Sweeney on the Rocks Page 19

  Ten minutes later, the truck door opens and Counts Enemies slips in next to him. Glances up and back, and slouches low in the seat. “Drive up toward Homestake.” A voice soft as cotton, cultivated, southern accent. “And you owe me, man.”

  “Yup.”

  A Modoc out of Miami, Oklahoma, Johnny Counts Enemies is still one of only a handful of full blood Native Americans to graduate from the FBI academy, and the only one (to Merchant’s knowledge) to graduate at the top of his class. Guy’s got an I.Q. of 180 or something. Spanish, French, a smattering of Farsi. He stares out at this lamentable white man’s world with the opaque pupils of his ancestors, the same glittering shards of coal that happily witnessed the scalping, emasculation, and evisceration of our own great-great-grandparents.

  “You been good? How goes undercover?” Merchant pulls onto the Interstate back toward Rockjaw, climbing toward the Divide. “Still working the local cops?” Merchant has heard rumors of a prostitution ring involved the city police. And when he learned that Counts Enemies moved to Butte six months ago, it was no big jump to make the connection.

  Counts Enemies squints at Merchant, considering him. “It’s undercover, you know. Slow, boring. Careful.”

  Merchant hears the reprimand. “I wouldn’t ask, but I’m on a clock. A kidnapping.”

  Counts Enemies absorbs this. Considers the various scenarios that would compel Merchant to cash in one of his FBI chits, to risk an ongoing investigation. Ten minutes later, approaching an Interstate rest stop, he says, “Pull off here. That silver Hyundai.” He hands Merchant a set of keys. “Gym bag in the trunk.”

  Merchant finds a black canvas gym bag between the lug wrench and spare tire. Hefting it in his hands, it’s lighter than you might think.

  Last time he saw a Stingray, it was housed in an aluminum casing the size of a desktop computer. Lights and knobs and handles, cable ports, a cumbersome AC power hookup. But when Counts Enemies unzips the bag, what he pulls out is the size and shape of a bag of Starbucks coffee beans, sleek in black molded plastic, rounded on the corners. He unwinds a magnetized antenna and sticks it to Merchant’s roof. Produces an iPhone from his hip pocket and plugs it in. “What’s the phone number?”

  Merchant’s got a thing for sexy hardware. He recites the number from memory, then watches as Counts Enemy plugs the digits into his iPhone. “They got Stingray apps now?”

  Counts Enemies shakes his head. “You didn’t see it from me.”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s just, damn. That’s slick.”

  The screen blinks, digesting digits. After a moment, a map of Montana pops up, complete with a light blue circle superimposed over Paradise Valley, south of Rockjaw. “We’ll get the nearest tower first, then once we’re within range, it’ll triangulate with two other towers, give us an address.” He sits back. “Looks like we’re headed to Rockjaw.”

  “You don’t need to get involved.”

  “Mr. Stingray stays with me.” Counts Enemies sits back, unplugs his phone. “’Sides. I need a break. I’m beat.” He kicks back, tilts his baseball cap over his eyes. “Wake me when we get there.”

  The question: Do you go in strong or weak? Do you appeal to vanity and ego or terror and self-preservation?

  Sweeney’s washed the blood from his knuckles and pulled off his necktie, folded his dress shirt neat in the back seat of the Honda. Now he’s got a black Yanks cap pulled down low and some wraparound shades off the rack. No hoodie, but a yellow raincoat, flimsy as a cheap garbage bag. And piéce de resistance, the pizza box. Balanced flat over a fist that’s gripping the Smith, the perfect little embodiment of wrath and retribution.

  Sweeney glances up and down the street. Empty sidewalks, and no banks that might have cameras pointed at the street. No ATMs. No nearby stoplights with traffic surveillance. So far, so good. He uses an unbloody knuckle to press the doorbell. Hears a distant and harsh metallic buzz.

  He stands there. Three minutes. Four. Presses the buzzer again. Leans on it.

  The door past the bars cracks opens six inches.

  Two feet away, there it is: A face that’s haunted a good number of Sweeney’s sleepless nights. “The fuck you want?”

  “Supreme pie, extra pepperoni.” Sweeney drops his head so the cap brim covers him to the nose. Keeps his eyes slightly averted. Bored with the day. Just another delivery kid with attitude.

  Jasha looks Sweeney up and down. Maybe there’s a flicker. But: “I didn’t order no pie.” And shuts the door.

  Sweeney gives it half a minute. Leans on the buzzer again. When the door opens, Sweeney’s checking his rental car receipt. “This is Van Brunt, yeah?”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t order no pizza.”

  “Well, shit.” Sweeney, frustrated. Stares off at the horizon. “This is the address they gave me.”

  “Not my problem.”

  Sweeney gives it a beat, then: “Wanna buy a super-sized pepperoni for five bucks?”

  “Five bucks?”

  “Man, how about four. I’m just throwing it away otherwise.”

  Jasha studies the box. “Hold on.” And shuts the door.

  ~

  The inside door opens, then the security door. Then here’s Jasha, offering up a small bloom of bills.

  Sweeney wedges in a heel and pushes forward with his knee. Dumps the pizza to one side. Punches into Jasha with the flat of the pistol. He’s not aiming for the nose but that’s what he hits. A crack of breaking bone, and Jasha’s flat on the ground, undone by his appetites.

  Sweeney steps into the dim odor of strip clubs (sweat, cigarettes, cheap perfume). Kicks the door shut behind him. Then stands a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom.

  The warehouse has been hollowed out to the exterior walls. Loose carpet scraps on the floor and a few bars of fluorescents overhead. Most of the light in the room comes from a filming studio set up at the far end of the space. Between here and there, metal utility shelves filled with DVD jewel cases and blank disks. Priority mail envelopes. And the studio? Three separate light stands, glowing behind silver umbrellas. A pair of palm-sized digital video cameras on tripods. Under the lights, a fake living room. A couch, a chair, a rug. A cheap seascape on the wall. And this: Scrambling for her clothes, the twelve-year-old girl, naked.

  Sweeney, catching a glimpse of bare torso, tries to find someplace else to look.

  To one side, the mother. Smoking a cigarette, lost in a private, drug-induced tour of her own bleak interior. Not even blinking at this guy who’s suddenly appeared in the room, gun in hand.

  Sweeney says, “Kiddie porn? Motherfucker.”

  “I remember that voice.” Jasha sits up. Pinches at his nose. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  Sweeney takes a step and kicks Jasha hard in the ribs. “The fuck down.”

  Jasha grunts. “Yeah, Shakespeare. I remember you.”

  Sweeney gestures to the zonked-out hooker. “You, come here. Bring the girl. Come here. Come here.”

  Even through the heroin haze, the woman understands gestures. She staggers toward Sweeney. The girl comes along behind, buttoning her little blouse. Sweeney says to the woman, “How much is he paying you?”

  “English, not so good.” A thick Russian accent.

  He says to the girl, “You speak English?”

  The girl’s fixated on Sweeney’s gun. Can’t take her eyes off it.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. Do you speak English?”

  Fragile, she nods.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Alena.” A tiny voice.

  “Alena. That’s a nice name. How well do you know this guy, Alena? Do you know him? How long have you known him?”

  She covers her lips with her fingertips.

  “Alena?”

  “Momma brought him home. He’s going to make me famous. Like Lady Gaga.”

  “Is he paying you? What’s he paying you?”

  The little girl proudly produces a damp square of currency, folded with the care of a d
oll’s dress. She opens the folds and displays it for him. A ten dollar bill.

  The final, largest fragments of Sweeney’s well-broken heart tense and tremble and shatter.

  What’s Sweeney got, cash-wise? The remnants from the dead wop’s stash. He switches hands with the gun, digs at his wallet. Three hundred and…ninety-five dollars. “Here.” Returns the ninety-five to his wallet (cab fare) and hands the three to the girl. Says to the mother, “Those are hers. Not yours.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I mean it. Don’t spend it on smack. No smack.”

  “Nosir.”

  “You do, I’ll find out. I’ll find you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What am I doing. You don’t even speak fucking English. Okay. Go.” He steps to one side, gesturing toward the door. “Leave. Don’t come back. Ever. Alena? Don’t ever ever ever come back, okay?”

  The little girl takes this all in as a matter of course. No theatrics, no screaming or tears. She finds her mother’s hand and leads her through the open door. The mother stumbles slightly, glancing back at Jasha.

  “Don’t look at him. Go.”

  After they’re gone, Sweeney pulls the door closed. Locks it. Turns back. “Jasha,” he says, “How you been?”

  ~

  Jasha, on the couch, under the lights, works hard at playing it cool. And he’s got a talent for it. Spreading both arms out wide and slouching deep. A bubble of blood hangs on one nostril. “You’re looking good for a corpse, Shakespeare.”

  “I been getting that a lot lately.”

  “Not the way I mean it.”

  A pair of rotating fans have been set up on either side of the lights, moving the stale air. Under their oscillating whirr, caught in the current of their breeze, Sweeney narrows his eyes. “You the one who killed Eddie?”

  “Is that what you’re here for? Payback?” Jasha manufactures his own little squint. “Nah. Wish I’d been. That sick fuck? Only a matter of time. Somebody somewhere got wise.”

  “What about Eddie’s wife. You kill her too?”

  “Tina? Did she get whacked?” He touches fingertips to his nostrils. Pulls them away to inspect the fresh dimes of blood. “Shame.”

  “Her and her boyfriend.”

  Sweeney pauses, leaving him an opening. One which, ideally, Jasha would fill with the name of Tina’s boyfriend, a street address, place of employment. Instead, Jasha snorts derision.

  “What’s his name again? The boyfriend?” This is as subtle as Sweeney’s inclined to get, all he’s got time for. Aggie curled fetal on concrete.

  “I didn’t even know she was fucking around.”

  “What about that guy, what’s his name…Breetvah. Yeah, her and Breetvah.”

  Jasha flashes surprise. Then laughs. A brief, I looked upon the face of God kind of laugh, caught between a giggle and a gulp.

  “Jasha.”

  “You know, I never trusted you. First time I met you, back in the day, everybody’s like all, Ohhhh, Shakespeare. Bad ass motherfucker. Smartest guy in the room. All that shit. But me, I’m like, uh uh. Guy’s got narc written all over him. What do you know. I was right, they were wrong.”

  A small square of chamois cloth on a table behind the lights. Something to wipe off the lenses, maybe; or soak up the bitter tears of children. Sweeney wraps it around his left fist, steps forward. And: Punches Jasha in the nose. Not hard enough to push bone shards back into the sinuses but hard enough to knock him flat onto the couch.

  It takes a minute, Jasha snuffling hard, wheezing, coughing, before he has the wherewithal for another empty threat. “You know who you’re fucking with here? The people I know? You’re dead, motherfucker. Again.”

  “So you got nothing to lose.” Sweeney plays with the wrap of chamois. Twists it tighter around his fingers. “I need to find Breetvah.”

  “Dumbass.”

  “Breetvah, I said.”

  “Breetvah’s dead.”

  “Bullshit. I know he’s alive.”

  “Eddie’s dead.”

  “Yeah, I know that much”

  “Eddie was Breetvah, asshole.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Like I said…” Jasha leans forward to blow a clot of blood out of one nostril. “Dumbass.”

  Sweeney stands stymied. But if that’s…I don’t see…Huh?

  To fill the space, he says, “So was I the only one in the dark or was this common knowledge or what?”

  “Me and Bytchkov knew. Always thought you did, too.” Jasha wipes his nose with his forearm. Stares at the broad swath of red on his pale skin. “Eddie was Bruce Wayne, Breetvah was Batman. If Batman was, you know, a crazy-ass serial killer.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Donnie Moretti probably.”

  “Wasn’t Moretti.”

  “Zakayev, then.”

  “Who?”

  “Abdul Zakayev. I know you know that name.”

  The fence from his phone call. Fifty-seventh and Lex.

  “One of those guys whose ass you saved when you ratted out Bytchkov. Zakayev knows it, too. What I hear, even now he’s still all about Shakespeare this and that. They don’t make em like that guy Shakespeare no more.”

  “What’d he have against Eddie?”

  Jasha’s eye goes to the gun, then back to Sweeney. Up to the ceiling. He sucks on a tooth. Spits blood. Says, “Zakayev’s connected. Turns out, he’s co-neck-tud. Eddie…Breetvah, he was in the midst of taking over territory. That’s all.”

  “Eddie and Breetvah.”

  “Sick guy, man.”

  “Well.” Sweeney finds a director’s chair, fills it up with puddled defeat.

  “Not what you wanted to hear, eh?” Jasha shows bloody teeth.

  Sweeney, alone. Without a plan. There is a wisdom that is woe, there is a woe that’s madness, and there’s a madness that’s…

  “But me?” Jasha says, “I’m glad to see you, Shakespeare. Means I get to tell Bytchkov we can kill you all over again.”

  By way of retort (but with little conviction), Sweeney shows him the pistol, one side then the other.

  “That day you died? Bytchkov still lights a candle, praying your soul into hell. Now he gets to light a whole new candle. Day you died again. After you leave here, the clock’s ticking. Think about that. You, your family, everybody you ever even smiled at, everybody’s dead. Like grass under a mower, man.” Jasha makes a horizontal gesture with his hand.

  “And yet.” The pistol, higher.

  Scorn bleeds from the valve of his lips. “Yeah, well. People talk about Shakespeare and his hits? I heard it’s all bullshit. What I heard, it was all Eddie. What I heard, you never actually had the balls to…”

  Sweeney shoots Jasha not quite between the eyes. A little high, half-an-inch to the right. But it’s enough to freeze the look of derision on the man’s face. Kick his body back into the sofa. Enough to paint a Jackson Pollock, scrambled egg masterpiece on the wall behind. Maybe Sweeney’s found his calling. The medium? Blood, Brain, and Bone on Brick. He considers his slow-dripping handiwork.

  Meanwhile, the 250-pound slab of meat previously known as Jasha Somebody-or-other goes twitchy with its new condition. A jerk here, a shiver and a shake there. The stress of a soul leaving its body.

  Sweeney waits for remorse, regret.

  Nope. Nothing. Nada.

  But no. Yeah, here’s something.

  Silence. Peace.

  Past the ringing in his ears, there’s a comfortable, soothing quiet. He might be standing in the only entirely-quiet corner of the five boroughs. He might be staring up through dripping trees after a hard rain. He might have just closed his eyes against a saltwater breeze and the sound of waves.

  Okay, snap out of it, Sweeney. Go through the checklist. What have you touched since you walked through the door? Chamois cloth, door knob, pizza box. Put the cloth in your pocket (toss it later), wipe the knob before you leave, take the box with you.

  One of the many virtues of a
six shooter? No empties ejected to skitter along and lodge between floorboards.

  He’s good.

  Homestake Pass to Rockjaw, then south. Counts Enemies pretends exhaustion. Kicked back, foot on the dash, trucker cap low. You don’t see a guy in what, three years? You want to catch up a bit. But maybe Counts Enemies is pissed at him for cashing in the favor.

  Eleven, twelve years ago, at a strip club in Puerto Vallarta, amid a circus of whooping, half-literate college kids from USC, Merchant and Counts Enemies were each the only representatives of their respective ethnicities. Drawn together by this slimmest of commonalities, they ended up buying each other beers, shots, lap dances. Before the night was done, they’d each spilled some personal revelations and made surfing plans for the next day. Counts Enemies knew about this little town up the beach. A good break, and off the beaten path.

  Floating out on their boards, waiting in a meager lineup before dropping in, at a glance they had some shared attitude. Counts Enemies with a bloody dagger tattooed on his right forearm and on his left a tangle of hair meant to be a blond scalp. Along his back, in fierce red ink, the stylized fist of the American Indian Movement. And Merchant? He was Merchant. A black man surfing alone in Mexico. Speaks for itself.

  Turning south off the Interstate, Counts Enemies pretends to jostle awake. Reaches blindly for the Stingray. Yawns, punches up his phone. “It’ll take a few seconds to triangulate.”

  “Okay.”

  “Meantime. Fill me in.”

  “On…?”

  Counts Enemies works his lips sourly, as if he’s anticipating tooth decay.

  Right. Dumb question. “I got a friend, turns out, he’s in WITSEC…”

  “Friend or client?”

  Fair question. “Friend. This is gratis.”

  “Okay.”

  “Somebody’s fucking with him.”

  “Ah.”

  “Extensively. Up to and including the kidnapping of his woman and her daughter.”

  “And he didn’t go to the cops because…?”

  “Because the best solution might end up being a solution the cops can’t abide.”