Holy Death (19 page)

Stopped behind a convertible Chrysler, on his knees, warding off the pain and peeking beneath the car to see if they were heading his way.

Not yet. DeVaughn was out of the car now, shouting, but the echo blurred whatever the fuck he was saying. Five more BGMs, out on the middle of the lot, holding guns the way they’d seen someone do in a
Fast and Furious
.

Lafitte had a gun in each hand. Probably twenty-three shots if he was lucky, if the banger had bothered to load his Glock to full-capacity. Another peek under the car. Two soldiers coming this way. Two headed behind the Soul. DeVaughn went back to his car, got in and closed the door. The witch started shouting at him. Goddamn.

Choices. There was a concrete column keeping the two farther down from seeing him. The other two, one doing the “duck under and look” thing now...maybe Lafitte could climb up on the bumper without—

“
Got him!
”

Then fuck it. Lafitte stood up and fired two-handed to make a lot of noise. Didn’t hit either guy. He wanted them to scatter for cover. The Lincoln wasn’t close. There was still fifteen, twenty feet of open pavement between him and it. Lafitte slid down by the car’s front tire before the bangers rounded the column and the lead one squeezed off a few shots that blinged and flashed too close for comfort and scared Lafitte’s heart into some deeper pain.

He shot back. One of the bangers said, “Got him trapped! Motherfucker trapped!”

Lafitte laid himself flat and scooted under the convertible. Then the next car. Then the next one, a truck, more headroom. He rolled. Gunshots and clinking and clanging and
GODDAMN
something bit into his leg. A concrete divot from a ricochet. He’d live. Crouching by the truck, he reached up, tried the door. Open. It was big one, quad cab. It was a risk.

Lafitte popped up and laid down fire in both directions. The slide on the first gun clicked back. Empty. He opened the truck, crawled inside on the floorboard. It was a hotbox, Lafitte instantly soaking in sweat, stinging all those burns, as the bangers got a bead on him. More shots. Bullets popped through the windshield and side windows. Goddamn it, he was going to die in here.

So he screamed.

He screamed like he had nothing left. He screamed because his heart was in full attack-mode and he didn’t know what else to do.

And then it got quiet.

His ears were ringing from all the gun shots. The bangers, they had to have felt the same thing. He opened and closed his jaw. He pinched his nose and blew. He
needed
to hear before they did. He
needed
to.

Finally got one ear to pop and heard, “Goddamn, son, you fucked him
up
!”

“How do you know he’s dead?”

“Ask him.”

“Fuck you mean,
ask him
?”

“I dunno, like,
ask him
.”

Goddamn. Lafitte was going to die in here.

“Hey!” One of the bangers, sounded close. “You alive?”

Lafitte rolled onto his stomach, on top of the guns. Why hadn’t they shot him already? Why hadn’t they finished him off?

Because DeVaughn, that was why. Same moment the thought bubbled up, he heard the bastard’s voice telling his hired hard boys to “Back the fuck up!”

Lafitte stopped feeling so doomed. Seemed he had two choices.

One, he was going to die in here.

Two, he was not.

*

D
eVaughn was just...just...just....
what the fuck
, man?

Wasn’t supposed to be no James Bond bullshit. Was supposed to be
shoot him
. Was supposed to be get the motherfucker out the truck, then shoot him.

But what does Motherfucker do? He fucks it up. Because for all this talk about Lafitte, how he’s some folk hero, some Superman, some kind of badass, it was a lot simpler. What it was was that Lafitte fucking cheated. He was a fucking cheater.

Wasn’t no point in shooting all those BGMs. Motherfucker did it to make some noise, fuck up the plan. Couldn’t talk to DeVaughn like a man. Had to find a way to make too much noise and now there was no time for anything. Gonna have cops and security all over the place, and, shit, now the motherfucker might already be dead.

Didn’t Lafitte know better? Didn’t he know how this shit was supposed to go down?

Melissa nudged him. “Go find out if they got him. At least do that.”

“I bet they didn’t.”

“Well go find out before they fuck it up any more.”

He sighed. He climbed out of the car. Watched the idiots trying to figure this shit out. Three of them, one at each end of the truck, and one heading for the blown-out driver’s window, gun low.

DeVaughn’s eyes went wide and he took a couple steps, but, shit, how stupid do you have to—

“Back the fuck up!”

The guy at the window jumped back quick. The other two laughed at him.

DeVaughn shook his head. “Are you all goddamned retarded?”

“But he ain’t moving!”

“Because he’s fucking waiting for you to get close so he can shoot you in the face.”

The bangers looked at each other. Lost.

DeVaughn said, “Seriously, any of you ever been in a gunfight before?”

They looked around at each other again. Then the guy standing point in front said, “Have you?”

Fuck these motherfuckers. This was taking too long. “Just...stick your arm in and shoot him. Fucking shoot him.”

The one nearest the door reached his arm in and before he fired,
something
grabbed his arm, pulled him in. Then his head exploded.

The other two jumped back, started firing low while backing up. Neither one had cover. DeVaughn watched the one behind the truck fall and scream. The other one hid two cars over, fired over the hood until he was out of bullets.

DeVaughn watched what happened next almost like it wasn’t happening to him. Lafitte kicked out the busted up windshield and climbed out of the truck the same as he’d climbed into the Kia. He didn’t worry about the bangers. Out of sight, out of mind. DeVaughn lifted his gun and fired and his hand jerked up and right and Lafitte kept coming. Picking up the pace.

“Shoot him!” Melissa shouting behind him. He couldn’t help it. He looked over his shoulder and she was out of the car, getting ready to fire across the roof. DeVaughn blinked back to Lafitte and the fucker was almost on him, gun ready. DeVaughn fired from the hip and it was too late and Lafitte fired and got DeVaughn in the foot before slamming into him, going down hard to the pavement as Melissa got off her shot and missed. And three more in quick succession,
miss miss miss
. She screamed.

Lafitte slammed the gun barrel into DeVaughn’s mouth and busted up his lips. DeVaughn scrambled and kicked and got his free hand around Lafitte’s throat. Squeezed good and hard. Gonna rip the motherfucker’s throat out. Dug in hard. Harder.

“You...goddamn...motherfucker!”

Lafitte pressed his chin down on DeVaughn’s grip. He was starting to gag and growl. Lafitte swiped the gun at DeVaughn’s face again, one, two, connected with the nose, with the jaw, three. DeVaughn felt his jaw explode again and thought for a sec Lafitte had shot it off, but it was the gun butt slamming into it. The banger who had run out of bullets had gotten his buddy’s gun and was advancing, firing at them. Bullets ricocheted off the pavement and dug up rocks and then Lafitte jumped up, stomped dead center on DeVaughn’s ribs, then his face, before swinging around, blasting—got the kid gangsta through the chest—and stumbling towards the Lincoln.

DeVaughn flipped onto his stomach in time to watch Lafitte in the driver’s seat, slam the door, and reach over to grab Melissa’s leg. She kicked at him, but he got his arm wrapped around and pulled her down into the car. Motherfucker revved up and was gone. Tire squeal, all that noise, as the leftover bangers fired at the Lincoln as it sped down the ramp and DeVaughn shouted until his voice was raw, “No! No! No! Don’t! You’ll hit her!”

Then Melissa was gone. The Lincoln was gone. Lafitte was gone.

The ringing in his ears started to subside. Sirens.

The whole thing, all of it, took, what...four minutes? Four fucking minutes.

DeVaughn pushed up from the pavement, hurt like an assfuck all across his chest, and ran for the closest banger car, a pimped-out Toyota Camry, and climbed in back. “Go, let’s go!” He fell back into the leather seat and closed his eyes, winced. Fucking Lafitte must’ve shot him in the heel or something. He lifted the shoe to his knee. Half the heel was gone, and there was blood, oh yes, there was blood. He clamped his teeth together and
Sssssssss.
Then his jaw lit up, too.

The car whirled three-sixty and shook him up, every jostle a jackhammer, and took off.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

His phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket. Melissa’s name on the display. Jesus. Three missed calls in the last thirty seconds.

He answered, “Baby? Baby?”

Heard Lafitte’s voice: “—up and sit still and it’ll be okay.”

DeVaughn: “You motherfucker! I swear, you touch her—”

“Gimme,” Lafitte said. Then a struggle. Lafitte grunted, Melissa yelped, and Lafitte said, “Good. Now you won’t shoot me.”

The hell? “Hey, you’d better listen to me...Lafitte? You hear me?”

Then Melissa’s voice, “I ain’t got to shoot you. I’ll let DeVaughn do that.”

“He had a chance. A lot of chances.”

“This next time, though, I swear. And then I’ll cut your fucking balls off.”

“Please. Shut up, please.”

DeVaughn figured it out. Lafitte didn’t know she had the phone. Didn’t know DeVaughn was listening. Good girl.

“What’s wrong with you?” She asked. “You going to pass out?”

Heaving breath. Lafitte caught it again, said, “I need...I need a doctor.”

Well, goddamn. DeVaughn told the bangers up front to turn off the stereo and keep their mouths shut. He’d found a good one in Melissa. She could handle herself mighty fine. “Get out of here. I’ll tell you where to drive in a few minutes.”

Give him somewhere to go, baby. Give him somewhere to go. I’ll be right there waiting
.

––––––––

B
y the time Stoudemire landed in Mobile to pick up the pieces after the attempt on Ginny, one of the local agents was there on the tarmac waiting, holding out a phone.

“Something happened in Mississippi.”

Stoudemire took the phone from her and listened as another agent from the New Orleans office told him what had happened at the parking garage in Gulfport.

“A fucking war zone. But it was fast. By the time security got there, they saw two cars hightailing it. Three dead gang members, one wounded, and a shit ton of cars all shot up.”

Stoudemire rubbed his mouth. He’d slept on the plane and was all dried out. He handed his water bottle to the agent and told her to open it for him. Then to the phone, “Where now? Last seen?”

“Best we got from the footage, it’s a Lincoln Lafitte stole from another gangsta trying to kill him. The security chief at the casino says this guy is a regular, plays poker all the time, and does pretty good.”

“No name yet?”

“I’m on the other line with him right now. I’ll call you back.”

The agent handed Stoudemire his water. He handed her the phone. “Thanks.” Took down half the bottle in one swig. The heat down here. Good thing he’d dressed down. The agents in suits, fuck, no wonder they were always two steps behind whoever they were after.

“So,” he asked the agent, who’d just told him her name. “Janice, you’re driving?”

“Anywhere you need to go around town, they told me.”

“Not anymore. We’re going to Mississippi.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fun.”

“Don’t worry.” Stoudemire winked at her. “I hear they finally crawled out of the nineteenth century a few years ago.”

*

“S
top,” Rome said.

Stoudemire raised his eyebrows. “Something wrong?”

“Why...areyou...t-t-telling...methis?”

“What, about Janice? Janice is great. Here.” He tapped his iPad then turned it for Rome to see. A blonde white woman, maybe in her forties, with brown eyes and a wide nose. That was all Rome could see of her because the bottom half of the photo was her mouth wrapped around, presumably, Stoudemire’s cock. “Something to think about later tonight.”

“Peessashit.”

Stoudemire smiled. “In the bathroom of a New Orleans bar the next day. Nice.”

*

S
toudemire filled in Janice on the drive to Gulfport, in-between phone calls to his wife, his personal assistant, and an agent he would need to cancel a boating trip with this weekend. He also laid the groundwork for fucking Janice—subtle questioning, the same way he could lead a husband suspected of murder to a confession was how he could lead any lady FBI agent to take her panties off.

Maybe it was the hair. Maybe it was because he first came across as gay. Couldn’t help it. There was something about the “Southern effeminate” accent that drove women wild. He laid it on a little thick when the woman needed some persuasion, sure, but mostly it was a God-given bonus.

At the casino, Stoudemire skipped the parking garage, told Janice to give it the once over instead while he headed inside. He was tired of being hot as balls, and parking garages smelled like NASCAR pits. Instead, he was escorted to the security offices, given high quality coffee, a new ice-cold bottle of water, and was shown all four minutes and thirteen seconds of the shootout in dead silence. And then once again, stopping, rewinding, stopping. Then back to when DeVaughn Rose, professional poker player and ex-BGM gangsta, first pulled into the lot with two other cars and five bangers on foot only fifteen minutes before Lafitte had showed up.

“Got the plates?”

“Already out there.”

Stoudemire nodded and turned back to the screen, watched one more time. He was impressed. He had forgotten how fucking
good
this Lafitte character could be. It was all improvised, firing at the Kia, jumping in, drawing fire, sneaking out. The truck, Jesus, Stoudemire was sure that was the end right there, but these BGM kids, Lafitte had picked up they didn’t know exactly what they were doing. It was strategy versus testosterone. And down they went, one at a time. The fight with DeVaughn, fast and nasty. It was hard to watch, even harder than the prison riot tapes, Lafitte finishing off riot ringleader Ri’Chess by throwing him into the bonfire.