Ben swallowed. “Why me? Why is this happening?”
“I can hazard a guess. Your wife.”
“I don’t…”
“Ben. You were a suspect in her murder, weren’t you? It would only be natural.”
His throat closed and he coughed. “Briefly. But the police cleared me. I had no involvement.”
He’d had to fly home to Dallas from his honeymoon alone, the worst flight of his life. Her body lay in the plane’s cargo hold. He arrived alone at the house they had shared; her parents, shattered in their own grief and blaming him because the world had been cruel and capricious, did not meet him at the airport. Sam was on a trip and couldn’t get back in time. Within a few more days he realized that Dallas had gone dead for him, and he’d moved back to his hometown of Austin, where there were fewer whispers about him behind cupped hands.
“If you wanted to frame a person, a man who’s already been suspect once is a much easier sell. To the police. To the media.”
“But why me…”
“I’ll explain why you were framed. Just get me patched up and get me to Dallas.” His words slurred, his eyes fogged with pain. “It’s a fair trade. I’m trusting you, Ben. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes. I give you my word,” Ben said. “We have a deal.”
“I need some water.”
Ben took the next exit, stayed on the frontage road until he reached a gas station. He went inside. The cashier said hi and he said hi back. He bought two bottles of water. He hurried back to the Volvo. Ben opened the bottle for Pilgrim, watched him gulp the water down.
“I should have thought of getting you water sooner. Sorry. I’m not used to dealing with gunshot wounds.”
“I can’t make it to Dallas without getting patched up.”
Ben pulled back onto the highway. “I’m going to find a Wal-Mart, and then a motel, and get you cleaned up, stop the bleeding.”
“Thank you.”
“Can I use a credit card? Will the police or Homeland Security be looking for me? Kidwell said he’d freeze my accounts.”
Pilgrim said, “I got a credit card we can use.” He laughed. “Can you forge a signature?”
“Um, I’ve never tried.”
“Trust me. It’s not hard to learn. You look like a quick study.” Pilgrim sagged against the door, eyes at half- mast. “I’m not in good shape here, man…”
Ben floored the car down the highway.
14
Jackie Lynch’s throat ached from singing. The van’s broken radio hissed static and he couldn’t bear the silence so he sang, slow and low, the entirety of Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison album. The rereleased version had been his and Nicky’s favorite. He’d started with “Folsom Prison Blues,” then sung his way through the poetry of the other eighteen songs. He knew every lyric, but on Nicky’s favorites it was a struggle to finish, to link the words together. He sang the album in an hour, listened to the quiet again for five minutes, then started singing it again, like he was a busted music box doomed to spill the same notes for eternity. His stomach began to growl as he reached the small city of Hillsboro, ninety minutes south of Dallas. Hillsboro boasted a huge outlet mall and a large collection of fast-food chains and gas stations. He figured no one would remember him in the constantly changing crowd. Jackie hated the necessity of his hunger; it reminded him he was alive, and Nicky wasn’t.
He bought his dinner at a McDonald’s drive-through, keeping an eye on the prone form of Teach lying bound in the back of the van. He regarded her with a cordial hatred. He bought her no food in case she awoke-the bitch could starve, for all he cared.
He pulled over at the far edge of the parking lot to eat his hamburger and fries. He sipped hard on a soda to cool his throat and bit into the burger. He couldn’t shake off memories of Nicky. They should be eating lobsters and steaks, drinking a fancy wine, savoring a kill that would have made their reputations even more sterling; now he’d be eating alone all the time, with Nicky dead, and the realization made his face ache.
Jackie set the burger and fries on the passenger seat. The tears came hot and hard and he bent his head over the steering wheel, happy images swimming before his eyes. Nicky teaching him how to ride a bike because Da was always busy with his interrogations and his meetings; Nicky showing him how to kick a football, how to shoot a semiautomatic, how to cut with a blade so you opened the carotid on the first try. His brother shouldn’t be, couldn’t be, dead. He used his napkins to mop up the tears and the snot and then he used his sleeve and, looking up, he saw the boys laughing at him.
Three of them, a shade younger than him, nineteen or so. They stood four parking slots away, getting into an old, weathered sedan, but they’d seen him crying like a babe and one acted embarrassed and the other two smiled, amused at his pain.
Behind him, the woman stirred and groaned. He glanced back at her; she lay still again.
Now two of the three boys had gotten into their car but one stood there and mock-rubbed his cupped hand on his cheek, wiping away pretend tears.
Jackie opened the van’s door and stepped out into the cool. The hum of the highway made a throaty murmur and the night sky spilled stars across the darkness. His fist felt primed to hit, his feet ready to kick. He didn’t need a gun. Or the knife.
“What’s your problem?” Jackie asked.
The boy kept his smile locked in place and said, with a twang, “Buy some pride, dude.”
“My brother died today.” He walked faster toward the smiling boy, whose grin faded. “Maybe I should laugh? Do a freaking jig?”
The boy ducked back into the car, started shutting the door.
Jackie caught the door handle. Fury made him strong and he reached in and dragged the boy onto the pavement. The boy twisted and hollered. Jackie punched the mouth hard; the teeth in the vanished smile cracked under his fist.
The two other boys spilled from the other side of the car. One was bigger than Jackie, with the bearing of an athlete, but Jackie didn’t see muscle and speed, he saw only weaknesses borne from overconfidence: a throat left unprotected, a crotch to be kicked, an eye to be gouged. He slid across the trunk to engage the athlete. Take the biggest first, Nicky told him. Jackie nailed him with a hard kick in the guts. The athlete doubled over and Jackie slammed him into the side of the car. The car door stood open and Jackie shoved the athlete’s head into the opening, knocked the door hard against him. The athlete folded, bleeding from both ears.
“See,” Jackie said to the last kid, rounding the car to come at him. “That’s pride, asshole.”
He bounced while the last kid threw a reckless punch; he stepped under it and delivered three close-in blows, to groin, stomach, and jaw. Nicky had taught him the moves. The last kid folded, mouth wide in a gasp. The athlete lay unconscious on the asphalt. Jackie ran around the car and found the once-smiling boy, dazed, trying to crawl into the driver’s seat, blood dripping from his mouth and chin.
Jackie yanked the boy out of the car. He grabbed the keys from the ignition, knocked the boy to the ground.
“Cry,” Jackie said.
“Don’t, please!” The boy’s tears welled, real ones of stark terror.
He pressed the boy’s head to the pavement, jabbed the ignition key into the soft corner of the eye. The boy screamed his own throat raw. Jackie’s grief vanished in the flame of his rage.
Blind him, he thought. Do the other eye. But he glanced up, noticed a couple of people gaping at him in shock from their cars in the drive-through line.
Time to go. He turned and the van was gone.
He dropped the keys and forgot to breathe. Then he saw the van, creaking along toward the exit, the woman driving but weaving. Like the drugs still hobbled her mind, like she hadn’t figured out the relationship between
