Scare Crow (4 page)

I hesitated there. “You’re not going to tell me what you’re planning, are
you?”

She shook her head. “It’s better if you remove yourself completely and let me take
care of
Emmy.”

When I eyed Spider, looking for elaboration, he just raised his shoulders. This was
all C
arly.

“Cameron, you know it’s for the best. If you don’t go get her, then you have to let
her go,” she
said.

My heart tightened and my teeth clenched, because I knew that Carly was right. “I’ll
stay away from
her.”

The words coming out of my mouth felt like knives on my to
ngue.

When I got to my car, Tiny, one of the few men I ever trusted with my life, was waiting
for me. I was carrying the box of wordy and dense philosophy books from the class
Emmy and I had once secretly shared. An amphitheater-sized class where I could keep
an eye on her and easily keep myself hidden. We should have been attending another
class together this school year. But I wasn’t going to be t
here.

I placed the box on the backseat, and we drove
off.

I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep my promise to Carly. Keeping away from Emmy,
letting someone else look after her … just the thought of it made me want to slit
someone’s th
roat.

****

We drove into a tidy neighborhood in New Jersey. Tiny dropped me off on the corner
and drove away. It was already dark. Through brightly lit windows, I could see families
sitting down eating their dinner in front of the TV, oblivious to the fact that I
was stalking through their backyards. When I got to the neat backyard of a little
bungalow, I swiftly peered through the backdoor window and chuckled at the sight of
the red eye of a motion dete
ctor.

Alarm systems aren’t just a joke; they’re dangerous. Their purpose is to make you
think you’re safe. Make you feel like you can relax and let your guard down. But anything
that one human created, another can des
troy.

Nothing man-made is foolproof. Death is the only untouchable, and a false sense of
security could get someone ki
lled.

I put some gloves on, quickly disarmed the system, and let myself in. I hadn’t had
to get my hands this dirty since I was a kid. Breaking and entering, stealing, was
a method of survival where I came
from.

As I prowled through the house, I remembered the rush I used to have at taking things
from people who had too much and selling them just so we’d have money to pay to get
the heat turned bac
k on.

But this house was no average Joe’s house. This was a cop’s house. A place where,
even when I was a stupid kid, I would have never ventured. By the plaques on the wall
and the medals, you’d think this was the house of a fine member of the police force.
But this police officer was no hero. If you looked hard enough, if you knew where
to look, you would find the dirt, like a black light in a motel
room.

The fifty-year-old bottle of Glenfiddich in the liquor cabinet, the over-the-top entertainment
center, the Rolex watches, and the cocaine stuffed in the couch. I had learned a long
time ago that there were no real heroes left—just good actors. And this guy wasn’t
just crooked; he was flambo
yant.

I quickly got on his computer and linked into a few sunny destination sites on the
Internet. The intricate firewall caught my interest, and out of sheer curiosity, I
started searching through files, finding his extensive Internet porn collection. I
had come across a lot of sick people; but this guy was really messe
d up.

After bringing his firewall down and turning off the computer, I rearmed the cop’s
false sense of security and found a dark corner to wait, away from the motion dete
ctor.

When he came home, the fat cop disarmed the system, threw his gun holster on the front
bench, and sat down at his computer desk. I watched from the shadows as he went straight
for his favored collection, already panting from excitement or from having to walk
his fat ass ar
ound.

Before he could get too comfortable, I strolled up behind him and placed the butt
of my gun against the back of his head. I leaned in to his ear, smelling the sweat
stained into his s
hirt.

“Officer Breland,” I murmured, “let’s go have a seat in the kit
chen.”

“Boy,” he said as we made our way down the hall, “you don’t know what shitstorm you
just walked into. You ain’t gonna walk out of here a
live.”

I bade him to sit at the table, and I sat on the opposite side, placing my gun on
the table’s smooth surface, the barrel pointing at the police off
icer.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked him. I knew he had no idea who I was; nobody did.
As far as he was concerned, I was just a twenty-something kid who was getting caught
up in something he couldn’t ma
nage.

“I don’t give a shit
who
you are,” Officer Breland ho
wled.

“A couple months ago, you stormed into my compound and killed some of my gu
ards.”

He scowled and folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking a
bout.”

I smiled. “I lost a lot of men that n
ight.”

I took a piece of metal out of my pocket and took care to screw it onto my gun. His
complexion blanched a li
ttle.

“One of the guards who was shot was unarmed. One of your colleagues ratted you out
as the trigger
guy.”

“It wasn’t me.” Sweat started to seep through the blubber on his
face.

“Come on, now. We both know that’s not
true.”

I put the gun back on the table, with the silenced barrel facing the policeman, and
kicked my feet up on one of the chairs, lacing my fingers behind my
head.

“I was just following orders,” he confessed. “If I wouldn’t have done it, someone
else would have, and I would have been killed my
self.”

“You and your chumps cost me a lot of money that n
ight.”

“I can pay,” he immediately offered, as I had expected. “I have a lot of money socked
away.”

“Oh, I doubt you can afford my price. I’m going to need a lot more than whatever shit
nest egg you’ve saved up. Someone has to pay for
this.”

While Officer Breland gave this some thought, I watched as his chunky hands started
to shake. He knew what I was asking for, and he knew that this could mean his death
now or his death later. When he looked at the clock clicking over the refrigerator,
I knew he had made his deci
sion.

“I know where you can get more money. A whole lot more m
oney.”

“Boy,” I said, mimicking his voice, “that’s the best news I’ve heard all
day.”

Officer Breland and I got in his Chevy, and I made him drive us so that I could keep
holding the gun on
him.

“They’re moving the money tonight,” he explained. “Shield has them move it around
every two weeks until he can us
e it.”

By use it, Officer Breland meant launde
r it.

“How many guys does he have guarding the m
oney?”

“No more than
two.”

“Just two?” That would have left his money a little too vulner
able.

“Shield doesn’t trust anyone with his money,” he told me. “I only know about it because
for the last two weeks, he has been keeping the stash at my folks’ old farm. I inherited
it after they died but never did anything with the prop
erty.”

I watched every move he made as he said this. He kept his eyes on the road, his hands
firmly upon the wheel, his breath steady. He was telling the t
ruth.

“If you get me that money, I’ll let you keep a chunk of it,” I vowed. “You can use
your share to disappear before Shield comes after
you.”

He took a breath, nodded, and relaxed his grip on the w
heel.

We drove to a farmhouse outside Jersey. Up the driveway, there was a cube truck with
its headlights on. As we neared the truck and the house, I could tell by the white
fumes rising against the dark night that the truck’s engine was still on, but we still
hadn’t seen a soul. I bade Officer Breland to park in front of the truck, and we waited
t
here.

There were no lights on inside the house, but I could see flashlights shining through
the windows every few seconds. Two distinct beams of lights—two flashlights. This,
so far, corroborated Breland’s story that there were only two men guarding Shield’s
m
oney.

We watched as the flashlights flew around the house, from window to window. The officer
looked at the clock on the radio. “They should have been done loading up the money
by
now.”

Breland’s inherited farmhouse was tall and slim, like a box of Kleenex that had been
turned on its side. It had a façade of old bricks that were the size of a speed limit
sign and bulged out. The bricks on the house reminded me of a bulletproof vest under
a too-tight T-shirt. A few feet ahead, at the end of the pebble driveway, there was
what was left of a barn. The roof had already caved in, and the structure hung on
its side as though it had had too much to drink and was close to being cut off by
the barte
nder.

“Nice place,” I sne
ered.

“My parents were assholes. I’m taking pleasure in watching their place fall apart
one piece at a time.” His glare was stuck to the barn in the back. A glare that I
recognized all too well. A glare that echoed that of a boy who had been beaten up
more times than he dared to rec
ount.

When the lights were focused on the side door and grew, Breland and I stepped out
of the
car.

A dark-haired gangly man came out, rump first, with a flashlight tucked in the back
pocket of his jeans. He was bent over a red can of gas that he was pouring in zigzags.
A second man followed him out. He was bigger and older, and he was carrying a wooden
crate while holding his flashlight between his teeth, lighting his arsonist buddy’s
way
out.

“What the hell are you doing?” Breland shouted. I let him go a little as he marched
toward the men who were planning to torch his childhood house of hor
rors.

The firebugs stopped short, crowded on the small cement stoop in front of the side
door.

“What the hell are we doing? What the hell are
you
doing? Here?” demanded the older of the two
men.

“Shield sent us over here to see what was taking so long,” I answered ca
lmly.

While his young friend held on to the gas can and hadn’t moved an inch since we’d
been spotted, the big guy put the crate on the gr
ound.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked and kept his eyes on me as he reached to the gun
holster looped against his c
hest.

I stretched my arms over my head and yawned. “Where are the other
guys?”

“What other guys?” the kid wondered, his brows furr
owed.

He’d confirmed that there were indeed only two of them. I shot them both in the head
before the old guy ever got a chance to pull his gun
out.

Breland and I went to the bodies. I ordered him to pull the bodies inside the house
while I opened the crate. It was loaded with cash. A couple hundred thousand dollars
worth of it. Then I walked to the back of the truck, where the men had left the door
up. There were at least another fifty more crates in there. Whatever Shield was planning
to do with ten million dollars, it was big money for him. And while it was probably
not his only stash of cash, he was definitely going to miss
this.

From the glow of the headlights, we could still see the boots of the dead bodies that
were inside the entrance. Breland was still winded from having dragged the two
men.

“Do you smoke?” I asked him with a s
mirk.

He glanced at me, glanced at his childhood home, chuckled, and pulled out a gold-plated
Zippo lighter. He lit it, and without hesitation, threw it onto the trail of gas.
The house was engulfed in sec
onds.

I told him to load the last crate into the back of the truck and followed him. He
reached up to pull the doors closed, and I fired two shots—one for each of his knees.
He screeched, falling face-first into the back of the truck. I shut the door and locked
him inside with the m
oney.

I drove away with Breland and the cash, leaving behind two of Shield’s men dead and
Breland’s car, fingering him as the escaped culprit. When Shield went searching for
Breland in his tidy bungalow, he would find that his man’s last Internet search was
for flight destinations in South Ame
rica.

I could still hear Breland howling in the back when I pulled up to the junkyard. Tiny
was standing next to my car, waiting for me. He opened the back and pulled out Breland,
dragging him to a pit in the sand. He threw Breland in the pit and moved to the
side.

I watched Breland coil in pain and sm
iled.

“You have your money,” he yelled. “What else do you
want?”

“That unarmed guard you shot,” I explained. “He was fourteen years old. He was harmless.
Just a
kid.”

“I was just following orders. I didn’t know he was a
kid.”

Tiny handed me a box, and I took a breath. That kid wasn’t just any kid. “He was my
brother. His name was R
occo.”