He turned back around to Frank for affirmation, but Frank just stood there. Shel usually handled these sorts of situations for him. Feeling a sudden visceral need for her there, Frank imagined her taking form by his side, like a ghost.
The old man shook his head and ran a thick finger under each eye. “Forget it,” he said, and humped back to the bar.
It took another ten minutes for the twins to appear. They came in one after the other, ducking into the bar with an uneasy familiarity. Their names were Bryan and Ryan Briscoe. They were identically towheaded, sloe-eyed, small and freebase thin. Frank called them Chewy and Mooch, to keep them separate in his mind.
One of the twins approached the center of the room with an expression of mock horror, his arms spread wide as though to embrace a missing thing. This was the wiseass, Mooch. He fell to his knees and cried out, “Reverend Ben! The snooker table! How could you?”
Reverend Ben traded glances with the two old men at the bar. Nobody looked happy.
“What is this,” Reverend Ben said finally. “National Skanky Hustler Day?”
Mooch rose to his feet and went to the bar, impervious to the contempt. He took out a tangled wad of cash, unraveled a bill and smoothed it out on the bar. “Drinks for everybody,” he said. “Gonna miss this place. Chump City. Made a lot of money here.”
The other twin approached Frank. This was the sad one. The nervous one. Chewy.
“We made it,” Chewy said.
The twins were a sight to behold, Frank thought. Youngest issue of the Lodi Briscoes, purveyors of quality feed. The twins were the family fuckups. Frank had made their acquaintance one night as they were hustling pool in a Manteca roadhouse. They had quite a little racket: Chewy suckered the marks in, knocked off to the can, then Mooch came out and finished them off. The brothers took their winnings in cash or blow. From the sounds of things, they’d played this room as well. Amazing, Frank thought, they made it out with their asses intact.
“How’d it go?” Frank asked.
Before Chewy could answer, Mooch came up from behind with three beers. He handed them around, grinning.
“Got three trucks,” Chewy said. He pulled up a metal folding chair and sat. Mooch remained standing. “All parked out in Antioch, where you said.”
“We did a follow-in out at the Red Roof in Tracy,” Mooch crowed. “Some salesman. Took his wallet and his sample bag and tied him up with duct tape. Sells ball bearings, you imagine? Went on out, used his plastic and rented us three big shiny white trucks.”
“Rented?” Frank said.
“Well, yeah,” Chewy said. He had yet to drink from his beer.
“It’s cool,” Mooch said. “They can’t trace it to us, I told you.”
“They can trace it to your follow-in,” Frank said. “Your salesman, he’ll hang a visual on you two. You kinda stand out, know what I mean?”
Chewy leaned closer and spoke softly. “It just seemed too much a risk to steal three trucks, Frank.” He licked his lips and swallowed. “You know, like three on a match?”
“Who’d you rent from?”
“That guy in Clayton you mentioned,” Chewy said. “Lonesome George.”
Frank froze. “Why him?”
“Why not?” Chewy answered. “No offense, but you’re making me very nervous here.”
Lonesome George DeSantis had operated at least a dozen rental agencies, one after the other, until the Insurance Commissioner got wise to his claims record. Lonesome George’s renters tended to have accidents. They tended to have their cars rifled, too, or stolen outright. Now he operated through a straw man. Since he had his shop in east Contra Costa County- CoCo County as the locals called it- Lonesome George kicked back to Felix Randall to keep his operation afloat.
“Why him?” Frank repeated. “Why Lonesome George?”
Mooch leaned down, close to Frank’s face. “Like my brother said, you gave us his name. You said he was a player.”
Frank turned to face him. The boy’s eyes jigged and the skin around the sockets was waxy. A user’s pallor. Frank said, “If I told you to come over to my house, fuck my old lady, it’s cool. Would you do it?”
“Hell, yes,” Mooch said. “You got a first-rate old lady.”
Chewy said, “Tell me what’s wrong, Frank.”
Frank kept his eye on Mooch. “You want a shot at my old lady?”
“He didn’t mean anything,” Chewy said. “Frank, what’s wrong?”
“No, I want to hear this,” Frank said. “Mooch, you want to splay old Lachelle Maureen? You’ve met her what, twice? Or am I wrong about that?”
“Frank- ”
“Answer my question, Mooch.”
Mooch took a step back. Eyes to the ceiling, he murmured, “Oh, man,” and drank from his beer.
“Look, Frank,” Chewy said, “I admit, you didn’t tell us outright, you know, ‘Check out Lonesome George.’ But we thought, hey, you brought him up, you told us who he was and all. Now, I mean, if he’s gonna make us…”
Frank closed his eyes and put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, pinching hard. A riot of dots materialized on the backs of his eyelids.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Forget it.”
“Frank…”
“Forget it,” Frank said, louder this time. He stood up. To Chewy, he said, “Drink your beer.” He turned to Mooch then, and gestured for him to come close. Mooch took one step forward, no more. Frank reached across the space between them and put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. Whispering, he said, “What you just did? Don’t do it again. Understand?”
He met the boy’s eyes. They were wild with cocaine, vaguely insolent, uncomprehending. Frank removed his arm and headed for the door.
“Hit the hump, boys. Time to do the deed.”
Frank went to his truck, started it up, and left with the twins following behind. As he drove back out through West Pittsburg, he found himself not thinking about the fuckup brothers or even Lonesome George. He was thinking about Felix Randall.
One of the last of the old biker chiefs, Felix controlled the Delta underworld from his salvage yard out near Bethel Island. He’d suffered a little in stature when the Mexicans made inroads during his last stint in prison. To make matters worse, he’d been diagnosed with throat cancer while at Boron. They transferred him to Springfield for the tracheotomy, which the prison doctors botched. Despite his ruined larynx and his years off the game, now that he was out again he was hell-bent on proving one thing: He ruled the Delta. Not the Mexicans, not the Chinks or the Vietnamese, not the rival biker gangs. Him.
Frank’s connection to Felix was through Roy Akers and his brothers, who conceded to Felix’s control. They paid their tithe to a pair of enforcers named Lonnie Dayball and Rick Tully. Others had proved slower studies. They had to see their crank labs fireball, or their chop shops bombed, or their indoor pot farms raided by county narcs tipped by Felix’s people to realize: You Do Not Sideball Felix Randall. A few guys died, learning that.
Only the Mexicans stood up to him now. They had labs up and down the valley, Fresno to Redding, and the Delta was no exception. With what they paid the illegals who manned those labs, you could cop an ounce of
Only a few weeks ago, one particularly unlucky
