BULLETS (2 page)

“They’re his brothers, his blood. So what?”

“So it don’t make sense, a banger, he’d bring some old school gang hard cases, right? Some Uzi-carrying blooded killers. Not a couple of farmers with shotguns.”

“Hey, we just do what—”

“Not only that, why would I get hired to help out a pure white native like yourself in some simple racial cleansing? Seems to me you got enough boys in your crew who’d be more than willing to knock off a few Mexicans with you, right? Why am I even here? Something ain’t right, don’t you think?”

“You ain’t getting paid to think. You’re getting paid to back me up, kill who I say to kill, bury bodies where I tell you to bury ’em, and that’s it. You got that, boy?”

Stutz glared, putting a hand on the pistol tucked into his pants for good measure. He was gonna plant this motherfucker alongside the Mexicans when it was all over, insurance or not, and anyone who didn’t like it could go fuck themselves.

Slick smiled, tossed his empty can and picked up the spade.

“Sure boss, whatever you say. Hey, I’m just asking, that’s all.”

Slick trudged in Stutz’s direction, voice and manner calm and relaxed.

“You don’t ask nothin’, you don’t say nothin’, you just do as you’re fucking told and nothin’ else, you hear me you goddamn yappy nigger?”

“She wasn’t fourteen,” Slick said as he got close.

“What’d you say?”

“I said she wasn’t fourteen, and she wasn’t white. She was twelve and Mexican.”

“What? How did you—”

“Esteban’s her older brother and he didn’t rape her. You did. They can’t go to the law because she’s an illegal. Esteban beat the shit out of you for it a few days ago, might have killed you if his friends hadn’t pulled him off. You have to kill him before word gets out that your ass was kicked by a Mexican half your size—and also why.

“So you had a message sent to him that your gang would deliver you to him for a price and you plan to kill him yourself without any of your people finding out, because, as nasty as your gang is, even they ain’t down for raping twelve-year-old girls. Since you’re on your own, you reached out to a broker for help, and they sent me.

“Thing is, I ain’t down for pedophile rapists, either. So it’s my distinct pleasure to tell you that Esteban and his friends, they won’t be showing up. It’s just you and me out here and I should tell you up front that—”

Stutz broke out of his stupor and went for his pistol. Slick grabbed Stutz’s pistol hand, squeezed tight, leaned close and finished his sentence.

“—I ain’t your boy.”

Slick yanked Stutz’s hand up and out of his belt, twisting it hard. He kicked the inside of the redneck’s knee, hard, and he went down. Slick still held the spade in his other hand, and he brought it up and down on the other man’s shoulder, breaking his collarbone. Stutz screamed in pain.

“I bet you’ve just been dying to say something about a spade holding a spade this whole time, right?” Slick said.

He snagged the pistol from the fallen man’s belt. Tossed it. Turned back just as the fallen redneck yanked a wicked dagger from his boot with his good arm.

Stutz swiped at Slick, who caught his wrist easily. Twisted until it snapped and the knife fell. Slick turned Stutz over on his stomach, grabbed him by the belt, picked him up and hauled him over to the freshly dug grave. With a grunt, Slick swung the other man into the pit. He fell hard, gasping in shock when he landed on his broken bones.

“I told you this hole would be big enough.”

Slick picked the pistol back up, chambered a round.

“Listen, my man, this ain’t right, I didn’t kill her and besides, she was just a—”

“Just a Mexican?”

“Yeah! Come on! It ain’t the same, you’re an American, you gotta understand—”

“I do. You screwed the deal. You fucking raped a kid.”

Slick shook his head. “Now karma’s come to collect on your ass.”

“Fuck you, you fucking cocksucking nig—”

Slick raised the pistol and fired three times. Hit Stutz once in the chest, twice in the head. Classic double-tap.

“Your hate was your undoing, friend,” he said to the dead man.

S
lick was on
his third cup of coffee when the cops walked in, and they came in with a definitive purpose beyond breakfast that everyone in the diner could sense. Conversation came to a complete halt as folks waited, expectant.

There were four of them, hands on their pistols, confident enough they didn’t pull the weapons but clearly looking for someone. Slick eased back on his stool and took a last sip of coffee just in case he didn’t get any more for a while.

He didn’t usually drink coffee, organic tea was his beverage of choice, but he was exhausted and had had trouble staying awake while driving.

After dumping all the stuff—the cooler, the pistol, everything—down into the hole with Stutz, he poured gasoline into the pit and lit it up. The only thing he kept was a dirty roll of cash, which was, he assumed, what Stutz had intended to pay him with.

He then drove Stutz’s truck to where he left his rental car, which wasn’t too far away—he’d known in advance where Stutz was planning the ambush and planted a rental—but wasn’t too close either, as he had to dump the truck afterward and didn’t want it to be found anywhere near the body. He then burned the truck and hit the road, hoping to catch an earlier flight if he made the four-hour drive to Tucson in three.

When dawn broke, Slick caught himself nodding off, tires rumbling on the edge of the freeway, and he knew he’d have to do something if he wanted to make it home at all. So when he spotted a sign for a town, he decided to pull off and grab some real coffee.

The sign had read: “
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE CITY OF BENDIJO, POP 14,201
.”

Bendijo was Spanish for blessed, Slick recalled from somewhere in his youth.
Population fourteen thousand, two hundred and one,
Slick had mused as he pulled into the city proper,
wonder who that last one is?

An hour and two and a half cups of very strong coffee later, Slick stopped wondering about the population of Bendijo and started worrying why four white cops with attitude were eyeballing the customers, one of whom was Slick.

It was after eight and the diner was half full, a mix of people, mostly truck drivers, construction workers and laborers and a couple of guys dressed for desk jobs. Everyone was friendly, everyone pleasant, lots of Spanish spoken on both sides of the counter.

Slick was clean, he had scrubbed himself good after the job, even washed the cash. No weapons, no drugs. He was careful. But here were four cops with obvious bad intentions and a lifetime of traveling while black had taught Slick that he was in a potentially dangerous situation just for being who he was.

The lead cop, a big bastard with the name
RAWLINGS
on his nametag, scanned the diner. He had requisite mirrored sunglasses, a crew cut and a hard gut, which seemed to be the way of white folks down in this part of the country. He chewed gum, which made Slick dislike him almost immediately.
Gum isn’t for grownups, it’s for kids.

Slick slid his hand into his pocket, pulled out his smart phone and pretended to check for text messages. Chance favored the prepared mind.

Rawlings finally found whomever it was he was searching for and swaggered forward, pulling out a police baton. His uniform told Slick that Rawlings was a sheriff. The other three, deputies, followed him. Bad procedure, one should have stayed by the door, another in the back. If they were here to arrest someone, they should have their guns out and ready. Sloppy.

Sloppy or not, they headed right for Slick. He rehearsed his reaction in his mind, got his story right and tight. Took a deep breath, got into character.

And Rawlings walked right past him, not even sparing him a glance. He stopped at the man sitting next to Slick at the counter, a Hispanic man in blue jeans and a denim shirt. He’d been sitting there with two friends, chatting up a storm in Spanish.

Rawlings, with his baton, tapped the man on the arm.

“Let’s go, Pedro, on your feet.”

“What for?” Pedro asked, fear in his eyes. “I am arrested?”

“Let’s go, on your feet.” Rawlings tapped him again with the baton. Slick lowered his phone, tucking it out of sight under the counter. He didn’t want to be involved, now that he knew they weren’t looking for him.

“What charges, why?”

Rawlings reacted instantly and swung the baton hard. It connected with Pedro’s face, breaking the man’s nose and probably several other bones in his face. He fell straight down to the floor. Rawlings kept swinging the baton, bashing the man’s back and legs, cursing a blue streak. The rage came at a flip of a switch, which told Slick that Rawlings was not only ready to lose his shit, he welcomed it with open arms.

Pedro’s two companions got to their feet, hands in the air, and just watched, helpless. The other three cops chewed gum, weapons out but relaxed, and waited for the beating to end. Finally Rawlings stopped, nodded, and two of them stepped forward, cuffed the unconscious Pedro, picked him up by the armpits and dragged him out. Pedro’s face was basically caved in.
He’ll be lucky to live,
Slick thought.

Rawlings stared at Pedro’s companions then turned to the waiting officer.

“Take them in, too.”

The remaining cop nodded, stepped forward, told the men in Spanish to slowly turn around and put their hands on their heads. They complied without a word or sudden movement. The cop cuffed both as Rawlings watched. One hand on each cuff, he waited patiently.
Sloppy,
Slick thought again.

After a moment, the other two deputies returned, having evidently dumped the bleeding and unconscious Pedro in the back of a patrol car, took the cuffed Hispanic men from the third deputy and marched them outside.

Rawlings glanced around at the other customers in the diner. A few, all white, smiled at him with apparent approval. Other folks, however, just looked away, concentrated on their food or coffee—same as Slick. He’d followed everything out of the corner of his eye, but his plan was to stay out of it.

He felt Rawlings stare at him. Slick did his best to mask emotions, but a man next to him just had his face cratered, ignoring something like that was far from natural. After thinking about it, Rawlings finally tapped Slick on the arm with his baton.

“Hey, boy. You see something here you don’t approve of?”

Slick didn’t approve of white men calling him boy. But he swallowed that and just shook his head in answer.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.”

Rawlings tapped him on the arm with his baton again. There was still blood on it from Pedro’s skull, and it colored Slick’s shirt. The sheriff didn’t seem to care.

Slick sighed, set his coffee down and turned to face Rawlings, who took his sunglasses off and gave what had to be his official version of a badass stare.

“What you doin’ here, boy?”

Slick thought about that, glanced at his coffee as if to answer,
“Isn’t it obvious?”

“I meant, smartass, what you doing in Bendijo? You ain’t from here.”

“Just passing through.”

“Passing from where and to where?”

“I’m driving to Tucson.”

“Why?”

“Catch a flight.”

Rawlings eyeballed him more. Slick could read people, it was one of his specialties, and he could tell Rawlings didn’t like Slick sitting there as witness to what had happened, didn’t like it at all.

“What you got in your hand there, boy?”

Slick had a real bellyful of being called boy, but he swallowed it again and opened his hand, revealing his smart phone. Rawlings took it from him. The keypad was locked. It had his nickname scrolling across a screensaver of an Ace-King of Spades.

“Big Slick. That you?”

Slick nodded again. He saw Rawlings come to an internal decision.

“On your feet, let’s go.”

“Hey, Ted, come on now,” a man chimed in from a back booth, smiling but concerned. “He’s obviously just a tourist having coffee. Give him a break. Remember, it’s good for the local economy.”

The man wore a suit and tie, both expensive. Slick put him as either an insurance salesman or a banker. Rawlings didn’t look back, just stared at Slick, still wary.

“That right? You a tourist, boy?”

Slick was exhausted. He hadn’t slept in twenty hours. He usually held tight to his emotions but when he was this tired he occasionally slipped and let them loose.

“Jon.”

“What?”

“My name is Jon Elder. My friends call me Big Slick, my lawyer and my accountants call me Jon, my bank calls me Mr. Elder because that’s my name. Jon Elder. It’s not boy, nigger, coon, jungle bunny, porch monkey, blackie, nappy, darky, spade, melon-head, or negra, none of the above. My name is Jon Elder, you can call me Jon or Mr. Elder or Sir, but you don’t call me boy. Got that, Ted?”

Rawlings swung his baton, hard, right for Slick’s head. Slick caught it before it landed and held it, a few inches away from his face.

“And this ain’t the way to run a chicken farm. You’re screwing the deal, Sheriff.”

Slick lost consciousness when the deputy hit him on the head from behind and was completely out, thankfully, for the very severe beating that followed.

W
hen Slick woke
up, his whole body hurt. He’d gotten one of those cop beatings, the kind where they hammer at your arms and legs with a baton while you’re cuffed. He stretched, muscles complaining. Didn’t seem to be any broken bones, just deep bruises everywhere. His neck creaked and cracked. So far everything moved as it was supposed to, the joints and tissue screamed at him for it but did as they were told.

He was in a holding cell, a brand spanking new one. No graffiti, no dirt or grime, clean cement painted yellow, a coat that was shiny and new. He lay on a metal cot and there was a metal toilet, sans seat, on one side. No mirror. He felt his face; swollen and bruised, dried blood but, again, no broken bones. He was barefoot and his belt was gone. The three cells next to his were empty.