That’s How I Roll: A Novel (25 page)

“Like ‘Big John’?”

The old man wiped at his eyes. “That was true,” he said, real soft. “That was true once.”

“I know that, sir. Everybody says it.”

He looked at me for a long minute. Then he asked, “And what do they call you, son?”

“You know how people around here are.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure, I know. Nasty and mean in their hearts, some of them. But not all, son. Not all. Never forget that.”

“No, sir.”

“You still haven’t told me what names they—”

“ ‘Crip,’ that’s one. And ‘Half-Man.’ And—”

He held up a big callused hand like a traffic cop telling me
to stop. “They called me ‘Big John’ because that’s what I was. A big man, name of John. It fit, so it held. For a long time, anyway. What would you want folks to call you, son? ‘Brains’—now, that would fit.

“Kind of funny, when you think on it. Anyone who wouldn’t call you by a name that truly fit, it’d be the same as naming themselves. You know, something like ‘Retard,’ or”—I was looking down, but I could feel his eyes burning at me—“ ‘Half-Wit.’ ”

I looked up. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

“What do you want folks to call you?” he insisted. “Not just to your face, either.”

“Esau,” I told him. “Esau Till.”

“Mark me,” the old man said. “The day will come when folks will
all
be calling you by that name, son. And by no other.”

ou’d think a man named Judakowski wouldn’t hold much sway around here. It was a foreigner’s name, and folks put great stock into how far back your name went. Far back local, I mean—not far back like European royalty or anything like that.

Lansdale, now, that was a name that carried weight. His father had been a prizefighter before the War. That was his last fight—one he never came back from. And that counted heavy around here, too.

What opened doors for Jackhammer Judakowski had nothing to do with his own family trail—a Polish name can trace back only so far around here. But nobody would ever be looked down on for having a Polish name, either—not in a part of the world where the name Yablonski is held sacred.

A man who died for his people.

Tony Boyle had been head of the UMW. And the United Mine Workers may have done some violent stuff, but that was only to force mine owners to allow the union in.

People knew that, and they stayed with it. Even when a whole
mob had backhoed out a pit, thrown the owner in, and filled it up again—this was down in Tennessee—the jury had acquitted them all.

It might have gone on like that, but when a mine blew up in West Virginia, the truth came out. Boyle had personally told everyone that mine was union-certified, with a perfect safety record. But when the inspectors—federal inspectors—dug through the wreckage and found a slew of major safety violations, there was only one possible explanation: Boyle had been getting paid under the table to sell out the miners.

And it couldn’t have been for just that one mine.

That’s when Yablonski challenged Boyle for leadership of the union. He called Boyle’s men nothing but a gang of thugs, and he promised to return the union to the miners.

When he lost that election, Yablonski said it had been rigged. I don’t mean some whispering in a tavern; he said it right out loud, for all to hear.

He was getting ready to go to court to challenge the election results when Boyle had him murdered. And not just Yablonski, but his wife and daughter, too. When the murder team came calling, everyone in the house had to go. No witnesses.

That made it worse. Much worse. Folks who normally wouldn’t spit on the Law let them past the wall of silence just long enough to say a few things.

The people Boyle had hired to do that job, one of them had been by Yablonski’s house before, scouting. But Yablonski knew he was living under the gun, so he’d written down the license number of that stranger’s car.

One by one, they all got caught. The more they talked, the higher the trail climbed. Nobody wanted to chance the Death House.

Their testimony was overpowering. One of them, a girl, I believe, she even had a photograph of the man who had done the hiring shaking hands with Boyle.

After all that, Boyle still only pulled a life sentence. Didn’t matter, really—he died in prison.

He would have died even if the jury had acquitted him, and he
knew it. Probably why he tried to kill himself. With pills, like the miserable coward he was.

Ask anyone around here and they’ll tell you: if Joe Yablonski had lived to be President of the United Mine Workers, things would be different today. They believe that the same way others believe in Jesus. Held that faith just as strong.

Maybe even stronger, now that I think on it. The only way folks could know Christ had died for them would be to read something written down maybe thousands of years ago … and believe nobody had tampered with it since.

But to know Joe Yablonski had died for them, all they had to do was read the newspapers. Or listen to someone who was around at the time.

You can’t find a living person who claims to have met Jesus in person. Not outside an asylum, anyway. But there’s plenty still around who’d met Joe Yablonski. Some who knew him personally. Even some who had been close to him.

And they all tell it the same way.

nce I worked out what I needed—once I decided that there was no other way to get it—the die was cast.

I chose those last words with care, as you’ll see.

On the day that started it all, Tory-boy wheeled me through the door of the DMZ, then went back to the van and waited. Just like I told him.

It was broad daylight, and the parking lot was almost empty, but Tory-boy didn’t question why I wanted him to park so far away from the front. It did take quite a bit of work to get him to accept the other part, which was: if I didn’t wheel myself out of that building, he was to get himself home first, and then call a number I’d made him memorize.

It wasn’t a number I could program into his phone, and that puzzled him some, but he proved to me he had it in his head.

And he didn’t question why I asked him to recite me that number, over and over again. Or why I asked him to recite it one more time before I rolled myself off.

I made sure not to look back. If I didn’t return, I wanted Tory-boy to have the image of how much I loved him showing on my face forever.

nce inside, I used my hands to get myself over to a big table where both bosses were sitting, each one in between two of his own men. The empty space across from them was for me; they knew I wouldn’t need a chair.

“You each got a note from me,” I said, polite but not nervous; it was too late for that. “And by now, you know you each got the same note. I’m not playing one side against the other, and I never would. But I know you’ve got at least one problem you share. A new problem. And I’m the man who could make that problem go away.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Lansdale asked. There was nothing hiding underneath his voice; he sounded like a man asking a reasonable question. Which, considering the circumstances, it was.

“For money,” I told him. Told them both, actually.

“How much money?” Judakowski asked, showing me the difference between the two bosses as clear as if he wrote it on a blackboard.

“That’s not important right now,” I told them both. “That’s because I don’t want to just solve this one problem for you. What I want is steady work, the kind of work either of you might need doing. Never for one against the other, though.”

“The kind of work that solves problems?”

“Yes, sir,” I said to Lansdale. I could see Judakowski nod out of the corner of my eye, but when he turned to me, his voice was hard.

“You didn’t come here for some friendly conversation.”

“No, I came because I can fix the problem you both have,” I said, letting a little iron into my own voice. “That problem is a motorcycle gang. They call themselves MM-13, which is a name nobody ever heard of. So it’s probably not any kind of national club, just a bunch of men using the motorcycles as cover. My best guess is that the ‘M’ stands for ‘money.’ And the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, that’s an ‘M’ as well. Money-Money-Money—that about sums them up.

“Now, I may be speculating on that, but I’m sure of this: they’re cooking up crank in that old hangar, and it’s cutting into your business. Both your businesses. Meth is cheap to make. So they can sell it cheap, and still turn a fine profit.

“That’s why that gang keeps adding reinforcements. They know, sooner or later, you’ve got to come for them. Neither of you is the kind of man who lets someone take anything away from you.”

“There’s somewhere around forty of them there already,” Judakowski said. I could hear the tiny trickle of interest as it seeped into his voice. “Plenty of military stuff, too.”

Lansdale didn’t ask him where he got that information. But he didn’t argue with it, either.

My turn: “Like I said, that’s the kind of problem I can fix.”

“How would you be doing that?” Lansdale asked. His voice was as polite as mine. Respectful, even.

“I can make it disappear.”

“The man asked you how,” Judakowski said. Now his tone was back to where it had started. But it wasn’t me he was playing top-dog games with; it was Lansdale.

I sat there for a few seconds, deciding. Then I told them: “I can blow it up. The whole hangar, with all of them inside.”

“What’re you gonna do, wheel yourself up to the front door and toss in a grenade?” Judakowski said, not even pretending respect.

“Even a grenade wouldn’t blow that whole thing up,” Lansdale put in, as if Judakowski’s crack had been an honest question. “You’d need dynamite, something like that. So how would you get that much explosive inside their place?”

“You know that big empty barn about a mile or so south of here? That farm that got foreclosed on about a year ago?”

They both nodded.

“If you take me out there, I’ll show you.”

“Planting dynamite in some empty barn—”

“I don’t think that’s what this man wants to show us,” Lansdale said.

“Count me out,” Judakowski said. “I got better things to do than wheel some crip around to watch a show.”

“No, you don’t,” I told him.

“You know who you’re talking to?” one of Judakowski’s men said to me. He was a big guy with eyes squeezed tiny from all their surrounding flesh.

One of Lansdale’s men—I later learned his name was Eugene—slid his right hand into the pocket of his jacket, like he was feeling around for his cigarettes.

“It doesn’t matter who I’m talking to,” I said to the whole table. “I can’t have one of you thinking I work for the other one—I know how that story would end. So either you both agree to let me show you what I can do at the barn, or everybody’s story ends that same way.”

“Now you’re gonna blow this whole place up?” Judakowski kind of sneer-laughed.

“See for yourself,” I said. Then I pulled up the right armrest on my chair.

Lansdale moved his head an inch or so. The man to his right got up and walked over to where I was sitting.

“It’s … it’s packed with dynamite, boss.”

Before anyone could say anything, I closed the armrest. Then I said, “The other side’s packed just as deep. Enough explosive to send this whole place into orbit.”