Bad Men (10 page)

If Dad still had his gun, he'd have shot Rodge there and then.

Next morning and
fortunately Rodge hadn't burst into tears once since he'd got up, but he hadn't been able to sleep a wink all night. Telling Dad had been hard. You'd think there'd be some truth in the saying about a problem shared and all that. But there wasn't. Crock of shite, it was. Dad and Norrie wanted details, so he gave them details. Told them about Wallace threatening to blow his kneecaps off, about how he hid in the backseat of the car.

Dad told him he was a fool. He was lucky to be alive.

All night Rodge kept replaying the events of that day in his head. The more he went over it, the more he realised that Dad was right. If Rodge had been a betting man, he'd have wagered a shitload of money that Wallace would never have let him go.

It wasn't right, man. Wallace wasn't the sort of person to behave like Gandhi. Okay, so that wasn't exactly how he'd behaved, but by his standards, that was as near as damnit.

Rodge thought about how composed Wallace had been. Someone strolls into your house and fires a couple of bullets at you, you don't stop to think how you're going to respond, do you? You kick the shit out of the bastard. At the very least. Well, that's how a normal person would respond. Wallace was very far from being normal. From the outset, he began messing with Rodge's head. And he was continuing to do so. And doing a fuck of a good job of it, too.

The next night
, around two o'clock in the morning, Rodge was in bed listening to the welcome patter of rain on his window—this heat didn't help when you were having trouble sleeping – when he heard a noise, like chair legs scraping, that sounded as if it came from the kitchen. Wasn't May. She slept like a horse. Could be Dad, his busted nose keeping him awake. Or a bit peckish, making himself a sandwich or grabbing a biscuit. But what if it wasn't Dad?

Rodge got out of bed, quietly, reached under it for the black wood Louisville Slugger baseball bat he'd kept for protection since May had moved in.

He crept along the corridor. Poked his head into the sitting room.

Nothing.

Carried on along the corridor. Braced himself. Firm grip on the bat. Poked his head round the kitchen door.

Nothing.

He switched on the light, just to make sure. Nothing. Nobody. He breathed out hard. Went over to the sink, poured himself a glass of water, drank it, switched off the light again. Wished he could calm his nerves.

Wallace wasn't stupid. He wouldn't come here. If he was carrying a grudge, he'd play it out on his own patch. He wouldn't —

Wham! The side of Rodge's head exploded. He staggered, tried not to go down. Tried to keep hold of the baseball bat, but his grip had slackened with the blow to his head. He felt dizzy. Wham! A second blow dropped him to his knees. Lights flashed in front of his eyes. The baseball bat slipped out of his fingers. They had no strength in them at all. "Wallace?" he said, then asked the craziest question: "Did you just shoot me?"

A third blow, across the bridge of his nose, knocked him backwards. His face filled with pain.

Then he felt a hand on his leg. "Wallace?" he said again.

And an explosion. He knew what it was, what it meant. He had his answer. The first three blows weren't shots. This was. For a second, he was left with only his imagination. And during that time, his imagination tried to prepare him for the ensuing pain by conjuring up what it thought was a suitable agony. But it fell way short. When the pain came, it was like nothing he'd ever experienced. At the same instant, a hundred mallets slammed into his kneecap. Pulverised it. The pain overloaded his senses. He couldn't believe this much pain was possible. But it was. He roared, told himself the pain wasn't so bad. Roared again at the lie. Choked on the blood from his smashed nose.

He didn't notice what Wallace was doing. Not that he could have stopped him.

The second explosion followed quickly. The same blinding pain. This time, the other knee. Through the pain, the thought that he'd never walk again. Not caring, if he could only stop the pain.

He heard the outside door slam.

A split second later, he passed out.

Pearce heard about
it first on the radio. It was in the newspapers, too, and on the TV news.

Somebody'd done both knees at close range with a handgun. Pearce recognised the big guy's name. Wondered what Rodge Baxter had done to piss Wallace off.

None of his business, though, was it?

Guapa
was Flash's
favourite word, so much so that he kept it to himself, and used
muchacha
instead when he was messing around with Rodge. A
guapa
was what the Americans called a babe, and
guapas
were always wanting to know why he was called Flash.

Well, he could hardly own up to the real source of his nickname, could he, you know? It wouldn't be right to say to some lovely lady he'd just met, "Hello, darlin'. They call me Flash cause I nick things. Quick as a flash," although he knew some people who'd have done just that but no, Flash had a bit of style and when he took a girl out on a date, he didn't take her to Burger King, no chance, mate, no, he wined and dined his women at Pizza Hut or somewhere classy like that, maybe even Pizza Express if the lady was really special, and threw in a bit of
español
which
usually did the trick maybe because, who knows, it sounded a bit dirty.

For a while, he'd taken to telling all the
guapas
he met that his name was Gordon and that he was known by the nickname Flash and after a minute they'd get it and go:
A-ha. King of the universe
.

Never failed. Well, sometimes it did but you win some and anyway the point is he was pissed off when he found out Pearce's first name was Gordon because it was as if the fucker had stolen his monicker, even though Flash's parents had saddled him with the name Fraser, not Gordon.

Gordon Pearce. The bastard was called Gordon. That's what Dad told him.

Anyway, he was supposed to be doing something here,
pronto.
Flash was ready to rumble, even though his mouth was dry, but as Dad had kept saying, there was no danger and he was right, of course. No danger at all, just a phone call, so what was he so frigging jumpy about? Flash blew his cheeks out, tapped his foot, made a fist and thumped his knuckles into the palm of his other hand. Yeah, bring on a barrel load of radges, he was ready, man, fucking primed.

Not that he had to beat anybody up, not this time, no, all he had to do was make this shagging phone call.

He could use a fag right now but he'd given up, hoping to prove to Dad how easy it was, just a matter of willpower and that was the same as being stubborn and Dad was stubborn all right, so no problem.

And it wasn't as if he was going to be face to face with Wallace, so there was nothing to get all steamed up about, but the truth was he was friggin' terrified of what the fucker was going to do next.

Flash couldn't quite get his head round what had happened to Rodge. Never heard of anything so fucking cowardly in his life, apart from hitting May and what the jizzwad did to Louis, maybe, but the point was that it was pretty fucking low to shoot somebody like that in the fucking knees when they weren't looking and had no means of defending themselves, apart from the baseball bat, but that wasn't likely to be much good against a gun, was it, so didn't amount to much, almost nothing, which was the point, right, as he said.

Wallace really deserved what he was going to get. No doubt about that, and Flash would dearly love to give it to him, but as if Wallace wasn't a tough enough proposition in the first place, he now had a fucking gun to contend with, which was an absolute pisser of a situation.

Which is why Pearce was the man for the job. So he'd turned it down already and Dad had given up on him, but Flash reckoned he could still be persuaded. And he wasn't afraid of guns. Been shot already, hadn't he, and survived.

Flash picked up the phone and dialled.

Hilda stared at
the phone, tail wagging. Looked like he was about to attack the handset. Pearce picked it up and said, "Speak."

"Seen what happened?" a voice he vaguely recognised said.

Pearce waited but he couldn't place the voice and it didn't say anything else so he hung up.

Seconds later, the phone rang again. "The fuck you hang up for,
amigo
?" the same voice sad. "That's Pearce, isn't it?"

Baxter's son. The one who was still walking. The one Pearce had threatened to castrate. Pearce said, "I said no."

He hung up again. Bent down, scooped up Hilda, tucked him under

his arm. He went through to the bedroom, stood by the window, looked out across the Firth stroking Hilda's head. Another hot clear day. Too hot to be bothered with this kind of hassle.

Wallace. Devil Daddy. The Baxter's nemesis. Shot Big Rodge's knees full of lead. The fuck was wrong with the mad fucker? What did Rodge do to upset him? The big guy would be in hospital for a while and, according to the newspapers, when he did get out, it'd be in a wheelchair. Probably wouldn't ever walk again.

But was it Wallace? Highly possible that Rodge could have pissed off somebody else. Somebody with that kind of sadistic temper, though? Somebody harbouring sufficient rage to break into your home and fire a couple of bullets into you? Pearce could think of one or two candidates. Suitably provoked, Cooper would do that without blinking. But then, he was in prison. And Seamus, Pearce's old cellmate, wouldn't have batted an eyelid. Mind you, handguns weren't his weapon of choice. People he didn't like, he used to slice chunks of their torsos off with a machete. While they were alive.

After lockdown, Pearce sometimes had trouble sleeping knowing Seamus was in the same room, machete or no.

Pearce held out
till evening. Then he gave in. He'd slotted the photo of May in a drawer in the kitchen once he'd decided Baxter's offer wasn't for him. Hadn't been able to toss the photo in the bin, though he wasn't sure why. He dug it out now, smoothing out the slight crease in the top right-hand corner.

He flipped it over, dialled the number on the back.

A girl answered.

Pearce said, "Who's this?"

"May." She sounded tired.

"Can I speak to Baxter?"

"Who do you want? Flash or Dad?"

"I'll have Dad, please."

When Baxter came to the phone, Pearce said, "I need to talk to you."

"What about?"

"Wallace," Pearce said.

"You changed your mind?"

"I didn't say that. I just want to talk to you."

"You want to come over?"

"Nope."

After a minute, Baxter said, "Oh, I get it. I'm on my way."

The Baxters had
had fish for dinner. Pearce smelled it on them the minute they walked in the door. So did Hilda. He appeared from the sitting room, had a quick look round, wagging his tail like a demented rattlesnake, and then went back to his basket.

"Weird dog," Flash said. "What sort is it?"

Pearce told him. Flash had never heard of a Dandie Dinmont. He was slouching so hard with his hands in his pockets he looked like he was going to collapse into his own stomach.

The dad offered Pearce his hand. He, at least, had some semblance of politeness. His face reminded Pearce of a car thief he'd shared a cell with for a month. Guy called Rocky. You could have cut off his nose and sewn it back on upside down and it would have been an improvement. Rocky didn't have those dark bruises under his eyes, though.

"Wasn't expecting the pair of you," Pearce said.

"Flash is as concerned about May as I am," Baxter said.

"Where is she now?"

"Visiting our brother in hospital," Flash said. "Where Wallace put him."

"Is she safe?"

"Course she is," Baxter said. "Public place. She's with a friend of mine. And we're picking them up after we leave here."