Suckerpunch: (2011) (32 page)

He grunted. “Well, I told you all this was gonna happen someday.”

I looked closer. It was hard to tell with my right eye swollen shut, but I think he was smiling.

“How many out there?”

“At least five or six cars’ worth.”

“So anywhere between six and sixty.”

A shot came from the gate; compared to Chops’s rifle it sounded like a cap gun but I ducked anyway.

“Don’t bother,” he said, “these guys can’t shoot for shit. The ones who come up from Central America—Tezo’s one of ‘em—are hard-core. Military training and cold as ice. But most of these idiots are Vegas born and raised or transplanted from LA.” He fired three shots. “I just hit your truck. Sorry. Look at them out there, holding their firearms sideways like they’re in a rap video. Is Tezo down there?”

“Yeah. Look for a swollen head.”

“Roger that. Hey, about the Tezo thing. I’m glad you made it out. How about your friend?”

Goddamn crazy people. “He’s okay.”

“Nice.” Chops fired again. “Oh, that was tight. So how about I shoot these guys for you and we call it even?”

“I think you’d shoot them anyway.”

“Technicalities. Oh yes, please try to come over the top of the wall. Please. Who you got there with you?”

“Banzai Eddie.” I looked behind the Cadillac, but he was gone. Shit. If he tried to make it down the canyon wall, he’d fall, trip a claymore mine, and/or start a nuclear countdown. “Eddie?”

“Seriously, dude, who
are
these people?” The voice came from under the car.

I reached under and felt cloth and pulled it. Eddie came out and I stood him up. I asked Chops, “Where’s Marcela?”

“Garage.” He kept his wooden hand under the AR’s foregrip and used his right to pluck a remote hanging off his tactical vest. He tossed it my way, got his finger back on the trigger.

I picked up the remote and hit the only button. The garage door raised two feet and stopped; the open space at the bottom was a black maw. I hauled Eddie toward it and rolled him through and followed.

I could have had both eyes swollen shut; it wouldn’t have been any darker inside. Tiny comets trailed across my vision. I tried to pick shapes out in my peripheral vision, but having one eye didn’t help.

Eddie bumped into me and grabbed my shirt. “Who’s that?”

“Stand still.”

Somewhere ahead, Kendall snapped his gum and said, “You gotta shut the door for the light to come on.”

I hit the remote. The door eased down and thumped on the concrete. Overhead fluorescents burbled into life and I squinted my left eye.

Eddie let go of my shirt and shielded his eyes against the brightness.

Kendall said, “You look like you been in a fight.”

He didn’t look much better. The tussle in the bakery had left him with a swollen nose and bruises around his eyes. He was sitting on the concrete steps below the door to the house. Big Jake towered next to him, his eyes on fire behind his mask of bruises and swelling. He looked much worse than Kendall; his nose was taped in place and had cotton plugs to keep the blood from falling out.

Lance was in the far right corner, where piles of shit belonged, with his arms tucked against his ribs. He gnawed on his right thumbnail like it was heroin flavored, looking at everything but me. I had nothing to say to him.

Steve was in the other corner. He was paler than I remembered. His purple lips were compressed and pulled toward his chin. The bottom lip was split and puffy. His left arm was in a sling, and two of the fingers on that hand were splinted and taped together. He glanced at me with concern; then his gaze flicked to a low stack of cardboard boxes, and his face registered real fear.

Marcela was sitting on the boxes smiling at me. “Hello, Woody.” She got a good look at my face and sucked in a sharp breath, jumped off the boxes, and walked toward me.

“Sit still,” Kendall told her.

She ignored him.

“You see?” Kendall asked the room.

Marcela held my head and frowned at the right half of my face. “Your eye.”

I touched her waist and her stomach and back. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

She hitched a thumb at Steve. “Better than him.”

“Did he . . . ?”

“He asked for a shoulder rub.” She shrugged. “So I rubbed his shoulders against each other.”

Steve looked like he was going to cry.

Eddie nudged me. “Is this Marcela?”

“Be quiet.” The garage muffled the sound of Chops squeezing off four rounds. Smaller calibers responded like lame applause.

Kendall stood. “Sounds like the O.K. Corral out there. Are they inside the wall?”

“If they are, they’re facedown in the dirt.”

“Mm-hmm.” He cracked his gum and patted a flat black automatic pistol against his leg. “Hey, Eddie, you want to come with me to see some fellas?”

“No,” Eddie said.

“They wear nice suits too.”

“No.”

“Well, good thing it ain’t up to you.” Kendall glanced at me. “That Chops guy gave you the door opener?” I nodded. “Lemme have it.”

“Not a chance.” I had my thumb on the button. I could hit it and shove Eddie and Marcela through, but with the fluorescents off we’d all be silhouetted against the dim light from the driveway. Easy targets.

“Jake, go get it.”

Big Jake came forward, grinning despite the pain it must have caused.

When he was halfway between me and Kendall, I put the remote on the floor and raised my heel over it. “One more step.”

He stopped. Looked back at Kendall, who peered around Jake’s shoulder and said, “What, you’re going to trap us in here? The door into the house is locked.”

“I’ve been fighting in cages all day. This is just another shift.” I put my focus on Big Jake. “You get someone to set that nose or do it yourself?”

He blinked. “Myself. I’ve done it before.”

“If it doesn’t set right, I know a guy. Had me breathing through both nostrils after five years of the left side only. And your boss is dead in the water.”

“Hey,” Kendall said.

I told Jake, “The rest of us can walk out of here and go our separate ways. He’s chum.”

“Watch your mouth,” Kendall said.

Jake nodded toward the front of the garage. Sporadic gunshots and Chops’s replies still cracked. “Isn’t that Tezo out there? Looking for you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve seen Chops shoot before. I’m not worried about Tezo anymore.”

Kendall stomped his foot. “Jake, get your big ass over here out of the way.”

Jake stared at me. If he stayed where he was or came forward, I could step on the button and barrel the three of us out before Kendall got a clear shot. I let my foot sink down. Jake stepped back so he was next to Kendall again.

The gun was already up. Kendall smiled and didn’t blink. “Now how about I shoot you and take that thing at my leisure?”

“That’s not the deal. Businessman, remember?”

“Yeah, that was when I
had
a business. All I am now is a man on the run, thank you very much. And if me and Eddie are the only guys who walk out of this garage, who’s gonna tell the story about me being unprofessional?”

“I won’t,” Eddie said.

Kendall pointed at him. “No shit, you won’t. The only boys you’ll be talking to don’t speak good English anyway.”

Steve shifted in the corner. “What do you mean, ‘only guys’? What about the rest of us?”

“Sorry, Stevie. We part ways starting now. Everybody’s fired.”

I said, “Did anyone else in here bring a gun?”

Kendall frowned. “What kinda question is that?”

“He has one.” Marcela pointed at Steve.

Steve glared at her. “Fuck you.”

I said, “Steve, will you please shoot Kendall so we can all go home?”

Kendall turned and shot Steve in the chest. The sound of it shattered through the enclosed space and made everyone jump. Eddie hid behind his hands. The bullet punched a hole through the sling fabric and knocked Steve into the corner, where he sank to the floor and gaped at Kendall.

“Don’t look at me like that, Steven. I can’t take it. Were you really gonna shoot me?”

Steve looked at the blood spreading across his chest and said, “No. Here.” He reached his lower back with surprising grace and pulled another black automatic out. Held it toward Kendall butt first. “Here. See? Take it.” His strength gave out, and the gun fell into his lap.

Everyone stared at it.

I stomped the button and the lights went out.

The door shook the ground as it raised. The weak light that cut in underneath died out a few feet inside the garage; the rest of the place was ink. Someone stumbled over a stack of cardboard boxes and went down hard. I pulled Eddie and Marcela away from Steve and the gun.

Kendall squeezed off four shots, working his way from where we had been to Steve’s corner. His face popped into view with each strobe of flame from the barrel—eyes shut, mouth open, gum hanging out. He may have been laughing.

I hit the boxes stacked along the right wall and started throwing them down between us and Kendall, anything to absorb bullets and keep us from being outlined on our way out the door. I pushed Eddie and Marcela that way, tried to whisper at them to get their asses outside but yelled it instead.

Someone ran into me and grunted. Someone who stank.

Lance.

I put a right hook into his guts, about the same spot Jake hit him the night before. He crumpled, and I tossed him onto the barrier between me and Kendall.

Kendall fired again and something buzzed past my face to smack against the wall. A voice that could only belong to Jake bellowed, and someone else yelped.

Two more shots, the concussion waves rocking through the space, and Jake yelled again.

Time to get out.

I dropped to the floor and rolled and cracked my shoulder against the door. I looked under, saw Marcela and Eddie crouched behind the Cadillac’s engine block. Marcela had Eddie by the tie. I had to flatten out facedown to squeeze through into the driveway.

Marcela slapped the car. “It’s locked.”

“Okay, okay.” I looked for Chops. He’d moved while we were inside, and no one was shooting anymore. My night vision was jacked from the fluorescents and muzzle flashes, but I could see my truck still wedged in the gate. Four other cars were scattered behind it, two with the lights still on. I didn’t see or hear anyone moving. “Let’s go. Down the driveway.”

Maybe it was the swollen eye. Maybe it was because I was so focused on getting everyone out. Either way, I should have gone to them, worked around the back of the Cadillac. But they came to me, and when Kendall scuttled out from under the garage door on my right side, I didn’t see him.

I heard the gun scrape on the concrete as he pushed himself to his feet. My brain and body were screaming at me to duck, roll, drop, but all I could do was turn my head.

Too late.

Kendall stood with the gun and that sideways grin, that
gotcha
face, and I got to watch it change to shock when Marcela flowed behind me and drove her fist into his throat. She got both hands on his gun wrist and pushed it up, then piled him backward into the garage door and slammed her forehead into his battered nose. Kendall screamed but didn’t let go of the gun.

Marcela pulled Kendall’s right arm out straight and hooked her leg over it. She made a small adjustment and dropped her weight on the back of his elbow while she yanked his wrist up. The joint sounded like twenty knuckles cracking when it gave out. Kendall made a screaming face, but no sound came out. The gun came loose. Marcela threw it over the edge of the driveway into the canyon.