This Wicked World (40 page)

R
AIN
? Y
OU GOTTA
be shitting me
.
Spiller stares glumly at the drops speckling the windshield of Taggert’s old Dodge, then sticks his hand out the window to feel it for himself. He’s been waiting at the Nipton exit for an hour. The Mexicans should be pulling up anytime now.

He lights a cigarette and picks at the scab on his neck from the tattoo-removal laser. The ground around the truck is pocked with muddy dimples, and farther south, where the actual meeting will take place, it’s really coming down. Looks like a black blanket has been thrown over the desert out that way.

His toes curl inside his Nikes a few minutes later when a gray Silverado leaves the freeway and glides up the ramp. The truck cruises slowly past, the driver and passenger eyeballing Spiller, before easing over onto the shoulder about twenty feet in front of the Dodge.

Spiller flips his cigarette out the window and gets his Hawg from the glove compartment. Olivia brought it back when she returned to the ranch, the only good thing to come of that. He slips the gun into his waistband and zips his jacket to hide it.

The rain is falling harder, riding the wind. Spiller steps out of the truck and strides down the shoulder toward the Silverado. The driver, a greaseball bodybuilder who’s even bigger than T.K. was, gives him a hard look when he peers in his window, while the passenger, some beaner in a cowboy hat, stares straight ahead.

“
Hola, amigos,
” Spiller says, making the greeting sound like an insult. He nods at the driver. “You first.”

Mr. Universe opens the door, slides out of the truck, and lifts his arms. Spiller runs his hands over the guy’s torso and legs, has him turn all the way around.

“Wait up there,” Spiller says when he’s finished, directing the bodybuilder to the front of the truck.

Mr. Universe glances at the cowboy, who nods slightly. The big man moves off to stand about ten feet away.

“Next,” Spiller says.

The cowboy gets out and walks around the truck to face Spiller, his stupid smile revealing a gold tooth. He reminds Spiller of a pool shark who once tried to stab him, so he does an extra-thorough job — goes up his leather coat to check under his arms, sticks his hand down inside his boots — before sending him to join his boy.

Turning his attention to the Silverado, he sweeps under the seats, front and back, opens the glove compartment, pulls down the sun visors, even lifts the floor mats.

There are two duffel bags on the rear seat. He unzips the first one and whistles at the sight of all those phony hundreds, neatly stacked and banded just like the real thing. He slides his hand around and under the piles but doesn’t find anything, and there’s nothing but funny money in the other one either.

It’s pouring by the time he finishes his inspection. Big fat drops pass through his thin hair to tap his scalp, and he wishes he’d worn a hat.

“Okay, amigos,” he calls to the Mexicans, who are standing with their shoulders hunched, their backs to the wind and rain. “
Adios.
”

He trots to the pickup and scrambles inside, uses his sleeve to dry his face. Scooping up his phone from the dash, he calls Taggert.

They’ve worked out a code: “Everything’s fine” means “The motherfuckers are holding a gun to my head and making me say this.” “All clear,” on the other hand, means “Proceed as planned.”

“All clear,” he says when Taggert answers. The Silverado’s taillights come on, and it pulls back onto the pavement. “They’re on their way to you now.”

“Okay, bro. See you at the ranch,” Taggert replies — “at the ranch” signifying that everything is okay on his end.

Spiller pats his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter. He notices that the Silverado has stopped and is now backing down the road toward him. Fucking morons probably need directions.

The Silverado stops alongside the pickup, and the cowboy motions for Spiller to roll down his window.

“
Hola, amigo,
” the cowboy says.

“Yeah?” Spiller replies.

The cowboy reaches up into a hidden stash box that’s been added to the headliner of the cab and whips out a pistol. He thrusts it out the window until it’s about a foot from Spiller’s face and pulls the trigger.

You gotta be kidding me, Spiller thinks in the instant before a bullet destroys his left eye and slams into his brain. You gotta be fuck —

T
AGGERT HANDS HIS PHONE TO
O
LIVIA, TELLS HER TO PUT
it in the glove box. They passed through their checkpoint ten minutes ago, stood around in the rain while one of the bodybuilders from the Indian casino searched the truck for weapons, and, finding none, waved them on.

The wipers of T.K.’s Explorer are going full speed, and Taggert can still barely see through the windshield. There’d been talk of a summer storm, but it wasn’t supposed to hit until Wednesday at the earliest. It’s hot and muggy to boot, almost tropical. Taggert switches on the air conditioner and cracks his window.

“Slow down,” Olivia says.

She’s been quiet since they left the ranch, kind of pale and spooky. Maybe she’s finally realizing what he’s been trying to tell her all along, that she’s not cut out for this life. Shooting T.K. was a good lesson for her. Some people can handle a thing like that; most can’t.

He tries to remember how he felt the first time he killed a man. Well, not the first time, because that was in Nam, where greasing gooks got to be like shooting gophers for a bounty. No, no, his first civilian kill was in Louisville, some pimp who ended up on Big Donnie’s bad side. Taggert walked up to him on his corner one night, put two in his dome, and went to a movie afterward,
Papillon,
with Steve McQueen. So he must not have been too busted up about it. Relieved the thing was over, probably. A little scared of getting caught. Hard to say. It was a long time ago.

He reaches out and squeezes Olivia’s thigh, and she flinches like he burned her.

“Hey,” he says. “Everything’s cool.”

She nods and gives him a sickly smile. He’d laugh if he wasn’t certain it would set her off. She looks like she’s going to puke. After hounding him for how long to let her come on a job? Good thing all she is is a warm body on this one. Imagine if he actually needed her for something.

He glances over his shoulder at all the money he has in the world, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag on the backseat, and smiles. He’s almost giddy now that everything is in motion. This is when he feels most like the man he wants to be, the man he
is
. Tomorrow it’ll be back to worrying about this and that, back to contemplating and deliberating and driving himself crazy with all the choices it takes to make it through a single goddamn day, but right now, what’s going to happen is going to happen, and there’s not a thing he or anybody else can do about it.

They come to the hamlet of Goffs, a windburned scatter of rickety wooden structures and mobile homes cowering miserable in the storm. The paved road makes a sharp right turn here, but Taggert keeps going straight, heading down a rutted asphalt track that soon peters out into graded dirt. He’s forced to reduce his speed because of the many potholes that have already become muddy puddles.

At one point, a ten-foot-wide stream rushing across the road stops him completely. Not willing to risk a blind crossing, he gets out of the truck and walks to the edge of the flow to check its depth with a stick he picks up off the ground. Five inches, six. No problem.

He’s soaked by the time he returns to the Explorer. Olivia leans back in her seat and braces herself as he releases the parking brake and creeps forward.

“Are we gonna make it?” she asks.

Taggert blinks the rain out of his eyes and says, “We better.”

The truck easily fords the stream, and they continue on their way.

“This is crazy,” Olivia says, the shadows of the drops on the windshield like tears on her face.

“Crazy’s good,” Taggert says. “Crazy means there’s nobody out here but us lunatics.”

Just then a crooked spear of lightning arcs out of a black cloud shot through with gray veins and slams into the ground somewhere beyond the horizon. Taggert feels the thunderclap deep in his chest and shouts, “Fuck yeah!”

B
OONE SQUATS NEXT
to the rusty water tank on the main street of Lanfair. Carl has taken up a position at the depot, and Robo is hidden in the remains of a cabin at the edge of town.

Rain is still falling, but Boone is relatively dry under the narrow wooden awning attached to the tank. He can see most of the town from here and has a clear view of the road. Wherever Taggert and the Mexicans decide to get down to business, he’ll be able to keep an eye on them until he reveals himself.

He checks his watch — 11:52 — before turning around to make sure the Xterra, parked in the warehouse on the bluff behind him, won’t be visible to anybody approaching the town from either direction.

The walkie-talkie in his pocket beeps, and Robo’s voice crackles out of it, singing, “Raindrops keep falling on my head…”

“Let’s keep the chatter to a minimum,” Carl barks.

“Roger,” Robo says. “ Ten-four.” Then, after a pause, “Kiss my ass.”

Boone chuckles to himself. His glands are shooting all kinds of buzzy stuff into his system that makes him feel like a superhero. “I pity the fool,” he chants quietly to himself. “I pity the fool. I pity the fool.”

A flash to the north gets his attention. There’s been some lightning this morning, but this is something else, lower to the ground. He peers through the binoculars Carl lent him, sees a truck splashing down the road toward town, headlights on.

“Vehicle approaching,” he announces into the walkie-talkie. “A mile or so out.”

The truck, a Silverado, slows to a crawl when it reaches Lanfair, rolling past the depot, the general store, and finally stopping in the middle of the road about twenty yards from the water tower. Its wheel wells are caked with mud. Boone can’t see who’s inside, but whoever it is doesn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to stand in the rain.

Another vehicle appears, this one coming from the south. An Explorer. Boone doesn’t risk using the walkie-talkie this time because Robo and Carl would have to be blind not to see the truck as it drives into town.

The Explorer brakes, its taillights turning the rain to blood, and comes to a stop facing the Silverado. There the two vehicles sit, thirty feet apart, until Taggert finally steps out of the Explorer and raises his hand in greeting.

Then Boone sees something he can’t be seeing. He presses the binoculars to his eyes in the hope that a closer look will prove him wrong. Nope: that’s Olivia in the passenger seat of the Explorer. Boone isn’t sure what this means. If the plan has changed somehow, she would have called, wouldn’t she? Best to stick to the program for now. He pulls the ski mask over his face and swings the M-16 into firing position.

R
AINDROPS SLITHER DOWN
inside Taggert’s collar and make him squirm. He stands in the no-man’s-land between the Explorer and the Silverado while Mando and his boy sit with mean grins on their faces, high and dry in their truck, and watch him take a soaking from the storm. Taggert clenches his fists and squishes one boot in the mud, then the other. Right now he could do both of those bastards with his bare hands.

The two men slide out of the Silverado, Mando in a white straw cowboy hat that shines like it’s lit from within. They approach Taggert, carefully placing each step to avoid puddles. When they get close, Mando smiles at Taggert from under the dripping brim of his hat.

“Good afternoon,” he says. He has to raise his voice to be heard above the rain.

“You piss somebody off?” Taggert asks with a nod at the seething sky.

“Not me, amigo,” Mando replies. He squints at the Explorer. “Who you got in there, your sister?”

“I’ve got your money,” Taggert says. “What do you have for me?”

“Everything you asked for.”

“So then what?”

Mando motions to his partner, and the two of them start back to the Silverado. Taggert walks to the Explorer, goes to the passenger side and opens the rear door.

“What’s happening?” Olivia asks. The glare of the dome light bleaches all the life out of her face.

“A few more minutes,” Taggert says as he reaches for the grocery bag and opens it to look at his money one last time. He glances out the windshield and sees that Mando and his man are already returning, each carrying a bulging duffel bag. Everything is going like it’s supposed to, except for the rain, and who could have foreseen that?

Taggert slams the door of the truck and walks out to meet Mando, the grocery bag clutched to his chest. There’s an instant of hesitation when they come together again. Neither wants to make the first move. Taggert finally steps forward, holding out the bag of money to Mando with one hand and extending the other to take his duffel bag. The exchange completed, he reaches out with his free hand and accepts the other duffel from Mando’s partner.

He hefts the bags a bit and says, “I’m gonna trust you on the count.”

Mando opens the grocery bag just enough to confirm there’s money inside, then wraps it up tight. He grins at Taggert and says, “Maybe I fuck your girl now, like you fucked mine.”

Something almost like fear jolts Taggert. “I don’t think so,” he says.

“No?” Mando replies and whips out a pistol from under his coat.

Taggert lifts one of the duffel bags to protect himself. The first round passes through the bag and bores into his shoulder like a railroad spike. The second grazes the side of his head, zipping off a strip of scalp.

“You motherfucker,” Taggert roars.

The duffel he was holding with his injured arm drops to the ground. He swings the other up and flings it into Mando’s face before running for the Explorer.

Mando jumps back, startled, and loses his grip on the grocery bag. It falls open, and stacks of rubber-banded bills plop into the mud at his feet. Regaining his composure, Mando fires again, and the bullet hits Taggert in the thigh as he reaches the truck.