Donnybrook: A Novel (7 page)

Pushing his hand over stubbled, military-kept hair, Whalen muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

Thurman had more. “Most likely it’s a male and female.”

A hint of hope brightened Whalen’s walnut eyes, and he asked, “Why you say that?”

“Two sets of footprints match both scenes. Size thirteen boot and size six. Same imprints was found on Eldon’s kitchen tile. Had a soil match from Amsterdam. Also, bruises on Eldon’s face are consistent with being beat by a big-ass set of knuckles. No female’d have those mitts wearing a size six.”

“Small-framed woman.”

“That’s my logic. Plus, swab tests come back matching ejaculate from a female, unknown. And a male, Eldon. The dumb bastard was getting fucked when some gal decided to shoot him just before he wasted his glue.”

“Twisted bitch,” Whalen concluded.

Thurman shook his head. “Not your average holster chaser. How the interview with the Chinaman go?”

Whalen exhaled with disgust. “He’s clean. Eldon owed him for some bets is the reason he stopped at the pharmacy. He called it business. Regardless, Mr. Zhong got an alibi. Can’t touch that bastard. I visited the Leavenworth Tavern, Poe gave nothing. Stopped and talked to Flat and Beatle’s pal Ned. He ain’t spoke with them in a while. So he says.”

Thurman said, “Keep a tab on him. At least we’s pretty certain it’s a man and woman.”

Whalen leaned back, bent his corded arms behind his head. “It’s been well past a week since we got the call on the house fire, found Beatle and Flat. I can either wait for another fire or pray for a poached body. Or—”

Thurman cut in, sitting down on Whalen’s desk and leaning forward. “You thought about cruising back roads, checking abandoned houses in the county for squatting meth cooks?”

Whalen lowered his hands from behind his head, pushed himself up from his desk, reached for his hat, and said, “That’s a damn good idea.”

*   *   *

Fingers lined with gold-nugget rings and tipped by buffed nails laid two photos on the jade table that sat in a numb-gray basement. Slid them to the man on the other side.

The man sliding over the photos needed to find two people. His source told him that these people squatted in abandoned farm houses, cooked and sold meth. The man wanted to get his money back from a pharmacist who owed him an uncollected debt.

The manicured man’s voice was direct. He stared into the other man’s eyes, which sat like tadpoles behind thick glass. The other man picked up the photos. Took in the details of a man and woman. He wanted to know what had happened to the man’s face.

The manicured man told him that the man in the photo had had a chainsaw accident. Used to own a logging business. Now he was the best meth cook around the county. Went by the nickname of Chainsaw Angus.

The tadpole-eyed man smirked, slid the photos into the breast pocket of his white short-sleeved button up. He had on each inner forearm a tattoo that signified his tutelage in a faraway school. A monkey branded his right. A snake branded his left. Mr. Zhong, he knew, had the same tattoos under his sleeves.

The tadpole-eyed man asked Mr. Zhong where he needed to start looking for this Chainsaw Angus.

Mr. Zhong owned five Chinese restaurants in six counties. Had come straight off the boat from the Fukien province. Turned the small amount of family money he’d had into a small profit. Used his businesses as fronts for his illegal bookie operation. He’d never lost a dollar. Always collected what was owed. Eldon was still delinquent.

Mr. Zhong told the tadpole-eyed man that his sources had reported the female used to run with two brothers now dead. They’d frequented a place of drink called the Leavenworth Tavern.

The tadpole-eyed man tipped his bowl-shaped head of hair forward. Then back. Raw light from the ceiling caught his face, highlighted the putty-like scars from years of offensive training as a boy. The knuckles of each hand were flat as the wood and bamboo he’d conditioned them against years ago. His forearms and shins were the same. Years of bones being pounded. Nerve endings numbed. Conditioned into steel.

His name was Fu Xi. Named after one of China’s cultural heroes, the possible inventor of the eight trigrams for the
I Ching
, the Book of Changes. Mr. Zhong had brought Fu out of China. Now Mr. Zhong paid Fu to clean up his delinquent dilemmas when no other solution was plausible.

Fu slid his small frame from the red chair in which he’d sat. Stood with shirt tucked into pressed brown dress slacks. A leather belt around his waist. Slip-on loafers over his feet. He offered his free hand before Mr. Zhong left Fu’s basement chamber, a makeshift monastery where he’d taught secretly out in the wilds of Harrison County. They shook.

Mr. Zhong paused, then told Fu that when he arrived at the tavern, his sources told him he’d need to speak with a bartender by the name of Poe. That he was a man that knew more than he let on. He was not an ignorant man, though he pretended to be.

10

In the passing hours of daylight and dark, Liz and Ned lay unbathed. Three days of chemical sweat. Cotton-mouth kisses and sandpaper tongues taking turns within each other’s nether regions. Breaking for bumps of the man-made powder, chased with swigs of bourbon, bottles of Bud, cans of Natural Light.

They crashed in the cold, air-conditioned interior of Ned’s tin shack. Cardboard blinds blocked light from the southern Indiana heat outside. Condensate beaded on the glass. Their chalky outlines lay intertwined like albino anacondas nesting.

Wednesday evening, Ned and Liz scrubbed the dead skin of the three-day binge from their flesh. Packed the meth in Liz’s rucksack along with Angus’s .45. Hit the road to Orange County in Ned’s old Chevy. They purchased a sack of greasy burgers for the long ride. Washed them down with two black coffees. No AC. Windows rolled down. Clear blue daylight burning moisture from their eyes, turning their skin sticky once again.

Liz told Ned, “Sure could use a bump.”

Ned gritted, “Gotta wait, unload some of it.”

“Just a bump.”

“Bit—” Ned stopped his words short. “We gotta wait.”

Liz paused. Asked herself, This toothless fuck was about to call her a bitch? The dope was hers. He’d be bone on pavement he didn’t watch it. She asked, “Where you say we’s going?”

“The sticks down in Orange County. Guy I know named Pete, he and his brother Lang run a tavern down there. Pete’s supposed to have set us up a deal ’fore we hit the ’Brook.”

Liz questioned, “Brook?”

Ned said, “Donnybrook.”

“Who the shit’s he?”

“Not a he, a fight. Bare-knuckle free-for-all. Us fighters love our rush in any form ’fore we meet in the ring.”

“Fighters? We selling crank to buncha’ scrappers?”

“Pretty much the idea. There’s a big crowd. Lot of betting goes on. Food. Booze. Good place to swonder your crank. It’s like a Dead concert with fists.”

Liz’s eyes blew up like large pelts of hail. “How much we gonna make?”

“Handful of cash. Enough crank left over to drop out for a week or better after. That was the deal. Take out your old man. Help you sell this dope for half the split, samplings of your sours and the crank.”

Liz shook her head, said, “He wasn’t my old man. He was my goddamn crazy-as-shit brother. Used to be a fighter.”

“No shit, well, he’s home to fly larvae now. What was his name?”

“Angus, Chainsaw Angus.”

Ned swelled up, offered his jack-o’-lantern smile. “Son of a bitch, I took out a legend.”

*   *   *

Gravel had dragged Angus to the room where he and Liz had slept. Where walls of pasted vinyl curled and peeled. Wooden windowsills were weathered and musted, and with its rings of syrupy stains, the ceiling looked as if someone’d held a tobacco spitting contest. Twice a day Gravel brought a tin bucket of water, scrubbed the frayed mess of unstitched brawn with lye soap. Patted the moisture and rusty fluid from it. Dressed the wound with patches of linen cut from his sister’s and mother’s dresses that hung from a closet in the upstairs. When Angus had come around, the beast of a young man bared a palm into his chest. Stuttered his words of, “Y-you st-stay.”

To wield the pain, Angus told the malignant shape of man to find the clear orange prescription bottle that lay in his ruck of clothing. And he had. Removing the lid, Angus had chased Vicodin with water, keeping the pain at bay.

Gravel had collected rabbits from his traps and sling-shot squirrel from trees for food. Gutted the insides, skinned them of fur and cleaned the meat, then fired the game along with potatoes for nourishment, fed Angus and himself along with roots he’d collected and dried during the previous spring, placed in a kettle of water, heated over embers and boiled the yellow to release its healing elements. He’d brought Angus back to a world where time was simple. Not many words were exchanged as food was chewed and eyes wandered about and the two men felt each other out. Angus would say, “Ain’t half bad.”

And as days passed Gravel felt some form of symbolism take shape. As though he’d lived with the purpose of the land and the land alone, but now that he had the land and another form to care for other than himself, he’d a much larger role in his daily existence.

Now, Angus sat shirtless in the disheveled kitchen, staring out the screen door. His strength was where it needed to be. The Vicodin keeping his pain at bay. One thought lingered, like the names engraved in roman script on his pallid body.
GOTHIC IRIS
,
RAZORED CLINT
, and
ALI SQUIRES
lined his forty-year-old pecs.
MARVIN
,
ISRAEL
, and
JUNIS
inked into his right shoulder. Names of fallen men. That thought was, Liz would go down.

A cigarette dangled from his lip. Smoke waved up into his nose, irritated his eyes. Problem was, Angus had no idea where Liz was.

He watched evening daylight burn through the mesh. A figure came from the distance up by the barn. This Gravel was some kind of ugly with his dress, boots, and split-tongue speech, but he’d nursed Angus’s old roadkill ass back to the living.

Angus thought about blood being specked. Blotted onto a faded and curled surface. Thought about sharp edges. Flat knuckles. Openings 9 mm in size exhausting a person’s insides.

He pulled on the Pall Mall. Exhaled. Asked himself, where would that nappy-headed bitch go with this sour-mouthed Ned? Man who had pulled the trigger. Had a piss-poor aim.

Gravel’s shape was coming nearer and nearer, he looked to have supper in his one hand and something pointed in the other.

Angus closed his eyes. Leaned his head back. Anger jackhammered his thoughts. Creating a pain so deep his face went numb. He’d survived their murder plot. Had to get his dope back. Implement what Liz and Ned had failed to achieve—kill him.

The Vicodin churned his stomach. He needed solid food. Took a final pull on the smoke. Pushed himself to his feet. Needed some fresh air. His eyes steadied on the table, focused on the hard pack of red Pall Malls that lay open next to his car keys. A break of light ignited from within, seeded his mind with where Liz’d gone several nights back before his murder. He said, “Leavenworth Tavern.”

Going into the back room where he’d slept, he pulled a shirt over his body, his wound dressed and scabbing beneath the ragged cotton. Grabbing his ruck, he listened to the door unbar, then the spring slam it into the jamb. He’d need to find some 9-mm shells. Then go talk to someone about a bitch in heat running with a mutt named Ned. Find them. Get his shit back. Leave them worse than they had left him. Place ’em deep into the earth.

In the kitchen, Gravel stood over the sink, turned with a mess of blood and a skinner in his hand. He’d a look of horrified surprise. “Wh-wh-what are y-you … do-do-doin’?”

“Movin’ on.”

Angus kneeled down, reached beneath the slab of kitchen table with his right. Grabbed for the 9-mm Taruas he’d duct-taped beneath it for an emergency. He ripped it from the table. Next thing he heard was the clank of steel hitting the sink and a shriek, “N-no!” Felt a hand grip and tug at his shoulder. “Y-you c-can’t leave.”

Angus eyed Gravel, whose retinas swelled and shrank with confused hurt, and told him, “Fuck I can’t.” He backed away from him.

Gravel thought of his father, thought of the bond he’d destroyed, something Gravel was building again after all of these years, nursing and caring for this soul so similar to him, his damaged appearance, then he stared at the pistol and said, “No … g-guns. H-hate … guns.” And he came at Angus, reached for the 9 mm in his hand, the big wad of a human squeezed Angus’s hand and the two men struggled for control of the gun. Angus’s finger fell into place, he locked his jaws, strained and pressed the barrel into Gravel’s gut, and without a second thought he tugged the trigger more than once.

Brass bounced hot. Blood pounded even hotter from Gravel’s gut. He fell backward into the counter. Glancing down at the scatter of pulp and back at the pearl-eyed man, shocked and betrayed by this person he’d catered for like his own kin. A piercing whine of confusion belched from his mouth. Head twisting unorthodox from side to side, he slid down the cabinet, onto the exact spot he’d found Angus. Where Gravel’s father had stood that day his family attained to no more.

Angus pushed the hot gun down into his waistband. Grabbed his keys and pack of smokes off the table. Turned to Gravel, who patted at the heat flooding from his stomach, a lost look in his eyes. But Angus did not concede his actions of betrayal. He only said, “There’s a gamble to everything one does in this life. Always a winner and a loser. Not sure of my role, but I know yours.”

Out the screen door and into the oncoming evening Angus went. Down the creek-rock steps to his Pinto. The engine fired. He put it into reverse. Backed up. Put it into drive. Took off down the road like a vampire anticipating nightfall, muttering, “Coming to get you, bitch.”

*   *   *

Pete waited with long arms vining from a faded, military-green Buckmasters T-shirt. Rested them on the nicked hardwood of Cur’s Watering Hole, a tavern he and his brother owned. Sold some beer and some whiskey. Dealt meth and marijuana to customers. Hosted bare-knuckle fights in a dirt pit out back. Ran side bets and a cover charge. And every August, along with their cousin Poe, directed new onlookers and fighters through Harrison and Orange County to Bellmont McGill’s Donnybrook.