Peckerwood (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MONDALE

He stepped out of the shower and checked his fingernails. No blood or dirt beneath or around the cuticles. He checked his reflection in the mirror. The man staring back looked like someone else. The crow’s feet were longer and deeper than the last time he’d looked, his skin was loose, and the ends of his mouth pulled back, sending wrinkles shooting toward his ears when he tried to smile.

He’d killed again.

It’d been years since he’d had to kill anyone and he hoped that he’d never have to again, but he’d seen it needed doing, and done it. And now, now he just hoped it had bought what he needed it to. He wanted the peace to hold. He wanted Chowder to run pussy and dope in a regulated environment without competition and unnecessary violence, without women disappearing forever or only to be found later in various states of decomposition. He wanted to assure a reliable tax base for his community. He hated the thought of outside syndicates pedaling in his town, soaking up the scarce resources of his citizens and sending their money out of town, out of the country. Buy local. Yeah.

His phone rang.

Against every instinct he had, he picked up. It was Bob Musil on the line. “Better get down to the station, Jim.”

“Jim.” Right.

CHOWDER

Hettie picked him up and they left. On the way out of town, he felt really good for the first time in too long. Hettie put her back against her door and plopped her feet into his lap. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and threw it into a creek as they passed over.

MONDALE

The station was a flurry of activity. Inside, Federal agents in tactical gear with DEA printed across their backs and expensive sunglasses were everywhere. Mondale’s mind raced for areas where he might be exposed, but he couldn’t think of any. Mentally he ran through scenarios to explain their presence in his station and he didn’t like any of them. He steeled himself for the worst and crossed the front room.

Bob Musil was at the center of a group of feds gathered around a map spread over a desk. He was drawing routes toward destinations marked in red. He looked up as Mondale approached. “Agent Harris, this is Sheriff Mondale.”

One of the agents, a bulldog of a man, five foot eight and a hundred seventy-five pounds of upper body mass and a gleaming shaved head, extended his hand. Jimmy took it and said, “What’s going on?”

Agent Harris spoke, “Sheriff, we had an undercover drop off the edge of the planet. His last communication put him in your back yard.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped away. “Who was the target?”

The DEA agent said, “One Charles Thompson.”

“Chowder Thompson?” said Mondale. “What’s he mixed up in?”

Harris snorted, “Little of everything, it looks like, Sheriff.”

Musil interjected, he looked ashen, “That crank-lab fire today? Bodies inside? Looks like one of them was Agent Harris’s man.”

Mondale said. “Guess my vacation is over.”

Harris continued. “We’re moving on Thompson now. Like it if you could come with, Sheriff.”

“Of course,” said Jimmy. “Give me one second.”

He went to the bathroom and threw up in the bowl as discretely as he could manage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHOWDER

Hettie’s eyes lit up when they turned off the highway before they’d even crossed the state line. “What’s this?”

Chowder winked at her. “Proper honeymoon. ’Bout time, yeah?” Hettie looked unconvinced. “I got another stash house out here. You like it, we can hide from the world here a while. I got no powerful need to move, just to be gone.”

MONDALE

From the bathroom, Jimmy dialed Chowder from his own throwaway phone. No answer. Shit. Chowder must’ve dumped his already.

He splashed cold water on his face and left the bathroom. He stopped and donned a kevlar vest and grabbed a shotgun from a wide-eyed Deputy Townsend. The young policeman looked panicked and Mondale ushered him into his office and shut the door.

Townsend sat down and put his head in his hands. “Is it true Jimmy? Did we kill a federal agent?”

“Shut that down, son.” Jimmy hissed. “All you did was back up your partner. You were there. It was kill or be killed at that point.”

“But they say it was federal police we killed.”

“I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“You just wait till we’re out the door. You’re staying here, Deputy.” Townsend nodded and looked grateful and confused. “Can I count on you not to lose your shit?” Again, Townsend nodded. Jimmy left him sitting there and closed the door behind him.

When Mondale appeared in the front room again, Agent Harris called out to his men, “Sheriff Mondale will lead us out. This is his town and he knows the target.” He turned to Jimmy. “After you, Sheriff.”

Musil drove. Mondale sat shotgun and Agent Harris slid in behind them with the rest of Harris’s men following in an SUV. Agent Harris spoke from the back seat. “Last report our man said his connect was setting up a meet with Thompson. Said that they were going in hot – that Thompson’s reputation with the Kansas City syndicate was heavy, they’d been muscled out, as had Memphis, Little Rock and Tulsa.”

Mondale nodded, “We haven’t had any outside problems that I know about.”

Harris went on. “After my agent failed to check in, the fire was discovered at the meet and we put eyes on all of Thompson’s businesses. We picked him up, cleaning house. Looks like he’s making a run for it.”

Mondale and Musil traded looks.

“Tailed him to an unmarked road.” Harris reached over the seat and indicated the location on the map circled in red. Mondale squinted. He didn’t have any idea what Chowder might be up to there. He hadn’t driven that old mule path in years. Old cabin falling apart at the ass end of a winding, rut-pocked dirt road. “Pretty isolated, so we’re meeting up with the tail car at the road’s start. You have any ideas about his purpose in that area, Sheriff?”

“Not really. All I know of, if it’s still standing, is a cabin about a mile in. Land was bought up for back taxes by an out of town acquirer maybe five years ago. Never heard of anybody doing anything with it.” Mondale turned around to see Harris’s face. “Sorry as hell to hear about your man, Agent Harris.”

The agent’s features were hard and the action of loading his shotgun, rolling the cartridges between his finger and thumb were as automatic and ritualistic as a prayer. The fed looked back at Mondale without breaking the rhythm of his work. He shrugged. “We lost a good man today, and I, for one, am looking forward to this. Cocksucker’s getting what he’s got coming.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHOWDER

The cabin used to stand at the base of a hill, but Chowder might describe it as leaning, now. Hettie’s look said
what the fuck?
Her mouth said, “You’re the boss, boss man.”

Chowder chuckled. “I’m just fuckin with you. We’re not stayin here. We’ll cross the state line, find a motel with a porno box and mirrors on the ceiling. I just gotta tie up one last loose end.” He put the truck in park and got out. Hettie, behind him, slipped her shoes back on before stepping into the yard and stretching.

“Mmmm, just like old times.” She followed Chowder around the side of the dilapidated structure, careful to not strike a foot against any of the old and treacherously located rusting junk settled into the mud and patches of high grass, checkering the yard. On the shack’s far side she found her husband scanning the hill, then fixating on an irregularly shaped mound of earth. He began to walk toward it, picking up a discarded steel pole from the ground as he went. “What you huntin, Chowder?”

“Dale something.”

MONDALE

The entrance to the road was blocked by a black SUV. That one plus their own cruiser and the vehicle following them made three conspicuous vehicles clogging the tiny entrance. Musil stopped the car and Agent Harris jumped out. Mondale followed the DEA man to the agent waiting for them at trail’s head.

Musil came up behind him with a string of three more federal police bringing up the rear. Agent Harris spoke to all of them circling the hood of the first agent’s SUV. “Sheriff says there’s a cabin about a mile in. Says the condition of the road is poor. I believe that we’d make too much noise driving in. Couldn’t go more than ten or fifteen miles per hour anyhow. So everybody grab your gear. Agent Phillips stays here to cover the road and I don’t want any radio communication that isn’t strictly necessary.” Harris made eye contact with each man standing in the circle. “Make no mistake, gentleman: Agent Ryan spent a year undercover with Kansas City and today we will finish the work he died doing. We want a strong, clean case, but most of all we don’t want to spend one more good man’s life taking out the trash. Do not hesitate to use deadly force if you have to.” Each agent gave a nod of understanding and Harris slapped the hood. “Let’s go.”

CHOWDER

It had taken only twenty minutes of scratching the dirt with the steel pole to uncover Dale something’s remains. Fuckin Irm. Lousiest disposal job ever. Tate had found it easy enough. He’d probably dug him up then pushed the dirt back over just to demonstrate to Chowder what a joke it all was.

Dale was unrecognizable. Elements had been at him. The lime had helped, but it was still obviously human remains and inexcusably sloppy. He told Hettie to go wait in the truck and she hadn’t taken any convincing. He tugged on the arms to pull the body out of the dirt. He yanked and the body moved just a couple of inches, yanked again and nearly lost his footing, a strip of flesh tearing away in his hands.

It took another twenty minutes, but he brought Dale’s remains into the shack in three trips, piling his bones on top of three bags of charcoal Hettie’d picked up from the Bait ’N More. He used a hammer to bust the teeth out of his mouth and picked what shards he could and threw them into the back yard. Hettie’d also brought a shelf full of lighter fluid, which he liberally soaked the pile with. He then went room to room spraying the accelerant over every surface. The fumes were making him lightheaded when he exited onto the sagging front porch.

Out in the air the smell was faint and he took a few moments to take deep breaths to clear his head, then he went to the truck for a box of matches. Hettie was dozing in the last lazy moments of sunlight and he put his hand on her shoulder, rousing her gently. “Hey,” he said, “Gonna miss the show.” He took the unopened box of matches and strode to the front porch and removed the cellophane casing. He removed a single stick. Struck it on the side of the box. The flare was bright and then died down. Chowder tilted it downward to coax the flame up, then dropped it into the box. Three seconds later a second bright flare followed by a quick succession of them and Chowder gently lobbed the flaming box into the front doorway and stepped back.

A tide of blue fire spread over the porch and he saw it traveling down the hallway. Chowder ran backward toward the truck, watching the pyro-show, and reaching the still-open driver’s door just as a brilliant flash burst through the windows, shattering what glass remained in the frames. Then, like the individual match, the flare died down and the burn commenced in earnest.

He turned to his wife, smiling like a kid watching a Fourth of July celebration. But Hettie wasn’t smiling back. She was lifting the Glock.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MONDALE

They moved at a quick pace, walking silently over the uneven road, avoiding holes and obtrusive root formations. The light was dying, lost in the thick tree-line. In another hour the trip would necessitate flashlights.

Bob Musil strode beside him, trying to disguise his heavy breathing, but the overweight deputy was sweating profusely and had to constantly mop his forehead with a kerchief. Mondale made eye contact with his best friend and saw determination hardening over the fear beneath. He guessed that Musil saw the same mixture in his own face and turned his gaze forward to avoid it being detected by any of the resolute federal agents with them.

When he recognized the road’s last bend before the cabin was visible, he held up his hand for the procession to stop. Agent Harris stepped to him and Jimmy whispered the information. Agent Harris rounded the bend with Mondale signaling the others to wait for them to return.

Around the corner the cabin was visible fifty yards across a clearing. Chowder’s pickup was parked in the muddy drive, twenty yards away from the front porch. Harris told Mondale to stay there and went back to the waiting men. While Jimmy crouched behind a rock he saw Chowder come out the front door. Jimmy looked over his shoulder. Agent Harris wasn’t back yet. Was there any way he could warn Chowder without tipping off the feds?

Chowder was opening the driver’s side door, but not climbing into the truck. Mondale sent a psychic message to the old outlaw.

Turn around. See this coming. Run away now. Disappear.

Nothing doing. Chowder retrieved whatever he was fishing for and began walking back to the cabin.

Agent Harris appeared at his side again, this time with three more federal agents and Deputy Musil in tow. Harris whispered to all, “We can’t let him get into the truck. No time to fan out. Follow me.” The agent stood, as did his men, who spread out as far as they could on the narrow road and into the clearing. Bob Musil locked eyes with Mondale, and nodded. They followed suit.

Chowder threw a small flaming object into the open front door of the cabin and stepped back. The agents slowed their approach. Agent Harris stopped altogether. Chowder began to back up toward the truck and Harris saw that his chance at nabbing his man without incident was beginning to evaporate. He motioned his men forward and was at a trot when the heat from the blast singed their eyebrows. At twenty yards, shotgun leveled, Agent Harris called out, “Charles Thompson! On your knees, asshole!”

They were Agent Harris’s last words. The back window of the truck’s cab exploded with bullets and Harris caught one with his mouth.

CHOWDER

Hettie’s eyes were cold and her intent to kill was plain. Chowder heard his own name called and then Hettie opened fire. The world was an inferno of glass and bullets, fire and blood. He turned to see Armageddon in flack jackets descending upon him, led by Jimmy Mondale atop a pale horse.

Hettie was empty and reloading when the windshield turned red. She fell out the passenger side, one hand clamped over her neck and a fine spray of blood shooting between her fingers. The next shot caught her high in her right shoulder and spun her around and the back of her head burst like a water balloon in the next instant.

Chowder screamed for her, ignoring the angry voices ordering him to show his hands. Something big and unseen hit him in his side and his right arm stopped responding. He looked at his attackers, chose one and ran straight at him.