America Rising (36 page)

The band was four white kids, the classic rock instrumentation—guitar, bass, keyboard, drums. They kicked off their set with the Clapton hit, Crossroads, the guitarist throwing his body into his sunburst Les Paul as he churned out riffs. Sheila Boniface listened with half an ear, eyes on the crowd, mind on the man sitting next to her, the job she had to do.

The band finished the first set and walked offstage. John Doe ordered two more beers and Sheila gave her best impression of having a good time. Blue One said, and they all agreed, that Elliott would wait until dark to take his shot, and that he’d blast his way through a crowd of civilians if he had to. There was no way they were going to let that happen. They’d have to force his hand, offer up the bait on a silver platter.

When the second set began the club was even more crowded, a mass of bodies swaying in time to the music. From her perch at the bar, Sheila Boniface could see even a slight disturbance becoming a commotion at the entrance. A shiny shaven head appeared, towering over the crowd, swiveling around, looking, searching. His eyes met hers. She looked away. Blue One watched the band, shifted on his stool. He could block the kid, take him down with any number of hand strikes. But the kid stayed put, sweating profusely, swaying in graceless rhythm to the music.

Blue One checked his watch. Twelve-thirty. Time to put their plan in motion. He scratched his jaw, spoke into his wrist mike.

“Four?”

“Yes.”

Blue Four was in a café across the street, watching the club’s entrance.

“Three?”

“Yes.”

Blue Three was on the ramp leading to the top floor of the parking tower. He had night-vision binoculars trained on the van, which was backed up against the railing overlooking Beale Street.

“Two?”

Sheila Boniface stood up in acknowledgement.

“Let’s do it.”

Sheila Boniface grabbed John Doe by the arm and pulled him off his stool. “We have to go now, John,” she said.

He balked. She pulled harder.

“Please.” Her voice urgent, eyes pleading. He relented and moved. They wove through the crowd towards the door.

The kid saw them, began edging out too. Blue One slid off the stool, kept his body between the kid and the target. Blue Four crossed Beale Street, stood just beyond the club’s door, pretending to examine t-shirts displayed in the window. Blue Three double-timed it across the parking lot to the van. He knelt beside the front bumper, raised his head to the windshield, looked inside, saw the plastic sheeting taped behind the seats, heard metal scrape metal as Elliott shifted on his stool.

The kid bulled through the crowd, stepped onto the sidewalk, stood facing the door, staring hard. He was sweaty, nervous, full of jittery energy. His hand went into the pocket of his baggy shorts, made a fist. Blue Three watched. He was close enough to grab the arm, break it if necessary.

Blue One neared the exit. He could feel the cool night air on his face. He could feel Sheila Boniface and John Doe behind him. He passed the door, hit the sidewalk, next to the kid. Stretched and yawned like he couldn’t decide whether to go back to his hotel or keep the party going. He could hear the kid’s breathing quicken, feel the tension in him about to release. It would be very soon now.

He focused everything on the kid’s hand. Blue Three crept around the van. Sheila Boniface and John Doe neared the door, were at the door, through the door. The kid’s fist moved in his pocket. Blue Three saw the fat black tube of a rifle noise suppressor emerge from the van’s back window.

The kid lurched at John Doe and Sheila, gun out now. Blue One moved, blocked his path. In the van, the suppressor moved slightly, drawing down on the target. Sheila Boniface grabbed John Doe, swung him around, pinned him against the wall, shielding him with her body. Kissed him hard and hungrily, like she wanted to draw him inside her right there.

The kid raised his free hand, tried to push Blue One aside. One put a ridge of bony knuckles in the kid’s throat. Short and quick, like a cobra striking. Not hard enough to rupture the windpipe, just enough to interrupt breathing and momentarily paralyze. The kid could take a punch, though. He staggered, dropped to one knee. Blue Three raised a gloved hand, grabbed the suppressor, jerked it backwards. Hard. Leland Elliott toppled off the stool, landed with a crash on the van floor, groaning. The rifle followed, clattered next to him.

Blue Four ripped the pistol out of the kid’s hand. Sheila Boniface kept John Doe pinned to the wall. Blue One dug his fingers into the nerves under the kid’s collarbone, forced him upright. Blue Three raised himself on the van’s bumper, looked inside, saw Leland Elliott sprawled out, put two nine millimeter bullets from his combat Sig in the center of Elliott’s chest, another under the jaw. The second bullet blew the top of his head off.

Blue One grabbed the kid and frog-marched him to the white minivan. Sheila Boniface released John Doe but kept hold of his arm. “We have to follow them,” she said. He didn’t resist. Blue Four slid behind the wheel, revved the engine. Blue One slid the van door open, pushed the kid in. Sheila Boniface and John Doe followed. Blue Three came running from the parking garage, jumped in after them. Blue One yanked the door closed. Blue Three hit the gas and pointed the van out of town.

Flying down the Interstate, they could finally relax. The air was heavy with spent adrenaline, grim satisfaction, relief. Blue One and Three sat on either side of the kid, Three with the kid’s .22 caliber Ruger jammed into his ribs. John Doe and Sheila Boniface sat opposite them. Together, silent, not touching.

“Who the hell are you people?” John Doe demanded. His voice was angry, raw. “What the hell is going on here?”

Sheila Boniface took his hand. He looked at her as if something had gone sour in his mouth. I’m sorry, John, she mouthed. He shook her off, shook his head. Her face was a mask.

“Well?”

Blue One grimaced. Sheila was taking this hard. “I’ll explain in a minute, John,” he said. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

He turned his attention to the kid. “Two choices,” he said. “Talk or die.”

The kid shrank back in the seat. Blue One almost felt sorry for him. He had no business being involved in this. It was practically child abuse.

“Name,” he said curtly.

“Billy Dean Rafer,” the kid said hoarsely, his adam’s apple working like a yo-yo on a string.

“Well, Billy Dean Rafer, what are you doing with a .22 caliber Ruger in your pocket outside The Blues Room?”

The kid looked like he was going to pee in his pants. Oh, please, Blue One thought. Don’t do that. I just had these seats recovered.

“I. . . I. . . I was supposed to kill him,” the kid said finally. He tilted his head at John Doe.

“And why was that, Billy Dean?”

“Cuz he’s a communist-socialist-fascist revolutionary who wants to burn the Constitution and sell us all as slaves into the One World Order. The black helicopters and all that stuff.”

Blue One shook his head in dismay. Blue Four stifled a grin. Sheila Boniface was like a stone. John Doe stared with something approaching pity.

“You are a moron, you know that?” Blue One said.

“Yessir!”

God help us, he’s actually proud of it.

“Whose idea was this, Billy Dean?”

“Mine, sir.”

“You couldn’t think your way out of a paper bag. Let me put it another way: Who made it possible for you to do this?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Blue Three jabbed the Ruger harder. The kid winced. More sweat dribbled down his head.

“Honest, sir. I don’t know. I was talking with some of the guys at Revere Corps. You know, about how somebody’s got to stop these godless-liberal-socialist-terrorists from taking over the country. The next day I got a phone call. This guy asked me if I meant what I’d said, if I wanted to make some good money. I said, Hell, yeah. He said he’d send me a plane ticket, have a van and a hotel room ready for me. All I had to do was check in and wait for instructions. He’d tell me who to kill and how to do it. Said I had to do it exactly like he said, that he’d kill me if I fucked it up.” All of a sudden he noticed Sheila Boniface. “S’cuse my, French, ma’am.”

Blue One and Blue Four exchanged glances. Revere Corps meant Ed Bane, William Bigby. They hated Frank Bernabe. Leland Elliott worked for Frank Bernabe. This was starting to get interesting.

“Who was the guy with the money and ticket, Billy Dean?” Blue One asked. “You see him, meet him? Anybody else?”

“No, sir. No one. Just him, talking on the phone.”

“So how was this supposed to go down? You get a phone call telling you where the target is, go up to him on the street and blow his shit away?”

“Yes, sir. Pretty much like that.”

“But it didn’t go like that, did it?”

Billy Dean Rafer bowed his head in shame. “No, sir.”

“And after you shot a man in the middle of the busiest street in Memphis, how were you supposed to get away?”

“The guy said there’d be a car waiting for me around the corner. He said it’d take me to a safe house where I’d get my money. Then they’d take me to a private plane and fly me anywhere I wanted to go. I always wanted to go to Cancun, check out some of that hot Mexican coochie.” His eyes flitted to Sheila Boniface again. “No offense, ma’am.”

She gave no sign of hearing.

Blue One gave an exasperated sigh.

“You know there was no getaway car, right, Billy Dean? No money, no plane, no ‘hot Mexican coochie.’ You were the patsy, the fall guy. The guy who put you up to this was in a parking garage across the street with a high-powered rifle. He would have either put a bullet between your eyes or let the cops arrest you and throw you in jail for the rest of your life.”

Billy Dean Rafer nodded morosely. “I guess so.”

“I was wrong what I said before,” Blue One admitted. “You’re not a moron. You’re an absolute pathetic fucking excuse for a moron.”

The kid perked up a little. He appeared to take it as a compliment. Blue One gave up.

“So what am I supposed to do with you, Billy Dean Rafer?” he said.

“Kill me, I reckon.”

This time Blue One was impressed. The kid did have a grasp of the essentials.

“You know, I’m tempted, Billy Dean. I really am. But it just wouldn’t be right. To be perfectly honest, you’re too stupid to kill. It would be like shooting my dog for peeing on the carpet. I couldn’t live with myself.” He thought for a moment. “Your friends, relatives. . . they think you’re going away for awhile?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You got a passport, ID?.”

He patted a buttoned pocket on his shorts. “Right here,” he said.

“But no money, right?”

Billy Dean Rafer looked downcast again.

“No, sir. Maybe twenty bucks.”

Blue One gave another sigh, said, “Four, get the bag.” Blue Four reached under the seat and came up with black nylon bag. “Give him five,” Blue One said. Blue Four gaped. John Doe gaped. Sheila Boniface gaped. Blue Three turned around in the driver’s seat and gaped.

“I know, I know,” Blue One said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But what do you want me to do? I can’t kill him, and we can’t leave him running around loose. Everyone’s expecting him to go to Mexico. So let him go to Mexico.”

He grabbed Billy Dean Rafer with a death stare and said evenly, “Listen to me, kid. I’m giving you five thousand dollars of our money and taking you to the airport. You buy a one-way ticket on the next flight to Mexico and make absolutely goddam sure you’re on it. You stay there for a year. One full year, you understand? If you come back before a year is up we’ll know. I’ll hunt you down and my friend here will shoot off pieces of you until you bleed to death. Is that a fair deal?”

“Yessir!” Billy Dean Rafer beamed.

Now he looks like he wants to hug me, Blue One thought. Don’t do that either, kid.

“Three, take us to the airport,” he said. “Mr. Rafer has a plane to catch.”

I
began building my reportorial house the only way I knew—confirm what I already know, check and recheck those facts I can, measure my assumptions against those I’ve managed to substantiate, let the facts drive the narrative rather than the narrative drive the facts.

Even that’s a whole lot less than proof. But it’s a start. And that start was telling me I was on the right track. I reached out to my colleagues at Public Interest for times, dates, places. For details, rumors, wild speculation, anything they might have picked up. I reached out to my contacts in government and law enforcement too. What do you know? What have you heard? What’s the scuttlebutt? Who’s sweating? Who’s not?

I got a lot of quick, nervous, No comments. A lot of breaths sucked in, followed by the metallic buzz of the dial tone. A lot of odd bits and pieces, stray information floating in the air, maybe something, maybe nothing at all. I wracked my own brain too. What had I heard, seen, noticed? What did I know? What did I assume? Where was I in all of this?