Holy Death (2 page)

“Welcome home, Billy Lafitte.” He raised his mug in a mock toast.

Melissa took it as a sign to come fill him up. And this time, her odor was less sweat and more Funyuns. He passed her the key to his Caddy and said, “Ready when you are.” She grinned and told him she could leave right now if she wanted, just let her get her purse. DeVaughn was feeling good. As long as his boys were watching over Lafitte’s truck, he might as well have some Funyuns tonight with this waitress’s big ol’ ass, knocking chairs out of her way as she walked back to the counter.

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W
hen the pain came, it was the hand of Death himself squeezing Lafitte’s left shoulder, firing up along his neck, down his arm, and across his chest. Took his breath away so bad he had to pull the truck onto the side of Highway 49. Pain had been chasing him a week now, at first only when he was loading or unloading the truck. Then whenever he walked. And now any old time.

That’s what Death had planned for him, right? Let him reach this close to home and then kill him before he got there? Fuck you, Death, you motherfucker. Fuck you.

It gave him another squeeze.

Truth was, Lafitte didn’t have a sane reason to go home anymore. Maybe he did back when they had first trapped him, calling him out of hiding from Steel God’s biker gang. But then he ended up murdering four people—flat-out murder, not “line of duty” shit like when he’d been a cop. Then he went to prison. All sorts of prices on his head. Someone tried to collect in the middle of a prison riot, blizzard, and power outage all in one. Laffite watched his own son die—only eight years old, visiting with his grandmother, both of them trapped in the riot. He had carried Ham’s body out into the snow, climbed over the fence with the boy over his shoulder. After all that, they had tazed Lafitte, then shot him, but Lafitte did what he had to do to live—he dove into the nearest snowbank and dug his ass as far away as he could. No one saw him do it, and the wind erased all traces before they could figure it out. Besides, who the fuck was going to come after him?

Most days now, whenever he woke, be it morning, night, didn’t matter anymore, he remembered what it felt like having a gunshot wound and electric shivers while buried in snow, and he wondered why he bothered to fight so hard for his life after all. Jesus, if this was all he had left, if this was all he had to live for...what was “this” anyway?

Except for the letters he had received in prison. They pointed him south. Home.

Billy Lafitte had been a delivery driver for Muscle Max for about four months. Muscle Max sold protein drinks and vitamins and weightlifting equipment and supplies from their base in Peoria, Illinois to franchises throughout most of the Midwest, and even some decent chain grocery stores. He had started at the warehouse, picking up the supplies, driving them to the customers, unloading them, collecting signatures on the invoices. Then he would drive back to Peoria to wait for the next trip.

But he was delivering more than protein drinks and weights and whatnot. There was something else, too. Something that had made Muscle Max a real player a lot faster than its bullshit supplements ever would. Freshly squeezed juice—anabolic steroids, HGH, testosterone. All colors and flavors, ha ha ha.

Can you see it?

Can you see a physically drained and starved Lafitte emerging from six weeks in the frozen woods, GSW barely healed, in stolen clothes paying for a gym membership with a stolen credit card so he could build up some strength?

Can you see Lafitte looking for some sort of job in the paper he’d found left behind at Taco Bell? Can you see him taking handyman jobs for cash until he had enough to buy a beater? Can you see him, week by week, buying better clothes, getting his hair cut, getting a shave from a barbershop with a striped pole and charged twelve bucks?

Can you see him applying for the Muscle Max job after hearing all the rumors around the gym about its real money makers?

What you can see, we know goddamned well, is Lafitte getting back on the juice big time, taking a pay cut to partake, so he could pump his body back in tip top shape faster than if he kept on trying good old-fashioned rest and rehab. The bosses didn’t give a shit. Saved them some money, and most of their other drivers had the same deal. It was all good.

Until his heart started trying to murder him.

He held his arms tight, shaking, and let out a wail. His jaw was killing him, too, and he stretched his mouth wide. Hoped it would subside before a state trooper got curious and pulled in behind the truck. He needed to keep driving, make it to a rest area or big parking lot where he could get a little sleep. The pain always went away when he slept. The pills helped, too. Turned out guys who trafficked roids also had their hands on some sweet pain meds, but they worked less and less with each handful. Lafitte wondered if they could get him some nitro, maybe. Shouldn’t be hard to find, especially not in America’s Deep-Fryer, Mississippi, but he couldn’t wander into a drug store and flat-out ask, so there.

To take his mind off the aching, he pulled back onto the road and dialed his boss, who should probably be asleep. Lafitte would leave a voicemail, no biggie. Surprised the hell out of him when the man answered on the second ring. “The fuck are you? I’m this close to calling the cops.”

“It’s okay. I’ll leave the truck somewhere for you. Give me two more days.”

“I didn’t give you any fucking days. You stole my goddamned truck.”

Another wave of pain. He clenched his teeth. “If I was really stealing your truck, I wouldn’t be calling you. I had something to take care of.”

“Take your own fucking car. Jesus, I can’t afford this.”

“Two days. I’ll be back on the third, or I’ll make sure the truck gets back to you. Something I need to take care of.”

Quiet on the other end. His boss, a mid-level guy at the warehouse who probably made more off the roids than his salary, was pretty pumped himself, but in a glossier way. His was stage-quality muscles. Lafitte couldn’t tell if the man had ever even been in a good fight. A real one.

Finally, the boss said, “Who the fuck are you, anyway? I thought I could trust you.”

Made Lafitte grin. Lafitte had given him at least three fake names. The boss had never asked for ID. “I don’t know what gave you that idea.”

“Just...just...give the truck back and I’ll keep the law out of it. Okay? I mean, you’re so fucking fired, but let’s keep it civil.”

“I get it. I really do.” Lafitte hadn’t really planned on delivering the stash currently squirreled away in the back. It was a
severance package
, yeah. “I’m sorry about this. You’ve been a good boss, and it’s been a good job. But I’m not a good job type of guy.”

He hung up and chucked the phone out the window onto the highway. The only reason he’d called the man was to hold off on the cops—the boss wouldn’t want them poking around the truck anyway, and Lafitte wasn’t in the mood to steal another car right now. Two more days was really all he wanted, so he could do what he had to do, what her letters had asked him to do.

Ginny. The road sign ahead looked like it said “Ginny.” His ex-wife’s name. Last he had heard, she was in a facility in Mobile, Alabama, locked inside her own head. She could still talk, but only a little, still walk, still enjoy the breeze on her face and her toes when she sat outside, but otherwise she was in a mental bunker of her own design, cut off from the outside world. But the road sign didn’t say “Ginny.” It said “Gulfport.” He wasn’t far now from the crossroads where I-10 ran east-west. Lafitte needed to go east. Mobile was another two hours. But not tonight. Not with this sort of pain. He needed his sleeping bag, his Oxy, his locked truck. As he pulled into the glow of the streetlamps at the cloverleaf exit, he had to blink and blink again. Last he’d seen his hometown, it was only a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina. It had been a corpse. It had been knocked back to the goddamned Stone Age. But look at this.
Look
at it! Must be three, four times as much stuff here as there had been before. It was massive—giant shopping center on the left, another on the right, a line of fast food and fast casual joints, signs still blazing.

Gulfport had always been a decent-sized Coast town, but nothing like New Orleans to the west or Mobile to the east. The casinos had started to change the landscape back in the nineties. Lafitte had been sure things would get quieter after a fucking apocalyptic hurricane. Who would want to live through that shit again, right? But he was dead wrong. Not only were they up for another round, but they’d found a whole bunch of idiots willing to move here and take their chances, too. Gambling could do that to people. First it was their paychecks, and before long it was their lives.

Even this early in the morning, hours before dawn, it was still busier than expected, as if the town never slept. The bigger the influence of the casinos, the lesser the pull of the fishing industry, old-fashioned neighborhoods and a good eight hours sleep. Lafitte looked at the dashboard clock. Maybe he could get four. Maybe he could take an extra pill and get six, but the longer he stayed in one place, the better chance someone would notice him. This whole trip was
supposed
to be about not being noticed, but based on tonight’s goddamned shit message, he’d already blown it. Somebody had been watching, waiting. Somebody who wanted him so bad they weren’t willing to call the cops. If whoever it was tried to take him alone, or even with a handful of guys, Lafitte would kill them all right quick.

Still, he wasn’t the same man he was in prison. He was weaker. He was in pain. He could barely keep his eyes open. So the Wal Mart Supercenter, open twenty-four hours and bright as shit, was perfect. There were already a few semis scattered there. His truck wouldn’t stand out. He pulled in after sitting through a couple of cycles of the red-yellow-green, pretty sure he fell asleep during the first green but with no one behind him to honk. The florescent brightness helped him stay awake so he could circle until he found a spot two spaces away from an employee’s truck and nose to nose with some college student’s bland Corolla.

He turned off the engine and sat still for a moment, searching for leftover pain from the last wave. It was getting better. He didn’t know when it would come back. He never did anymore. It was coming more often, every couple of days on its own, or sooner when he forced it—loading and unloading the truck, lifting weights, jacking off. He smiled. He could only guess what caused it, didn’t have time to find out.. It had been months since he’d been online. He hadn’t bothered to read any newspapers, either.

A few more deep breaths, a look around to see if anyone was paying him any attention, but would he really be able to tell? He’d stopped checking his tail barely ten minutes after leaving the truck stop in Hattiesburg, and he knew damned well someone had him on radar there. The pain, the sleep deprivation, the anxiety, shit, don’t expect the man to concentrate much.

He hopped out and the humidity nearly dropped him. But there was a breeze, too, and the smell of salt water on the air was what really got to him. How many years had it been? Maybe he would drive on down to the beach in the morning to get a glimpse of the Gulf again. It wasn’t the fastest way, but there were some things that needed to be done. He knew he might not get a chance to see it again after this.

Lafitte walked around to the back of the truck, slid the door up, hopped inside and dropped the door again. The lock clicked. No one would be getting inside unless they had badass bolt cutters or a welding iron. It was safe. There weren’t too many places Lafitte felt safe anymore, so his truck had given him plenty of good sleeps, regardless of the heat, the dark, and the smell of diesel. The heat hadn’t mattered when he was driving around the Midwest in the cold, but once the temps rose, he had rigged a car battery to run a handful of little fans. He slept on a puffy sleeping bag he’d scored through a garage sale. Not as nice as the prison mattress, but he slept much more soundly on it. The mound of fake boxes at his head hid a couple of pistols, his pain pills, his juice, and some cash. They also hid the trash can lid covering the hole he’d cut out on the bottom of the truck. From the bottom, any snoopers would see a reinforced square of plywood. It was barely attached, easy to kick off. His escape plan. He hadn’t had to use it so far.

He turned on his flashlight and crawled across the floor to his makeshift bed. Flicked on the fans, cooled the sweat soaking into his clothes. He eased onto his side across the sour-smelling sleeping bag and bunched up one corner as a pillow as the pain started to throb in his jaw and arm again. So he reached into the nearest box, grabbed a bottle of painkillers and half a bottle of warm water, and swallowed five of them. Then he drank the rest of the water, knowing he needed it, but goddamn if the warm stuff didn’t turn his stomach.

Tomorrow. One more day of driving and it would all be over by sundown. He yawned, tried to ease the pain by breathing through his nose, all the while praying for some peace. At the very least, right? Jesus, you can hate the fuck out of me if you want, but if I ask for peace, you still have to give me a little, right? Wasn’t that part of the deal?

No answer. It was okay. There was never an answer. He just talked to the Lord to make himself feel better these days. They understood each other—no one had come to help Jesus off the cross either. Wasn’t a damned thing to it.

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W
hen Melissa woke up, she almost thought it was still part of a dream. She was on her stomach, cheek on a fluffy pillow, Egyptian cotton sheets on her skin. The chill of the A/C and the warmth of the bed and the slight but pleasant headache, the memories of the night before, made her grin and lift her feet until the sheets slid down her calves. She smelled coffee, but not the burnt heaviness of diner joe. It was clean and earthy. The TV was off, the shower running.

It was coming back to her. Melissa turned towards the windows, a long row of them, showing her only a deep cloudless morning sky. Her hair was halfway down her back, and she liked the way it felt, not all bound up for work. The alarm clock on the bedside table said it was close to noon. The push button phone beside it reminded her this wasn’t DeVaughn’s actual bedroom. This was a hotel suite. And from the look of everything, a really nice one.