Cowboy Ending - Overdrive: Book One (48 page)

Not trusting
myself to speak yet I nodded and finished my milk. I began
puttering with the dishes to keep my hands and mind
preoccupied.

“Heading to the
club?”

I hesitated but
nodded.

What? I was
gonna lie at this point?

“Okay.”

Okay?

My hands
stopped their useless puttering and I turned my head slightly to
peer at my mother.

She leaned
against the stove wearily. It was well past her usual bedtime and
dark circles were beginning to form under her eyes.

She was so
damned frail.

In my mind’s
eye I would always remember her in the bleachers of Donald’s ball
games, jumping up and down and cheering as their team scored.
Helping run and organize major group events at school, the church
and at the community centre. A dynamic, outspoken and gregarious
woman.

Deep down I
knew she still had that fire and passion for life. It’s what made
me the saddest as I stared at her now, hanging onto the stove for
support to keep herself upright.

But her eyes,
they still had life. Zest.

And
understanding.

“Something bad
is happening tonight, isn’t it?”

What do you say
to that?

I nodded
again.

Mom pursed her
lips, bringing out the lines around her mouth and eyes. She was so
frail, it made my heart ache.

“I ..” My
throat was stuck and needed clearing. I tried that again. “With any
luck I’ll be home before dawn.”

Her lips
twisted, turning into a small smile.

“Your brother
used to say that to me. Would make me crazy with worry.” She shook
her head sadly, crossing her arms in front of her. Her eyes misted
slightly. “He was so strong, so busy. Always off from one event to
the next. Baseball. Hockey. Weekend tournaments.”

My guts
twisted. We never talked about Dad and Donald. It was an unspoken
rule. Nothing good could come from trips down memory lane.

“Mom … I …”

“You boys were
so different.” Her gaze faded slightly, focusing on something just
out of range, past my head. “You were always so inside your own
head. Reading. Analyzing. Wanting to know every angle of something.
Donald just wanted to go. To run. To live.” A tear escaped her
eyelids and traced down her cheek. She let it run. “So full of
life.”

My throat
tightened painfully.

“Mom …” My
voice was a croak. “Mom I don’t …”

“it wasn’t
until you got older that I realized how similar you boys are. How
like your father.” I blinked as well, trying to flick away my own
tears. She smiled again at me. “You may have been more into your
own head, but when you’d decided on a course of action there was
nothing anyone could do to get in your way. Not in school. Not in
life. It’s the part of you I’ve missed the most since …. Since they
passed.”

I dashed at my
eyes with my forearm. “I made my choices, Mom. I have no
regrets.”

She stepped
forward then and crossed the kitchen to meet me, gripping both of
my arms weakly and staring up into my eyes.

“I
have regrets, Joe. Me.” Her fingers tightened
fractionally, might have been as hard as she could squeeze. “I
should never have tried to keep this house. Let you move back in,
take on so much responsibility.”

“Mom, I wanted
to help …”

“And you have.
Same as you would have if I’d moved to a smaller place. Something
the insurance could have covered.”

“This is our
home.”

“This was
our home when we were
all
here. But we’re not anymore. We’re not, son.” Her voice broke
and the tears fell from both of us. Mom pressed her forehead into
my chest, sobbing slightly.

I held her
close, resting my chin on top of her head. Her sobs rocked her body
painfully.

Eventually the
tears stopped and the anguish subsided. My shirt was wet from her
eyes but I knew I wouldn’t change.

She looked up
at me again. “I knew the minute you came in the door tonight that
something had happened. That you’d made a decision to act.” Her
lips twisted into a small smile again, a sad one. I matched it with
one of my own. “It had been so long since I’d seen that look on
your face. But I knew. I knew I couldn’t stop you. I won’t stop
you.”

Relief and
guilt battled for supremacy in my belly. I had been worried that
Mom would try. At this point, she might’ve been the only one able
to do so. Part of me regretted that she didn’t try; the part of me
that was a deep rooted coward who didn’t want to get shit kicked
for the second time in a week.

Her hands
grabbed the sides of my face.

“Is this
necessary?’

I nodded.

“Is there no
other way.”

I shook my
head.

“Does it have
to be you?”

I
hesitated.

Then …

“There’s no one
else, Mom.”

She nodded.
Then pulled my head down and gently kissed my cheek.

“Come on, help
me get settled on the couch before you go.”

Within five
minutes we’d gotten her tucked in, a blanket pulled up gently and a
mug of tea steaming on the table beside her should she need it. At
her insistence I left the TV on in anticipation of the late news
coming in a few hours.

She was asleep
within moments. I smoothed down her wispy hair and pressed a final
kiss to her forehead before leaving the room.

I gathered up
my personal affects and sorted through them quickly. No need for my
wallet or full set of keys tonight. Grabbed a few dollars in cash
and the keys to my Windstar and stuffed them into the front pocket
of my cargoes. Took one last look over all of the items I usually
carried with me and froze.

On the
countertop were the two tickets for the Art Gallery fundraiser
Cathy had given to me. I scooped them up and really looked at them
for the first time.

In flowing
script:

AN EVENING FOR
KOREA

South Korean
Ambassador

Mah-Jon Sun

will speak
on

International
Terror

and the effects
of

Human
Trafficking

on his
Country.

Wheels started
churning in my head again. All of the Asian faces at the club.

Not
Pilipino.

Korean?

I threw
on my battered leather bomber jacket and jammed the tickets into my
coat pocket, eyeballing the clock over the kitchen sink. I still
had thirty minutes before the lineup at
Cowboy Shotz
would get out of control.

Time enough for
a quick phone call.

Chapter
46

The roads
were lined with cars as I approached
Cowboy
Shotz
on foot.
I didn’t bother trying to
find parking within five blocks of the club, opting instead for the
same street where I’d met those thugs the week before. It felt
symmetrical somehow.

Plus no one
else was parked there. So, bonus.

Thoughts and
images scrolled through my mind as I walked. The threads of
information I had gathered were starting to make sense in my head
even though I was mostly working on speculation. I hate
speculation. Made my head hurt.

Thankfully this
whole scenario revolved around three simple truths that allowed me
to simplify my intention.

Girls were
going missing.

The club was
involved.

People who got
in the way were getting beaten into silence. Or killed.

At the end of
the day, that was enough for me. The rest of it – the whys and the
what-fors – all of that was just details.

Boil the rest
away and it was easy to see.

Parise was a
dirty cop. Aaron was letting his club be used as a front. And I had
let bad things happen under my very nose because I was too wrapped
up in my own problems to let myself see.

But not
anymore.

Thunder rumbled
in the darkening sky overhead. It was little early in the year for
a thunderstorm, but it suited my mood just fine. Gooseflesh tingled
down my spine and along my arms in anticipation.

My
fingers repeatedly clenched and unclenched with every step that
brought me closer to the club. This was a new experience for me. In
all my years of being in rough situations, dealing with drunks and
getting physical I’d never actually
started
a fight before. It was a different
feeling knowing that violence was imminent. Plans rolled through my
head that I immediately discarded. Planning was only going to make
me crazy. There were too many variables, too many people who might
get involved.

Instinct worked
best for me. Instinct and brute force.

The Neanderthal
in my belly started up his tribal war dance again, poking at his
bonfire with a long branch. Flames rose and tickled at my insides,
feeding my anger and my sense of injustice.

I worried for a
time about Mom, about leaving her to fend for herself. But her
words reassured me. Intellectually I knew that she would be all
right. Devastated at the loss of her only remaining son, but able
to cope and move on. She was right, I needed to do this. Not out of
a desire to punish. Not out of a sense of vengeance.

Just simply
because no one else was available.

And because I
wanted a tad bit of payback.

What? I’m
petty. Sue me.

By the
time I got to the club a lineup at least a hundred people deep was
already down the block in front of
Cowboy
Shotz
. The hot dog cart was in its usual spot midway
down the line with girlfriends making street meat runs for their
boys while they held spots in queue. Taxis and the occasional limo
pulled up front of the club, dumping out groups of well-dressed
partygoers who either made their way to the back of the line or
were escorted past the queue and sent right in. Friday nights were
always crazy busy as people wanted to burn off the last five days’
worth of work and anxiety by getting shitfaced, dancing until two
a.m. and potentially dancing in a different way as the night turned
into morning.

I just hoped to
see the morning.

My eyes skimmed
over the crowd of people in line as I walked past. Call it habit,
call it instinct. Whatever. Years of crowd control jobs had
ingrained the ritual into me. Scanning faces for anyone familiar
usually in the hopes of identifying a troublemaker or someone
previously barred from the establishment that was trying to sneak
back in.

About halfway
up the line I found my two cougar friends from the Downtown YMCA,
Big Red McChesty and Miss Tiny TooTanned. Neither of them
acknowledged my presence as I tromped past clearly lost in their
own world of inconvenience, forced to wait outside like common
folk.

Every step I
took towards the club increased the beat of my heart ever so
slightly. The electricity in the air thrummed in my ears,
resonating off my flesh and buzzing in tune with the tingle at the
back of my neck. How I never noticed this sensation for what it was
in the past will forever remain a mystery to me.

The sky rumbled
overhead. Bar patrons scanned the sky ominously, worrying about
rain.

When I was ten
feet from the main entrance I paused, standing in the exact spot
where I’d been shot by Keimac Cleghorn. The man who – while a
criminal – ended up being killed because he wanted the truth about
his sister. I stared down at the pavement beneath my feet where my
body had lain, bright blood spilling into the street. Then I
shifted my gaze upwards at the roiling, black sky.

I closed my
eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. The tingling sensation
twitched and wreathed at the back of my neck, begging me to release
it. The energies and thrumming in the air trembled against my skin
and rattled my teeth.

On the third
deep breath I exhaled forcibly and opened my eyes, striding towards
the main entrance to the club with purpose.

Danny and two
guys I didn’t recognize stood at the front holding the queue. The
club’s uniforms had changed slightly; felt cowboy hats had been
added to the bouncer’s attire along with white button up shirts
instead of the previous black ones.

Seeing me
coming, Danny stepped away from his post and put both hands up to
slow me down. The hat on his head was completely oversized,
drooping down to his eyebrows.

“Dude, you’re
not supposed to be here. We’ve got strict orders to …”

I tried very
hard not hurt the kid. He’d had my back on the night I got shot
after all. But I couldn’t afford to get stalled right at the front
entrance.

With one hand
on his chest and the other holding his extended arm I slipped my
lead leg in behind his and drove him hard to the concrete sidewalk.
Air rushed out of his lungs as he hit, leaving him gasping and
choking on the ground. People in line gasped loudly at the sudden
rush of motion.