Mental State, page 24
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Here is a preview from the crime novel Boise Longpig Hunting Club by Nick Kolakowski.
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I.
We came home from the movies to find our front door kicked open, both floors ransacked, half the food in the fridge missing. My five-year-old daughter ran into her bedroom, screaming, to make sure her toys were safe. Kelly loved her two pink princess dolls, which I won for her at the trick-shooting booth at the state fair. Her toys were safe, but when I went into my bedroom, I found that the frisky varmint had stolen my favorite things: a pair of AR-15s with expensive scopes.
First order of business: I called the cops. While I waited for them to arrive, I phoned my former brother-in-law. His voice came over the line raspy and slow, and I had to talk loudly to prevent him from nodding off. I had no compunctions about treating him a little rough, not when I paid his sister Janine a grand every month in child support, a big chunk of which probably ended up in his veins.
“Rick,” I said. “You tell any of your fellow scumbags about my guns lately?”
“Nuh-uh, I swear.”
If he kept to his old habits, he was in his crack shack in Garden City, near the river. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “Activate that chunk of meat you call a brain and think again.”
I took his silence to mean he was trying his hardest. Rick had an outstanding warrant, and he knew I would roust him for it, no matter how much my ex-wife screamed at me. “Zombie Bill,” he finally said.
My skin tingled. “Zombie Bill what?”
I could practically hear Rick shrug. “I told him you had a couple nice rifles. I’m sorry?”
I hung up without bothering to reply. A couple of meth freaks stealing my guns was one thing. Ten out of ten times, they would try and pawn the hardware, and end up busted. But Zombie Bill, the crazy bastard, would use those AR-15s to fill as many people with lead as possible. And that blood would be on my hands.
A police cruiser pulled into my driveway, and I walked outside to meet it, Kelly crying in my arms. The cops were polite as they took the report, and promised to do their best, which meant exactly squat.
II.
Roger, my neighbor, was another firearms enthusiast. “They broke into your gun locker?” he asked, as I handed him a nylon bag loaded with enough toys, books, and snacks to see my kid through the night and the next morning.
I shook my head. “I was an idiot,” I said. “I keep them in a wooden cabinet, locked.”
He offered me dead eyes. “Got to get something tougher, man. Steel. Like a big safe.”
“I know.” I shrugged, which felt dismissive and weak. “Kept them unloaded, under lock and key. Figured that’d be enough.” A gun safe with enough room for my arsenal might cost more than a thousand dollars if I wanted a good-looking one—well outside my monthly budget after I paid for the mortgage, food, gas, and the kid.
“You going to find them?”
I nodded. “It’s my responsibility to make this right.”
After handing Kelly over, I headed downtown in my truck. I needed to talk to Rick, and whether that discussion came with a generous beating was up to him. Zombie Bill might have stripped my house of guns, but I still had a dinky 9mm hidden inside the paperback Bible I kept in my glove compartment. Call me damned to Hell for cutting a hollow in the Good Book, and I’ll tell you I’d rather risk divine wrath than show up anywhere unarmed. Besides, I lost my faith a long time ago, in a desert on the other side of the world.
Stopping at a red light, I dialed the office. Janine picked up on the first ring, sounding bored as usual. “The Bond King.”
“It’s your favorite bounty hunter,” I said. “You want to carve time out your busy schedule, dig up a last known address?”
“You looking for a William Price?” Zombie Bill’s legal name.
“What are you, psychic?”
“Nah, he called five minutes ago, said meet him at the Tastee Diner at eleven. Said you could split a basket of finger steaks or something.”
“Funny guy.”
“He’s turning himself in?”
“Nope, he’s trading info. Thanks for letting me know.” I swung the truck around and headed east down West Franklin Road. The Tastee Diner, a bright and shiny temple to deep-fried fat, always had a crowd. Unless Zombie Bill planned on splattering me in front of thirty witnesses, I was probably safe there.
At the restaurant, I found a booth in the corner and took a seat facing the front door, 9mm in my left hand beneath the table. When the waitress came by, I ordered a coffee. Finger steaks are tasty, but my doctor hounded me about my cholesterol levels. At five minutes past eleven, the door opened and Zombie Bill shuffled in, dressed for success in a white T-shirt and a pair of stained cargo shorts, his tattoos resembling old wounds in the fluorescent lighting. One of his lieutenants, an inked-up skeleton with a waist-length red beard, came in behind him, taking a seat at the counter that ran the length of the restaurant.
Zombie Bill sat down across from me and smirked, revealing metal teeth that could have used a polish. “How’s your night going?”
“Cut the crap,” I said. “What do you want?”
He leaned back, snorted, scratched at the pink scar on his neck. He’d earned his street name after surviving eight bullet wounds to the jaw, stomach, throat, chest, and right arm. It’s like he’s undead, some halfwit had said after that. The only way to kill him is with a shot to the brain. “I want a favor,” he said.
“Good for you. I want a new pickup and a supermodel in my bed. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. What makes you think I won’t call the cops?”
“Because the cops won’t ever find the guns.” Zombie Bill waggled a bony finger at me. “You think I’m an idiot? Why you keeping that much firepower around the house, anyway?”
“What can I say, I believe in home defense,” I said, my stomach knotting.
“I’m not asking anything of you that I wouldn’t do myself,” he said, flashing those teeth I so desperately wanted to yank out of his head. “Just that you don’t bust me or my crew. Maybe sometimes I ask you to track someone down, and you do it.”
“I’m never getting those weapons back, am I?” I said. “It’s like endless collateral for you.”
Bill bit his lip. “What’s ‘collateral’ mean?”
“I’m dealing with a genius here.”
He slapped the table. “This genius already got a task for you: Frankie has some outstanding warrants.”
“No,” I said. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Same difference.”
He slapped the table again, harder. “Better think that over,” he said. “When you’re ready to make a deal, you call that number I left at your office. I’m giving you until tomorrow afternoon, maybe. Then I do something real bad.” And he left, the red lieutenant drifting in his wake, while around me a lot of nice people went on clogging their veins with delicious fat, oblivious to the weird horrors happening all around them.
III.
Frankie stood five-foot-two in her customary combat boots, her small body tight with muscle and sharp with bone. She wore as much black clothing and eyeliner as a high school Goth, and nobody made jokes about it, because she liked to do things like shove pens through necks. As she poured me a whiskey, she said, “My old friend Bill.”
“Wants you arrested,” I said.
“Yeah, so one of his little meth-head bitches can shank me inside. He can’t beat me on the street, you know.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t predictable.” I sipped the whiskey, checking out her new office: a shipping container with a skylight cut in the roof, a thick rug on the floor, a leather couch at one end, and a nice desk at the other. The container sat at the edge of the river. Anyone who wanted to take a shot at her would have to bypass three fences and ten bodyguards. Frankie had founded an e-commerce site on the darknet that exchanged Bitcoin for pretty much anything illegal, which meant hundreds of powerful people in twenty countries wanted her cold on a slab, all for different reasons. Hence the security, and her habit of wearing a bullet-resistant vest around Boise, one of the safest cities in America.
“Bill’s not predictable, is the problem. Never stops moving.” She slugged down her drink. “Thanks for calling me about it.”
“You know I didn’t have a choice,” I said.
“True.” She poured herself another round, after topping off my half-full glass. “Now drink up, because you’re not going to like the solution I’m offering. You’ll have to abuse the powers of your office.”
IV.
I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, but I’ve never felt scummier than the next morning when I paid bail for Mark Miller, accused of carnal relations with a variety of barn animals. He was the sort of simpering scumbag who makes you fear for the future of the human race. As we exited the jail, he kept asking me who I was and what I wanted. I don’t think of myself as blood simple, but it felt like sweet relief once we made it to my truck, where I could punch him in the face many, many times until he snapped into unconsciousness.
You want to know the worst part? I had paid a lot of cash to spring him loose, and I would probably never see a dime of it again.
It was noon by the time I finished cleaning my knuckles, and with Miller bound and gagged in my back seat I swung by the office. Janine, who never seemed to leave her desk, gave me Zombie Bill’s number. I dialed it in the parking lot, the only place where I had a modicum of privacy.
“You arrest Frankie?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said, injecting my voice with false cheer. “But guess who I just sprung from jail?”
He knew. Even with someone like Zombie Bill, there are only so many cousins you can have locked up at one time, especially if the cousins in question help you run your drug-smuggling business. It took him forever to speak. “You making a play here?”
“Uh, yeah. Duh. You hand over my guns, you get your relative back. If you act fast, I might leave most of his face intact. If you don’t, he’s going to tell me enough to make your life real difficult, and real short.”
“I will kill your daughter,” he said. “I will blow her brains the fuck out.”
My vision went red, and it took superhuman control to force the next words through my clenched jaw without screaming. “She’s already out of the city. You want to blast my ex-wife, though, you go right ahead and save me another thirteen years of child support.” That part about the kid was true: my friendly neighbor Roger and his girlfriend had driven my little pumpkin north to their cabin.
Zombie Bill fell silent again, so I took the initiative. “Listen, man, your plan wasn’t a bad one, but it’s over. Give me the rifles, and I’ll hesitate to bust you in the future. Scout’s honor. Otherwise, this all just ends in blood.”
Something in my voice convinced him. “You know the big quarry in the foothills, the kids call it the Hole? Meet me there in two hours. Bring my idiot cousin.”
“Bring my guns.”
V.
When we were teenagers, we used to bike up to the Hole on hot summer days, and dare each other to jump into its watery depths, to risk our spines in the name of applause and a couple dollars. A few plunged into the depths of the quarry and never surfaced. Later on, it served as a favorite dumping ground for snitches, and a few of my clients ended up there.
I had Mark Miller on his knees near the edge of the chasm, blindfolded, with my 9mm pressed against the back of his neck. I watched as Zombie Bill’s monster truck maneuvered through the open gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the quarry, wondering whether I’d made a huge mistake, if my old self—the one who’d survived countless shootouts and standoffs in Baghdad—had whispered too much bad advice from deep in my subconscious.
The truck stopped maybe fifty yards away, skewed so it pointed back toward the gate. Zombie Bill and his lieutenant climbed out, Zombie Bill’s hands empty of rifles.
I cocked back the hammer on the 9mm. “I’m not messing with you,” I said.
“Where’s your backup?” Zombie Bill asked, scanning the empty quarry. “You didn’t come alone, did you?”
I dug the pistol into Miller’s head. “I’ll start counting to three.”
Zombie Bill raised his hands, palms out. “Relax, your stuff’s in the back seat there. I just got to check. You okay, cuz?”
Another man climbed out of the far side of the truck: bearded, black sunglasses, forearms needled with flaming skulls. He walked to the right, worrying my flank.
“I’m good,” Miller said. “Just get me the hell out of here.”
“Why don’t you walk him over?” Zombie Bill called out. “We had a deal, right?”
“Why don’t you call your dog over here off?” I said, turning my head to keep an eye on roving Mister Skull.
Zombie Bill said nothing. Mister Skull kept moving. I had boxed myself in. Sure, I could have leapt into the abyss to my left, and risked my spine, if the mining company hadn’t drained the water from it years ago.
So much for keeping things nice and civil, I thought, swiveling my gaze to the cliff that walled one side of the quarry.
The back of Mister Skull’s head exploded, followed a quarter-second later by the sound of a gunshot echoing off stone.
Miller, blind and panicked, did a stupid thing: rocketing to his feet with surprising quickness, he tried kicking me in the groin. I sidestepped easily, losing my grip on him—and he decided to run away.
Pro tip: When sprinting a one-hundred-meter dash in a quarry, make sure to remove any blindfold first. He plunged over the edge of the hole, his legs bicycling in space, and Zombie Bill’s scream of rage couldn’t quite drown out the crunch of one hundred fifty pounds of pervert hitting granite at terminal velocity.
I raised the 9mm and emptied the magazine in Zombie Bill’s direction, then ran for an inviting patch of rocks a few yards away. A black SUV bounced down a dirt ramp that led from the cliffs, screeching to a halt beside me. The front passenger door popped open, revealing Frankie in a camouflage outfit, rifle in her arms.
“We got to stop them,” I yelled at her. “They get out of here, I’m screwed.” Zombie Bill and his lieutenant had made it inside the truck, which lurched into gear—bullets sparking off its bumper as Frankie fired off a burst—and promptly crashed into the chain-link fence at the edge of the quarry.
Frankie’s laughter came deep and ominous as a thundercloud. She raised a hand above her head and snapped her fingers twice. “Monkey Man,” she called out.
The rear door of the SUV opened, and out climbed a man in an unmarked blue jumpsuit, his face covered by a cheap rubber chimpanzee mask so large, it shaded his eyes into black holes. He had a long metal tube cradled in his arms.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“That’s what I love about you,” Frankie said. “You’re all upset about your guns and shit, meanwhile I’m buying artillery online.”
As the Monkey Man approached, he grasped the ends of the metal tube and pulled, extending it. Stopping beside us, he flicked up a tiny metal sight on the tube’s end, placed the hardware on his shoulder, and cocked his head toward Frankie.
“Put your fingers in your ears,” she said, and I did as ordered. The Monkey Man swiveled, the tube tracking Zombie Bill’s truck as it struggled to pull free of the collapsed fence, its rear wheels tangled in wire. Through the windshield, we saw Zombie Bill fumbling with one of my rifles, while his lieutenant shrieked and punched the steering wheel.
The Monkey Man pulled the trigger on the underside of the tube, and the air around us exploded. A white plume of death rocketed across the quarry and impacted the rear of the truck, lifting it into the air on a pillar of flame, the doors blasting open to eject burning Bill and the lieutenant. I felt a little sorry for the two of them. Roasted alive is a pretty horrible way to die. But then again, so is overdosing on the crappy drugs Bill sold.
The truck crumpled back to Earth in a shower of sparks, the dull thud of its impact bouncing off the quarry walls. The Monkey Man returned to the SUV, whistling a merry tune, swinging the launcher around like a prop in an old-time musical. While we waited for the flames to die down, Frankie pulled a crumpled pack of menthol cigarettes from the back pocket of her jeans, lit one, and puffed with the great satisfaction of someone doing a sinful thing. “How’s my niece?” she asked.
“Good,” I said. “She loved that castle toy thing you got her.”
“Excellent. I hope it gives her ideas about ruling the world.” She took another puff, blasted smoke out her nose. “Because our family, it’s all about power, you know? Or we’re crushed.”
“I just find people,” I said.
“You’re covering my flank on the lawful side,” she replied, punching me softly in the shoulder. “But you’re just as much a part of this. You know, I spent a year trying to get Bill out of hiding.”
“Good thing he just happened to rob me, huh?” I began walking toward the truck, figuring the fire had quieted enough for me to see whether I could grab my guns before any law showed up. The air smelled like a gasoline-fueled barbeque.
“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t let him blackmail you.” Following in my footsteps, Frankie paused long enough to crush the finished cigarette beneath her heel. “I have a confession.”
