Stagger Bay Read online

  “Marker,” I mumbled.

  “What’s that?” he asked, cupping his hand to his ear. “Show some gratitude, boy. Who do you think made them hold off on you this whole time? Who do you think called SBPD off Moose Creek Road tonight so you had a free shot at Jansen? Speak up and show some respect here, son – you’re in my ballpark.”

  “I’m calling in my marker, sir,” I said, looking at the ground. I almost had to admire his bald faced lying. They’d only held off because I was too prominent with the cameras right now for me to conveniently disappear just yet. Tubbs had only pulled the cops off Moose Creek Road so Reese could take out Jansen without interference.

  My politeness was less than sincere, but Tubbs nodded as if satisfied. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  He glanced down the road in the direction of the Gardens. “Looks like you’ve built up quite a little following amongst those people, Markus – some of the other folk in Stagger Bay seem to like you some too.

  “I know what that’s like: You take responsibility for things; you think you can make a difference in their lives. But pretty soon you’re compromising yourself and you’re trapped by the power. You know things are going to go smash soon enough, but there’s no stopping that machine – you’re in for the duration.

  “Everyone thinks you’re the one driving, but you’re really just the hood ornament. You’re racing head-on at a brick wall. You’re right up front on that hood and you can see it all coming up on you, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” He shook his head, looking at the ground at his feet.

  He came back to the present. “Besides, what kind of friends are they? Here we are, you and me, talking about life and death on this beautiful night – and those people are nowhere to be seen. It’s just us, and you’re all alone.”

  He shrugged. “You were heading on out of Stagger Bay anyway, weren’t you?”

  “Well,” I said, “I was sure thinking about it.”

  “Don’t think too long – we’re even now, for what you did for my girl. No more markers from me, and our paths had best not cross again. Time to leave Stagger Bay, Markus.”

  Tubbs turned to go but then stopped. “Oh, by the way. Looks like I was premature to be promising you that quarter of a mil. It seems now like the bank account never even existed, and all the paperwork’s been lost.

  “That’s the price you pay, eh? But you made it clear you didn’t really want anything I was offering you anyways. Quite a disappointment, I’m sure – but I promise you, you’re not the only one feeling let down these days.”

  As Tubbs and Spale got into the car, soon-to-be-ex-Officer Rick Hoffman sat in the back seat, his gaze lifeless, his lips moving silently as he contemplated the reversal of fortune that was about to earn him his own private plot in the piney woods, maybe in the same exact place he’d planned on planting me, Sam, Elaine, and Little Moe. As soon as Tubbs had his butt in the shotgun seat, the Bronco started off down hill toward its ultimate destination.

  Chapter 60

  Sam, Elaine and Little Moe climbed out from the underbrush where they’d been hiding. Elaine plucked pine needles off her fancy clothes; she really wasn’t dressed for tonight’s brand of entertainment. Sam looked pretty sheepish but I liked that he’d had the sense not to be a hero and watched out for Little Moe and Elaine instead.

  “You called me Dad,” I observed as we wrestled the spike strip into the gutter so no one else would drive over it.

  Sam snorted and we started to roll the Continental to the side of the road. But my injured leg spasmed and collapsed under me as I pushed, and I wound up on my ass.

  “Your leg’s bleeding still,” Sam observed as he continued to push the car alone. Elaine came to me, pulled off her scarf, and began tying it tight around my upper thigh.

  I didn’t feel guilty at all for not helping Sam muscle the car toward the shoulder of the road, one hand on the steering wheel, the other pushing on the open door. Judging by how much he huffed and sweated, a 70s Lincoln Continental rolling on nothing but rims was a lot of dead-weight Detroit iron. Maybe his next car would be a compact.

  “You were surprised I was waiting when you came out the house,” Elaine whispered, continuing to fuss with her scarf even though it was tight enough around my leg by then. “You know, you may have all the others fooled, but I know your secret.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She chuckled quietly and leaned in with brows arched, her smile mocking but not unfriendly. “You're terrified people will figure out you’re a nice guy.”

  I was bemused, wondering why she would say something so blatantly nonsensical. “Sure, that’s me all right. The milk of human kindness just kind of oozes from my pores in a fine mist.”

  Elaine glanced over at Sam, who’d finished pushing the Connie to the side of the road but still leaned on the rear bumper catching his breath. “I can’t let you keep on threatening to turn him against me, Markus. It ends right now,” she said. “No matter what I do on the side, I would never do anything to harm Sam, or you.

  “Don’t you have any secrets, Markus? Leave it lie, I’ve told you all I’m going to. Can’t we just muddle through without being at each other’s throats? Can’t you trust me even a little?” she asked, pressing as Sam approached.

  “Well, you’re here, ain’t you?” I said.

  “What up?” Sam asked.

  “I’m just welcoming Elaine into the family, boy. Such as it is, of course.”

  “And what about that?” Sam asked, looking at Hoffman’s cop car. The strobes still turned; that disco trouble light still shot its rays out, painting the surrounding trees as it spun.

  “Leave it be,” I said. “It makes a nice nightlight.”

  Chapter 61

  Little Moe stumbled as we walked down the hill and I was limping pretty bad by then. Sam scooped him up to carry him, and I’ll admit to leaning on Sam’s shoulder fairly hard myself. Elaine was stuck carrying Karl’s box but she didn’t seem unhappy to be lugging it: judging by how she kept looking down into it every few seconds, she was impatient to get some alone-time with Karl’s notes.

  “Could it really be that simple?” I asked as we gimped our motley parade down the road.

  “Backwoods racists and people with no fishing and logging jobs anymore, willing to go along with pretty much anything as long as they get a paycheck from the development boom. A twisted devil worshiping freak hiding behind being Chief of Police, with the very cops that should be busting him taking orders from him instead. And a hillbilly mafia running everything from behind the scenes, trying to clear out the riff-raff so they can cash in on all that outside money pouring their way.

  “The Driver cut his teeth on the Beardsleys first, and there I was, born to be the fall guy for it. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing the locals then somehow convince to only kill the ‘right’ people. The powers-that-be protect him because they can’t afford the medicine if they lock him up, can’t lay him down because he’s got the goods on them, and he’s oh-so-useful. Then he turns on the fools that thought they were his masters, and it all unravels from there. Am I missing anything here?”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t know – actually, it sounds pretty convoluted to me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Convoluted – it means complex, involved – “

  “I know what it means, boy. I’m just surprised to hear you using a word with more than one syllable.”

  “What is it with you two?” Elaine asked, throwing us both a sharp glance. “Can’t you be nice to each other even for a little bit?”

  I thought about me and Karl, and of how much broken furniture had lain in our wake. Of the snarl that overlaid all our rambunctious affections, and the undertone of cruelty whenever we tried for anything approaching brotherly affection. This lady had no clue what nice meant to our kind.

  “You know if I let you in too far it’d feel like turning my back on Uncle Karl, right?” Sam asked. �
�It’d be like I was spitting on everything he ever did for me.”

  “I know.”

  “Jansen was a liar, you’re nothing like him. And he was full of it about Mom and Karl too, wasn’t he?” Sam asked. “I mean, okay, he was right about Uncle Karl taking way longer than you without nothing happening. And I’ll admit, if Karl had been here tonight, I don’t see how he could have done better.”

  I was feeling a little peaked, but I still gave Sam my best deadpan. “Don’t forget I had the advantage over Karl: Things had already started to break wide open when I got involved. Karl could have worked the pieces as good as me if he’d been alive – I was only half the team that should’ve been here tonight.”

  But I’d had the advantage of desperation as well – I’d had to keep the pace quick. Sam had been getting mightily froggy; he’d been getting close to really attracting their attention.

  If I hadn’t moved fast, Reese would have gobbled up Sam just like he did Karl. And even if Sam somehow side-stepped Reese, he would have wound up partying alone with Jansen and Hoffman up in that hell house.

  “It was a bunch of horse puckie, what Jansen was trying to feed you,” I assured my son. “Don’t even waste time rubbing two brain cells together over it, Sam. This town is built on lies. Everyone here is full of shit.”

  “Including you?” Sam asked.

  “All you need to take away is that Karl was my big brother and your uncle, and that he was there for you when I couldn’t be. But now it’s time to let both him and Mom rest in peace, okay? Just focus on the fact that they’d both be proud of you, Sam.”

  “How about you? Are you proud of me?”

  But I only laughed.

  Little Moe squirmed and moaned as he nestled in Sam’s arms – he was already sound asleep as crazy as that seems, and his mouth hung open. A hungry expression came onto Sam’s face as he looked down at this boy resting in his grasp.

  “We did it, didn’t we, old man?” Sam asked, his voice full of wonder.

  “Yeah, I guess we did at that. Good job, son.”

  Sam stopped and I tottered as I almost lost my grip on his shoulder. He threw back his head and whooped at the heavens, louder than I’d ever heard him speak: “We did it!”

  Little Moe woke up and started squirming and crying – we heard engines from below, multiple vehicles howling our way. “Oh shit,” Sam said. “Tubbs changed his mind. They’re coming back.”

  We scrambled for the woods.

  Chapter 62

  Sam got him and Little Moe out of sight quick, and Elaine tottered after as fast she could lug the box in her Jimmy Choos. As for me, I was still limping along like a man doing the three-legged race solitaire when the lead vehicle came around the curve, and its headlights pinned me like road kill in the making.

  I stood and watched, too drained really to be afraid. It was a caravan of four vehicles: two minivans stuffed with Hmong, a low-rider Impala filled with some enthusiastically bullet-headed Mexican kids I’d never seen before, and Big Moe’s Taurus.

  “Where is he, you son of a bitch?” Moe shouted hoarsely from the shotgun seat of his ride, holding a bloody rag to the side of his head, his eyes red and crazed. His skinny white brother JoJo was driving, bony knuckles strangling the steering wheel. “Where’s Little Moe?”

  “Right here,” Sam said, leading Little Moe from the tree-line for his uncle’s inspection.

  Big Moe yelped as he got out the car. A pistol fell and clattered on the asphalt as he dropped to both knees and embraced Little Moe.

  Big Moe stood and stalked over to me. He grabbed me hard by the shoulders and ogled me up and down, taking in the makeshift tourniquet tied around my leg.

  And then, so help me, this big corn-rowed young black man kissed me full on the lips. Sam smirked at me as Big Moe clutched me hard against him and I patted rapidly at his shoulder.

  Big Moe finally let go and turned to face away from us all. His shoulders shook a little while he aimed his broad back at us, but his face was perfectly composed when he finally turned around to face our way again.

  “Okay,” was all he said, in a voice that didn’t sound pessimistic at all. He picked up his rod and we all piled into the Taurus.

  Chapter 63

  When we got back to the Gardens it looked like a fire ant nest someone had kicked open. People ran around or stood in groups, cars roaring every which way. An old white-haired black lady waved a meat cleaver, yelling. The Gardens had finally had enough.

  A mob swirled to surround the car as we pulled up in front of Little Moe’s house. A low moan came from the milling crowd as we got out and Little Moe ran toward the open front door of his bungalow crying, “Mommy.”

  His mother sprinted out the door panting and gasping; she scooped him up with a shriek, held him tight enough I was afraid for his health. They disappeared inside, no one following to intrude on their reunion.

  Everyone headed toward the Gardens’ entrance, so Sam and I followed. I still leaned on his shoulder; my leg had stiffened up something awful.

  “I am proud of you, son, proud of you for always standing up to me,” I said. “And I’ve admired all along how loyal you are to Karl. You should be; he was a hell of a man. You’re right that he did all the thinking for us back in the day.

  “But I started thinking for myself the day I saw you in your Mom’s arms. And I’m not the man I was before I went to prison, please tell me you see that.

  “You’re right, too, about us not having any history before – that was stolen from us, it’s not your fault nor mine. But now I know you some – I’ve gotten to see who you are a little bit. You rock, kid. You did one helluva good job tonight.”

  “We can never replace what they took; it’s down the tubes.” I studied his face as we gimped along, ignoring the hustling mob around us. “We still got the future, though, don’t we, Sam? We still have time to make something.”

  “Check this,” Sam said, jerking his chin toward our front.

  I turned to follow Sam’s look. We were at the entrance to the Gardens, and every male of fighting age stood there in a silent throng; a lot of the women were there too. Everyone had weapons: guns and baseball bats; knives; straight razors.

  The Hmong were off to one side, sticking to themselves as usual – an AK and a couple of M-16s leaned against the backs of their minivans, ready to grab. One of the Asians had a blanket-wrapped bundle at his feet that looked suspiciously like a rocket launcher.

  The 18th Street Crips were in position, and they came up to join Sam and me. “They’re coming for us,” Big Moe said, voice breathless and eyes wide. “I just got the word from one of my contacts. They’re coming to clean us out all the way.”

  I heard a lot of cars coming down the highway from the direction of town but couldn’t see anything for a moment for the trees. Then the first vehicle appeared on the ridgeline, its headlights panning over our faces as it turned down the access road and started around that big loop of road surrounding the empty lots.

  Another vehicle came into view, and another and another, hundreds of them in a slow moving line – motorcycles and pickup trucks, cars and vans, even a couple of buses. Stagger Bay was coming to call on the Gardens, in force.

  Chapter 64

  I’d only been chumming when I used Reese to send the message the Gardens were about to break, and asked Elaine to expose her jugular on TV. I’d just been looking for the opening, trying to flush the Driver and his cronies. Now the bill had come due: Stagger Bay’s sharks were coming up-current along the scent trail, intent on a feeding frenzy.

  One after the other, vehicles came around past us and turned into the empty cul-de-sacs and courts in the vacant lots across the avenue. As they parked, the drivers and passengers got out their vehicles and walked up to the sidewalk on the development side, standing to our front with only the avenue dividing us. They were all armed too: axe handles; hunting rifles; shotguns – an arsenal as varied as our own.

  They muttered disj
ointedly amongst themselves until one strident woman’s voice bawled out, “Niggers.”

  A few of them enthusiastically chanted the word a few times but most of the crowd refused to join in, their pained looks indicating embarrassment. The open bigots finally stopped and our enemies subsided into the background mumble of any would-be mob working itself up into a tizzy.

  The murmuring horde grew steadily until we were outnumbered vastly, with more vehicles arriving and parking behind them in a steady, seemingly endless stream. Then one man crossed the avenue toward us, his hands open at his sides to show he was unarmed.

  “Peace to the Gardens,” he said. “I’m here to stand with you.”

  It was Takeshi. He saw me in the crowd and walked up with a sheepish grin. “If you still want to work the dock, Markus, you’ve got a job with me. Fuck’em.”

  A half-dozen women got out of a VW micro-bus and came to join us, every one of them dressed in black. The women pulled candles from their purses and lit them, turning to face the direction they’d come from with the lit tapers cupped in both hands. The surviving Peace Women: If the casualties they’d suffered before or the comments shouted their way now gave them pause, they showed no sign of it.

  A vintage root beer Bentley pulled up and parked a little ways away from the other cars. Jim Scallion got out and gave me a shy wave before joining us, the best dressed man in the crowd.

  Others continued to join us: Nurse Dorcas, under the arm of a tall skinny guy I recognized as one of the interns that attended me at the Hospital; Sara and her fellow librarian; others either vaguely familiar or unknown to me.

  At first Moe seemed dumbfounded, but the organizer in him stepped up to the plate without delay. He greeted every new arrival to our side of the street, giving them all a gracious welcome as if they were invited guests he’d known were coming all along; as if it were no more than his due they were here. Moe pumped their hands if they let him, and then suggested where in our growing crowd they should take their places, Julius Caesar deploying his Legionnaires.