That’s How I Roll: A Novel (28 page)

Some people are just plain mulish. Science can do a lot of things, but there’s no cure for a man’s personality.

That threw me at first, and it shouldn’t have done so. I’d seen too many times how a man’s ego can take over everything else inside him—make a usually accommodating man as stubborn as a tree stump.

That’s why I always delivered my messages direct into the hands of the man I got paid to fix. I learned the force of ego not so much by reading as by watching. I’d learned that if a man gets warned off in front of his crew, he’s never going to act reasonably. It’s almost as if he
can’t
do that.

I could always get the job done. No matter what it took, I knew
where to find it. Or how to build it. All I ever needed was certain knowledge I couldn’t get on my own. Knowledge of the target, I mean.

My preference was always for precision. There’s no reason to blow up a whole schoolhouse just to kill the principal. That’s why I needed the best possible knowledge of the target … so I could decide on the best method to make him go away.

I turned myself into a persistence hunter. The fastest animal on earth is a cheetah, but there’s a tribe that kills them for food. They can’t outrun a cheetah, but they can keep running long after the cheetah can’t draw another breath. Takes them hours and hours each time, but they know, if they stay at it, the outcome is always the same.

When I took a job, it was known I’d stay on it until it was done. How could I charge the prices I did—how was I supposed to keep earning the money I needed—unless my word carried its own worth?

Here’s an example of that. I didn’t know why Judakowski needed that new preacher gone, but I was assured the Reverend Elias never went to sleep in his own bed without spending some time with his Presentation Bible—the one they give you when you graduate from divinity school.

That Bible was precious to him. It never left his house, even when he traveled. But he had others—whoever heard of a preacher who went around without at least a pocket-sized one? And he was leaving on a two-week circuit soon.

I’m no burglar—that’s understood, and such a service is never expected from me—so Judakowski’s men had to bring that Bible over to his place for me to pick up.

When I told them they had to take digital photos of that Bible from several angles, including tight close-ups, before they so much as touched it, they gave me a funny look. When I told them I would need the camera they used, too, so I could check to see if they’d done their job right before I started on mine, I felt them getting ready to buck.

“Do what the man tells you,” Judakowski said. He didn’t have to say any more.

His men were expert thieves, but they didn’t know anything about putting stuff
back
.

It was almost three days before I was satisfied with the wire-thin string of microchips I built. But it took me only a couple of hours to drill a tiny hole through the binding between the pages of paper and the spine. Then I threaded the string of microchips through that hole and touched each end with a tiny droplet of nail polish to hold it in place.

When I handed that Bible back to Judakowski, it was open to the same page it had been when it was stolen. I told him his men had to use the blown-up digital shots I’d made to guide them through putting the Bible back exactly where they’d found it. I even drew a diagram for them, with all the measurements in inches.

I also told him they had to handle that Bible like it was made of spun glass. Most important of all, they had to be absolutely sure not to close it.

hen I say “fix,” that’s just what I mean—solve a problem. That’s why Judakowski never hired me for one of those blood feuds he was always getting into—that’s not the kind of job you can outsource.

Lansdale never seemed to have those kinds of feuds. Whenever he hired me, it was to move someone aside who was standing in his way. Business. Nothing personal.

That’s why I was so taken aback when he called over to the barmaid one night, “Bring Esau his usual, will you, Nancy? Uh … better make it a double, okay? We’ve got a lot to talk over.”

Everyone who worked in Lansdale’s joint knew I only drank apple juice—not even cider, pure juice. They always kept some on hand for me. Fresh, too.

I didn’t show it, but that meant a lot to me. Not the juice itself, the way they respected the decisions I made about my own body.

The first time I’d ever come alone to his bar, Lansdale had
asked me what I’d have. Didn’t bat an eye at what I told him. Ever since then, I could count on a big mug of apple juice being brought over to the table whenever I visited.

What had taken me aback was that Lansdale asked the barmaid to bring me that drink
after
we were done talking business. That made it clear that he didn’t want anyone else hearing whatever it was we were about to talk over.

Neither of those things had ever happened before.

“Thank you,” I told the barmaid when she brought my drink.

“You might be the only man who ever brings his church manners into a bar, Esau,” she said, flashing me a grin. “But don’t be leaving me any more of your tips. I warned you about that, didn’t I?”

“You did,” I admitted. “But I can’t just—”

“What, call me Nancy? Trust me, I’ve been called a whole lot worse than my own name.”

“It’s not that,” I told her. “It’s just that … well, you being a young girl, it seems like I’d be taking liberties, doing that.”

She put her hands on her hips and stood there, her eyes searching my face.

“It’s been a long time since anyone called me a young girl, Esau. You know why I choose to work here? It’s the one bar in this whole lousy town where they don’t allow drunks. Mean drunks, I’m talking about. And nobody’s ever crazy enough to start a fight in here. But the best thing of all is that every man who walks through the door knows buying a drink doesn’t give him leave to paw the help.

“Most of the men in places I worked before? Far as they’re concerned, when they buy a drink, pinching the serving girl’s ass is included in the price.”

“I didn’t know that” is all I could think to say.

“No,” she said. “No, you wouldn’t. You’re too smart for that, aren’t you?”

“Smart?”

“Oh, come on! A man’s been around as much as you, he knows a rich silver tongue works better than a cheap gold bracelet. On a real woman, that is.”

Right about then, I was grateful for the soft lighting in the bar. And for the even darker pool of shadow where Lansdale kept his personal table.

“The way I see it,” Lansdale said, “you ain’t got but two choices, Esau. And little Miss Nancy here, she’s famous for her stubbornness.”

“With your permission, then,” I said to her.

“With your permission,
Nancy
,” she corrected me.

“Nancy,” I surrendered.

“You’re missing the show,” Lansdale said to me as Nancy walked away. “That girl can flat-out bring it.”

“I don’t—”

“Tell you what,” he said. “Roll on over to the side, next to me. And empty that drink, Esau. That way, you’ll see exactly what I mean when Nancy brings you a refill.”

ansdale was right on that score. In fact, I downed a whole lot of apple juice that night.

Just as well I did—Lansdale had a story to tell, and it wasn’t a short one.

“You’ve heard of Casey Myrtleson, I take it? To hear folks talk him up, you’d bet that young man is going to set NASCAR on fire one day. Sure, he’s kind of wild, but nothing wrong with raising a little hell when you’re still in your twenties. It was our own people who really got NASCAR started, and you know how they learned
their
driving skills—by now, it’s in our blood.

“But a young buck like Casey Myrtleson, he doesn’t just drive fast, he does everything fast. Stirs up a whole lot of rumors in his wake.”

“I suppose he might,” I said, not having even a clue as to where all this was going.

Not that I cared. I would have been content to sit there all night.

“You and me, we’re the same,” Lansdale said. Not like asking a
question, stating a fact. Before I could ask him how he could possibly think such a thing, he told me.

“A man can put up with a lot of things. Some more than others. But there’s a bottom to every well, and a man who won’t protect his own, that’s not a man.”

“I’d never argue that.”

“Just think of the lengths you’d go to to protect your little brother, Esau.”

“You can’t have lengths for that.”

“Why do you say?”

“Lengths means there’s a limit.”

“And you’re saying, when it comes to protecting your own, there is no limit.”

“That
is
what I’m saying,” I told Lansdale, fear of some threat to Tory-boy already darkening my mind.

But then he went off in another direction entirely. I knew he had two children, a boy and a girl. And I knew his boy was a real terror in his own way—a newspaperman who got the Klan mad enough to burn a cross in front of his house over some articles he wrote when he was first starting out. The paper he wrote for now, it was the biggest one in the state, published in the capital. That was a long way from here, so I didn’t imagine his father could protect him much.

Anyway, Lansdale was peacock-proud of his son, but I could see he thought of him as a grown man. Old enough to pick his own road, and already walking it.

Not so his daughter—she was still in high school. One of those special-blessed beauties. Folks could legitimately argue over which was more lovely, her church-choir voice or her movie-star face.

“I do admit I worry myself about her,” Lansdale said. “A girl her age, she’s likely to be impressed by the wrong things, you know what I mean?”

I just nodded, so I wouldn’t be stopping him from talking.

“Judgment, that’s something you have to learn,” he said. “Some never do. Take that Casey Myrtleson we were just talking about. Now, he can burn up a racetrack, for sure. Thing is, he’s
full-grown, but not yet grown up. Keeps on taking chances, just to be doing it.

“There’s chances a man shouldn’t ever take. You can bounce your life off the rev limiter one too many times—there’s a reason why they paint red lines on tachometers.”

“A warning.”

“Now, that is exactly what it is!” Lansdale slapped his hand on the table hard enough to break it. “But there’s always going to be men like Casey Myrtleson. They see a ‘No Trespassing’ sign, they figure they just found themselves a fine place to go deer hunting.”

That’s when I finally understood what Lansdale was really talking about. “Man like that, he’d probably take a doe out of season, even if he had to jacklight her,” I said, just to make sure.

Lansdale looked me full in the face, like he was trying to read something written in a language he knew a little bit, but not to where he’d be called fluent.

“Good talking with you, Esau,” he finally said. “I know we do business, but I hope you regard me as your friend, because that’s how I regard you.”

asey Myrtleson was big stuff. And going places, too. But he hadn’t gotten there yet, and he wasn’t so big that he didn’t open his own mail. Especially a pink-wrapped box with little red hearts all over it.