“The stuff is over here somewhere,” he said. “Look, can you turn that overhead light on? I can’t see, I need some light if I’m gonna see over here.”
“Do it yourself,” Fingers said.
Obnoxious kid. “Can’t you just do it? You guys come here, beat the shit out of me, and tell me I’m gonna be killed. Then you push me down onto the floor of my shop. I can’t even fucking walk, you know that? Shit. Fuck it, I’ll turn the light on myself.”
He made a move like he would turn around and pull the chain on the light, the simple hanging bulb. If only it was right there behind him. If only he could move a little better. If only he wasn’t so sore from the beating he had taken. He turned around wearily, creakily, gazing upward at the bulb. It was dark out, getting darker.
“What’s taking so long?” Cruz called from somewhere outside. It sounded like he had drifted back toward the house.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Fingers said. “I’ll turn on the fucking light, you gimp.”
Smoke braced himself as the kid moved into the room behind him. It was too bad it was just he and the kid in here. He wished it could have been everybody. Okay, this would have to do. His hand quietly turned the lock on the window. He imagined himself yanking it open then leaping through, blasting head-first through the bug screen, propelled by both his legs and arms. It would take everything he had.
Fingers played with the chain. “I can’t seem to get this thing to…”
Come on, kid. Light it up.
“You gotta do this fucking thing, you gimp.”
“Why? You can’t turn on a fucking light?”
COME ON.
“All right,” Fingers said. “I got it.”
Whooooosh.
Smoke saw the flash of light played out against the wall. He heard the tiny pop of the light-bulb going and then he felt the sudden heat on his back. An instant later he heard the kid start to scream.
It was loud, like a siren.
Smoke wrenched the window open and sailed through, his back in flames, the fire eating away at the hair on top of his head. He fell to the ground in the alley behind the shop, rolling to put out the flames on his back, patting out the flames on top of his head.
The inside of the shop was already on fire. With the paints he kept in there, the thing was going to blow sky-high. He saw a shadow stagger through the bright orange and yellow of the flames. It was the kid, lit up like a torch. He screamed for only a second longer, then went silent, and keeled over. Smoke pictured the kid inhaling fire. His larynx ruptured, the scream had died almost before it began.
The kid was a goner, but the other two weren’t. Smoke dragged himself up the footpath between yards in the gathering dark. Behind him, the shadows leapt and danced in red and amber.
Precious seconds passed.
Smoke turned right on the quiet street. No one was coming. No one was running. Soon though, they would all come soon enough.
Paint cans. Gunpowder. Blasting caps.
These were just a few of the things he stored in that shed.
He thought of the two ladies, old biddies, sisters, who owned the house. They could have been twins, but after so many decades, who could tell? Neither one stood five feet tall. They both had their white hair pulled back into buns. Neither one could hear worth a damn. They were eighty if they were a day. He rented his apartment from them, and they lived upstairs. How far was that shed from the house? Thirty yards? Less?
The neighbors, the firemen, someone would come and get them long before the house was threatened – he felt sure of it.
He lost his balance and fell into his neighbor’s dense bushes. His vision swam and darkened. He crawled deeper into the hedge.
He heard the explosion just before he lost consciousness again. The sound was deep, like far away thunder. It made an impression in the air, like a wave on the ocean. The wave passed over Smoke Dugan as he lay in the bushes. His face was lit with the firelight as the flames burst toward the heavens.
At the very end, a thought occurred to him. They knew about Lola.
His eyes rolled back in his head and he slept.
Cruz ran up the street, Moss loping along beside him.
In his mind, Cruz saw Fingers go up in flames again and again. The image was imprinted on his mind. He had stared at Fingers for several seconds too long.
Then the whole shed had blown and he and Moss were over the fence and running together up the block of tidy suburban homes. No signal, no teamwork, just BOOM, and they were gone.
They reached the work car. It was a green Ford Taurus, a couple years old, nondescript, a real piece of shit. It had twenty thousand miles on it. At least it would run for a while. They jumped in. Moss took the wheel and Cruz slid into the passenger seat. Moss started it up. Fingers had removed the lock mechanism. He had left four license plates in the trunk for them, in case they had to switch later. Fingers had done his job. Now he was dead.
Moss was laughing.
“Okay, what’s funny?” Cruz said. He didn’t see much humor in it. The whole job, everything, slipping away in the two minutes it took for Dugan and Fingers to go out to the shed.
Moss cruised past the house with the backyard on fire – ice cold, Moss – burning embers flying everywhere, black smoke funneling into the sky against the red and orange glow. The house was in danger of going up next.
Moss turned slowly onto the main thoroughfare – Broadway, it was called – still cruising slowly. His head did a slow swivel, looking for possible tails. None. Only now did he turn on the headlights. Cruz watched him check the rearview.
Now he sped up into traffic.
“You,” Moss said. “You’re funny. You tried to send me in that shed with the old man. If you had your way, it woulda been me going up in flames. That was the biggest fuck up I ever seen. Only way it could have been bigger was if it had been me.”
Cruz sat back. “I didn’t see you warning him off.”
Moss only shrugged. “You’re the boss, big man. That’s what the dossier says, anyway.”
At this moment, Cruz would love to know exactly what else Moss’s dossier said.
Moss went on: “And you know what? I didn’t mind Fingers. Had a sort of way about him. You didn’t know him, seeing as how you work alone and all, but I did. He was a good kid. Didn’t get scared. Did what he was told, didn’t complain too much.”
Moss nodded at the truth of this eulogy.
Cruz figured it would amount to about the kindest tribute Fingers would get now. If he had a mother somewhere in the world, God knew she had been expecting her boy to go down in flames for years – except without the actual flames.
Sirens began to wail in the distance. As of yet, Cruz didn’t know from what direction they were coming. They stopped at a traffic light. Three or four cars were ahead of them. No one was looking or acting strangely.
“Do you suppose the old man got out?” Moss said.
Cruz regarded the question. He didn’t answer right away. It was his job, they had sent Fingers along with him, God knew what for, and now the kid had been deep fried. Toasted. In his mind, Cruz saw the kid go up in flames again. His insides felt scraped raw. Shit. He cared. He had to get out. He was tired of seeing them die, even guys like Fingers, who had probably lived on borrowed time since he was ten years old, and had deserved his fate ten times over.
We all deserve it, Cruz thought. All of us.
These maniacs had killed the fucking Guatemalan cleaning woman or whatever she was. Why? No loose ends. That was the excuse, anyway. That was always the excuse. The real reason was they had killed her because
