Holy Death (11 page)

She opened the driver’s door of the Tiburon, and DeVaughn went around, got in the other side. Hot as balls in the car. Waves of heat coming out as he sat down. She cranked up and revved and revved again. Turned the a/c on full, a blast of hot making them both cough first before the cold hit. He expected her to shift into gear, but first Melissa grabbed his crotch all the sudden and said, “If we weren’t in a hurry, I would’ve let you fuck me back on the desk in their office.”

“You serious? Dead guys watching and shit?”

“I feel you getting hard. You know you would’ve.”

She was right. Off they went, too fast down a road lined with strip malls and fast food joints.

––––––––

A
n hour into the flight, the turbulence shook them hard. Rome closed his eyes, interlaced his fingers on his lap, and took a deep breath. “Airplane crash” was a more high-profile way to die than “hit a deer”. Maybe people seeing his name on the victims list would get the nation talking about Lafitte again. Since he’d escaped and been able to stay escaped, the news had gotten tired of talking about it, and had stopped mentioning the sightings altogether.

Rome could be a martyr for his cause.

Worth it.

But when he opened his eyes after a calm stretch, the flight attendant was already up again, picking up the drink orders where he had left off. Nothing fancy, water or orange juice. Conventional wisdom: if the flight attendant is up and about, then no worries. This was a small jet, a CRJ-700, a bit stuffy but still plenty of leg room on the exit row they had paid extra for. Only four “first class” seats, only three taken this flight, both by lucky upgraders instead of someone who paid full price. He could tell because even back here, he heard word-for-word a conversation between a loud old woman and the flight attendant, telling him all about her upgrading adventures, and him doing a shit job pretending to care. Even
she
could tell the “sky waiter” didn’t care, but that didn’t stop her.

Wyatt read a magazine. Rome couldn’t read on planes. Never could. Didn’t like movies on flights, either. He listened to the drone of the engines, cringed to the slight bounce of the fuselage on the air currents. If he didn’t concentrate on those things, it would all fall apart. His willpower was what held the plane together.

Another bitchslap of turbulence. Jesus! He had to grab hold of the headrest in front of him.

Wyatt said, “Hey, Frank, take a look,” and started to pass over an article—some shit about an over-fifty dating service—but then the article was in his face, pressed hard against it. Rome reached up and grabbed the edge, peeled it off. He was disoriented. The plane’s dinger went ding-dong four times, and the flight attendant said, “Excuse me,” to the old woman as he turned for the phone, but the jolt came fast and dropped him to the ground as they lurched to the right. Way far right. Goddamn almost turned upside-down. People falling out of seats, luggage slamming down from the overheads. Screams.

Engines screaming too.

Oxygen masks.

Something cold. Cold all over. Smoke.

Ears pop pop popping.

Disembodied voices from the speakers: “Keep calm! Keep fucking calm! I can’t—I can’t—shit! I can’t!”

Wyatt, grunting, white-knuckling the armrests.

Rome closed his eyes.

Still totally worth it.

––––––––

L
afitte took stock.

His elbow, a fucking bloody mess. Rubbed a patch of skin clean down to the bone. Ear was all skuzzed up from gravel, broken asphalt. Cheek, too.

But other than the blood, the burning, and the electric cattle prod his heart was turning into, he got out of it pretty fucking clean.

Behind a house in an old subdivision, all brick homes in one of three styles, propped against the back wall in a fenced yard with a colorful, plastic swing-set, an air conditioning unit, roaring, next to a water hose snaking through unmown grass. He turned it on a trickle, hoping no one inside would notice, and took a long drink before washing off the blood, dirt, and rocks.

DeVaughn had known where Ginny was, had he? Or had someone follow him there? Shit. DeVaughn knew too much. Shit. BGM and DeVaughn had been the ones writing in shit. Shit. Shit. How long had they known? By the time they wrote on the wall of the truck stop, it was too late. He’d already committed. Like a dog and bell, he came running. Shit. Is that all that was left in his skull? Shit? DeVaughn? Not Rome? Not the FBI?

“Shit.”

The smell of shit all over the yard. Dog shit. He looked around—no dog. But then he heard it, the barking, relentless, scrabbling at the back sliding-glass door. He couldn’t see it from his spot. Squeaking, squeaking, dog nails on glass. Relentless. Barking. But that was good, right? No one had come outside to see what the puppy was barking at. No one had yelled for it to shut up.

The electric cattle prod bit harder each time and took longer to fade away. He flexed the fingers on his left hand, even though he knew the pain wasn’t in his muscles. Not those muscles, anyway. He had been sitting on his heels, back up against the house, tense all over, and finally stuck his feet out in front of him, ass on the ground. Relief.

First thing, he needed a car. There had to be plenty in this neighborhood, in garages or parked on the curb. Okay. Actually, it wasn’t the first thing. The first thing was to stop hurting. He was holding his breath without thinking, trying to stop the pulsing, white-hot—

—Ginny, dead. Ginny, bruise around her neck. Smiling. Thanking him—

He must have dozed off. Not sure of the time. Maybe the sky was darker, or maybe it was his eyes still adjusting to the light. Someone out front on the street was revving their engine for fun. Then high-pitched brakes, then nothing. Was the dog still barking? The pain had subsided, mostly. He checked his elbow, his ear. Crusty blood, dry. Good.

He pushed himself off the ground, hand on top of the A/C unit until he was sure he could walk. There was a wooden backdoor, probably led to the garage. He crouched and duck-walked over to it, tried the knob. It was open. He pushed, but it only went another inch. Chain lock up top.

The energy leaked out of him and he ached all over again. But fuck that. He put his boot in the gap at the bottom, pressed hard with his knee, then shouldered the door, more pressure gradually, trying to keep the noise down. He was just under eye-level with the chain, watched as the screws holding the latch stripped out of the door frame. He stumbled inside the garage.

The door only opened forty-five degrees, blocked by plastic totes. Those and cardboard boxes and tools piled on wobbly steel shelves, five high, along with beat-to-shit and sun-faded toys the kids must’ve lost interest in. And, thankfully, a car, all packed into a narrow garage. He wondered if it meant there was someone home after all. But he couldn’t hear anything except the dog still barking, whining, scratching, now at the interior garage door. Lafitte closed the back door, too dark, no windows in here, but then left it open a crack, enough to help him see as he walked sideways between a wall of boxes and the passenger side.

The car was a shitpile, no doubt. Tan, four-doors, what was this thing? Saturn. Yeah, Saturn. In the back window, a community college parking permit from 2003, half-gone from someone trying to peel it off. Lafitte nearly got hung up on the tow hitch—seriously? This thing could tow shit?—scooting between the rear to the driver’s side. He opened the driver’s door, sat down. The scent of sickly-sweet perfume nauseated him. The inside light showed a bunch of papers, school handouts, and empty Skittles bags, and a little stuffed clown hanging off the rearview by its arms, right beside a high school parking permit, this year.

A kid’s car. A hand-me-down, or bought used. Whatever. He checked for spare keys tucked into the visors, but yeah, no one did that much anymore. He needed to hotwire it. So, okay, he did. He hot-wired it, the perfume making him hungry for some reason, and then he tapped the garage door opener, put the car into reverse, and waited until the door was up.

Outside were two pick-up trucks across the street on the curb, parked nose-to-nose, a handful of guys, three shirtless, standing around, and one sitting in the driver’s seat of a chopped-down GMC. They all stared at him.

Of course they did. Of course they would be there.

Then Lafitte looked at the house he’d been hiding behind. In the front window, a teenage girl, phone to her face, now shouting, easy to tell, and pointing. Then her face disappeared and a moment later she was outside, phone still to her face, shouting about, “He’s stealing my car! My car!” Right behind her was the dog, a shaggy mutt, barking and running in circles.

The guys in the street—what, late teens? Twenties?—moved towards the driveway. Lafitte hadn’t even cleared it yet. They blocked the path. One of the guys headed up to the passenger door and yanked the handle a few times. Pounded his palm on the window. “Stop the car, bitch! The cops are coming! Stop the car!”

Lafitte inched back some more. The guys blocking his way stepped forward and laid their hands on the trunk. The shirtless guy at the window was still slapping, still telling him, “We’re not playing! Stop the fucking car! You’re not taking her car!”

The girl had gotten brave enough to stand right behind the guy, phone still to her face.

Jesus. Couldn’t Lafitte have
one
stolen vehicle for the day without anyone fucking it up? If those idiots had just left his Muscle Max truck alone...

He let out a breath. Took his foot off the brake, punched the gas and the car jumped backwards. The guy on the side flinched away, same as two of the guys at the trunk, except one who got his feet tangled and went down and, goddamn it, Lafitte punched the gas again and must’ve gone right over the guy like a speedbump.

The teenage girl screamed and in the rearview was the whole fucking population of the street watching from their yards, with their phones up and recording, and these guys panicking over their friend under the back wheels.

Lafitte pulled the stick into drive and gunned it forward. The speedbump wasn’t as easy this time. First two tries, it was like he was slamming into a concrete block. The other guys, waving their hands wildly in front of him, shouting “Shit! Fuck! No! God, no! Stop it! Stop it!”

Then the third time, the resistance gave way and he bounced up and over the body, and nobody stood in his fucking way this time. Lafitte looked in the rearview and saw all of these people running towards whoever he had run over. He couldn’t see the body itself, surrounded now, but he did see the trail of red tire-tracks starting nice and wide and bright back at the house, fading as he put distance between himself and the scene.

He hoped the guy would be okay.

He needed another car. Something easier this time.

*

I
t took two more carjacks to get a clean one. Finally. Someone left a Mitsubishi running outside a Target because they’d left a dog inside. Yappy little shit. Schnauzer. He looked at the tag on its collar—Kaiser. Then the names Lynn and Chris and two phone numbers. It was probably chipped. They couldn’t track it, right? Lafitte thought of letting the little thing out into the parking lot, but fuck, he was lonely.

After seeing Ginny, hoping she’d found some peace at last, the next impulse drew him north again, back to Minnesota, where all the bad things had happened—but it wasn’t as strong a pulse as before. His head was beginning to clear and he was getting through the fog. He had unfinished business.

Kaiser the Schnauzer settled after a few minutes of growling. Lafitte laid his hand on the dog, now curled in the passenger seat. Stroked his fur. DeVaughn had engineered this shit somehow, so maybe Lafitte needed to see it through. He’d always have someone behind him—the FBI, Homeland Security, Rome, Ginny’s mom—but he couldn’t lay blame on them. They were doing what they had to do. DeVaughn could’ve left well enough. He should’ve.

No, it was Lafitte himself. His own internal radar couldn’t leave well enough alone. His whole life was a scab he kept picking, like walking into this trap—
you knew it was a fucking trap, you fucktard
—for the sheer hell of it, convinced no one could catch him now, not after prison. Not after watching his son die because of some stuck-up Christian bitch wanting to teach her grandson a lesson, and Colleen still ass-hurt over her dead husband, putting everyone at risk to make herself feel a little better.

So, fine, where’s this busted radar going to lead you now? Where’s this ego, leaking like a cracked nuke, going to steer us?

Well...there was this one guy. If Lafitte was going to square things with DeVaughn, he needed time to heal. And that meant squaring things with someone he hadn’t seen in almost twenty years.

*

L
afitte ditched the car in a parking lot in Biloxi with broken asphalt and long wild grass growing knee-high between the cracks. There had once been a K&B Drugstore, but it had turned into some other chain and then another and then it had become a store for ethnic hair products that wasn’t there anymore. A big grocery store had centered the place, also gone. He remembered it had been closed long before Katrina. The water mark from the storm was still high on the wall all these years later, next to the graffiti from the Coast Guard marking how many dead were found here—six. But down the line, business was alive if not well. A Chinese take-out, and two check cashing joints. Yep, two of them, not even fifty yards apart.

He found a leash for Kaiser in the backseat, and he even locked the Mitsubishi’s doors with the keys still inside, engine running. Maybe it would run out of gas before someone else came along and re-stole it, but Lafitte doubted it. Eight minutes, tops. The thief, whoever it turned out to be, was probably watching him right now, making sure it wasn’t a “cop drop” to lure a rat to the cheese, same as Lafitte coming close to getting his own neck snapped by DeVaughn. But it didn’t matter. At least one rat would still take the bait, God bless him. Today that car thief would get away with it for a while.