Everybody Pays (26 page)

Billy Ray’s face stayed flat, but his mind smiled. He hadn’t expected even the dumbest Hoosier to go for a coin toss anyway. So far, everything was going exactly as planned. The table they were using had a dead spot against the short rail farthest from the rack, the very rail they’d have to come to for the lag. But the dead spot was only on the right side—the side Billy Ray stepped to immediately. Rhino took his place on the left side of the same rail. They each stroked one of the colored balls toward the opposite short rail at the far end of the table; each stepped back to watch the balls hit the rail and return. Closest ball to the near short rail got the break. Billy Ray’s ball had more pace on it than Rhino’s, but he knew what would happen as soon as it hit that dead spot. In fact, you
had
to stroke it pretty good unless you wanted it to just plain
stop
like a magnet stuck to metal . . . and that would make anyone suspicious.

Nobody spoke as the two balls approached the short rail. Billy Ray always used the six ball. It was solid green, visually closing the gap between it and the rail by maybe a hundredth of an inch over the bright-red three ball Rhino had selected. Another edge.

Billy Ray’s ball hit the dead spot on the short rail perfectly, like it always did . . . and bounced off
hard,
a good four inches away. Rhino’s settled gently against the cushion, maybe an inch and a half off. Not even close.

“Our break,” Buddha said.

Billy Ray sat down. Not out of courtesy to the other shooter, but from shock. How could that have . . . ?

Rhino stepped to the table. He placed the cue ball six inches from the right-hand long rail, stroked a few times, the cue’s tip poking in and out from between his fingers—a gentle, steady movement, as methodically probing as a snake’s tongue. Then his right arm came forward and the cue ball rocketed into the pack, sending the balls scattering as if fleeing in fear. Four balls dropped into various pockets. One of them was the nine ball in the left corner.

“Yes!”
Princess shouted.

Rhino didn’t say a word.

“Nice doing business with you,” Buddha said, walking toward the man standing next to the attaché case. The man looked to Manny. The businessman shook his head. The bodyguard stood aside. Buddha picked up the attaché case in one hand and started for the door, Rhino just off his right shoulder. Princess was the last one to leave, turning to the crowd, waving. “That was
fun,
huh?” he yelled.

Then he too disappeared.

When Billy Ray heard the Harley’s engine growl into life, he got to his feet and went over to the table. Unlike a few minutes before, when any close scrutiny would have been a mistake, he now pressed his thumbs against the right-hand side of the near short rail. It was alive. The dead spot had vanished. “Give me a light,” he called to one of the watchers against the corner.

“Since when’d you start—?”

“Not a match, goddamn it. A . . . flashlight or something. I want to look close.”

When he did, Billy Ray saw it for himself. He pulled out a penknife and went to work.

“This is a new rail,” he told Manny, gesturing at a piece of what looked like black rubber. “A new rail under the old cloth. Whoever did it, he’s got the best hands I ever saw. This is fucking perfect. Even if I was looking for it, I don’t think I would’ve seen it.”

“So you mean . . . ?”

“Yeah. Somebody got in here. This place don’t close until two in the morning, officially. And it stays open way past that sometimes, especially when I got a game. When did you set this up?”

“About three weeks ago. I was in the Double X and Buddha—”

“Three weeks. Plenty of time. Whoever did this, they knew exactly what they were doing. And they knew me, too. Knew my game. Knew what table we’d be using. Knew it all.”

“All that for twenty grand?” Manny wondered. “That don’t seem like Cross at all.”

“They didn’t even cheat me,” Billy Ray said, mostly to himself. “I mean, I was gonna do them that same way. And the monster . . . he
did
make the shot. It’s even a bigger risk than you say. What if he’d missed? I
still
would’ve won the money. You know I would. So why would they . . . ?”

“Fuck if I know,” Manny snapped at him. “All I know is I’m out twenty grand. And Buddha, he’d kill his mother for twenty large.”

“Kill his mother-in-
law
for nothing, way I understand it,” a Latin guy lounging against the wall said, laughing.

“You know him?” Manny asked.

“I served with him. Same outfit. He was an evil little motherfucker even then.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“What you want me to say,
patrón
? You the big man, you running the show, putting up the money. You need
me
to tell you what Buddha is?”

“You promised!” Princess sulked in the front seat of the car. They had followed him to a spot where he’d ditched the Harley. Rhino’s bulk loomed in the back.

“Look, Princess,” Buddha said, “what I told you was—”

“You said if I was good, if I didn’t cause no problems, we could race. You said it! Didn’t he, Rhino?”

“You did say it,” the monster-man spoke to Buddha, his voice an incongruous high-pitched squeak.

“I’m not saying I fucking
didn’t
say it, okay? I just didn’t say it would be tonight, all right?”

“I
wanna
do it now,” Princess demanded.

“Fuck me,” Buddha said softly, his eyes toward the heavens.

Forty minutes later, Buddha was working the shark car through a maze of twisted streets near the Badlands. The road surface was cobbled from neglect. When citizens don’t vote, road repair is very slow. And when a neighborhood
has
no citizens . . .

Buddha’s touch on the small-diameter, thick-rimmed wheel was as delicate as a surgeon’s. “I’m not promising anything,” he said to no one in particular. “Maybe we’ll get some action, maybe we won’t.”

“You said—”

“Princess, gimme a break, okay? This is street racing, not the fucking Indy 500. Sometimes the players are around, sometimes they’re not.”

“Try the back of the diner,” Rhino advised.

Buddha turned and shot him a look. Rhino stared back impassively. Buddha sighed. “I just put a whole new suspension underneath. Full-time four. Gotta have it, you want the beast to handle on slick roads. But I don’t know if she’ll tolerate a nitrous shock like a solid rear axle would, and . . .”

“Might as well find out now,” Rhino said implacably. “When there’s no risk.”

“No risk? Fuck you talking about? The Man is down on street racing now, big-time. Too much stuff about it on the wire. They even got that damn newsletter making the rounds, giving the rankings and the handicaps and all. You let people bet money in this town on anything, you open up the action, and you don’t let the cops dip their beaks; you know what’s gonna happen next.”

“So it’s a ticket. Big deal.”

“A ticket? Listen, Rhino. They’d pop me for Driving to Endanger. And I’m carrying. You too. And probably this maniac,” he continued, nodding his head in Princess’ direction, “for all I know. You’re talking felony beefs for all of us.”

“No. If that happens, Princess and I will get gone. It’ll just be you.”

“Isn’t
that
special? They’d hold me for—”

“—a few days, max,” Rhino assured him. “And nothing’s going to happen to you at the County. Just make sure they know you’re with Cross. You’re the only one with papers, Buddha. A fall comes, you got to take it. This isn’t news to you. You make bail, we juice the cops, their memory isn’t so good; our shyster pleads you to some nonsense, we pay a fine, and that’s all. Don’t get excited.”

“You think I’m worried about a few days in jail?” the pudgy man snapped. “Fuck that. What’s gonna happen to my car? And who’s gonna tell So Long why I didn’t come home?”

“The car’s no problem,” Rhino assured him. “It’s registered, it’ll go to the Impound Lot. Cost us some money, that’s all.”

“And So Long . . .”

“Uh . . . you could call her from the County. They got pay phones there. Somebody’ll know Cross, get you right to the front of the line.”

“Thanks a fucking lot, pal.”

Rhino shrugged. He wasn’t going to visit So Long no matter what the inducement. And sending Princess would be . . . too gruesome to contemplate.

The shark car rolled into the dimly lit parking lot behind an aluminum-sided diner with no name that had been perched on the edge of the Badlands for as long as anyone could remember. Nobody ever ate there—it was a trading post on the outskirts of a hostile nation.

About two dozen cars were arrayed in no particular pattern around the back lot. They ranged from flamboyant to drab, but they all had one thing in common—the hardcore stance of the street racer: monstrous rear tires and skinny fronts. Superchargers poked conspicuously from some hoods. Others had painted flames pouring out of louvers. A few actually looked near-stock.

“I don’t like this,” Buddha said to Rhino. “Most of those ponies are back-halved. Blowers right out in the open. Look like a bunch of trailer queens too, even with the plates. Probably some running alky, too. This thing ain’t no drag racer. And none of those quarter horses are going for the twisties. They’ll only take on straight-line stuff, maybe even want to do eighths. If I could get them to go from a standing start, we might be able to pull a little, get off first. But they all want to run thirty-tromp now, ’cause they can’t get all that torque to hook up.”

“Rhino, what does he mean?” Princess asked.

“That the other cars are faster than this one.”

“Hey,
fuck
that, all right? I never said that. I was just . . . There’s horses for courses, you understand what I’m saying? Like, come on, Princess . . . look at it like this: What if I was gonna race a helicopter against a jet, how fair would that be?”

“But these are all
cars
!”

“Fine,” Buddha mumbled darkly. “Let me see if any of these clowns want to dance.” He got out of the shark car and leaned against the driver’s door, lighting a cigarette.

Within five minutes, a small crowd approached.

“What you running?” one asked.

“A 698 Elephant.”

“Heinous! You on the bottle?”

“Sure.”

“Fuel?”

“Right outa the pump. 76 straight, not even av-gas. This is a
street
car, sonny. No tubs, no tubes, got real seats, all that. And it’s all-steel, too—no fiberglass, no carbon, no titanium.”

“Damn! This thing must weigh two and a half.”

“Three and a piece,” Buddha replied. “There’s a four-wheel drive underneath, viscous coupling, full-time torque-splitter, air bags instead of springs. . . .”

“You still working on it,” one young man asked, looking over the shark car’s gray-black-primer flanks, “or are you going suede?”

Buddha ignored him, his eyes only on the target.

“You see the Nova over there? The blue one with the red flames?” the target asked.

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Wanna go?”

“Against that?” Buddha laughed. “What’d you do, have it trailered over, waiting for a sucker? You running a Rat, right?”

“Nah. Small-block, 406 huffed.”

“I’m a Mopar man myself.”

“Yeah, well, want to show me something?”

“For how much?”

“You say.”

“Got five?”

“Hundred?”

“Thousand.”

“Oh.” The young man looked around, caught a few nods. “Yeah, I got it covered.”

“Okay. How many lengths I get?”

“Lengths? Nobody said nothing about lengths. We run to thirty, get in sync, go past the white post—we’ll show you—then get on it to the next white post. First over takes it.”

“Right,” Buddha said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “You got—you
say
you got—a bored-out small-block, a blower, and that’s all, right? And I got maybe a few liters’ displacement on you.
No
blower, and—”

“You got the nitrous.”

“And you don’t?”

“Uh . . .”

“Right. Bottom line, you got a—what?—nine-second car there? Weighs—what?—twenty-two hundred, tops? I got same-size rubber all around. I don’t even have a solid rear axle, like I told you.”