Authors: James W. Hall
The man was out of lies, all his courage draining away, hanging his head.
“What I want to know, Jorge, and this is the point of this entire exercise, I want to know if any of those folks are still around. Those people that paid you to be a traitorous infiltrator.”
There was some jabber between the two Mexicans, then the translator said, “He don’t know if those people still around.”
“But he’s admitting he made movies for them, and got paid for spying. Is that the case?”
“They ask him to wear the watch, bring it to them every night. That’s all. They gave him a hundred dollars. He didn’t know it was wrong. He needed the money. Jésus knows nothing more. They were in the woods, back there behind where the black people live, now they gone.”
“Except they’re not,” Webb said. “I believe one of those hippies is still lurking nearby. And I believe Diego here knows where the slimewad is.”
“No, sir, no, sir. I don’t know nothing, sir.”
“Then it looks to me like we got us a classic rock and a hard place.”
Webb reached out and tipped up the small man’s chin so he was forced to look at Webb eyeball to eyeball.
“You know what happened to your friend Javier when I caught him with an identical watch as this one? You seen him around here lately?”
The man shook his head.
“I did nothing wrong, Mr. Webb, not a spy.”
“If that’s your story, boy, then here’s the deal. I give you three choices.”
“Tres opciones,”
the other one said.
“That’s more than fair, you ask me. Number one, I pull out my phone, I dial a gentleman I know in Raleigh, man works with ICE. You know what ICE is, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“So if I ask him polite, he’ll drive down this afternoon as a special favor to me and he’ll check to make sure your papers got all their
i
’s dotted and their
t’
s crossed, assuming you got some papers to show him.”
The illegal listened to the translation and said something back to his buddy and the buddy said to Webb, “He lost his papers. They destroyed. His family papers too. No papers. Jésus is a hard worker. He never been in trouble.”
“Then tell him he’s got two other choices. Number two, you tell me where this man is hiding. This man who bribed Jésus to spy on my farming operations.”
When the translator had given his friend the update, Jorge said, “I don’t know about anyone hiding. I wear watch, I give them watch, they give it back, and I never see them again.”
“Well, then I guess that leaves us with number three.”
Webb bent forward and pulled up one of his own pant legs, all the way to the knee.
“This is how my daddy handled things back in the day when he caught me in a lie. This is how we worked it out between us.”
“What is that?” Burkhart said, craning forward. “He scald you?”
The slick hairless scars resembled burn marks, but they weren’t.
“There’s your number three, boy. So pick your poison.”
The man was silent, eyes scanning slowly around the hog barn as though taking one farewell look. The two Mexicans had a short back and forth. Both of them looked like they might be ready to make a run for it. Then the culprit looked at Webb with the weary gaze of a veteran of defeat and said, “I don’t know where anyone hiding, Mr. Webb. I don’t know.”
“Strip off your overalls, boy. I don’t have all fucking day.”
Jorge’s face was pale and strained. But he did as he was told.
When his overalls were heaped on the concrete floor, Webb said, “Now start up the pressure cleaner, boy. Start her up.”
Jorge cranked up the DeWalt’s Honda engine and stepped away. His boxer shorts were white and printed with red hearts. Burkhart looked up at the ceiling of the barn and shook his head. Lordy day.
Webb picked up the spray wand and aimed it at the floor and fired a quick pulse and the wand kicked back against his hand. Forty-two hundred pounds per square inch of firepower, enough to peel the chrome off the bumper of a ’57 Chevy.
“Tell me where he’s hiding out, this man you been spying for.”
His friend didn’t bother to translate. He shut his eyes, unable to watch.
Webb turned to Burkhart and said, “When I’m done here, if this man is still alive, you put him in one of them special cells. Give him a chance to consider the errors of his ways.”
Burkhart nodded and Webb aimed the sprayer at the Mex.
When the Mexican raised his hands in helpless surrender, Webb fired a blast at his ankles, the right then the left. Doing a hot-footed jig, Jorge howled. After a few seconds, the skin peeled back and blood ran onto the floor. Webb cut off the spray.
“You sure about this, Jorge? You sure this how you want it to go?”
The man was shivering, tears on his cheeks, speechless.
“I know nothing. Nothing.”
“Okay, then.”
Webb fired another blast, working up the man’s leg to his knee, leaving a two-inch stripe, then aiming at the valentines, another blast, holding down the trigger, holding it tight until the cloth at his crotch ripped apart and darkened with blood, and the howling was almost more than a civilized man could bear.
TWELVE
THORN ORDERED PLAIN WAFFLES, THINKING
they might stimulate his appetite. He stared down at them for a while, then out of habit he cut them into small squares and swiped some butter across the grids and watched it melt. He tried pouring maple syrup over them but that did nothing to rouse his hunger either. He pushed the plate away and took a sip of the black coffee and sat back in the booth and looked out the window at the wreckage of the burger restaurant.
Sitting across from him, Cruz was on the phone, her second call since they’d been seated. Speaking softly, a hand cupped over her mouth as she told someone to expect them by early afternoon.
When she finished, she set the phone beside her plate of pancakes and said, “That was our contact in Pine Haven. Name’s Webb Dobbins. It’s his farm Flynn’s group was targeting.”
Thorn watched her cut up her short stack and spear a chunk and tuck it quickly into her mouth, then repeat the process. She wasn’t having any trouble with her appetite.
“What really happened to Tina?”
“Just what I told Sugarman.”
“He didn’t believe your story. And I’m having the same problem.”
“So call her. Ask her yourself.”
She dug her cell from her purse and handed it to him.
“Don’t know her number,” Thorn said.
Cruz recited it to him.
“I had her under surveillance for some time. I know all her numbers.”
Thorn punched it in. Got her voicemail.
“Sorry. Me and my honey are on a little romantic getaway. If I’m not answering, well, you know. I’m otherwise occupied. Whoopee.”
Thorn shut off the phone and set it on the table.
“She’s not answering.”
“She’s probably sleeping it off. She smokes a lot of grass, that one.”
Thorn nudged his plate of waffles farther away.
“Who drove Tina back to Key Largo?”
“You still don’t trust me?”
“I’m working on it. Who drove her?”
“An associate of mine.”
A few minutes later, waiting at the checkout register, his gym bag in hand, Thorn looked out at the parking lot and saw Deputy Randolph speaking to a man in a blue suit. Thorn told Cruz he’d meet her outside and before she could respond he was out the door.
The man in the suit was short and heavyset with a comb-over the morning breeze had flipped up like the hinged lid on a mason jar. He was consulting an electronic tablet while Randolph was unwrapping a stick of gum.
“Thorn,” he said, folding the gum into his mouth. “You’re still here.”
“About to leave. Unless you need me.”
“And who’s this?” the fat man said.
“Guy I told you about, hauled the kid’s body out of the fire.” The fat man looked Thorn up and down but didn’t seem awestruck. “Thorn, this is Detective Dickerson.”
“That fire was arson, wasn’t it?”
“What makes you think that?” Dickerson took a second look at Thorn.
“Like I told Randolph last night, there was a substance in the victim’s mouth. At the time I thought it might’ve been vomit, but now I don’t know. It was heavier, thicker, smelled like spoiled meat. You might be looking at foul play.”
“You a forensics specialist, are you? Come to our small hamlet to share your expertise with the country boys?”
Deputy Randolph must’ve seen the veins rise in Thorn’s throat. He took hold of Thorn’s arm and steered him back toward the restaurant.
“Being an asshole,” Randolph said. “It’s his mission in life. Don’t take it personal.”
Thorn shrugged out of his hold.
Randolph said, “What you told me last night, the goop in his mouth, I passed it on to the ME and he took a look before he started the autopsy. It’s all preliminary, but yeah, seems to be a big wad of ground beef in the kid’s cheeks, more of it blocking his windpipe. And he wasn’t wolfing down a burger. The meat wasn’t cooked.”
Thorn asked him what they made of that, but Randolph shook his head.
“Murder by meat is how it looks. A fire to cover it.”
“You ever hear of that before?”
“No, sir, that’s a new one on me. Hard to picture how it happened, you know, the mechanics of it. Not to mention the why.”
Thorn spent a few uncomfortable seconds trying to picture someone being choked to death on a handful of meat.
“One other thing came up,” Randolph said. “Early last evening apparently there was a confrontation, the kid versus some fellow in the drive-through window. Manager told us about it, thought it might be relevant. The incident was captured on the security cam. We just took custody of the disc, haven’t had a look, but I don’t have much hope for that.”
Thorn was staring at the wreckage.
“You want to leave me a cell number, I’ll let you know the outcome of the investigation, seeing you have a personal stake.”
“Not personal. I was just passing by. I did what anybody would.”
“Wish that were true,” Randolph said. “I surely wish that were true.”
“Good luck finding the guy. I’ll check back if I’m free.”
Across the parking lot, Cruz motioned for him to join her. She was waiting at the rear of a brown four-door sedan, an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, one of those gas-swilling mastodons from twenty years back. The trunk was open, her gear and the green duffel stowed inside. Thorn tossed his gym bag beside the other bags. When he slammed the trunk and straightened, Cruz was in his face.
“Now listen. The two people you’re about to meet, they’re members of my team, but they can be quite volatile. So I’m asking you, please, don’t antagonize them. The less you interact with them, the better. They don’t need to know anything about you, and you don’t
want
to know anything about them. Keep it impersonal. Clear?”
“I’m feeling a little volatile myself.”
“Control yourself. Don’t run this off the rails. There’s a lot at stake.”
The guy was sitting behind the steering wheel and in the seat behind him was a pale, emaciated young woman with gigantic sunglasses that hid half her face and a baseball cap cocked sideways. She wore a baggy black sweater and jeans ripped at the knees, and was scrolling through messages on her phone and didn’t look up as Thorn and Cruz stepped close to the Olds. There was something vaguely familiar about her but Thorn couldn’t say what.
Cruz knuckle-tapped the guy’s window and he cranked it down.
“This is the man I told you about.” She gestured with her chin at Thorn.
The guy continued to stare out the windshield at the charred ruins of the burger joint.
The young woman in the back rolled down her window.
“Hey, me and X were thinking of going retro, boys up front, girls in back. Can you dig it?”
When they were seated, Thorn riding shotgun, Cruz introduced him to the driver a second time. The man didn’t say a word or look over, and he didn’t offer his hand and Thorn didn’t offer his. An instant bristling standoff, the kind of hairy-chested ritual Thorn had experienced since he was old enough to make a fist. Two guys thrown into the same small cage with the clear understanding that only one of them would be coming out with his manhood fully intact. In recent years Thorn had lost interest in such bullyboy contests, but the mood he was in this morning brought it all back.
“X-88,” Thorn said. “Is that with numbers or you spell it out?”
The guy looked over at Thorn. He was swarthy, in his late twenties, heavyset with overripe lips and a gleaming shaved head. Big arms swelling the sleeves of his black polo shirt. A fleshy beer keg, thick in the chest, thicker at the waist. But it didn’t look like fat to Thorn.
“Eighty-eight,” he said. “It’s a number. Maybe you never counted that high.”
“Good one,” Pixie said.
“You use a hyphen or go without?” Thorn said.
“It’s a nickname, Thorn,” said Cruz. “Give it a rest.”
“He’s giving you a ration of shit, X,” Pixie said.
Thorn glanced back at the young woman.
“What? He needs an interpreter?”
“Thorn?” X said. “Is that with a prick or without?”
“Out of the park,” Pixie said, clapping her hands. “Slam dunk.”
“Okay, knock it off, all of you. We’re on the same side. Where we’re going, what we’re doing, we can’t be at each other’s throats. I’m warning you. Stop the smartass. His name is X-88. Numbers, hyphen. Call him X if the ‘eighty-eight’ is too much for you. And you too, X. From now on we need to depend on each other, so let’s get started, no more bullshit.”
They got on I-95 and rode in silence for a long while, passing through Jacksonville, taking the high bridges across the St. Johns River, then out of the city and into Georgia. Passing through the coastal lowlands, the flat watery bayous and marshes, saw grass, palmetto, live oaks with beards of moss.
After another half hour of quiet, X pulled off the interstate, turned into a service station, and got out to pee. Everyone else stayed put.
“In case you’re interested,” Pixie said, “me and X-88 are hardline vegans, straight-edgers. We don’t do drugs, eat meat, cigarettes, coffee, anything that pollutes our bodies.”