Bones Omnibus (5 page)

For his part, Bones continued to hunt his targets one at a time, unfazed by the mayhem. He chose at random, picking off whichever ones were close or slow. When a victim put up a fight, the shepherd upped his game, unleashing a fury that was more akin to a rabid or feral dog than one trained by law enforcement personnel. But this was just another aspect of his training, something drilled into him by his first master, Lionel Oudin, so many years ago. He was relentless in his attack and didn’t stop until the threat was nullified.

Two of the smarter men found their way to the two pickup trucks that had pulled the bike trailers. But once they were inside, any brains they had slipped away as the booze and adrenaline blasting through their bodies gave the drivers a belief in their own god-like faculties. Rather than head away, both came to the conclusion that running down the dog was the answer. Both aimed their vehicles for the shepherd, stepped on the gas, and accidentally mowed down a handful of their comrades as they took single-minded aim at their furry enemy.

But as the two trucks closed in on Bones from different angles, they found each other first, with horrific results. The first truck, going sixty miles per hour, slammed into the second one, which was bouncing across the field at a mere forty-five mph. The impact rolled the slower truck over, directly onto one of the bonfires.

When the truck burst into flames a few seconds later, exploding a few seconds after that, the remaining BCRA members decided they’d had enough and fled the scene. But even then, the only one who managed to haul a motorcycle off one of the trailers smashed headfirst into a ninety-foot-high bitternut hickory tree a moment later, shattering his spine and snapping his neck.

He, a teen named Spider, would be the last to die.

The time between Monster’s death and Spider’s was only six and a half minutes. In that time, Bones would kill eleven men. The various stray bullets, vehicular assaults, and ensuing fires would kill another six while wounding more than twice that. Only a handful escaped unscathed.

Those who lived to tell the tale would never come to a consensus as to what happened that night. Most believed they’d either fallen victim to a rival railroad gang, likely the FTRA (even though they didn’t typically operate that far east), a double-cross from Golen’s group (despite the fellow having paid them their money and left), or retribution from some heretofore unknown associate of Ferris Aaron or the Cuno family (what the majority felt made the most sense).

To a man, however, none believed the responsibility rested on the shoulders of a single canine. When the dog was brought up in conversation, most denied having even seen it. The same men suggested those who suffered bullet wounds must have received them from other shooters, not their own comrades. In addition, they believed those in their own party with guns probably took down “at least a couple dozen” of the enemy.

It was eventually decided that their enemy was the one who fled, not them. When the BCRA members broke for the trees, it was only for cover. When they immediately circled back to return fire, the “chicken-shit ambushers” had already hightailed it away. No thorough police report or multi-part piece of investigative journalism into the bizarre incident that decimated their ranks could convince them otherwise.

It took Bones almost five minutes to locate Bitch after the last gang member had fled. The combined smells of blood, burning flesh, and gunpowder had cut into the shepherd’s remarkable scenting ability. But then, there she was.

The Yorkie’s body was on its side about two feet from Monster’s corpse, a bullet drilled clean through her torso, having pierced her tiny heart. Bones gave her face a couple of licks, but there was no doubt that she was dead. The German shepherd nuzzled her open mouth with his nose for a moment before settling down next to her body, placing his head on his paws, his eyes downcast and hollow.

As the fires burned down and the night grew cold, Bones remained alongside the terrier for hours, alert for signs of predators. He never closed his eyes.

When morning came, a heavy mist descended on the meadow, giving the blood-soaked field a gauzy, ethereal appearance.

When the nearby railroad tracks began to quake with the coming of the day’s first train, Bones slowly clambered to his feet. He leaned his snout back down to Bitch’s corpse, her fur still warm from his own body keeping the Yorkie warm throughout the night. He inhaled her scent one last time and headed away.

As the train came into view, the shepherd trotted up to the tracks. He jogged alongside the train as he’d seen Bitch do. When the open door of a freight car passed, he hopped in. The car was colder than either he’d encountered the day before. He had to huddle in the corner farthest from the open door to keep warm.

It was a long ride back to civilization, the train’s final destination of Akron several hours and almost two hundred miles away. But the cold and the scent of the dead Yorkie troubled Bones’s attempts at sleep, keeping him awake almost the entire way.

D
evaris couldn’t tell if the smell was something blowing in off the East River or boiling up from the sewers. As if the acrid stench wasn’t bad enough on its own, the street lamps, yellowed by oxidation, cast the block in a dog’s breakfast of bilious colors: toxic green, blood-piss orange, and the congealed gray of yesterday’s oatmeal.

East Harlem near Jefferson Park was its own particular brand of hell on a midsummer’s night. Too hot for anyone to get comfortable doing much more than fucking in a shower or getting high in a meat locker.

Devaris had already done the latter while double-shifting at Triple A the past sixteen hours. He was looking forward to doing the former once he found out if Ro was home. And if she wasn’t, wasn’t it about time he knocked on that girl Sheila’s door over in Building 2?

He smiled as he turned the corner on 111
^th
and 2
^nd
. It may have been two o’clock in the morning, but Devaris Clark wasn’t afraid of getting jacked. Everyone knew he was out of the game. If they didn’t, he knew all the right scary names to drop.

Besides, he knew he didn’t look like he was worth the trouble. A skinny guy with an empty backpack slung over one shoulder and a single Parliament jammed behind his right ear probably wasn’t rolling in it.

It didn’t hurt that he smelled like blood and dead animal flesh. Gloves, aprons, helmets, boots, and goon suits kept the blood off his T-shirt and jeans, but the smell of the Liberty Avenue slaughterhouse where he worked got in everywhere. It was under his fingernails, hanging in his eyelashes, and sweating out his balls. He’d seen its effect on animals here and there. A cat giving him a long cold look as if he’d smoked every other pussy in its litter before skinning its mother. The crows that would call to other crows to get a look-see. The dogs that went crazy, their eyes sparkling and their lips smacking like they wanted a taste.

But they all gave him room. How were they to know he wasn’t willing to add a couple more victims to those three hundred hogs he’d killed that day?

“Heeey, you ready?” cried a voice from across the street.

Devaris looked over and saw a girl in booty shorts dancing down the steps to a waiting car, two girlfriends hanging out the window.

Damn, where were
they
going
?

He stared at the girl’s thighs where they met the straining-at-the-seams shorts. Half an hour from now, she’d be bouncing that thing over some brother at a club that wouldn’t be him. He’d have to settle for the girl across the hall who’d give it up for little more than the time of day.

But one day things would be better. One day that better come soon.

He popped the ear buds into his ears and kept walking, turning up his iPod until the last word he made out from Booty Shorts was a reference to her pussy.

The Triborough Projects loomed large over in East Harlem. Also known as Neville Houses, they consisted of sixteen high-rise brick apartment buildings that wove across four square blocks. Designed by an architect who’d rookied in designing Texas prisons, Neville Houses was packed with thousands of people. There were families, old people, singles like Devaris, multi-generation immigrant clans, and then a handful of illegal squatters, the apartments rented out by Nigerian gang lords who filled up rooms with assholes fresh off the boat that they’d call INS on a day after they’d drained their last cent.

The buildings themselves were identical, but their relation to one another created a labyrinthine effect. Instead of being on a grid, the towers slanted at odd angles that, if seen from above, looked like some kind of modernist sculpture.

But if you were on the ground, or worse, had to live in there, you’d pack for minotaur any time you had to cross the threshold.

Devaris didn’t mind. It was better than his brother’s place in the South Bronx and a hell of a lot better than the streets, a shelter, or lockup. He’d had plenty of experience with all three.

That’s why, when he felt the eyes watching him from the side-view mirror of the one car parked facing west in a row legally obligated to face east, he did nothing to adjust his gait. Only prey runs. When the doors of the car swung open and the footsteps approached him from behind, he couldn’t help but tense, though he demanded his heart resist the temptation to accelerate.

“Hands out of your pockets!”

Devaris did as he was asked. The ear buds were popped out of his ears and a hand placed between his shoulder blades.

“Police. Turn out your pockets and put your hands on the wall.”

Devaris turned to find two men, a black guy and a Latino, standing behind him. The black one was Phil Leonhardt, a ten-year veteran who’d done all his time in Harlem’s notorious 22nd Precinct. The precinct had earned much of its reputation from two inglorious distinctions: one of the highest geographical concentrations of violent crime in the country, and then one of the highest rates of police officer suicide.

The Latino, Ramon Garza, was a five-year veteran who’d only recently transferred in from the 34
^th
Precinct in Washington Heights.

“You ain’t cops,” Devaris grunted.

Garza pulled out a badge. “Got anything else to say?”

Slow as you please, Devaris turned to face the nearest wall, spread his legs, and placed his palms against the bricks. This apparently wasn’t good enough for Garza, who kicked Devaris’s legs apart even further, almost knocking him down.

“You think we’ve got all night, asshole?” the detective asked.

“You think I’ve seen your calendar?”

“Wow, you hear this guy?” Garza asked Leonhardt, slipping on latex gloves. “I don’t know what you’re heard, kid, but this is New York. Cops here have a pretty low threshold for assholes.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Garza gruffly shoved Devaris’s head back down before beginning his pat-down. “Anything in here we’d be interested in?”

“Dunno. Depends what you’re into, I guess.”

Leonhardt stifled a laugh. Garza scowled.

“Now you’ve gotten on my bad side,” the Latino detective snapped.

“A real man would’ve hit me by now.”

Leonhardt jumped in. “We’re going to find you for something, kid. You won’t be laughing when they set your bail.”

“Yeah, right,” Devaris retorted. “For what?”

“Vagrancy, resisting…” Garza spat.

“
Possession
,” Leonhardt added evenly.

Devaris met the black cop’s gaze, scrunching his brow. “Bullshit. I ain’t holding.”

“Oh, you must have something,” said Garza. “My partner’s a one-man K9 unit. If he says you’re holding, you’re
holding
.”

From across the street, the men were being watched by two sets of eyes. As Garza searched Devaris’s clothes, Leonhardt tossed the backpack. The watchers could see, could practically
smell
Devaris’s sweat. Even better, the sweat was activating the blood the young man had rightly surmised was caked into every pore in his body. Within seconds, a new aroma joined the sick of the streets.

The watchers liked this.

Leonhardt turned the backpack inside out. He
knew
there was something in it, but its position was eluding him. As he searched the pockets yet again, he could see Devaris’s body relaxing in his peripheral vision even as the detective’s frustration grew.

When even Garza glanced over with concern, Leonhardt shrugged and handed the bag back. “It’s clean.”

Garza shot him a look of
are you sure?
Leonhardt glanced away. Garza slapped the backpack into Devaris’s hands.

“Tomorrow night, then?” Devaris asked.

“It’s a date, fucktard,” Garza flung back, spittle ejecting from his mouth.

Devaris smirked, threw the backpack over his shoulder, and walked on down the sidewalk.

As soon as he was out of sight, Garza turned to Leonhardt.

“You slipping?”

“Nah, he had something. I just couldn’t find it. It happens.”

Garza grunted and moved back towards their car. Once the two were inside, the Latino detective gunned the engine and peeled away, as if hoping to wake up half the neighborhood.

Devaris watched the cops leave but then took off his pack. Pulling the right strap close, he withdrew a thin joint from a tiny hole in the seams. He lit up with a smile. The first puff tasted even better than he’d imagined it would.

He headed onto the Neville Houses grounds, trampled grass and rocks demarcating the lot borders better than the sidewalks. Building 7 was directly ahead of him and inside, Ro’s ass just waiting to get fucked. He lowered the joint from his lips knowing that if he showed up with less than half, she’d pout, but he’d already gotten a buzz on.

It was going to be a lovely evening.

But that’s when he heard it. The sound of running feet echoed down the walls of the buildings, causing Devaris to look up. All the way on top, he could just barely make out the form of a little kid running along the roof, his shiny jacket illuminated by the moon.

“Oh,
shit
,” Devaris muttered before raising his voice. “Hey! HEY!! Get back from there! C’mon, man!”