Bullet Work (2 page)

Another of the three, the shortest of the
group, scraggly blonde hair and overly tight blue jeans, reached
forward and slapped the kid in the back of the head with an upward
movement.

“Stupid, what’s for breakfast?”

The shot wasn’t meant to inflict pain, but
merely to knock the kid’s baseball cap into his plate of food. The
three laughed heartily and high-fived one another. The kid still
didn’t look up.

He was used to this treatment, Dan thought.
It was a battle he couldn’t conceivably win, so he sat motionless,
enduring the verbal and physical onslaught.

Crok flew from behind the serving counter,
wielding a large metal spoon.

“You leave that boy alone.” She took a swing
at the nearest boy, but he leaned backward, like Cassius Clay
taunting Sonny Liston. She missed. The boy stared at his plate. The
trio scoffed at Crok but continued out the door.

“See ya, retard,” the short one shouted.

“Have a nice day,” said the tallest one.

Crok swept away the kid’s plate, dusted off
his ball cap, and in a matter of seconds returned with a clean,
even larger plate of food. The kid said, “Thank you, ma’am”—still
without looking up.

Dan watched the entire scene, glued to his
chair. He just sat there. He didn’t help. He didn’t do anything.
Finally, he looked down into his coffee cup.

“God, I hate myself.”

Chapter 2

Many watering holes and taverns
served the racetrack crowd. Business was good during the times the
track was dark, but when the twelve-week summer meet was on at
Fairfax Park, in Manassas, Virginia, these places rolled in the
cash. The backside traffic was like having an entire new town
spring up in the area. Local businesses had more patrons and needs
to satisfy.

Plenty of options existed for quenching the
adult thirst of this transient community.

Clancy’s wasn’t one of them.

Clancy’s was a biker bar in Dumfries,
Virginia, tucked between a tattoo parlor and a wholesale tire store
in a dingy strip mall on the far side of Interstate 95. It was
sixteen miles from the racetrack.

The man pulled up, parked, and turned off his
headlights. He noticed the white pickup truck he’d been looking
for, got out of his rusted Jeep Wrangler, and slipped on his black
cowboy hat. Several motorcycles stood at ease nearest the door.

Cowboy Hat walked in and surveyed the crowd.
Several men occupied prime seats at the bar, and two men stood
sentry around a pool table while a third slammed home a shot and
backed up the cue ball. A solitary figure in a baseball cap sat in
the far booth facing him. The man from the booth nodded to Cowboy
Hat. In response, Cowboy Hat poked his chin toward him and
continued to the bar. After a brief discussion with the bartender,
two longnecks were produced. Cowboy Hat put down some bills,
grabbed the necks of the beers with one hand, and walked to the far
booth.

Baseball Cap slid his empty bottle aside,
took the offered beer, and poured a good portion of the new one
into his mouth, then looked out the window.

“All set?” asked Cowboy Hat.

“Yep.”

“When?”

“Tonight.” Baseball Cap appeared preoccupied
with tearing the paper label off the neck of his beer. To make
their operation a bit more covert, the two had adopted code names.
Baseball Cap was known as “Falcon.” Cowboy Hat was “Raven.” They
joked that they were birds of prey—might as well carry the
titles.

“Who you think will give us problems?”

Falcon shrugged. “Lot of ’em. At least at
first.”

“That’s why we need to hit hard right away.
Fear is a powerful motivator.” Raven stared at the man in the
baseball cap.
Had he picked the wrong guy?
Falcon had the access and the knowledge to pull this off. He also
had the need. Raven was sure of that. Only question was whether the
man had the stomach for it.

Falcon wadded up the label in his fingers and
flicked it onto the floor. He looked at Raven for the first time
and nodded in agreement.

Raven continued, “How many we hit in the
first week?”

“Two tonight, then more after the note goes
out.”

“Note’s ready. Twenty bucks a head. Damn
reasonable, then we’ll move it up when we have their
attention.”

Baseball Hat nodded and turned his
label-stripping action to the larger one. “We’ll have to focus on
the larger stables. If we get them, the smaller ones will go
along.”

“Which ones do you need to get on board?”
Raven asked.

“Probably Gilmore, Dellingham, and
McDonough,” said Falcon. “They’re all tough pricks. If they go,
we’ll get most of the rest.”

“We have to show them they have no options.
Twenty a head is chump change for those guys.” Raven hunched
forward, leaning on his elbows. He needed to get Falcon’s head in
the game. Punk was way too sedate for this gig.

“It’s not about the money for them,” said
Falcon. “It’s a control thing. This will piss them off.”

“We have to show them we’re more pissed off
than they are,” said Raven, raising his voice. “You mess with a
guy’s meal ticket, they wise up fast,” he said, pointing a finger
at Falcon. Feeling that he made all the emotional progress he was
going to make, Raven leaned back and relaxed. “Who you gonna hit
tonight?”

Baseball Hat sat for a long time. An AC/DC
tune cranked over the speaker system, and pool balls clicked in the
distance. Light flickered from the juke box and cut blue and red
shapes into the shadows blanketing the bare drywall. Laughter
drifted from the pool table as the cue ball fell into a side
pocket. Falcon’s ball cap finally rose, and he said, “Emerald
Stone.”

“Hhmmm. Gelding?”

“Yep.”

“Cashed a bet or two on him over the years,”
said Raven.

“Me, too.”

“Who’s the trainer?”

“Daniels.”

“He’s got better stock. Won’t miss him that
much,” Raven said, smiling. “Hell, we’re doin’ the guy a
favor.”

Falcon killed his beer, got up, and walked
out of the bar.

Raven sat focused on the label-less beer
bottle left behind. Even though he owned the guy, Raven couldn’t
help feeling less confident than when he had walked in.

Tonight, Falcon gets blood on his hands. A
smile spread across Raven’s face as he held his cowboy hat steady,
dipping his head down and back up. Then he’ll be locked in. There
will be no turning back.

Chapter 3

The man slipped along the side of
the shedrow, staying in the shadows. He stopped, listened, and
looked up and down the darkened gravel road that separated the
barns. Many barns housed stable hands in empty tack rooms, so he
had to remain quiet and aware.

The barns were uniform with a dozen horse
stalls on each side, back to back. The inhabitants were confined by
webbing clipped to either side of the stall door. The webbing was
two feet high and positioned optimally to prevent the horse from
sidling under or jumping over. A contraption of psychology, as a
1,200-pound animal with determination, could barrel through the
chain and plastic device in a flash, but its presence somehow kept
them in place.

A large sloped roof ran down either side of
the shedrow, providing a walking ring around the stalls that was
covered. On one end of the barn were two rooms, one a tack room and
the other the trainer’s office. The best barns had small grassy
areas on one side where horses could graze and be washed down—green
space in a world of dirt and gravel.

Silence and darkness were the man’s friends.
At three in the morning he had plenty of both.

He crossed through the fence opening beyond
the barn and walked onto the gravel road, stepping lightly to
minimize the crunching sound. He took three large steps to the
other side of the road and eased onto the grassy area behind the
adjoining barn. The stall he wanted was the fifth one on the
backside of the shedrow.

Horses murmured and shuffled around when they
sensed his presence. He reached the fifth stall and looked inside.
A horse whinnied quietly and stared back at him. The man clucked to
the animal and quickly slipped under the webbing into the stall.
The horse shifted uneasily as the man reached out and stroked the
horse along the neck. He scratched along the neck and continued
clucking quietly to the horse.

With his left hand he reached into his pocket
and drew out a hypodermic needle. The man stroked the horse and
made quiet kissing sounds to soothe the animal. When the horse was
standing calmly, he jammed the needle into the horse just below the
withers. The horse shivered and cried out. Horses in nearby stalls
whinnied and moved about nervously. He quickly pushed the plunger
to the base, withdrew the needle, and replaced it in his jacket
pocket.

The man patted the horse’s neck and stroked
upward behind the ears. In an instant he ducked back under the
webbing and disappeared into the darkness.

  

Or at least the man thought he had escaped
into the night. Across the road a pair of eyes had watched him
enter the stall. He recognized the fright in the horse’s reaction.
When the man moved to the right toward the main gate, the eyes
followed.

Apparently feeling that his mission had been
perfectly executed, the man didn’t move as stealthily as he had
just minutes previously. He walked down the middle of the gravel
road back toward Crok’s kitchen and the main gate. The eyes kept to
the shadows.

When the man reached the road’s dead end at
Crok’s kitchen, he tossed something into a trash can. Then, rather
than moving left toward the main gate, he went right. The eyes
followed.

Thick woods of Manassas State Park framed the
backside area away from the racetrack. The man passed four sets of
barns and continued on to the fence, which divided the backside
from the U.S. Forest Service Park. Without stopping, he slid
through a separation in the fence and moved out of sight through
the heavy underbrush.

The eyes waited and listened—silence but for
the sound emitted by his own breathing. He backtracked to the
garbage can outside Crok’s kitchen. Light coming off the soda
dispenser outside the front door of the diner gave him enough light
to see what he needed. He used a discarded overnight sheet to lift
the object. He wrapped the sheet around what he had found, put it
in his pocket, and moved back toward his tack room.

He stopped briefly in front of stall five. A
snort and one blinking eye greeted him. The horse moved forward,
and the new visitor patted and scratched the side of the animal’s
head. He turned and returned to his makeshift apartment. Eyes
didn’t recognize the man. He didn’t know what the man was doing,
but he knew it was not good.

  

The horse in the fifth stall snorted and took
several bellowing breaths. He shook his head and blinked. After
several seconds he leaned and stumbled to his left. The stall’s
wooden planks prevented him from falling. He looked out over the
webbing, and lights flickered among the darkness. No movement, no
activity. He snorted again, rocking his head up and down. His head
dipped slightly, then he lost his balance, crashing onto the matted
straw.

The sound caused shuffling in the
compartments of his neighbors, but only the equine variety. They
were in no position to help.

The horse tucked his head and lunged upward,
trying to get his feet under him. One leg propped him momentarily,
then it slid away, and he collapsed back onto the stall floor. His
chest heaved as he tried to get air into his lungs. Sweat poured
off the once glistening coat. He lunged again but wasn’t able to
generate as much motion as the first effort. He lifted his head and
whinnied, but the sound was hardly noticeable beyond the stall
door. Finally, unable to hold his head off the ground, it, too,
succumbed to gravity. He nuzzled the straw as if nodding in
agreement with the inevitable.

He blinked twice, then his final breath left
him.

Chapter 4

Morning came early to the backside.
Falcon was even earlier.

In about thirty minutes the first of the
grooms and hotwalkers would start to fill the shedrows. Only
“morning people” need apply to work in this world. Several would
yawn and spit, trying to manage the hangovers from the night
before. Others would be sharp and alert. For now, there was just
silence.

Falcon picked the horse based upon the escape
route. Bad luck for the horse. The end of Juan Camillo’s shedrow
backed up to one of the three restrooms on the backside. He would
be quick, and he would get away.

He carried the two-and-a-half-foot section of
lead pipe alongside his leg. In daylight it would’ve looked
suspicious, even criminal. At this time of night he was just being
careful. A few horses were shuffling in their stalls, but the world
was asleep. He had to move quickly.

The gelding stuck his head over the webbing,
and Falcon scratched him behind the ears, keeping a furtive watch
down the shedrow for any visitors. He held a slice of apple up to
the animal with an open palm.

A few licks and slurps preceded the crunching
bite. The apple was quickly smashed and chomped, much to the
animal’s pleasure. With the expectation of a puppy, the horse
nuzzled forward, knowing there was more.

Falcon stayed with the plan. He tossed the
apple into the back of the stall. The gelding quickly turned around
to find the prize in the straw.

So predictable
.

The back legs of the horse came toward the
webbing. Falcon knew this gave him a better angle, but he also
liked the idea so he wouldn’t have to look the animal in the
eyes.

He stepped back and gripped the pipe like a
baseball bat. The horse had found the apple and was devouring it
happily. Falcon spotted the cannon bone. It was the part of the
horse’s lower leg that connected the fetlock to the hock, the
equine equivalent of the shin bone. It was the piston of these
warriors’ engines.