Cash Burn (34 page)

He and the pastor had crossed Bedford. Again they stood in front of the church. Jason didn’t dare look at the metallic Jesus at the end of the room beyond the open doors.

“We weren’t gone an hour before we fought. She got out of the car.” He choked on the words. They were like chunks of flesh rattling in his throat, threatening to strangle him. He had to cough them out somehow.

“It was the worst possible place. The worst time of night. She ran into this bar. And I. . . I let her go.”

He fought to keep tears back. The heels of his hands went to his eyes. He wanted to push his eyeballs through his head, as if that would erase the images.

“It took me too long to swallow my pride and go in after her. They kicked me out. I called home, and my dad said he was coming with Phil. I went in and tried again. I got into a fight with the bartender. By the time I got to the room where they had her . . . Oh, God.”

“Jason—”

“They were having a party, and she was the main event. I heard them whooping and hollering before I even opened the door. Then my brother showed up. I remember afterward, he was holding a baseball bat broken in two. He was pushing Danah and me to the door. Yelling at us to get out before the cops got there. My dad was pulling me away from her. There was blood all over the room.”

Jason looked up at Miles. Those black eyebrows were knitted. “I’m sorry, Jason.”

Jason ran his knuckles over his cheeks and blinked. “Not half as sorry as I am.”

“Jason, I have to urge you. Be reconciled to Christ. He can take this guilt from you.”

The doors to the church were still open. It was a place he couldn’t go. Never mind the pastor’s statistics.

“God is bigger than your sin, Jason. He can forgive. Even if you can’t forgive yourself, God can forgive you. And teach you to live with it. I know what I’m talking about. But don’t take my word for it. Believe God.”

Jason toed the grass that hedged the sidewalk. These grounds were so green. Across Bedford, the dirt of the little desert shone brown in the angled sunlight of the late afternoon. He didn’t belong in the perfectly maintained garden of the church. That cactus-infested desert was where he belonged.

He shook his head. “I can’t believe in this.”

“You can.”

“No.”

“I have to say one more thing.” The pastor extended his hand. Jason took it. “You’re using this thing as an excuse, just like you’re using the letter. Your own sin is not so great that God won’t forgive it. God’s gift in Christ is greater than any sin ever committed and all of them put together. That’s how big God is and how great his sacrifice was. Be reconciled to God, Jason. And stop using that letter as an excuse to leave your wife.”

Jason wrenched his hand free. “All right. You made your point. You’ve done your duty. You can punch the clock now.”

“There’s no clock, Jason. Time has never been the issue, O master of diversion.”

Jason looked at the traffic backed up on Santa Monica. It would take some time to cross. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But my marriage is my business—”

“And Serena’s.”

Jason turned his heels to the pastor and stalked away.

54

Flip inhaled the darkness. It was fuel to him, elemental as the blood that spun through his clenched fists. He let it consume his thoughts, fill his consciousness. He breathed out any thin line of light, breathed in blackness, envisioned his tissues and bones and veins darkening from the colors of life to a thick and unalterable pitch.

Only shadows within.

He’d already smashed the only light in this section of the alley. Smashed it as if it represented anything that could remove his darkness. It had exploded with a light tap from the crowbar he now wedged smoothly into the gap between the edge of the door and the frame. He popped the door open.

The music of the Ragtop Club erupted into the alley. A singer’s shouting stoked the night.

No one was in the hallway leading to Mr. B’s office.

He pulled out Mr. B’s pistol. Slid off the safety. With the gun in one hand and the crowbar in the other, he stepped inside.

He blinked at the pale intensity of the light.

The door wouldn’t close again. It inched outward toward the gaping black outside. He let it go.

The crowbar’s weight comforted his palm.

Two steps ahead, three, four. The door at the end of the hallway leading to the kitchen leaked the fragrances of boiling grease, onions, potatoes, and hamburger, but he had no hunger for food.

The singer screamed a dozen times, “. . . a denial, a denial, a denial.” A final chord from his guitar lingered to an end.

They’d fixed the plaster where Garrett’s head had broken through. Flip wouldn’t have been able to spot the repair if he hadn’t been in this hallway when the damage was done. He came to Mr. B’s office door and stood to the side. From his pocket he took a small stash of duct tape and tore off a strip to cover the peep hole.

Another song started.

He put his back to the patched wall and considered the office door. A metal plate now surrounded the doorknob, encasing the edge of the door. Mr. B had learned something since the last time Flip stood here. It would be tough to bust this down.

So he would wait. He was prepared for this. He listened for a moment and, hearing no one coming, returned to the exit door and placed the tip of the crowbar against the nearest bulb recessed in the ceiling. He ducked his head and shoved the crowbar up, and the bulb blew. A shower of glass trickled over his cap and shoulders.

He listened. The explosion could have been just another thump of bass from the club.

Two bulbs remained. He moved to the other end of the hall, closest to the kitchen, and used the crowbar there, too. The last light was directly outside Mr. B’s office door. He took his third shower of glass, and darkness resumed its rightful place.

He leaned against the wall opposite the office door, the crowbar against the back of his left leg, the pistol against the back of his right. In his peripheral vision he could see creases of light from the doors leading to the kitchen and to the club. One of these doors would open. Or the office door itself would. Either way, it was only a matter of time before he brought the fight into Mr. B’s office.

He focused on the shadows. At the edges of his vision, the glowing thin lines grew in intensity as his eyes adjusted. The angles and corners of the hallway emerged out of the dimness, the blank spaces of the walls becoming gray. It struck him how easily darkness was bullied by light. One tiny source, and the dark oozed away, polluted.

From the kitchen came the clatter of utensils banging and scraping on surfaces, dishes rattling onto counters. From the other door and through the wall at his back, thudding music pounded its rhythm into his brain. As if removed from himself, he saw his position in the building, an isolated figure against a wall in an unlit hallway while employees bustled in other rooms, while partiers eyed one another and shouted above music in the club, drowning themselves in alcohol and conversation, in munchies and banter. He was only a few feet away from all of them, but he might as well have been in another world.

This was taking too long. Like the dissipation of the blackness around him, he felt darkness’s hold on him slipping, his mind losing its sharpness as his thoughts floated. Next he would be thinking about Diane. She shouldered into his consciousness, her green eyes, her fragrance, the silk texture of her skin under his fingertips. She stared at him, brought her hand to his shoulder, her lips to his ear to whisper another mission. . . .

At least this thing with Mr. B had nothing to do with her. This job was his alone. This would show her that he didn’t need her for everything, that he could create his own paydays if he needed to. The bracelet had been supposed to show her, before he had seen the table set for someone else. He had planned to give her the bracelet and watch her eyes widen when she saw the glitter of the diamonds. She would have held her wrist out to him so he could lay the platinum-encased jewels across it and pin the clasp together. She would have thrown her arms around him for not just the gift but also with surprise that he’d done the job himself, apart from her.

Instead, she’d had to scramble off the floor to hustle him to the door. He’d dropped the bracelet in a trash can at the foot of the stairwell.

The light seeping into the hallway irritated his eyes. He wanted to crush it forever.

She had her job, and he had his. So it had gotten a little away from him. He’d made a mistake with the motel phone, and somehow they’d figured out who he was. Now he had Mr. B’s guys tracking him. The truth was, he’d bungled it pretty good. But he still had the list. And Mr. B’s thirty-two grand. Or thirty-two grand less what he’d paid for the bracelet and a few other necessities.

And tonight he’d finish it.

The hallway flooded with light. The kitchen door.

A waiter stepped into the frame. The door swung back. Flip jumped away from the wall and pinned him with the crowbar.

“Be quiet,” he hissed. “Don’t say a thing. This is a gun in your side. You feel it?” He shoved it into the waiter’s ribs.

“Don’t. Don’t.”

“Quiet, I said.”

The waiter was stiff as plywood under Flip’s grip. A noise like a whimper escaped from his throat.

“You’re going to Mr. B’s door, and you’re going to knock. I’m going to have this gun on you. Don’t say anything wrong. Understand?”

A shake of the waiter’s body made Flip think he was nodding. They walked like lovers to the office door.

“Now knock.” Flip brought his arm back and shuffled to the side, the barrel of the pistol digging into the waiter’s side.

He knocked three times. From behind the door, someone asked who it was.

“It’s Tony.”

“What do you want?” It was a voice Flip didn’t know. Not Mr. B. Not Garrett or Ronny.

Flip whispered, “Tell him you’ve got some food for him.”

“I got some food for you.”

Muffled voices inside talked it over. Flip shifted his feet. He peeled the tape off the peep hole, staying to one side.

A voice cursed on the other side of the door. “I can’t see you, man.”

“Tell him the light’s burned out.”

“The light’s burned out. Open up.” He edged away from the gun. Flip let him.

The door opened a crack and Flip burst inside.

The guy behind the door trotted backward, off-balance. It was the spider. Not such a smooth mover now.

In a second, Flip saw his odds. They were not good. Garrett brought a shotgun up. Mr. B sat behind the desk, grinning. Ronny, against the wall, was the only one in the room Flip didn’t worry about.

The spider regained his footing and jumped to the wall.

“Hi, Flipper.” Behind his desk, Mr. B leaned forward. His hands were hidden. His gold necklace swayed, flashed in the glow of the fluorescents overhead. It was enough to drive Flip crazy.

“You said the wrong thing.”

Mr. B glanced at Garrett. To Flip, the barrel of Garrett’s shotgun was a gaping cave, beautiful and terrible in its perfect blackness.

“Wha’d I say?” Mr. B asked.

“You said you were going to my father’s house. That was the wrong thing.”

Mr. B’s grin turned down and Flip guessed what was about to happen. He dropped to the floor.

The front of the desk exploded.

The waiter yelped from the hallway. He wouldn’t be taking any more orders tonight.

Splinters of desk wood spun through the air. Flip rolled to the corner as another shot rang out.

His shoulder was rocked. A bullet. His left arm went limp.

Beneath the ringing in his ears, he thought he heard Mr. B shouting.

Flip got off a shot in Garrett’s direction. Garrett flinched. Flip didn’t know if he’d hit him or not.

He rolled back toward the door.

The spider looked like he might try to climb the wall back-first. He wasn’t moving with all the lead flying around.

Garrett was down.

Ronny cowered behind a chair.

It was just Flip and Mr. B.

Flip’s left arm hung dead. He shot at the desk as Mr. B disappeared behind it. Flip scuffled to his feet. Firing, he stepped toward his adversary’s hiding place. Three shots. Four. The bullets shattered the wood in a frantic pattern. Six shots, seven.

The trigger snapped. No recoil. No shot. Empty.

He had no more cartridges.

He dropped the gun and hurdled the desk.

Mr. B trembled in a ball. He was a mess. Flip wrenched the gun from Mr. B’s hand. Underneath Mr. B, blood spread across the floor planks like a living thing.

“You shouldn’t have said that about my father.”

Mr. B’s eyelids fluttered. He looked up at Flip, coughed a sputtering cough and clutched himself.

From the corner, Ronny said, “Hey, Flip, man. I’m leaving, okay?”

Flip didn’t look at him. Something seeped down his arm from his crushed shoulder.

The spider had edged away from the wall. He was near the door, calculating. Flip watched his eyes.

Ronny moved between them. It was the spider’s chance to get out. But he didn’t. Ronny was gone. Flip didn’t see the waiter lying outside the door. Maybe he’d crawled away.

Mr. B’s new gun was in Flip’s hand. Plus, he could go for the shotgun. Garrett didn’t look interested in firing it anymore. He was using both hands to hold onto a rib. He kept saying, “Oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man.”

Flip watched the spider.

“You’re wondering, is this empty?” Flip held up Mr. B’s gun.

The spider smiled. “Doesn’t matter.”

Flip waited. The spider stood motionless, waiting in the middle of a web for dinner.

“I like you, Flip,” the spider said. He spat on the floor and nodded in the direction of Flip’s feet, where Mr. B hid dying. “You come in here, shoot it out. Just like the Old West, man. I got to hand it to you.”

“Are you going to leave my father alone?”

The spider grinned. “Sure, Flip. What you think I’m gonna say?”

“I want you to mean it.”

“I mean it. I mean it for real.”

“So why are you standing there? Your meal ticket’s on his way out.” He looked down at Mr. B and stepped away from the red tide creeping over the floor. Pain flared from his shoulder. He couldn’t move that arm. His head began to swirl. “You might as well go away too.”