Vengeance (12 page)

Maybe Casey was flat out lying because he figured there was no one who could correct his account. Or maybe his admiration of Aiden was so fierce that in an admittedly substance-impaired memory he became Aiden for one heroic moment.

Either way, it proved me right. The extent to which I could trust Casey was limited by one boundary or another.

As Casey crossed the First Avenue Bridge and headed up the southeast side, I started paying attention to our route and realized we weren’t headed toward my motel.

“Where to now?” I asked.

“That TASER isn’t going to knock Rook out. It’ll freeze him in his tracks, if you use it right. But then what? You need something that’ll finish the job.”

I figured a two-by-four to the skull would be a good start, as well as payback for my aching head. I let it go and moved on to a question that had been nagging at me.

“Rod White’s nickname,” I said. “Doesn’t make sense. How do you get from Rod to Louis?”

“Because of this one time he used a baseball bat on some poor fuck. I don’t know if he used a genuine Louisville Slugger. I honestly don’t know if it was wood or aluminum. Who knows? But they started calling him Louis because of Louisville.”

“Not the toughest nickname out there.”

“Better than Slugger, isn’t it? If they had called him that instead, he’d sound like some middle-class mentally retarded little league player. You go get ‘em, Slugger! Don’t worry, Slugger, just going out there makes you a winner.”

It was also better than “Weasel.” I kept that to myself.

I inspected the TASER in my lap. As if that device was really going to put me on even ground with Rook. The whole situation was ridiculous. Maybe my dad had been a barroom brawler extraordinaire, but I was out of my depth. And probably out of my mind.

“I don’t know if I can make this work,” I said.

“Don’t worry. They’re simple. You can practice before using it on Rook.”

“No. I mean this whole thing. Have you even met the guy? He’s a gorilla with ninja training.”

“Yeah, I know Rook.”

“You know him, my dad knows him, and I’m the one who has to deal with him?”

“Told you before, your dad can’t get in the same room with Rook. And if you haven’t figured it out, I’m in the business.”

If I understood correctly, Casey was telling me he was involved in organized crime. I had already figured his livelihood was something shady. Casey was no tough guy. But not everyone in that world was an enforcer.

“So shouldn’t you be able to sit down with Rook and get to the bottom of this?”

“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t snoop into the business of one of my colleagues. That’s not acceptable. If I turned something up, I’d still be treated like an internal affairs back-stabber. And if nothing turns up, I might be the one who ends up stabbed in the back,” he said. “Driving you around I can explain because we’re practically family. But getting involved beyond that would put my neck on the chopping block.”

It took longer to digest the part where he called us family than when he talked about being in the underworld. I could see he and my dad had some sort of bond, but I had written it off to Aiden’s passing. I thought Casey was just looking in and taking care of the old man. I hadn’t considered they had grown close on their own.

“So this is up to you,” he said. “But you’re getting cold feet. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. Well, let me tell you what I know. You’ve got some moves. You made the varsity wrestling team as a sophomore. And you look like you’ve bulked up since then.

“A hundred ninety and some high school wrestling doesn’t add up to much against Rook.”

“No,” he said. “But I also know about Billy Swinson. Got your ass beat by him once or twice. With The Brothers backing him up, way I heard it. Billy was what, eighteen? And The Brothers were older than Billy. So early twenties. And the three of them are picking a fight with a ninth grader. Being Aiden’s little brother bought you a lot of grief, didn’t it? But I think you learned how to cope. A week after Billy beat you up, you broke his arm and knocked out three of his teeth.”

“Billy sell you that story?”

“Ethan, you’re not sitting in the principal’s office. This is me. I know shit, OK? Billy made up some load about being jumped from behind by three gang bangers. He’d never admit a ninth-grader fucked him up. And Aiden was sitting in juvey for a stint. So he didn’t do it. I’m betting you took a baseball bat and swung for a homer on him then shoved it in his mouth and took out the teeth. Maybe we should be calling you Slugger.”

I was flattered that someone was keeping a score sheet on me. But corroborating or correcting Casey’s version of events wouldn’t change what he was getting at.

“That’s the pep talk?” I said.

“My point is you can do this. Rook? He’s no Billy Swinson. But you can take him down if you do it right. He has no reason to feel threatened by you. As long as he doesn’t see it coming, this can work.”

There’s a world of difference between visualizing and executing. But in my mind I could see how it might work. If absolutely nothing went wrong.

“And if it doesn’t?”

He cast a wide grin at me. “Might want to keep the car running, just in case!”

Casey turned up a gravel alley in the neighborhood. A few houses up, he pulled to the side across from the doors of a two-stall garage. Even through the rolled up windows I could hear the sounds of a grinder from inside the garage. From the varied pitches of its sound, I guessed it was a handheld model, doing some light shaping on sheet metal.

“Sit tight,” Casey said, effectively ruling out discussion by closing the door on the tail end of his imperative. I didn’t see much alternative, either, as my side of the car was so close to a four foot high chain link fence and the hedge invading the alley through its diamond grid that the side view mirror had folded back against the car as he parked. I was stuck, but about as quickly as I had assessed the situation, Casey came traipsing back out of the side door to the garage. I didn’t think the grinding had even been interrupted. He dropped back into his seat and passed a small cardboard box my way.

“Second punch,” he said.

As we pulled away, I took a look in the box to find a bottle of chloroform. Second punch, indeed.

Chapter 13

Around one o’clock, three men staggered out of Andy’s together, followed immediately by Lenny. Once they had pulled out, it was down to me and the silver Beemer. I considered moving my car out of sight of the side door, but I was worried Rook would emerge while I was in the process, which would have blown the plan. I got out and loaded the TASER into my right coat pocket. I had checked its charge three times over the past few hours, worried the battery might be faulty, leaving me high and dry with Rook. I had walked through the plan in my mind dozens of times. If the TASER snagged when I drew on him, or if the contacts didn’t attach, or any of a hundred other difficulties arose, I couldn’t count on walking away from there.

After checking that Rook wasn’t on his way, I got the chloroform bottle and removed its cap. I covered the open bottle with a cotton rag and slipped them into my coat pocket like that, keeping my hand around the bottle so it wouldn’t spill.

I hid around the back corner of the building and waited to hear the side door. Even if I missed the sound, his shadow would be cast in my direction by the lights from the highway. Each of my hands was positioned perfectly around its respective weapon in my pockets. I didn’t want to pull a hand out because of the chance of fumbling things up if Rook came out and caught me off guard. But the wait dragged on for maybe fifteen minutes. Though the night wasn’t particularly cold, standing out there anxiously I found myself shifting my weight from one leg to the other. If he didn’t come out soon, I’d be shivering and rubbing my hands together for warmth.

A few more minutes passed before the door opened. Part of me wanted to wait where I was and jump him when he passed me. But the plan was designed to work taking him head on in the confined space along the side of the building. There was no time to calculate what could go wrong if I didn’t stick to the plan, but there was plenty that could still go wrong even if I did.

I gathered my resolve and turned the corner. “Rook,” I said. I didn’t want to give the appearance of trying to sneak up on him. My first weapon was the fact that I could keep his defenses down by seeming as naïve as I had the night before. He slipped the key from the door lock into his jeans pocket as he squared his stance to intercept me.

“You came back to talk some more?” he quipped, sounding entirely unthreatened by my appearance.

“That’s right,” I said, closing the twenty feet between us at a measured pace. If I had rushed with my hands hidden in my coat pockets, it might have raised his suspicions, as if I were concealing a gun. As long as I played it cool he had no reason to react. I tipped the bottle in my left hand to soak the cotton rag.

“Last night you got lucky—”

As he spoke, I stepped within range. I pulled out the TASER, aimed, and fired in one unbroken motion. His eyes registered the threat with anger, but it was too late to avoid the contacts that bit into his thigh and chest.

The current locked up his muscles and I dropped the TASER. I had thirty seconds before the electricity stopped. I jumped onto his back and slapped the chloroform-soaked rag over his mouth and nose. I kicked my heels into his inner thighs, breaking his stance and dropping him to his knees. As he lunged forward, I wrapped his right arm in a half-nelson and leveraged against the back of his skull to keep his head on the ground and against the chloroform. The TASER was supposed to incapacitate him long enough for me to deliver the knock-out punch, but he was fighting back. Had I knocked one of the TASER contacts loose when I had jumped on him? His muscle spasms vibrated into me as if there was a tiny motor revving somewhere in his mass. Rook swung his head from side to side like a rabid pit bull trying to shake free of a muzzle, grinding the back of my left hand into the gravel beneath his struggling face. The force of his face pressed against my hand was the only reason I didn’t let go. The back of my hand felt like it was being mauled by a dozen gnashing mouths. I let out a noise that braided together fury and agony, like a growl and a wail from dueling alley cats.

Beneath the muffled sound of Rook’s protest and the mashing of the gravel I heard the insect wing clicking of the TASER ticking down the milliseconds until Rook would recover and demolish me. How long was this stuff supposed to take? I thought I might need to take the rag away from his mouth to saturate it with more chloroform while the TASER was still helping keep him down. But he was already writhing enough even with the current coursing through him that I didn’t know if I could hang on.

The TASER was still flicking when the gravel had all been swept out of the way and Rook’s wrestling polished my hand against forgotten dirt packed hard as granite. I could feel every bone and vein on the back of my hand and imagined whatever patches of skin that remained being scoured off. Against the pain, I squeezed my head against the back of my right hand to keep his face pressed as forcefully as I could into the rag.

While we wrestled, the fraying plan disintegrated altogether. The TASER ceased its thirty second assault with Rook still conscious. He flailed his free arm and rolled over, crushed my right side against the gravel under his mass. My left elbow was smashed against the chain link fence and Rook was trying to ram his left elbow into my ribs, but the fence blocked every one of his half dozen assaults with a metallic splash. He started to roll his hips over, and he was taking my whole weight with him. I dug my heels into his thighs to try to stop him, but I had already given it my all to ride that bronco. All I had left was devoted to holding his one arm up and the rag to his face. Once I was away from the shelter of the fence, he could break the half nelson, throw me off, and pummel the rest of me to match my hand.

The TASER rested a few feet in front of us. If I let go of him and made a move for the weapon, I might be able to use it on him in the up-close mode, like a cattle prod, and hope it paralyzed him enough that he wouldn’t be able to strike. But what would I do then? It didn’t matter! I needed to buy more time anyway I could.

Just as I let my legs slip away from his mass, I felt him go limp. He slumped back to the position he had been climbing out of, rolling back onto me and slamming against the fence with his left shoulder. “Shit!” I said. “Holy fucking shit!”

I held the rag there for several more seconds in case he was faking, or in case he might wake back up as soon as he breathed fresh air. I tried to catch my breath, but I couldn’t inhale deeply, pinned under his mass. I needed to get free, but I didn’t have the leverage to roll him off me, so I had to drag myself over his shoulders to escape. As I pulled myself along the fence, his weight slumped to make sure I had to work to free every inch of my body. When I finally pulled one foot free, I stepped on his shoulder and pushed off to free the other. I had the urge to kick him in his face, but that momentary catharsis wouldn’t be worth the risk of waking him, much less the eventual retaliation. So I doused the rag and gave him another dose. I wasn’t taking any chances.

I was shaking from the adrenaline surge, my chest heaving. Sour sweat washed over my face, trickled down my spine. My muscles were spent. As if I had just sprinted a mile up a slope of scree in summer. I took a moment to marvel at what I had just done.

But I needed to get moving. The bottle had spilled most of its contents. What remained wouldn’t keep him out long. I dug into Rook’s pocket and retrieved the keys to unlock the side door to the bar. I remembered one crucial step I needed to take before moving him. But the rope I had brought was no longer tucked into the back of my belt. I had to grab Rook by the back of his pants with both hands and brace my legs well in the gravel to roll him over to retrieve the rope. I dosed him again before I started tying.

It took minutes to drag him inside, a few feet at a time. I tried to lift his slumped body into a chair so I could bind him to it. After a few tries, I decided lifting that much dead weight was impossible. Instead, I laid a chair on the ground, rolled him into it, strapped him to it, and used its rigid frame to get him upright before I continued tying him.

I had used up all the remaining chloroform. I worried it may have been too much, as the only sign of life out of Rook was his breathing. The plan had been to talk to him, not drop him into a coma. Restless minutes passed before he stirred.

“Here we are again,” Rook said before opening his eyes. He tensed the ropes and a dozen chairs clattered.

“Except the tables are turned.”

“Mm-hmm. You think you’re in charge because you got me strapped to half the furniture in this joint?”

“You want me to untie you, just tell me what I need to know.”

He snorted out a whiff of a laugh.

“Nah. I’m comfortable. I might be in for one boring evening, but I don’t have anything to worry about from you,” he said. His eyes were open now and he was looking toward my face. I assumed he still couldn’t see me clearly in the dark, but he could make out my silhouette five feet in front of him. “And when my people walk in here tomorrow I’m getting out of this chair and you’re in for a world of pain.”

“Look, we don’t have to waste all night. Just tell me—”

“Son, the hard part didn’t happen outside. Getting me in this chair is just the invitation to the ball. You still have to ask me to dance.”

“I just want to know—”

“Don’t ask a question until you’ve set the tone,” he exhorted with equal parts encouragement and admonition. “All kinds of things behind the bar you can use. Break some bottles over my head. Threaten to slit my throat with the glass. Drag a cut down my arm or chest to show you’re serious.”

Had the chloroform caused brain damage? Or was violence a script these people refused to deviate from? Fight, torture, interrogate. Rook struggled against the ropes to express his impatience. He jostled the furniture, startling me despite myself. I knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

“If you don't like the sight of blood, there might be a baseball bat back there,” he said, far too amused for my comfort. His grin would have made the fiercest jack-o’-lanterns tremble. “Jab it into my stomach. Or use the TASER again. Tickles a little.”

“Look, can we skip past the gangster lessons and talk? I just want to find out what you know about my brother’s death.”

A semi swept past outside, its shockwave stripping the room of pretense and Rook of his humor as abruptly as a ringside bell stops a sparring match. The bar held its breath in the truck’s wake.

“Your dad didn’t send you here for a job?” Rook asked. His tone was earnest.

I couldn’t help but hang my head and shake out the exasperation. “I am not a hit man and this isn’t an audition to get into the business. If you’d listened to me last night, it would’ve saved us a lot of trouble.”

“Someone steps up on you in the middle of the night in a tight place, you act first, ask questions later.” Unapologetic and didactic. But his voice eased before he added, “I’m sorry about your brother. He was a good kid.”

“You knew him?”

“Your dad sent him to me,” Rook said. He muttered a convoy of curses behind my father’s name. “I already had an eye on him. He’d been in on a few small jobs. He carried himself all right, but he didn’t have the aptitude for dirty work. Not the kind to pull a gun. He was dabbling. Maybe he found it exciting. Or maybe the girls did. Or your dad nudged him, probably. But no way was I letting him into the business.”

I would have been justified in treating his story as suspect. But he sounded sincere and it was clear he had not only met Aiden. He understood who he was.

“How many rounds did it take before Aiden got you to listen to him?” I asked.

“We didn’t go rounds,” Rook said. “Your brother knocked on my office door. Like a normal person.”

I shrank under the accusation. “I did what I had to do,” I said.

Root snorted.

“Your brother had a bright future. He was in his element wherever he went. Smooth. He could’ve done well as a con man. But he liked people too much to take advantage of them. And they liked him. Must have gotten that from his momma.”

I was tempted to ask if Rook had actually known my mom. But I knew he knew my dad and he was probably just applying a process of elimination. Besides, I was there about Aiden.

“What can you tell me about the night he died?” I asked.

“Just what I read in the paper. Something else I should know?”

I squinted in an effort to slice through the dark, as if I’d be able to gauge his veracity.

“How can I be sure you’re telling the truth?” I asked.

“You want to try that baseball bat? No? Then you decide whether you’re going to trust me.”

“You’re telling me you don’t know anything,” I said. “You’re supposed to be the man who knows things. I can’t believe I’ve done all this for nothing.”

“Doesn’t the fact that I don’t know anything convince you?”

“It makes me think someone is stepping out of line right under your nose, ordering hits with no authority.”

I cringed at my own statement, as if I were acknowledging anyone had the authority to decide when someone should die. Rook scanned my face, measuring, calculating. He remained silent as he cataloged his findings, weighed them against another set of metrics.

“Why do you think he sent you to me?” Rook said. “To beat answers out of me?”

I could hardly defend the logic of the plan, but the outcome of our scuffle was undeniable. “Got the drop on you, didn’t I?” I said.