“No,” David said. “I enforce them.”
“Last time we had a big order, it somehow ended up in Portland and on the fucking evening news,” Lonzo said. “If my boss doesn’t like this shit, it’s beyond my control,” he said. “I’m being real level with you both.” He kicked at something on the ground between them.
“This isn’t a negotiation.” David took down his hood. Stared at Lonzo straight in the eyes. Let him get a good look. Then he shot him twice in the chest. Walked up two paces, said, “This is for Ronnie’s kids,” and put two more in his face.
“What the fuck!” Ruben screamed. Lonzo was bent back grotesquely, snapped at the knees, which would hurt if he wasn’t already dead. “Why the fuck did you do that?”
“It’s what I do,” David said. “Stay down.”
David didn’t wait for Ruben to respond. He stalked across the desert, toward the other hearse about fifty yards away, guns in both hands, body crouched, moving in the space between the two lights. When he was within twenty-five yards, he started shooting at the hearse, until the windshield was gone. Did no good to shoot at the body of a car. It wasn’t like TV. They didn’t blow up. You just fucked up a car.
Five yards in front of the hearse, David didn’t see anyone in the front seat, just a shitload of broken glass, the jacketed hollow points doing some work. Could be Peaches was shot dead and was now slumped under the glove box, oozing brains. Could be he was about to pop up with an AR-15 and put a hundred rounds into David. Could be it didn’t matter, because this was going to be the day for one of them.
David slid around the front of the SUV, then popped up in the driver’s side window.
Empty.
Except for half of an ear—the bottom—which was a mangled bloody mess on the passenger seat.
So he did hit him.
David peered through the back of the hearse. There was a single coffin in the back, spattered with blood, and there was a bloody handprint on the side window, too, and the rear hatch of the SUV was up, another bloody handprint on the window. So that’s how he got out.
Peaches couldn’t be far.
David was surrounded by the grove of Joshua trees, a thousand men with their hands up in the darkness. Maybe two thousand. Peaches might come out from behind one of them, try to get a shot, but it wouldn’t be clean. He’d need to get bullets that could bend around trees.
David bent low, looked at the dirt, found what he was looking for.
Blood. It led away from the hearse, toward the abandoned church, David following the drips and smears in the sand, moving slow, both guns out, ready, when he heard two gunshots in rapid succession, then: an almost inhuman yowling, a sound that came from deep inside a wounded animal, wordless, atavistic, and unmistakable throughout time. Pain. Profound pain. David sprinted out into the clearing, hugged the well for cover, stopped.
Peaches Pocotillo stood beside the driver’s side of the SUV, staring straight ahead, gun in his left hand. He must have made a dead run as soon as David started shooting. Ruben Topaz was splayed against the rear driver’s side wheel, directly at Peaches’s feet. He was missing the left side of his face, most of his jaw blown off. Must have turned his head at just the last moment. If David wanted to shoot Peaches, he’d need to shoot Ruben, too.
“Your friend got shot,” Peaches said. “Gonna need some dental work.” Peaches wore a white linen suit that was now covered in blood, his and Ruben’s. The right side of his face looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. His ear was gone but so was a good part of his cheek. Must have been grazed, which sounds like nothing until you get grazed in the fucking face. His right arm didn’t look great, either. Like a chunk of his bicep was missing. He’d tied his belt around it. Ruben tried to crawl away. Peaches stomped on his leg. That scream again. “Good news. He’s still alive.” Another scream. A coyote, somewhere in the distance, answered. If Ruben could just slouch one more inch, David would have a shot.
Maybe.
“Your friend is already dead,” David said. They were about twenty, twenty-five yards apart. Not a good distance for a gunfight.
“He wasn’t my friend.”
“He was Ronnie’s,” David said. “You’re gonna need to answer for that.”
“I don’t answer to anybody.”
“Gangster 2-6,” David said, “don’t quit. I were you, I’d stay out of Chicago. State prisons, too.”
Peaches cocked his head. “So it is you,” Peaches said. “Don’t know if you saw, I blew up your house.”
He loved that fucking house. If he got the chance, maybe one day he’d rebuild it just so he could bury this motherfucker in the foundation.
“You should call 911. Get that award money.” Another moan from Ruben, then a high-pitched whine, like air leaving a balloon. “How’s my guy?”
“Breathing,” he said. Then: “You really remember every face you’ve ever seen?”
“That’s right,” Sal said. He had no idea if that was true. He doubted it.
“So you know me.”
“Did you used to have two ears?”
“Joey the Bishop,” Peaches said.
“The fuck is that?”
“You killed him,” Peaches said. “House in Batavia, 1990. Tried to pin it on me.”
Sal barely remembered. Joey B. was a bookie The Family used a million years ago. Must have been seventy years old. Had literally been around when fucking Capone was in business. Ronnie sent Sal to take him out, so he did. Didn’t remember this fucking guy involved with it. Sal had never tried to frame anyone. He claimed his kills.
He worked his mind. A detail from the news reports showed up. “You were hiding in the closet,” Sal said.
“That was his wife,” Peaches said. “We had a whole conversation. I was working for your cousin. Delivering luggage. Then you fucking set me up.”
Sal said, “If someone tried to pin that murder on you, it was Ronnie. I was doing work for my family. If all this shit is about something you think I did to you twelve years ago? Homeboy, I tell you, I do not recall it.”
“I’m the boss of your family now.”
Ruben lurched forward; his legs started to twitch. Maybe cardiac arrest? He couldn’t let Ruben die. Not like this.
