beer. He saw the anger, hesitated, then started pulling cold brews out of the ice chest and flipping them around at the circle of men.
Smith made no move to catch his. It ricocheted off his crutch and landed in the sand.
Jody tried to talk their anger down. 'To begin with, let's get a few facts straight. This ain't his fault. He saw me on the freeway. My mistake-not his. He did what any one a'you woulda done if you saw a friend you thought was dead. He looked into it.'
Now they were all glaring at Jody.
'He shot an LAPD sergeant for us. Killed the acting head of DSG and took this file.' He reached into his back pocket, pulled out the folded manila folder, and waved it at them. 'Hot Rod and Inky Dink were there. Right? Tell 'em what you saw.'
Reluctantly, Tremaine Lane and Hector Rodriquez nodded, but the nods were so subtle, they were almost imperceptible.
'This file is in code, but it says we're all still alive. Fortunately, it's the original and there are no copies. Right, Hot Sauce?'
'Right,' Shane answered.
'It was only hours from being sent to the Questioned Documents Division. We were all about to get made. Without Scully, our whole deal was dust. So, in my opinion, that gets him a piece.'
'Then give him your piece,' Smith said darkly.
'And what're you gonna do, Victory? You gonna lead cheers and be in charge a'that fuckin' crutch? Who's gonna handle your end of it, now that you're draggin' one leg?'
'I wouldn't be draggin' it if yer buddy here hadn't shot me,' Victory said, but his eyes shifted briefly away, then came back.
'You're supposed t'be a SWAT Home Incursion Specialist, so how come you're the one ended up stopping a round?'
Victory didn't answer, but he leaned down, and with a long arm, scooped his beer out of the sand. He ripped the tab off; the can chirped and hissed foam.
'Okay. Let's go have this cookout. Sawdust, get the tattoo kit. Since Hot Sauce is a Viking, we gotta give him his leg piece.'
Nobody moved.
'Is somebody gonna have to shed blood over this?' Jody asked softly.
'I ain't down with this shit, and I ain't sharin' my end with this peckerwood,' Tremaine growled, but the rest of the Vikings turned, and Tremaine finally followed them toward the beach.
After they left, Jody smiled. 'Give 'em a little time, Hot Sauce. They'll get over it.'
'Right…' Shane said softly. 'I'm gonna count on you to make that happen.' Then he followed Jody down to the beach, feeling intense emotions directed toward his childhood friend-frustration, disillusion, and murderous rage.
Chapter 22
THE SMALL GAS generator hummed.
The tiny ink-filled needle whirred.
Tears filled Shane's eyes.
Lester Wood hunched over Shane's left ankle while Jody held it against a driftwood plank to stabilize it. Slowly, Sawdust drew the crude Viking helmet, freehanding the tattoo without a stencil, the horns reaching up the inside of Shane's foot unevenly, curling around his ankle bone.
Sawdust leaned into the needle, painfully blunt-ending the job. Shane could see a dark, sadistic smile twitching at the end of the ex-cop's bloodless, ruler-straight mouth. Shane clenched his teeth, determined not to cry out.
They had been on the beach all day, drinking. Shane had tried to keep away from the alcohol, realizing that his survival depended on a clear head, but the ache inside him continued to grow. Finally, about noon, depression overcame him. He consumed beer after beer until sometime late in the day he realized he'd finished more than two six-packs and now felt bloated, sick, and unruly.
As the morning sun came up, the Vikings had stripped off their shirts, and Shane could see the insanity of Sawdust's body art; most of it done with standard stationery-store black ink. Hot Rod was sporting what street parlors call a Fullback Royal-a badly proportioned hand-drawn eagle emblazoned across his shoulder blades. It was still red and looked as though it was getting infected.
All of the Vikings except Tremaine Lane had the same freehand Viking helmet on the inside of their ankles, with additional designs on their arms and shoulders. It was low-grade prison-quality art, done in black ink with Sawdust's amateurish scrawl. For some reason, the African American ex-sergeant had no tattoos.
'There she be… All done,' Lester Wood said in his West Texas drawl. Shane looked down at his ankle: red, raw, and bleeding from dozens of deep new puncture marks.
'That's a tattoo?' he said angrily.
'Right now, it looks like beef day at the Injun Agency, but you wait an hour, then git it in the ocean, wash her off. It'll look fine when she heals.' Sawdust snapped his kit closed, got up, grabbed a beer, and wandered off.
Shane's ankle throbbed as he stood. Most, if not all, of the Vikings seemed either wired or wasted. Shane watched as they drifted up the beach, away from him. Throughout the day he caught glimpses of their stash and saw fresh needle marks hiding in tattoo ink. Only Jody seemed to be drug-free, but he had been guzzling beer after beer.
Shane noticed that the unit was divided. Lester Wood sat at the north end of the beach with Tremaine Lane. Smith and Rodriquez stayed at the other end. More than once Shane caught the steroid junkie and the gray-eyed Mexican whispering, making plans and looking in his direction.
The end of the day finally came. At sunset, when Jody and Shane walked down the beach away from the others, Jody pulled a bottle of tequila out of his pocket. 'How 'bout a shot a'Mexican courage,' he said, handing it over.
Shane took the bottle, telling himself he would take only a sip, but once he got it up to his lips, he found himself swallowing hungrily, trying to burn loose the tangled knots inside him. His eyes were closed as he gulped it down, until he felt Jody's hand tugging at the flask.
'Hey, hey, Hot Sauce… Save some for me.' Jody pulled the bottle down to find it half empty.
'Yeah, right,' Shane said. 'Sorry.'
'You hit the number this morning… Put that round right through the ten ring. Clean shooting, Salsa.' Jody was talking about Alexa's murder as if it had been a firing-range event.
Subliminal memories flashed:
Alexa flying backward, arms extended.
Blood spurting.
Eyes lifeless.
Shane winced inwardly and his face contorted. Jody saw the flinch. 'Fuck her, man… Give it up. She deserved what she got.'
Shane nodded, but Jody's eyes were drilling- reading his thoughts, seeing his devastation.
'Don't do this grief thing, Salsa. Get over it.' Jody ordered.
Shane nodded again. 'You're right. Fuck it,' he finally said. They walked on in silence for a few feet, then: 'You got a disaster here, Jody. All these guys are cranked up.'
'I know they seem a little fractured, but I'm trying to keep things in balance,' Jody said.
'Balance… Yeah, right.' Shane took a deep breath. 'Victory Smith is popping Amies like they're M amp;M's. He's got 'roid-rage'; it's the reason he wants to rip the shit outta everybody. The guy's got enough gym juice in him to bench-press a school bus. And Lester Wood… I saw his Baggie: cocaine and pills. Tremaine is just an alcoholic,
