Dirty White Boys (37 page)

“H-he’s going in,” came Richard’s sing-songy voice. “What should we do?”

“Shut up,” she barked, but herself thinking,
What should I do?

She watched as the man approached the door, paused again, adjusted his hat as if he were stepping into a fancy restaurant. He was a big guy, well packed with bulk and girth, but no damned youngster. Something familiar to him, goddammit.

She reached under the car seat and pulled out her ski mask. She pulled it over her face, feeling the scratch of wool, the stink of her own sweat, its warmth, its closeness. Her mouth tasted pennies.

“It’s nothing,” said Richard wanly. “He’s just a cowboy. He wants to get tattooed. He’s some oil-field hand. He wants ‘I Love Susie-Q’ on his biceps, that’s all.”

“Shut up, you pussy boy,” she said. She slid Lamar’s cutdown Browning 12-gauge semiauto from the back seat, pushing the safety off. Her hands flew to her waist, where she’d tucked Lamar’s .45 SIG.

“It’s all right,” said Richard. “Please make it be all right.” The man stepped in, closed the door behind him. There was a glorious, blessed moment of silence.

“Whew,” said Richard. “It’s all—”

Then the sound of shots, lots of them, fast and wild, and from where they sat they could see the gun flashes illuminate the darkness of the tattoo house.

A
nimals!

Zoo!

Odell’s eyes roamed the extravagant figures on the wall, utterly transfixed.

Magic!

He saw lion. He saw birdie.

Big birdie and snake. Tiger
.

Grrrrr!
Tiger bad! Bear
. Growlllll!

He began to make animal sounds and shake just a little. So many animals. It touched a far-off and not coherent shard of memory: He was very small and Mama took him over to Mrs. Bean’s farm and let him pet the goats. Odell remembered the goats all round him, the funny funny sounds they made, the thickness of their animal odors, the soft wetness of their tongues as they licked his face, and his mama saying, “Oh, I ain’t seen him smile like that ever.”

But then they had to go back to Daddy; Daddy was mad. Daddy whipped and hit Odell.

“That goddamn stupid boy, ugly as shit, no brain in his
goddamn head nowheres,” Daddy screamed, beating him with the belt while Mama cried. But Odell never cried.

The door opened.

Bud paused at the door, put his hand on the knob, and was surprised that it yielded to let him enter. He stepped into a small, darkened chamber awash with the smells of incense, disinfectant, and sweat.

He felt enveloped in quiet. It was as if he’d entered a religious shrine. He blinked in the low light, half in and half out of the door, and his eyes quickly sped to sinuous forms in sheer bursts of color on the walls. Was it a museum, like earlier today? Snakes, he saw snakes, and strange, stylized beasts, ornate and muscular, formal and alive at once. Eyes of beasts bore savagely down at him. He heard breathing, the low sounds of a tinny radio, and looked across the room to the primary source of radiance, a doorway behind a counter, which revealed portions of still another chamber, well-lit, like an operating theater. He could see a form splayed out in white seminudity and another form bent across him, with bloody-fingered latex gloves holding a strange implement that must have been a tattoo needle. And slouched in the doorway like a sleepy dog was another form.

Bud looked, said, “Say, I’m—,” and then focused on the slack but puzzled face of Odell Pye. Odell grinned absurdly, and his tongue flicked out. There was a black hole in the center of his face, just under his nose, and his eyes had the guileless stupidity of a young boy drunk for the first time.

Bud looked at Odell, all his instincts clotted up in his heart, but he knew he was in big trouble.

The moment seemed to last forever, like a breath taken and held. Then it exploded.

Odell stirred into action, yanking a shotgun from somewhere, but without willing it Bud had drawn his Colt Commander from the high hip holster and hit the thumb safety, and he and Odell fired almost simultaneously.

The flash from the gun muzzles filled the room with incandescence; the snakes seethed and pounced in its blinding whiteness. Bud was not hit and did not know if he had hit Odell—he doubted it, as he had pointed, not aimed, and had fired with one hand—and without a conscious thought anywhere in his head, he jacked the trigger seven more times, pumping .45s at Odell in a burst that sounded like a tommy gun. And like a tommy gun, it was evidently inaccurate, for Bud saw clouds of plaster flying, large chunks of masonry ripped up, the flashes blotting details from his vision. Then the gun came up dry, Bud cursing, for only an idiot shoots a gun empty without counting shots to reload with one in the spout and less vulnerability.

He dived into the room, ripping a fresh mag off the pouch on his belt, slamming it home, and thumbing off the slide release to prime the pistol once again. He came to rest behind a counter that now atomized into shreds before his very eyes. He saw the glass liquify as buckshot pulverized it, and the stuff blew into his face, knocking him back, blinking. But he felt no pain, and in response fired three fast times at the gun flash, receiving on the middle shot the impression of a yowl. Odell had disappeared. Smoke hung in the air. There was a moment of silence.

Then a small, blue Asian man came crashing from the open doorway. Bud tracked and nearly fired at him but didn’t and instead redirected himself toward the opening itself, to see the low, hunched form of Lamar Pye bent in a combat crouch, good two-hand hold, but apparently unable to see Bud.

Bud couldn’t see his sights, it was so dark, so he just put
the back of the pistol against what little he could see of Lamar and fired three more times, fast, reloading his last .45 mag with one shot left in the chamber, just as he knew he should.

He also understood that in firing he’d given away his position. If Lamar wasn’t hit mortally, he’d return fire in just a second, so Bud slithered to his left, coming hard against a wall, then backed spastically until he found what appeared to be a door, and slipped back into it.

Flashes lit the darkness. Both Lamar and Odell fired, Odell obviously not dead at all, maybe not even hit; and the counter behind which Bud had cowered simply evaporated as Lamar’s .45s and Odell’s buckshot remodeled it. He heard Lamar’s pistol lock back dry and another sound—hollow, like someone blowing in a wand—seemed to suggest that Odell was reloading as well. He could see no part of Lamar, but he put the pistol before him in that segment of darkness out of which had sprung Odell’s bursts and, convinced he saw a shape, squeezed off what he meant to be but two or three shots. But in shooting he banished the sudden demons of fear that had come from nowhere to tell him what a fool he’d been, how he’d walked in here without backup, without even a radio, and so he could not stop shooting until the gun was empty. Again, he thought he heard a cry, as he dumped the Colt, and his hand sped to and ripped his big new Beretta from the shoulder hoslter.

“Waharrrrr, Waharrrrr”
came a gurgling cry from the dark. It was Odell, his voice veined with hurt.

“Goddamn it, boy, you stay put,” cried Lamar in return, equally anguished. “Who the fuck are you, mister? What the hell, you ain’t no cop, we don’t mean you no goddamned harm.”

Bud was silent. All he had to do was open his mouth and
Lamar would have a source of noise for him to bring fire on.

“Wahh-arrrrrrrr
. Mama.
Wah-marrrrrrrrrr
, pweezze. Mama.”

“Odell, you stay down, Daddy come git you in a bit. Where’s that goddamn car?”

A car? More of them? The criminals had backup. The cop didn’t.

Shit
, Bud thought.

Who the fuck was he?

Where had he come from?

Why was it happening like this?

Lamar hurt every damn place, and he felt so goddamned naked, his shirt off, blood all over his chest. But what had him worried was Odell. Odell sounded hit bad. He’d never heard that tone in the boy’s voice. It was so pitiful, so animal. Odell, hurting. It just filled Lamar with rage.

If only he could clear his mind and think, or if only that goddamned Ruta Beth would get here. Where the hell was she?

“Wharrr?” came Odell’s quavery voice.

“You shut up, Odell, we be out of here in a jif,” he called back.

He had one goddamn magazine left, he’d fired the other two. Seven .45s. Where was goddamn Ruta Beth?

His breath came in wracking sobs. The room was so dark. He could see nothing.

Lamar looked about. How stupid that
he
was in the light and his enemy in the dark. Kind of goddamned mistake that could get you killed.

He slipped back in the room, jumped up, and with a light tap of his gun muzzle shattered the huge light over the table. The space plunged into darkness.

How long had it been?

Maybe thirty seconds?

Where was goddamn Ruta Beth?

He slid back to the door, edging out. He could see nothing. The guy was somewhere in the back of the shop, amid the destroyed counters that had just exploded as Odell’s buckshot had blasted them. But where? Had he found cover? Was he dead himself already? Lamar couldn’t see a thing, and he could hear nothing over Odell’s labored breathing.

Lamar tried to clear his head. The main thing was to get out. Fuck this boy, let him live or die, but get out, go back to the farm and regroup. He wondered if the sounds had carried. All that gunfire in the little room in so short a time, the stink of gunpowder in the air.

Oh, who are you, you motherfucker
.

“Who are you, goddammit?” Lamar bellowed to silence.

Smart boy, wasn’t making a move.

“Wharr?” came Odell’s wet voice. Then: “MAMA!”

See mama? Yes, he’d promised he’d take Baby Odell to his mother’s grave and he’d never made good on it. How could he, with all the goddamned cops in the world on his ass?

Then, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, Lamar noticed something. There, just ahead of his eyes, light switches.

Turn on the lights, Lamar. Put this motherfucker in the lights, and kill him.

“Marrrrr,” whispered Baby Odell.

Bud was squashed so low to the floor he could hardly move. The darkness was absolute. He could hear Odell moaning and breathing harshly, but since Lamar had turned out the lights, nothing from him.

He tried to gauge where the door back to the tattooing
room had been. That’s where Lamar would be right now, waiting for him to make a sound. Or would he? Maybe Lamar was creeping toward him even now, to get close and cut open his windpipe.

No! He’d make noise moving across all that glass on the floor. There’s no noise, only the wheezing and moaning of Odell. Maybe they’re just waiting for their pals.

Suddenly the lights came on.

Bud blinked as his eyes filled with dazzle. A shot cracked out from the now-visible Lamar, but it hit a shard of wood blown loose from the counter, and danced away.

All Bud could see was that big gun in Lamar’s hands, not part of Lamar but only the gun, the long-slide .45 gripped tightly. Time seemed to slow down, as if it were an accordion slowly being stretched.

Bud thought,
Front sight
, and fired.

Lamar’s hand exploded in a burst of pink mist and the .45 fell away. Lamar slipped and fell, unarmed, fear on his face.

Front sight
, Bud thought.

He tried to take his time, that is, to shoot in two-tenths of a second rather than one-tenth, placing the front sight on Lamar’s face, now distended and swollen with fear as Lamar lay helpless before Bud’s gunsights.

As Bud fired, the world around him suddenly lost its stability as a cloud of dust showered down upon him.

He ducked, feeling a terrible sting in his leg, and turned.

Odell stood behind the counter. Part of his jaw had been blown away; Bud could see tiny teeth, the tongue squirming like a mouse. His eyes were wild and insane. He held the shotgun that he’d just fired at Bud in one hand, as the other was useless, soaked in blood that ran in torrents from a high chest hit.

Odell pulled the trigger again but nothing happened.

He started to walk toward Bud, raising the shotgun like a club.

Bud fired six times, aiming at center mass. Each shot tore a hole in Odell, and more blood spurted wetly down his shirt, but still he came.

Bud fired seven more times, the 9-mm hollowpoints punching at Odell, who halted, went to his knees, and with a look of utter agony climbed back to his feet.

“ODEEEEEEL,” he could hear Lamar shout.

Bud aimed at the forehead and blew a big chunk of it out. He aimed at the eye and blew a blue hole just beneath it. He aimed at the throat and tore it open.

The Beretta locked dry.

Odell was on him, that huge weight, the rancid breath, blood spraying from the ruined mouth, the sound of breathing labored and wet and desperate like an animal’s. Odell’s big hands were on Bud’s neck, but the medium of their grappling was liquid. Blood was everywhere, slippery and almost comical, as Bud squirmed for purchase under the huge man. Then he remembered his belly gun.

Bud got the .380 out from his shirt, not even remembering
pulling it, and stuck it under Odell’s armpit and squeezed the trigger. He fired and fired, until at last Odell slumped against him, slack.

Bud pulled himself out and stood.

Lamar had climbed to his feet. He held his left hand in his right, another bouquet of roses that was blood.

“You,” said Lamar. “You goddamned Bud Pewtie. You done killed a baby.”

Bud aimed at Lamar’s head—amazed and impressed that Lamar didn’t flinch or cower, so intense was his hate—and pulled the trigger.