Merry’s eyes narrowed. “Are you begging, Terry Perrine? Am I watching a grown-ass man or a sickly child?! GO ON, GET IN THERE!’ he bellowed.
Terry was a fit man, big and strong. But he’d seen Demon fight before, Merry figured, which explained his trepidation. “Just vault the damn wall!” he barked. “Sure, he’ll take a piece or two out of you but we ain’t going to let you suffer long.”
The other man looked around at his fellow henchmen. To a man, they looked away or refused to meet his gaze. His shoulders slumped, reality setting in. He took two steps back then ran for the edge of the fence, using his left hand to vault it, landing in the pit four feet below.
Demon reacted without pause, covering the fifteen feet in a few bounds, leaping at him. Terry instinctively threw up an arm, trying to jam it past the beast’s mouth, to lock up its bite as it tried to pin him down and finish him, a look of utter madness in its eye.
A fang sank deep into the meat of his forearm and Terry screamed.
Merry felt a warm, welcoming sensation at the noise. He inhaled deeply, like a lost traveler seeing a friendly horizon.
Life sure was good, he thought, as Terry continued to scream.
He noticed his men weren’t watching the carnage ahead of them, and were instead looking obliquely his way, as if waiting for something.
“FINE. Fine, you bunch of pussies. Kenny, noose the dog. Someone help that idiot out, get his wounds looked at. But he pays the bill himself, you hear!”
Behind them, he heard the sound of tires on gravel. He looked over his shoulder. A police squad car was pulling up in front of Tommy’s ranch house.
Merry rose from his chair. “Excuse me a minute, fellers, while I attend to some executive business.”
He wandered over as Officer Jeb Fowler climbed out of the cab.
“Jebediah,” Merry said. “Your partner too good to visit us?”
“Well now, clearly he thinks so,” Fowler said. “But you know how Witty is. He’s real sensitive about appearances and such. And it’s Sunday. Lord’s day and all.”
That was a puzzler, Merry figured. “Jesus ain’t looking out for him. Everyone in Kern County knows you two are crooked as shit. And I say that with love, Officer Jeb.”
Fowler grimaced a little. “Don’t sound too much like it. Yeah, we smooth the playing field on your behalf a little, but we do our jobs, too. Just ticketed some guy for being fifteen over in a school zone, just this morning. That’s protecting the community, right there. And Witty… he ain’t nothing but my boy, you know that.”
“Well sure, Jebediah, sure,” Merry said. “Now… you’ve gone and arrested that Chicago boy and everything in that regard is fine and dandy, ‘cept for his lawyer, ‘course. He’s being a mite difficult.”
Merry waited for him to respond then realized Fowler was looking past him, horrified.
He turned just enough to see them dragging Terry away from the dog pit. “Oh… that. That’s just a little tough love, is all. Don’t you worry about that. Anyhow… we need you to deal with this Bob Richmond feller.”
Fowler peered at him. “You mean… you want me to kill him.”
Merry shrugged. “I just want him permanently gone. I believe our financially appreciative friend’s got some business for you, too. I don’t really care how you go on about it. How, I ain’t concerned.”
“I told you last winter after the thing with the illegals…”
“I know. I know what you said, Officer Jeb, I sure do. But times and circumstances change. Time to dig another hole.”
“You said if I took care of them for you, you’d forgive my debt…”
“Speaking of digging holes, and all. Yeah, I did. I forgave the financial portion. Didn’t make you play Operation, didn’t make you spin the Sig. But that don’t mean you don’t owe me still… it just means you don’t owe me money. Favors? Well, given how many you already done me, and how much evidence I have of me paying you, I’d say we’re pretty much darn near stuck with each other at this point. I’d say you’d do best to keep me happy, large and in charge as they say.”
“Merry… Witty ain’t up for that sort of thing. He knows it happens sometimes, but… dang, you know what his nerves are like. Even taking your money, a little payola, is enough to shake him. With the illegals, I had to leave him a mile off, go pick him up once they was buried.”
“Get him involved proper, so’s his hands are good and dirty, like the rest of us. Tell him he needs to keep the money happy. And right now, happy is if someone takes that bigmouthed lawyer out into the desert somewhere and introduces him to a new home, preferably about six feet under the ground. Am I making myself clear, Officer Jeb?”
Fowler crossed his arms defiantly. “Push too hard, Merry, maybe you’ll leave me in a desperate situation. You’ll want to think real long and hard about that. If I’m willing to solve this for you, in the fashion intended, then you best know darn well I’m more than happy to pay you and yours a visit one day.”
Merry placed a hand over his heart. “Why, Jebediah Fowler! I am hurt you’d say something like that. How long we known each other? Twenty-five years, near enough. Since grade school.”
“Uh huh,” Fowler said. “And you’ve been troublesome since you were knee high. You ever wonder why you didn’t have no friends in school, why the other kids picked on you for your weight? You ever think maybe it’s because you’re sonuvabitch to everybody? That enter your thinking, Merry? That’s why I don’t trust you. Because I KNOW you.”
“My hand to God, Officer Jeb… you deal with this little problem, we are all clear. You don’t owe me nothing. I’ll even tell the boys you’ve got a line of credit with them again if you want to do some wagering. That sound fair to you?”
The idea of having free money to gamble with clearly appealed to the undersized policeman, a gleam appearing in his eye. “Well now… that might be all right, I guess.”
“’Course,” Merry said. Fowler was as hopelessly addicted to gambling as his customers were to crystal. Given a little rope, he’d be thousands in debt again by Christmas.
Jeb could raise the specter of their youth, but most of those people had disappeared since high school, made nothing of themselves while he ran Bakersfield’s trade. Merry didn’t worry about them any more than they ever worried about him. “’Course it’s all right. All you’re doing is disposing of some trash… keeping our fair city clean.”
18
Bob felt self-conscious. Both Mel Feeney and Sharmila Singh had offered to take him out for dinner, show him the town a little.
He’d countered with an offer to use the meal as a strategy session, to go over what they’d learned so far and plan their next move.
Mr. Feeney had taken that suggestion with a look that flickered between pity and concern. “Or, you know… we could just have a nice meal and listen to some nice music,” he’d suggested.
So they’d taken his truck, and picked up Sharmila along the way. “We’re going to take you for a taste of local culture,” Feeney had said.
Then they’d pulled up outside a massive pink, Western revival-style building on Buck Owens Boulevard, next to the arching “Bakersfield” sign that greeted people rolling into town. It was complete with square wooden pillars, balconies and stained-glass windows. The wood clapboard siding had been decorated with Western storefront motifs and signs reading “Trading Post”, “General Store”, “Saloon,” and “Dry Goods.”
