“You can have The Family.” Sal held up both of his guns. He hadn’t gotten this close to getting out just to die in a fucking Old West shootout. “Way I see it, we both have a pretty good chance of dying out here tonight. You prepared for that?” Peaches didn’t respond. “You might kill me,” Sal said. “Then what? I die, so what? I’m already dead.”
Peaches leaned forward. Listening.
“Say in the process, best case, Ruben dies in the next twenty seconds, and I run up on you and your bitch ass runs away and I put two in your spine and now you’re in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Plus whatever is going on with your arm and your face. You think Sugar is gonna take orders from some motherfucker can’t even stand up to piss? Can’t hear unless his head is turned just so? He’ll push you off a fucking dock. You’ll be dead by Christmas. Because if we don’t come to some kind of accord, I’m going to open on you, and the odds are, I’m going to fill you up. And then all this shit, everything you’ve been working for, will mean nothing. That what you want?”
Peaches said, “What kind of accord?”
“My guy alive?”
Peaches looked again. “My experience,” he said, “he’s got an hour.”
Ruben screamed. His actual voice. Not some animal. Sal pretty sure he heard the word, “No!”
“My experience,” Sal said, “you’re gonna lose that arm you stay out here much longer. I wouldn’t fuck with that ear, either. So, you start walking east,” he continued, “I get my friend and drive west. Thirty minutes, you walk back this way, get your car, find a clinic that takes your insurance.” When Peaches didn’t respond, Sal said, “Maybe see if Kirk Biglione knows first aid.”
“He’s been more trouble than he’s worth.”
“Yeah,” Sal said, “not a guy to trust.”
“And you are?”
“Gotta have faith in the game.”
“Then what?”
“Then maybe one day you catch me slipping,” Sal said. “But that’s not today.”
Peaches said, “You really don’t remember me?”
“I told you.”
Peaches shook his head. “You will now,” he said and fired a shot into Ruben’s leg, and then he disappeared into the darkness, Sal running toward Ruben now, but by the time he got to the hearse, Peaches was gone, somewhere in the ruins, or in the Joshua trees, or maybe he was never there to begin with, Sal beginning to think he was out here fighting ghosts.
Ruben was splayed on the ground, the left side of his face blown off, blood pulsing from where his jaw used to be. His tongue was gone. His left eye was ruined, but his right was wide open. It darted back and forth. His right leg gushed blood from the thigh. Shit. Probably the femoral. Fuck. Blood everywhere now, rushing like a river in the sand. They were two and a half hours from a hospital.
Rabbi David Cohen took Ruben’s left hand. Held it. Tried to calm his noises, the convulsions.
The Talmud teaches that a man does not tell lies in the hour of death, so David said, “The wheel always comes full circle, Ruben, for all of us. You were always going to die. I do not know if it was always going to be like this, but know, Ruben, you will see the face of God and he will already have forgiven you.”
Ruben blinked. Tried to turn his head to face David, what was left of his mouth attempting to make some sound, but nothing was happening, no sound was coming, just the wheeze of air and blood in his esophagus.
David kept hold of Ruben’s left hand, said, “Look into my eyes, Ruben.” He did. “You are the righteous. And the righteous are greater in death than they can possibly be in life. You do not need to suffer. Please,” David said, “let me relieve you of the pain.”
Ruben reached out and touched Rabbi David Cohen’s face, gently, and David realized he was already somewhere else most likely, that this world was almost gone to him, but still, any second of pain he could spare him was a gift.
“Close your eye,” Rabbi David Cohen said, and then he shot him once, in the back of the head.
TWENTY-TWO
SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2002
VICTORVILLE, CA
AT 4:46 A.M., PEACHES POCOTILLO PARKED HIS HEARSE BEHIND THE LONG John Silver’s in Victorville, loosened the belt around his arm, tried to flex his hand, the blood pumping out of him again, getting everywhere. He’d done this every fifteen minutes for the last hour while he drove to the spot Kirk Biglione picked, figuring that way he wouldn’t lose his fucking arm, but also he didn’t want to bleed to death. He hadn’t lived this long so he could die in a gunfight in the middle of the fucking desert with the most proficient hit man in the mafia. He certainly hadn’t lived this long to die behind a fucking Long John Silver’s, either, so he was relieved when Biglione pulled up beside him.
“Where to?” Peaches asked.
“Follow me,” Biglione said.
They drove up Highway 395 for another mile, then cut into the desert, the city lights disappearing behind them, Peaches following Biglione another ten minutes, until they hit an expanse of fence that was mostly missing. Biglione stopped his car, got out, popped his trunk. Peaches parked a few yards away. The spot was littered with charred junk. A bed. A refrigerator. A trailer. An old station wagon.
“Where are we?”
“BLM land,” he said. Biglione stared at him. “The fuck happened to you?”
“Rain Man shot me in the face,” Peaches said.
“What about your arm?”
“Also shot me in the arm,” Peaches said. “Did you bring me what I asked for?”
Biglione dumped a handful of pills into Peaches’s hand. “That’s Oxy. Doctors gave it to me today. Go easy.” Dug around his trunk, hefted out a gas can, set it on the ground between them. “Sure about this?”
“Positive,” Peaches said. He chewed up three Oxy, took the can, dumped it over the hearse, poured it over the casket in the back, set the can down, lit a match, tossed it. The hearse went up in flames. Peaches watched for a moment, made sure that the casket began to burn, since Mike was inside and he was still, nominally, responsible for him. He’d left Lonzo in the desert. Coyotes would take care of that.
“Will it blow up?” Peaches asked after a while.
“No,” Biglione said. “It will just burn.” He examined Peaches’s face and arm. “You need a hospital.”
