one instance where he couldn’t afford to be stingy, and it pissed him off mightily. “Choke on it,” he said with a grim smile.
As Worrell scrambled to grab the scattered bills, a haggard-looking middle-aged woman appeared halfway down the stairs. She cast a befuddled glance at Worrell, then smiled sweetly when she saw Crowe. “Mr. Crowe!” she said warmly. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
Crowe returned the smile and shook her hand. “Mrs. Worrell, you look prettier every time I see you.”
The woman blushed, filling her homely face with blotchy color that reminded Crowe of her son. “Oh, you!” she blurted. She turned to see her son and the two girls on the sofa. “Donny, would you and your friends like some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”
Worrell scowled. He hadn’t bothered to stop pawing the girls; in fact, Crowe caught sight of a stubby tent under the front of his sweatpants and nearly gagged. ”
God
, Mom! Just leave us alone!”
Worrell’s mother flashed a pained smile that Crowe thought she wore like an old apron. He put a hand on her shoulder as he passed her on his way to the door. “You must be very proud,” he said as he left.
#
Crowe had quickly learned that there were two seasons in Calgary: winter and road construction. Since it was the middle of the latter, Crowe’s Navigator crawled through the late afternoon traffic like a big blue turtle, passing the crumpled remnants of collisions and bored-looking flagmen leaning on signs that said STOP and SLOW. On most days, he might have been annoyed, but today it offered him some much-needed time to analyze and strategize. By the time he made it to the Wild Roses clubhouse in Bowness, he’d puzzled out a game plan that was about as good as he could hope for under the circumstances.
The clubhouse was known locally as the Rosebush, though there was nothing to indicate it had a name at all. It was a nondescript concrete shoebox attached to the rear of a run-down storefront on an overgrown lot. A chain link fence around the property seemed to be working equally hard at keeping people out and keeping the rambling crabgrass in. The storefront was once a thriving secondhand shop, popular among the neighborhood’s working poor, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the area who remembered what it was before that. The shoebox had been a warehouse decades ago, but that had been lost to the mists of time as well. In any case, the former owner, a Chinese immigrant, had been well paid for the building, and was now living in a condo in Puerto Vallarta. Most people knew the Rosebush for what it was these days and gave it a wide berth if they didn’t have direct business with its inhabitants.
Crowe parked out front and walked into the storefront. A rat-faced young man with tattoos up and down his skinny arms sat on a stool behind the cash register. The kid looked up from the porno mag he was reading and fixed a wary eye on Crowe. “They’re waiting for you, I think,” he said.
Crowe scowled. “Get the fuck out of here.” Rat Face flashed him a sullen look but did as he was told. Crowe closed the door behind him and stalked through a swinging door into the back of the building.
The Rosebush proper was a converted two-story concrete warehouse, home to an office, a large unisex bathroom and a common area with a few well-worn sofas and chairs. A pool table and a wet bar with a kitchenette added a honky tonk atmosphere, and there were a couple of rooms with army surplus beds for Roses who couldn’t navigate their way home after an all-nighter. A double-wide steel garage door opened onto a mechanical and body shop, where the Roses kept their rides in top condition.
The second floor was something else entirely. It consisted of tiny rooms decked out to look like college dorms. Each was assigned to a particular girl and outfitted with a webcam in front of which said girl (and sometimes her friends) would perform various acts for the viewing pleasure of thousands of eager men (and no doubt a few women) via the Internet, for the perfectly reasonable sum of $37.50 a month. The perverts would see a charge from Wild Rose Media, Inc. on their credit card statements, the information age equivalent of a brown paper wrapper. And the best part was that it was completely legal. The girls were well paid, and always made sure the good folks at Revenue Canada got their cut of the action – except, of course, for the cash bonuses they received for jobs such as servicing Donald Worrell, always paid in used twenties.
The main floor common room was full, as Crowe had expected. He could smell takeout pizza, dust, and the familiar odor of men who had a nodding relationship at best with soap and deoderant. Kenny Flo and his twin brother, Dougie Flo, lounged on a sofa, passing a bottle of White Owl whiskey back and forth between them. Shitbox, a great buffalo of a man in a leather vest that could have upholstered an armchair, played a game of cutthroat pool with Smokey Hooper and Spider Burke, both of whom wore dingy strap undershirts that showed off their ropy arms. Digger Lewis sat on a barstool, cleaning his fingernails with a wicked-looking pocket knife, his tongue planted firmly between his yellow teeth. The last two, Boone and Pulaski, chewed thoughtfully on oversized slices of pizza and glared at Crowe.
“Gentlemen,” Crowe said, unsmiling, as he strolled between the pool table and the chairs where Boone and Pulaski sat. “Always a pleasure.”
Rat Face had set off Crowe’s alarms, and the look from Boone and Pulaski confirmed his suspicions. He glanced around the room – the pool game had come to an abrupt halt, and the Florence twins had put down their bottle.
So it’s going to be now
. Crowe had expected it at some point, of course, but he’d hoped it wouldn’t be today of all days. Then again, it had to happen sometime, especially after his conversation earlier with Hodge.
Some of them guys are pretty hardcore
.
Fuck it
, he thought.
Might as well pull off the Band-Aid and get it over with
.
Shitbox laid his cue next to the table, drained his bottle of Labatt’s Blue, and let out a Herculean belch. Nearly as wide as he was tall, with a round face and a beard that qualified him for entry into ZZ Top, Shitbox was easily the largest and physically strongest of the Roses. He was also the most genial, with a disarmingly squeaky voice that was totally out of proportion with his size.
“Hey, Crowe,” he said. “How’s the boss doing?”
Crowe recognized the attempt to defuse the tension in the room and ignored it. He liked Shitbox well enough, certainly more than the rest of the Roses, but he wasn’t about to engage in idle talk. This was their first meeting after the guilty verdict, after Rufus Hodge was moved to maximum security, after the executions of Chuck Palliser and Richie Duff. It was without a doubt the most important moment in his two years with the Wild Roses.
Crowe fixed his gaze on Pulaski and leaned against the pool table. He folded his arms across his chest and crossed his feet, not unlike the position he’d taken in the plastic chair at the Badlands. He was good at it, and it had served him well over the course of his career.
Pulaski stared up at him defiantly, chewing his pizza slowly and deliberately.
“Hey, Pulaski,” Crowe said mildly. “I could swear I just saw that little shitpoke cousin of yours in the storefront when I walked in.”
Maxim Pulaski was approximately the same size as Crowe, but a few years younger, with shoulder-length raven black hair, and a handlebar moustache that he thought made him look like Sam Elliot. He had been born in Eastern Europe and moved to Canada with his parents when he was five. When fighting broke out back home, he’d returned to the Balkans and saw more than his share of combat in that ugly war. He wasn’t someone to fuck with lightly.
Pulaski wore his shirtsleeves rolled high to show off his biceps, where he and every other Wild Rose sported a tattoo of a red rose wrapped in barbed wire. Crowe waited patiently as Pulaski swallowed the pizza and wiped the grease from his mouth with a paper towel. He took his time.
“What’s it to you?” Pulaski finally asked, his eyes locked on Crowe’s. “He’s worked lookout before. He needed some cash, so I told him he could. You got a problem with that?”
Crowe maintained his shooting-the-shit tone. “I told you months ago that I don’t want hangers-on in the clubhouse when the boss is in lockup. It’s too much of a risk.”
Was Hodge talking about Pulaski earlier?
Crowe wondered. Aside from Crowe himself, Pulaski was probably the smartest of the Roses, and the most ruthless. But was he capable of doing what Hodge thought he might have?
Boone put down his own slice of pizza and stood up, positioning himself next to Crowe by the pool table. He was the oldest of the Roses, with long, steel-grey hair in a ponytail, and deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. His belly hung out over his belt, but his arms were thick slabs that were still as strong as they’d ever been. Crowe ignored him and kept his gaze firmly on Pulaski.
“Well?” said Crowe. He raised his eyebrows in expectation of an answer.
Pulaski stared at him. “What’s the big deal?”
“What’s the big deal?” Crowe grinned and shook his head. “Ask Dumb Fuck Duff what the big deal is, Pulaski, he’ll tell you. Oh, wait a minute, no he won’t. He can’t. He doesn’t have a fucking tongue anymore, does he?”
Boone put his hands on the hips of his faded jeans. Crowe continued to ignore him. “You got sump’n to say, Crowe?” Boone asked, trying to sound nonchalant yet defiant at the same time. “You got sump’n to say, spit it out.”
Now Boone, too. Could he have helped Pulaski? The two were thick as thieves, and both had military backgrounds, though Boone had never been in the shit like Pulaski. Crowe held his position and glanced around the room. The Florence brothers were watching him intently. Smokey Hooper and Spider Burke leaned on their pool cues, Smokey lighting up one of his trademark Export A Filters, the ones people in the know called Green Death. Shitbox looked like a kid who had walked in on his parents fighting. Digger Lewis continued jamming his knife under his fingernails as if he were the only person in the room.
Crowe smiled, letting nothing show. “Fuck me, Pulaski,” he chuckled. “I didn’t know you were a ventriloquist. I couldn’t even see your lips move when Boone talked. Maybe I should have been looking at your asshole instead.”
Boone scowled and laid a hand on Crowe’s right shoulder. “Now listen here, you prick–”
Crowe grabbed Boone’s right hand with his own. Quick as a snake, he twisted the older man’s arm over his head and behind his back, using the momentum to position himself behind Boone. He drove his right knee up into the base of Boone’s spine, then grabbed Boone’s thick grey hair with his free hand. He didn’t dare give Boone time to get his bearings; if he did, the older man’s strength would be a threat. Crowe shoved Boone’s head toward the center of the pool table. His nose connected with a wet smack, spraying blood and snot across two square yards of green felt.
Crowe heard a sharp intake of air behind him as Pulaski leapt from his chair. He dropped Boone to the floor and spun to his right, grabbing Shitbox’s cue and swinging it in a wide arc in one fluid movement. The cue struck the back of Pulaski’s head with the force of a major league triple and split in half. The narrow end flew through the air, smacking Digger on the side of the head, finally breaking his fingernail-cleaning reverie.
Boone moaned on the floor next to the pool table as Crowe kept his eyes on Pulaski. He was clearly stunned, stumbling backward away from the table, but his right hand was hidden from Crowe’s view by his torso. Crowe hadn’t seen Pulaski when he swung the cue, had only heard the loud cracking sound when it connected with the man’s head. He would have to make a split-second decision when that right hand reappeared. He was ready. Jason Crowe was
always
ready. It was his job.
Pulaski lurched toward Crowe. Seconds ticked by. Finally, his right hand emerged from behind his back holding a folding knife with a four-inch carbon steel blade. It was shorter than the blade Digger had been using on his fingernails, but Crowe judged by the quality of steel that it would be considerably sharper. Pulaski swung blindly at Crowe’s midsection with all his strength, slicing through his cotton tee-shirt, but missing the skin underneath by millimeters.
Crowe stepped to the side and grabbed the wrist of Pulaski’s knife hand with his own left. He brought the thick end of the broken cue down with his right hand on the outside of Pulaski’s left elbow. Pulaski’s scream echoed through the concrete bunker like a siren.
We’re not done yet
, Crowe though grimly. He hauled the man, stumbling, over to the edge of the pool table next to Boone, who lay on the floor, holding his gushing nose and cursing. Crowe stomped the back of Pulaski’s knee. He dropped next to the table, still moaning, as Crowe grabbed Pulaski’s left hand and laid it flat on the edge next to the corner pocket. Crowe picked up the eight-ball, tossed it lightly and caught it a couple of times, making sure everyone could see it. He surveyed the room quickly; Shitbox looked on the verge of sucking his thumb, but the rest, including Digger Lewis now, were watching him with rapt attention.