Authors: James W. Hall
They were silent till they reached the end of Millie’s long drive. A dark night with a dreary drizzle just beginning, a hard north wind blowing the sprinkle into the car. Alongside her driveway the naked limbs of runty trees clattered like loose bones in a tin can.
The Carhartt jacket Millie had dug out of a closet full of her husband’s old clothes was already damp from the rain, and even with the collar turned up, the chilly breeze whispered across Thorn’s neck.
Millie stopped at the asphalt roadway beside a row of mailboxes and a wooden sign pointing the way to the Johanssons’ residence.
“Where to?”
“Dobbins Farm,” Thorn said.
“You’re not serious.”
“It’s time to turn the tables.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t do it, not with Emma. It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s just a farm, Mama. It’s not dangerous.”
“Drop Sugar and me out front.” Thorn bent her way and lowered his voice and said, “Then take Flynn to that medical center.”
“No hospital,” Flynn said. “No way.”
Thorn turned around and confronted Flynn’s steady gaze.
“It’s not about you, Flynn, not anymore. You’ve got to do this for Millie’s sake and Emma’s, and Ladarius and Eddie too. The longer you float around Pine Haven in your condition, the longer you’re putting everyone around you in danger. You don’t want that, do you? Risk innocent lives because you refuse help.”
Flynn was silent.
It was Thorn’s last hope. Play the guilt card, appeal to Flynn’s principled instincts. The car was quiet for several moments, then Emma said, “I don’t want you to die. Won’t you go to the hospital, please?”
And in the long silence that followed, it was settled.
Several miles down the road, Thorn leaned forward and spoke to Millie.
“We appreciate your help. I know this is going to be a problem for you later.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been quiet too long. Got lazy, lost my gumption.”
“Well, you’ve got good allies. Eddie, Ladarius, I’ve met a few. There’s probably lots more. They just need a nudge.”
“That Ladarius,” Sugar said. “He’s a solid man.”
“More than I knew,” Millie said. “It took some serious guts bringing you down the river, risking everything like that.”
“Always count on a brother,” Sugar said. “Little town like this, when I drove in, I said, now how do I go about locating my buddy Thorn? First thing I did, I looked for a beauty salon, because I know they’re the nerve center, got all the breaking news, but the only one I saw was closed, then I stumbled on Belmont Heights, and it was the smell in the air that did it.”
“What smell?” Emma said.
“You ever want to know what’s going on in a place, Emma, sniff out the best barbecue pit, stand around for five minutes, chat with the folks, I guarantee you’ll get a helping of high-grade gossip along with your ribs.”
“You’re a detective, aren’t you?” Emma said.
Sugarman hesitated, then swiveled his head to look at her.
“I used to be,” he said. “I used to be a darn good detective.”
“Did you quit?”
“I’m seriously considering it.”
“I’d love to be a detective,” she said. “That would be so awesome. Mama, you think I could do that when I grow up? A private eye.”
“I think you have no limits, Emma. Anything you put your mind to.”
Emma made a noise in her throat Thorn hadn’t heard in years. A shiver of eagerness, the deep churn of a child’s imagination fixing on a thrilling future.
As they drove, Sugar switched on the map light, fished inside his jacket, and handed Thorn two black-and-white photos.
“Tina’s grim reaper.” A euphemism for Emma’s benefit.
“You sure?”
“As close to positive as I can be. Details later. These are from St. Augustine, the burger place where I got our supper the other night. Worker there was done in the same manner as Tina.”
Thorn groaned, told Sugar he was sorry.
“You seen this man along the way?”
The first photo showed X-88 leaning out his car window at the burger joint. The second was later that night with X’s head ducked, trying without success to shield his face with his hand as he approached the rear exit of the burger joint.
“I have.”
“Thought it was likely, the circles you’ve been traveling in.”
“Cruz takes her daughter Pixie everywhere. This guy is Pixie’s boyfriend. Calls himself X-88.”
“What is that, a gang name? X-88.”
Thorn said he didn’t know. But he and Pixie called themselves hardline vegans or straight-edgers, maybe that was a gang, though not one he’d ever heard of.
“Straight-edgers,” Sugar said.
“Heard of them?”
“Indeed I have.”
“You get around.”
“Met one in the flesh a year or so back, called himself that, a straight-edger. Freaky guy named Wally, that time I was working the runaway case in Key West. Guy was an ex-con, it was something he’d picked up at Raiford. Bad as the Taliban. Guy thought he was holier than the pope. He could do no wrong, the world could do no right. Mean man, full of spite. Teetotaler to the tenth power.”
Emma tapped on Sugar’s back and asked what a teetotaler was and he explained the idea to her as they rolled through the night.
“Mama, are you one of those, a teetotaler?”
Millie glanced back at her.
“I am,” she said. “Have been for a long time. Don’t miss it a bit.”
“But you’re not full of spite, are you?”
Millie looked over at Thorn and they shared a smile.
“I try not to be. I try real hard.”
The drizzle had become a downpour, the wipers slapping double time to little effect. Everyone rolled up their windows and the smell of Flynn’s decaying flesh quickly became palpable.
“Cold front,” Millie said. “Dropping to the forties tonight.”
“Perfect weather for what I have in mind,” Thorn said.
“I’m not even going to ask,” said Sugar.
Millie said, “You sure you know what you’re doing, Thorn? These people are ruthless, they’ll do anything to keep the show running.”
“I heard about a certain trumpet flower,” he said. “Know anything about that?”
Millie frowned out the windshield and was silent.
“What I heard,” Thorn said, “this flower is the linchpin for Dobbins. Without that plant the farm wouldn’t survive. Did I get that right?”
“I believe you did.”
“So Pine Haven has no choice but to look the other way on Dobbins’s sideline business because without that part everything else collapses. His farm, eventually the town.”
“Sounds like we got two detectives riding with us, Emma.”
“What trumpet flower is he talking about, Mama?”
“I’ll explain later,” she said.
“You always say that.”
At the entrance to the Dobbins farm, Millie pulled onto the shoulder, the wipers slapping at the rain, ahead of them in the headlights the road was a foggy smear. Millie switched on the overhead lights and Thorn turned around in his seat to face Flynn.
“They’ll fix you up. You’ll be healthy in no time. I know you will.”
“Go on, I’m fine,” Flynn said. “Don’t worry about me. And don’t forget what I asked you to do.”
“I won’t forget.”
“This isn’t good-bye,” Flynn said. “So no big scenes, okay?”
Flynn extended his hand and Thorn clasped it in both of his. Flynn’s grip was firm and dry, squeezing hard, and in those few seconds his son managed to transmit a message as rich as any human hand Thorn had ever held.
“No worries, Dad. I’m getting my second wind. Just chill out. We’ll go to the hospital, I’ll beat this infection, then I’ll take on whatever’s next.”
He released his son’s hand. Blinking back the burn in his eyes, Thorn kept his face stiffly composed, a stoic habit from the schoolyard and fields of play, the athlete’s maxim: never rub an injury, admit to suffering. But it wasn’t easy. His eyes were blurred and the bottled-up sob obstructing his throat made breathing a sudden chore.
After he and Sugarman climbed out and Thorn retrieved the duffel, there were no more good-byes. They stood in the drenching rain beside the car. Flynn saluted, Emma waved, and Millie gave them a simple raised fist, then switched off the interior light and drove off into the rising wind.
THIRTY-FOUR
“NO APOLOGIES REQUIRED.”
“I was an idiot, persuading you to go,” Thorn said. “She tricked me and I fell for it big time.”
They were plunging ahead through the lashing rain.
“She tricked both of us. And Tina too. She’s good at it.”
The outdoor lights near the main barn lit their way down the gravel drive. Thorn was soaked. His jeans had doubled in weight, the coat was shedding water, but was a size too small and the driving rain leaked in and plastered his shirt to his skin. Shivering against the biting wind, he hugged the coat to himself while the two shotguns in the duffel thumped against his back.
“I talked to Sheffield a couple of times, yesterday, earlier today. Cruz came to see him two weeks ago, wanted to pick his brains about you, Thorn. Her real name is Obrero, by the way, husband was DEA, she was FBI for a while till her older daughter’s suicide. Girl was jacked up on heroin and coke, jumped off a building and after that Obrero fell apart, totally lost it.”
“So she’s tricking herself too. Putting her girl’s suicide on Cassandra.”
“The woman’s completely stripped her gears.”
As they trekked through the darkness and the pounding rain, Sugar filled him in about Cruz’s meeting with Sheffield, her questions about Thorn, clearly trying to find a way to manipulate him. And about Cruz enlisting Julia’s and Tina’s help by convincing them this was an antiterrorist operation.
Remembering that he was still carrying it, Thorn halted Sugarman with a hand on his arm and dug Tina’s cell phone from his pocket and handed it over.
“Where’d you find this?”
“Trunk of X-88’s car. Hidden near the wheel well. At the end she was trying to call you, Sugar. You and nine-one-one.”
Sugarman examined the phone, checked the recent calls, stood blankly for a moment, then snapped it shut and stared up at the pelting rain and the black heavens, his mouth yawning open as if he were unleashing a silent howl.
When he recovered, he wiped the rain from his face and tucked the phone in his pants pocket. Thorn clamped a consoling hand on his shoulder and Sugarman reached up and patted his hand. All forgiven, back on track.
They tramped on through the sludge, the rain bearing down harder.
“So is there a plan? You’re going to try to take out all these folks on your own? Dobbins, X-88, his girlfriend, Cruz?”
“No,” Thorn said. “Not that way.”
“I’m angry enough to disembowel a few people,” Sugar said. “What they did to Flynn and his friends and the thing with Tina. But you know I can’t do that. It’s not who I am. I’m not like you, Thorn.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“I want the guy who killed Tina. I’m taking him in, and making sure he goes away forever. I sure as hell don’t want him to die on the field of battle.”
“We have the same intention then.”
“Okay, then why aren’t we calling in the feds, the state police?”
“Dobbins is holding the whole damn town hostage. I don’t want to injure a lot of innocent folks by pulling Dobbins’s plug without a backup plan.”
“Spell it out for me.”
“We’re going to do what Flynn would do.”
“Yeah?”
“What they did in Marsh Fork and the other places. Creative approach. Nonviolent. Strategy was always the same. They changed the shape of the playing field, and that changed the way the game was played.”
“You mean blowing up that retention pond, the toxic sludge destroys the school. Government has to build a new one in a less dangerous place.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s an approach you and I can agree on. Try our best to see nobody gets hurt, make sure the bad guys lose, give the good guys a chance at a fresh start.”
“You got all this figured out, do you?”
“Are you kidding? When have I ever figured out anything? I’m just trusting the seat of my pants.”
There were a couple of drowsy Mexicans in blue jumpsuits working the midnight shift in the main barn. It appeared their job was some kind of sentry duty, marching up and down the main corridor watching the piglets sleep, watching other pigs, the insomniacs, pace back and forth inside their stalls, and a few others who were chewing listlessly on the cage bars.
Thorn and Sugarman stood dripping just inside the double doors and watched the two men parade up and down the aisle with the kind of stiff attention that suggested they’d been caught slacking on the job before and the punishment had been harsh and memorable.
“What now?”
“I need to show you how to work this thing.”
Thorn hauled the unloaded Atchisson out of the duffel. He inserted the twenty cartridges into the drum and smacked the drum into its slot and held the weapon out to Sugar.
“You said nonviolent.”
“Nobody gets shot, nobody dies,” Thorn said. “That’s our goal.”
“Are you playing with words?”
“No, I mean it. Nonviolent.”
“And by the way,” Sugarman said, “those bricks of cash Cruz used as a stage prop to incriminate Tina, that’s part of the drug stash her husband, Manny, left behind.”
The Mexican workers had spotted the two of them and were frozen in place. Those black, sleek shotguns had that kind of spellbinding power.
“No te preocupes,”
Thorn called out to them.
“Está seguro.”
They shouldn’t worry. They were safe.
But the men weren’t convinced by this strange Anglo and his African American partner. They raised their hands high and backed down the main corridor, and when they were close to the rear exit, they broke into a sprint.
Thorn led Sugar up the metal stairs and across the observation platform to the small concrete room where he’d been held captive.
As Thorn had guessed, the Mexican who Thorn had untied was back in his chair, still wearing that pair of white boxer shorts with red hearts printed on them. His mouth was again covered with duct tape, hands bound with rope, and now his face was swollen and there were gashes around both eyes.