The Smack Read online

  A flash of lightning burned up all the shadows in the room. Thunder rattled the windows, and rain poured down outside. The cowboy glanced at the ceiling, nervous, and used the barrel of one of the revolvers to push his hat back on his head. “I think I’ll check for myself,” he said.

  He herded Petty and Tony into the bathroom and shut them inside with a warning that he’d shoot through the door if he heard so much as a rustle. Petty leaned against the sink, and Tony stood in front of the tiny window, wavering between angry and afraid.

  “Sorry about this,” Petty said. “He must have been tailing me.”

  “Is he gonna kill me?” Tony said.

  “What for?” Petty said.

  Tony didn’t reply. He scratched his scar with the nubs of his missing fingers.

  They could hear the cowboy tossing the apartment, opening and slamming shut closets and cupboards, pulling out their contents and dropping it to the floor.

  “Get your asses out here,” he said when he finished, frustration souring his hokey drawl. He directed Petty and Tony back to the couch and stood in the middle of the room again with his guns. The floor was littered with high school yearbooks and VA paperwork.

  “Listen, RoboCop,” he said to Tony. “I don’t like being fucked with.”

  “I’m not fucking with you,” Tony said.

  “Then tell me where the money is.”

  “There isn’t any money.”

  “Let me call Don,” Petty said. “That’s who sent you, right?”

  “Who?” the cowboy said.

  “I’ll call him and tell him the story was bullshit. He’ll listen to me.”

  The cowboy laughed. “Man,” he said. “Ain’t nobody gonna listen to you.”

  It incensed Petty that Don had played him, but now wasn’t the time to get hung up on settling the score. Right now he needed to get out of here. He pushed himself to his feet and started for the door.

  “I’m leaving,” he said.

  The cowboy pointed one of the revolvers at his nose. “No, you’re not,” he said.

  Petty paused with his hand on the knob.

  “I’ve been thinking,” the cowboy said. “If I had two million bucks, I wouldn’t keep it in this shithole, either.” He turned to Tony. “Your mama’s store got a safe.”

  “No,” Tony said.

  “I don’t believe you,” the cowboy said. “She a hot tamale, your mama?”

  “There’s no money,” Tony said. “No money anywhere.”

  “Seriously,” Petty said. “Put the guns away, and I’m gonna call Don.”

  “What you’re gonna do, Rowan, is get your ass in that kitchen and bring me the duct tape I saw under the sink,” the cowboy said.

  “Fuck that,” Petty said. “This is between you and the kid.”

  The cowboy tightened his fingers around the triggers. “Get me the tape!” he said.

  Petty went into the kitchen, grabbed the tape, and came back into the living room, all the while trying to brainstorm a way to get past the pistols.

  “Tape RoboCop’s hands,” the cowboy said.

  “You’re fucking up big-time,” Petty said.

  “I’m getting tired of telling you shit twice,” the cowboy said.

  Petty bent over Tony and wrapped a couple of loops of tape around his wrists, binding them together. The kid’s breath stank, his mouth gone dry from fear. He was trembling like a drawn bowstring.

  “Now hit him,” the cowboy said.

  “What?” Petty said.

  “Haul off and belt him as hard as you can.”

  “No.”

  “Hard as you can. Right in his lying fucking face.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Hit him, or I’ll shoot you.”

  Petty stared at the cowboy, stared down the barrels of the revolvers, stared at the bullets nestled in the cylinders, then turned and popped Tony in the jaw.

  “Fuck!” Tony yelled.

  “Harder!” the cowboy said.

  Petty reset and hit the kid again, so hard this time it hurt his knuckles. Tony tried to stand but couldn’t without using his hands. A sound came from him, a rising hiss, like a safety valve about to blow.

  “Stop crying and tell me where the money is,” the cowboy said.

  “Antonio Mendoza!” Tony shouted. “Corporal, United States Marine Corps, 573344076!”

  The cowboy blinked, confused. “What?”

  “Antonio Mendoza, Corporal, United States Marine Corps, 573344076!”

  “His name, rank, and serial number,” Petty said. “That’s all he’s giving you.”

  “Is that right?” the cowboy said.

  He turned to Petty.

  “Pull off that fake leg and beat him over the head with it.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” Petty said.

  The cowboy pointed both revolvers at Petty. “Take off that leg and beat him till I see blood.”

  Pow! A gun went off. Pow! Pow! Petty ducked, wondering where he’d been hit and waiting to feel the pain. The cowboy dropped his pistols and stood, stunned, in the middle of the room. His hands rose like a lover’s to his chest, where three black holes suddenly gushed red. Another Pow! sent his hat flying. This bullet entered under his eye and blew off the back of his head. He dropped, and Petty turned to see a vision of smoking doom, Tony now pointing a Glock at him.

  12

  PETTY’S SURVIVAL INSTINCT KICKED IN. HE WAS TWO SECONDS from taking a bullet from a one-legged Mexican kid while a no-name stranger bled out at his feet. Time to do some fast talking.

  “Hold up!” he shouted, thrusting his hands in the air.

  “Don’t move,” Tony said.

  “It’s okay,” Petty said. “I’m on your side. Everything’s cool now. Everything’s fine.”

  The gun in Tony’s hand wavered the tiniest bit.

  “It was self-defense,” he said.

  “Absolutely,” Petty said.

  “You’re my witness.”

  “You were in fear for your life. He was gonna kill us both.”

  Tony lowered the gun. His mouth opened and closed like a fish dragged onto dry land as he stared at the dead cowboy. Petty edged toward the door. Rain was still coming down hard outside, buckets of ball bearings, and thunder roared again and shook the apartment in its jaws. So maybe, maybe, the neighbors hadn’t heard the shots.

  “Can you get this off me?” Tony said, talking about the tape, extending his hands.

  Petty hesitated. All he had to do was twist the doorknob and step outside, and he’d be clear of this mess. But the kid looked so pitiful slumped on the couch, and the sneaker on his fake foot was suddenly the saddest thing Petty had ever seen. He walked over and tugged at the tape but couldn’t get a decent grip on it with his fingers shaking like they were. He found a steak knife in the kitchen and used that to cut the kid free. He was at the door again when Tony called from the couch.

  “Wait.”

  Petty turned, expecting to see the gun, but the kid was just sitting there, his hands in his lap.

  “You gotta help me,” he said.

  “I can’t help you,” Petty said. “Call the cops.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Tony hesitated.

  “The money,” he said.

  “What about the money?”

  Tony paused again, but Petty already knew what he was going to say.

  “I’ve got it. Not here, but I’ve got it.”

  “Stop,” Petty said.

  “If you help me—” Tony continued.

  “Stop,” Petty said again. Someone was already lying dead on the floor, and Petty wasn’t about to stick his head any further into the lion’s mouth. He turned back to the door.

  “Okay, go ahead and go,” Tony said. “But if you do, I’ll tell the cops you were trying to rob me, too. You’ll be an accomplice or whatever they call it.”

  “You do that, and I’ll tell them about the money,” Petty said. />
  The kid’s face fell. Fear had stripped years off him. He looked like a scared little boy.

  “Come on, man,” he said. “What do I do?”

  “About this?” Petty said, gesturing at the dead cowboy.

  Tony nodded.

  “How the fuck should I know?” Petty said. “You’re the killer. You’re the Marine.”

  “Yeah, but with my leg and everything.”

  “Pull yourself together and semper fi this piece of shit.”

  “I need help.”

  “Not from me.”

  “I’ll give you half my share of the money, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Please,” Tony said. “I can’t go to prison.”

  Petty’s gut was still screaming run, but deep down he knew things would only get worse for him if he left the kid to handle this mess on his own, that somehow it would come back to haunt him. Fighting his natural instinct wasn’t easy, though. It was as if he’d decided to battle a river, to stand suddenly against a strong, snatching current. He was nearly swept off his feet as he shuffled closer to the frightened kid and the cowboy’s corpse.

  “Get up,” he said.

  “You gonna help me?” Tony said.

  “I’m gonna try,” Petty said.

  “Thanks,” Tony said as he struggled to stand. “And we can go get the money afterward.”

  “I told you, I don’t want it,” Petty said.

  “Why not?” Tony said.

  “Because it looks to me like it’d be way more trouble than it’s worth,” Petty said. “Now, listen, do you have any plastic bags?”

  Petty focused on the USMC flag hanging on the wall as he grabbed the cowboy’s blood-soaked shirt and lifted so that Tony could slip a Hefty Ultra Flex over what was left of the dude’s head. Not having the corpse’s eyes staring at them would make the rest of it easier.

  Next Petty sliced open some of the bags, spread them out on the floor, and duct-taped them together to form a makeshift shroud. He felt calmer now. He’d drawn up a mental punch list, and all he had to do was work his way down it, step by step. The kid had also settled once Petty started giving orders. The only time he bucked was when Petty told him to empty the cowboy’s pockets.

  “Me?” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Petty said.

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Empty his fucking pockets!”

  Tony grimaced and bent over the body. He rooted around in the cowboy’s jeans and found a key ring, a phone, and extra rounds for the revolvers. They rolled the corpse on its side, and a back pocket yielded a wallet attached to a chain. Tony tossed the wallet onto the couch with the pistols and the other items.

  “What we’re gonna do now is lift him onto the bags,” Petty said. “I’ll get his shoulders, you get his feet.”

  “Roger that,” Tony said, moving into position.

  “One, two…”

  They carried the body across the room, its ass almost dragging on the floor, and lowered it gently onto the shroud. Petty got busy with the tape and scissors again. He wrapped the shroud around the corpse, sealed the seam, and finished with loops of tape drawn tight at the neck, waist, and ankles. When he was done, the package looked like a sailor ready for burial at sea.

  The blood that was puddled on the linoleum where the body had lain was already beginning to darken and dry. More blood was spattered on the wall. Luckily Tony was a clean freak. In the cupboard under the kitchen sink were bottles of Lysol and Mop & Glo and a pile of rags.

  They set to work swabbing the gore. You couldn’t be more thorough than Tony was. He used his fingernail to scrape out the crack between the baseboard and the floor and rinsed the mop again and again in the sink until the water drained clear. An hour later there wasn’t a drop of blood anywhere.

  “I need a beer,” Tony said. He was in the kitchen, stowing the cleaning supplies. “You want a beer?”

  “Sure,” Petty said. He sat on the couch and closed his eyes, pushed out everything but the sound of the rain. Something poked his leg. He reached under his thigh and came up with Tony’s Glock. He’d only held a gun once before, while target shooting with a friend. Even with earmuffs on he’d flinched whenever the pistol went off and missed the paper target nine times out of ten.

  Tony stopped short when he came into the room and saw the gun in Petty’s hand, looked nervous. Petty didn’t let on how uncomfortable he was holding the pistol. He released the magazine—remembered how to do that—dropped it, and slid it back into place.

  “Where’d this come from?” he asked Tony.

  “I keep it under the cushions,” Tony said. “You never know around here.”

  Petty set the gun on the couch beside him. Tony passed him a Tecate and sat on the couch, too, leaving the gun lying between them.

  Petty popped open his beer, picked up the dead man’s wallet, and looked through it. A Texas driver’s license identified the cowboy as Greg Cherry. He didn’t have a beard in the photo, but it was him. He carried a Visa card, a Bank of America debit card, players’ club cards from a couple of Reno casinos, and a Safeway rewards card. A thousand dollars in hundreds and twenties was nestled in the main pocket of the wallet; an ancient condom moldered in another.

  One of the three keys on the ring was to a Ford. The others, who knew? The phone was locked. Petty tried 1234 and ABCD as passwords, hoping to get lucky. He didn’t.

  Tony watched him with a blank expression, like this was TV and not something he was living through.

  “We’ve got to get rid of the body,” Petty said.

  “Right,” Tony said.

  “I’m not making an announcement, I’m asking for suggestions. I’m not from around here.”

  “The mountains are close. They’re always finding dead people there.”

  “How about someplace they won’t find him?” Petty said.

  “The desert?” Tony said.

  Petty saw that he was going to be doing most of the thinking tonight.

  “All right, the desert,” he said. “Anyplace in particular?”

  “It’s the desert,” Tony said. “Shouldn’t anywhere be good?”

  Petty checked his watch: 3:00 p.m. Because of the storm, it was already dark outside and would soon be darker. If they left now, they’d be in the middle of nowhere by nightfall. He pulled up a map on his phone and followed the 15 over the Cajon Pass and past the sprawl of Victorville. Plenty of dead ends out there and not many houses. He noted one possibility—a nameless spur off a dirt track called Sidewinder Road. It petered out on a flat behind a low hill that would hide them while they worked. But then how long would it take to dig the grave? An hour? Two?

  Petty smelled something funny. A balky sewer line, he hoped, and not the corpse already going bad. The last of his beer tasted strange, too. He needed to call Tinafey. Cell signal was likely to be iffy where they were headed.

  “Do you have a shovel?” he asked Tony.

  “A shovel?” Tony said, like he’d never heard the word before. “No. Maybe the neighbors?”

  “Right,” Petty said. “Nothing weird about that if the cops come asking around later, some dude banging on your door in the middle of a storm and wanting to borrow a shovel.”

  “Oh,” Tony said.

  “Get dressed.”

  Petty put the cowboy’s pistols, wallet, phone, and extra bullets in a Hefty bag.

  “You should get rid of this, too,” he said, holding up Tony’s Glock.

  “Yeah, fuck yeah, get rid of it,” Tony said.

  Petty wiped the gun down and dropped it in with the other stuff. He and Tony rolled the body up in a blanket, a fleece swap-meet number with Iron Man printed on it, as if that would be any less conspicuous than trash bags to anyone watching them carry the bundle out of the apartment and down the stairs to the garage. They had the rain for cover, at least, and the gloom. And then there was the fact that the people who lived in the neighbo
rhood tended to ignore anything that smacked of trouble.

  Tony’s fake leg made him awkward descending the stairs, but he never asked Petty to slow down. The garage was already flooded with a foot of water, and more flowed down the driveway every second. Petty and Tony sloshed across the pond to Tony’s F-150 and lowered the dead cowboy into the bed. Tony pulled a plastic tarp out of the truck’s toolbox and covered the body with it, tucked it tight, then got in and started the engine. Petty settled into the passenger seat, his soaked Nikes leaking all over the floor mat.

  The truck splashed to the driveway. The wake it created smacked the cinder-block walls. They climbed up and out into the last of the dripping daylight, pure gaudery, silver trees, silver streets, silver sky.

  Halfway up the block Petty had Tony pull over. He aimed the cowboy’s Ford key out the window and pressed the Unlock button. The taillights of an Explorer parked near the corner flashed.

  “Boom!” Tony said.

  Petty stepped out of the pickup and carefully squished his way to the Explorer, carrying the bag containing the cowboy’s effects and Tony’s gun. The rain had slowed to a sprinkle, but he still didn’t trust the oily pavement, wouldn’t risk a slip by hurrying. He climbed into the Explorer and slid the key into the ignition. Classical music blared when the truck started. Petty slapped the radio’s Off button and gunned the engine, listening for trouble in the rev.

  The Explorer smelled like restless nights and hungover mornings. The cowboy had been living out of the vehicle. The rear seats were down, and a sleeping bag was spread in the cargo bay. McDonald’s cups here, Taco Bell wrappers there, and a pizza box on the floor. The ashtray was overflowing. Petty poked around in a duffel stashed under the passenger seat: underwear and socks; a kit bag containing a toothbrush, deodorant, and a disposable razor; and a paperback book with a dragon on the cover. Nothing helpful. The center console and glove compartment were full of the usual junk.

  He lowered the window and motioned for Tony to pull up.

  “Where’s the nearest Home Depot?” he asked him.

  “Pretty close,” Tony replied. The scar on his face flashed like more lightning in the watery dusk.

  “I’ll follow you.”

  The sloppy black streets took them past bus stops where the lucky huddled under umbrellas and plastic bags and the unlucky stood out in the rain bareheaded. A cop waved traffic through a chaotic intersection, every light blinking red, and in a neighborhood where the power had gone out, flashlight beams swept the walls and ceilings of darkened apartments like the search was on for someone.