B009XDDVN8 EBOK (47 page)

“Let’s try to do this again without the grade-school histrionics,” said Clevenger, before calmly lighting another cigarette. He reached down for the canvas bag and raised it to the table. “And take my advice, think before you speak, because keeping all your fingers might depend on it. Are you ready to give me an accounting?”

I struggled again against my ropes, but there wasn’t enough give to get free. There had to be something I could do. There had always been something I could do. I could stall for time, I could find an opening, I could free myself, leap from my chair, fight my way out of the basement, past the collection agents with their guns, into the mangrove swamp, suddenly free to save my daughter. But instead of the notion of my valiant escape filling me with the adrenalized energy necessary to make at least an attempt, I felt only exhaustion. It might have been the futility of it all. Or the shock from my bout of electrifying torture. Or it might have been that Clevenger, in his own vile way, was right about so much. But I think it actually was something else.

“Are we ready?” said Clevenger.

“No,” I said, my voice no longer spitting mad, but instead monotone and dead.

“Is this going to be like your friend Augie?”

“It will be what it will be,” I said. “But I don’t trust you. I have one thing left to bargain with and you can’t have it until my daughter is free.”

“Well, then,” he said, “we’ll have to take a different tack.”

He rummaged a bit in the canvas bag before pulling out a large bolt cutter. The sight of the cutter, with its long wooden handles and hooked blades, a tool perfectly designed to snap metal and bone alike, filled me with an electric terror as powerful as the charge that had ripped through my body only moments before. But what was I going to do about it?

Nothing.

From the moment that seventeen-year-old kid had aimed his flashlight into that crawl space beneath the Grubbins kitchen, I had been playing the role of a secret agent. I stole the money, that’s the right word, stole it like any common thief, and after that bold act I lied to my friends, lied to my family, hid out in plain sight, planned my escapes, kept track of the threats, switched identities like T-shirts, ran this way, ran that way, sought guns and rammed cars and made wild threats on the phone. And propelling everything was the secret: it was my motivation, my energy, my superpower. But whatever it was, this thing I had carried through more than half my life, it was no longer what it had been. Everyone who mattered now knew the truth. I was stripped of my powers, Samson with a buzz cut, Dillinger without his wooden gun.

“Go ahead and do it,” I said. “You’re right, I deserve it, I deserve everything.”

“You bet you do, buddy boy.”

And I did. For all I had done, for all I had failed to do. In my resignation I was opening my heart to the malignant indifference of Clevenger. And just then, as if it were an accompaniment to my sudden acceptance of my inevitable fate, that minuet began again to play. Clevenger put down the cutter and took up the BlackBerry.

“What?…Anyone else?…Keep them there. We’ll be right up.”

He looked at me like I was underwater before putting the phone into the front pocket of his pants. Then he raised the cutter to his man behind me.

“Take this,” he said to the man, “and cut him loose. We have visitors.”

W
HEN SHORT-AND-STOCKY DRAGGED
me upstairs, my feet still were bare and my hands had been retied in front of me, but I felt less exposed with my shirt on, even though blood was seeping through into the material over the right breast. Clevenger was talking with Derek Grubbins at the windows surrounding the front door. Tall-and-morose was standing behind them, gun drawn.

“They didn’t ring the bell?” said Clevenger.

“They’re just standing by the fucking truck,” said Derek, with a drunken slur. He had a bottle in his hand, even though he was already thoroughly self-medicated, and he staggered a bit as he stood in place by the window. “Waiting. Like they know something we don’t.”

“Well, we know something they don’t know,” said Clevenger. “We’re going to kill them. You see anyone else?”

“It’s just the two of them,” said Derek. “The black guy is Ben, the other member of J.J.’s crew. The old guy, I ain’t got a clue.”

“Anyone check the back of the house?”

“I did,” said tall-and-morose. “Nothing.”

“All righty, then,” said Clevenger. “Go see what they want.”

“Me?” said “Derek.”

“You.”

“They want him,” said Derek, nodding at me.

“Then bring him along.” The fat man grabbed my arm.

“He’ll run.”

“No he won’t. We’ve got his daughter. He’s tied to us. Go ahead, Frenchy.” Clevenger grabbed my head so that he could put his lips close and said in a tight whisper, “Don’t ever forget, for the rest of your stinking life, I own you.”

I was still digesting this, feeling the certainty that every syllable he had jabbed like a knife into my ear was the utter truth, when Derek put down the bottle, took hold of my arm, and yanked me outside the model house. It was late afternoon, the sun was low and directly across from us. I tried to shield my eyes from the sun, but still all I saw were silhouettes, silhouettes I recognized: Harry leaning forward in a fighter’s crouch, like he was back in the ring. Ben standing straight, holding my father’s metal toolbox in his hand.

The emotions coursing through me as I spied them there were as strong as anything I had ever felt before—fear, of course, but along with the fear were love, gratitude, hope. And I felt a charge of energy, too, enough to banish the overwhelming weariness that had settled into my bones. I’ve had three great friends in my life and two of them had come to save me. Imagine that.

“Ben, you fat hunk of crap,” called out Derek, “what the hell are you doing here?”

“We came for J.J.”

“Hello, boys,” I said.

“I told you not to trust him,” said Ben.

“Yes you did,” I said. “After all these years I forgot to listen.”

“You look like you been rode hard, Johnny,” said Harry. “What happened to you, son?”

“I was overcharged,” I said.

“You couldn’t help yourself, hey, Derek?” said Ben. “Had to get your licks in?”

“It wasn’t me,” said Derek. “Clevenger’s calling the shots now, and he’s a beast. He’s in the house with his men and his guns, so don’t do anything stupid.”

“Too late for that,” said Harry.

“What do you got in the toolbox?”

“Money,” said Ben.

“How much?”

“How much did he offer you?”

“A hundred thou.”

“That’s exactly what we got,” said Harry. “Just like Johnny told us you would agree to.”

“Where’s the rest?” called out Clevenger from the house.

“Who’s that?” said Ben.

“Clevenger.”

“You’re the one who killed Augie,” shouted Ben to the house.

“We would have come for you first, boy,” said Clevenger, “but the only thing you got of worth are your kidneys, and they’re not in A-one shape anymore. So we went after your friend instead. How does that make you feel?”

“Cold,” said Ben.

“Your hundred isn’t enough,” shouted Clevenger. “There’s at least another hundred in cash somewhere. Leave us what you got, get me the rest, and then we’ll talk about letting your friend go.”

“We’re not leaving here without Johnny,” said Harry. “No, sir. That’s just the way of it. And he’s not leaving without his daughter, so there we are.”

“Just do what he says,” I said. “It’s over, I’ve given up. Leave the money and get the hell out of here.”

“Not without you.”

“Ain’t you nursemaids a little overmatched?” said Derek.

“Mebbe so,” said Harry. “But there’s a fight here to be had and I never sidesteps a fight. And when I’m in a fight…” He reached into his belt and pulled out a gun, Holmes’s gun. “I’m in it to win.”

As soon as he saw the gun, Derek yanked me in front of him and grabbed me around my neck with a sweaty forearm. I could
smell the stink of the liquor floating on his breath and oozing out his pores.

“Calm down, old man,” said Derek. “Put that little pistol away before someone gets hurt.”

“Someone getting hurt is the point of it,” said Harry.

“They have more firepower and fewer scruples,” I said.

“Shut up, J.J.,” said Ben.

“They’re going to kill you.”

“They’re going to try,” said Harry.

Suddenly Derek tightened his grip on my neck and yanked me back. “What’s that?” he said.

I listened and didn’t hear anything other than the ringing in my ears. Until I did. A soft rent in the drumming silence, a rumble from far off, an ever-louder growl rising from the swamp surrounding us. I looked up for a helicopter, saw nothing but the deep blue of the darkening sky, as the rumble grew sharper, deeper, more insistent. When my eyes snapped down I saw the lone motorcyclist leaning into the curve that led to the model home.

And then a second.

And then a fourth.

“What?” said Derek. “Wait. What did you do, Ben?”

“What did you think we were going to do if you acted like a fool?” said Ben.

“I saved your financial ass,” said Derek.

“You beat the crap out of me, set Clevenger on my friend Augie, and took J.J.’s daughter.”

“What’s that noise?” called out Clevenger from the house.

“It’s them,” said Derek.

“Who?”

“Them,” said Derek, and immediately, using me as a shield, he began dragging me back to the house.

“What the hell did you do, boy?” yelled Clevenger.

“We didn’t trust Derek,” said Ben, “and we sure as hell didn’t trust you. So we called in backup.”

“You know what you just did,” called out Clevenger as Derek kept dragging me back to the house. “You just killed yourself a second friend.”

I tried to break away. Out of that house was now the safest place to be. I struggled to loose my bonds and run toward Harry and Ben, but my hands still were tied and Derek’s grip was iron as it dragged me back, dragged me back. My bare feet couldn’t get purchase as he dragged me back, even as the rumble grew louder, grew deafening, even as by twos and threes and tens the roads of Everfair filled with Devil Rams.

T
HE
D
EVIL
R
AMS
alighted onto the street in front of the model house like a murder of crows on an electric cable. Almost forty in all, they lined their bikes along the curb and stood in pecks of trouble, knives bared, chains wrapped around fists, shotguns unsheathed from saddlebags, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

What have you come to kill, Billie Flynn?

Whaddya got?

Inside, Derek took a double swig from his bottle while Clevenger and the two collection agents kept uneasy tabs on what was going on outside the broad picture windows. I had been thrown harshly on the leather couch and told to keep quiet while they figured out their next move. There was fear in that house, and a sweaty panic, and the sulfur scent of some inevitable betrayal, though no one yet knew which way it would turn. But in the midst of my violent captivity, I alone felt a decided calm as the motorcycle gang congregated outside the door. I was the one who had brought the Devil Rams to Fort Lauderdale, after all. This was my plan B, my nuclear option. Now all I had to do was figure out how to turn the fear and the sweat and the betrayal in that room toward my daughter’s favor.

“How many bullets you got?” said Derek.

“Not enough,” said Clevenger.

“Bad planning. Maybe we can scare them off.”

“They don’t look like the scare-off type, do they? Gaines, check and see if there’s anyone out back.”

Short-and-stocky shot out of the front room, through the dining room, and headed for the kitchen and great room at the back of the model house. “They’re all over the place,” he said when he returned. “Bikers leaning against the rear development wall, bikers on either side of the house. There’s an army out there.”

“I’ve seen less animals in a zoo,” said tall-and-morose, standing at the front window, swishing the curtain with the muzzle of his automatic.