This Wicked World (31 page)

He lifts his T-shirt to check the bite on his stomach, but it’s too dark to see much.

The pavement in front of him sparkles, and a roadside reflector flares to life. Not the moon. Too bright. He turns to look behind him and spies headlights. He’s only twenty yards from the Olds, can see it there, on the side of the road, but he’ll never reach it in time. With the sound of the approaching vehicle’s engine growing louder, he veers into the chaparral and dives to the ground.

Taggert’s truck races past and screeches to a stop next to the Olds.

“Jimmy,” Olivia yells out the window. “Hey, Jimmy Boone.”

Virgil hops down and runs around the truck to try the door of the car.

“Locked,” he calls to Olivia.

“Where the fuck’d he go?”

Boone decides to show himself, find out what’s going on. He stands and steps into the road.

Virgil points and says something to Olivia. She puts the truck in reverse and backs up to meet Boone, sticks her head out the window. “Were you hiding from us?” she says.

“I thought it was Taggert,” Boone replies.

Olivia pushes her wispy blond hair out of her eyes and says, “This truck is going to be a lot more hassle than it’s worth. We need a ride to L.A.”

Boone hesitates. These two are clearly trouble, and this is nothing he needs to be mixed up in.

“Come on, dude,” Olivia says. “We saved your ass.”

“A ride,” Boone says. “That’s all. No fucking around.”

“A ride,” Olivia repeats, a little offended. “Meet me at the turnoff.”

While Boone walks the rest of the way to his car, Olivia executes a three-point turn and heads back to the intersection with Cholla. Virgil is waiting for Boone, leaning on the hood of the Olds when he reaches it.

“You’re taking me and my sister?” Virgil says.

“Looks like it,” Boone replies.

“So everything’s cool.”

“And let’s keep it that way,” Boone says.

The car starts right up, and he and Virgil drive to the turnoff. Olivia has wedged the F-150 sideways across the dirt road, blocking it. She’s waiting beside the truck with a couple of suitcases and a gym bag at her feet, the shotgun and Glock in her hands.

She calls Virgil out of the Olds and passes him the sawed-off. Boone can’t hear what they’re saying to each other, but all of a sudden they raise their weapons and begin firing at the truck. Muzzle flashes light up the night as shotgun blasts shatter the windshield, the rear window, the headlights. Olivia puts a few rounds through the grill into the engine, then walks around and shoots all the tires.

Before the echoes of the shots bounce away, Olivia and Virgil have scooped up their belongings and piled into the Olds, Olivia in back high-fiving her brother in the passenger seat. They’re sweaty and breathless as Boone pulls away.

“We fucked his shit
up!
” Virgil crows.

“Between his truck and his dog, that motherfucker’s ruined for life,” Olivia says.

Boone flicks on his brights. He should have stayed hidden by the side of the road. There’s too much pent-up anger in these two, and not enough sense.

Virgil notices the supplies Boone purchased earlier. He reaches into a bag, comes up with a Snickers bar and says, “Can I have this? I’m fucking starving.”

“Sure,” Boone says. “Eat whatever you guys want.”

He checks the rearview mirror every few seconds until they get through Twentynine Palms. By the time they hit the 10, Olivia and Virgil are sound asleep, her lying across the backseat, him crumpled openmouthed against the window, the Glock nestled in his lap.

T
AGGERT IS SLUMPED IN A RECLINER IN HIS LIVING ROOM, NO
television, no music, just silence and darkness, the drapes keeping out the morning. He can’t sleep. Every time he starts to doze off, something twitches inside him and jolts him back to wakefulness.

He and Spiller and T.K. drove down to Amboy Road after they freed themselves last night and found the Ford shot full of holes but no sign of Olivia, Virgil, or Boone. Took them almost until dawn to tow the truck back to the ranch.

It hurts like hell, Olivia leaving. He can’t believe it, but it does. His whole life he’s laughed at guys who talked like this, but here he is with tears in his eyes over a woman. He chews his thumbnail and stares at a stain on the carpet. He should have told her about Eton right when it happened. If he’d played it that he was as broken up about it as she was, she might have gone for it. Instead, she busts in while he’s dealing with Boone, and he looks like a lunatic.

She’s probably halfway back to Florida by now, putting as many miles between him and her as she can. After the deal with the Mexicans is done, maybe he’ll fly out and track her down. Fuck the truck, he’ll say, fuck the dog. That’ll surprise her. She knows how he usually handles those who cross him, so she’ll realize how much she means to him. And then he’ll surprise her even more. He’ll say, “Let me make things up to you.” God knows she’s the kind of girl who’ll let him try.

As for Boone, the guy can’t prove anything about anything. If some heat does come down, the story is that he got bit while trespassing, while breaking and entering. He’ll have Miguel take down the pit today just in case, then send him on a long trip to visit his family in Michoacán to get him off the property for a while. He can’t trust the kid to keep his mouth shut if they put the screws to him.

He stands and stomps the feeling back into his feet. Time to pull his head out of his ass, take the wheel again. Drawing a glass of water in the kitchen, he walks out onto the patio. The sun is already high in the sky. Heat shimmers off the hard-packed earth of the yard, and insects sizzle in the chaparral. He strolls out to the gut-shot F-150 and runs his fingers over a bullet hole in the fender. The metal is warm to the touch.

Down the hill at the bunkhouse, T.K. and Spiller are preparing to drive back to L.A. They’re supposed to stay at their places in town tonight, then drive back tomorrow evening, but Taggert’s having second thoughts about that now.

As he’s walking over to talk to them, the muffled
boom boom boom
of distant artillery drifts up from the Marine base. Live-fire exercises. They’re almost constant these days, the corps busy turning out grunts for Iraq and Afghanistan. Poor bastards. The sound disturbs a raven perched on a nearby boulder. The big black bird croaks twice, then lumbers into flight with long, lazy flaps of its wings.

Spiller steps out of the mobile home when Taggert approaches. “Hey, boss,” he says, raising a hand to cover the bruise on his cheek where Boone punched him last night. “We’re about ready to roll. You want us to bring you anything back?”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Taggert says. “You two are gonna hang out until we finish this thing.”

T.K. appears in the doorway. “What’s up?” he says. “There’s a lot less chance of something going wrong if we stick together.”

“Ain’t nothing gonna go wrong.”

“Yeah, well, you’d have said that yesterday too, and look what happened.”

T.K. isn’t happy. “I got things going on,” he grumbles.

“More important than this?” Taggert replies.

The guy doesn’t answer, just stands there looking pissed until Spiller pipes up with, “Whatever you think’s best, boss.”

T.K. grunts and fades back into the bunkhouse. Taggert cuts him some slack this time, but the guy better adjust his attitude before he finds himself in a world of hurt.

“Come to the house in a bit,” he says to Spiller. “I’ll put on some steaks.”

His knees feel a little creaky going up the hill. A cloud slides in front of the sun, and the light changes in an instant, the shadows losing their hard edges, all the shiny spots their piercing glare.

B
OONE LIES ON
the couch in his bungalow and listens to the purr of a nearby lawnmower. It’s 9:00 a.m., a new day. He and Olivia and Virgil arrived back in L.A. about two. Olivia made a few calls but couldn’t find anybody willing to take in her and her brother, so Boone let them crash at his place. He made it clear, though, that they’d be on their own in the morning.

They squawked some when he ordered them to hand over the weapons they were carrying, but he locked the pistols and the shotgun in the toolshed after wiping his prints off the Hawg he took from Spiller. Virgil then proceeded to try to drink all the beer in the fridge, and it was another hour before Boone got them settled in the bedroom.

Joto walks over and licks his face. He pushes the dog away and sits up. So many parts of him scream out in pain that he pauses for a minute to catch his breath: the cut he got during the tussle at Big Unc’s, the knot on his head from Spiller’s pipe. His collarbone is sore where Taggert hit him with the chair, and he can’t lift his right arm without wincing.

Then there are the dog bites. The one on his thigh consists of two deep punctures accompanied by bruising. The one on his stomach is nastier, a raw, red hole a couple inches in diameter. He covered it with gauze when they got back, and that seems to have stopped the bleeding. The bite on his ankle doesn’t look too bad, but the joint buckles when he stands, so he assumes the dog’s teeth did some damage beneath the skin.

He limps into the bathroom to take a shower, then applies Neosporin to his wounds and covers them with fresh dressings.

Someone bangs on the door as he’s finishing up.

“You almost done?” Virgil calls. “I got to take a wicked piss.”

Boone opens the door and squeezes past the kid. Glancing into the bedroom, he sees Olivia sitting on the bed, hair tousled, a blank look on her face.

“Is there any coffee?” she asks around a yawn.

“I usually go out,” he says.

“Shit.”

He leashes Joto for his morning walk. It feels strange leaving Olivia and Virgil alone in his place, but, hell, there’s nothing for them to steal.

Joto takes his time dumping out, passes up all his favorite spots to finally squat on a patch of dead grass three blocks away. He’s in no hurry to get back either. Every tree trunk, every garbage can, every telephone pole, merits special attention.

A few bees hover over an orange peel lying in the gutter, and ranchero music plays nearby. Boone takes a deep breath, smells jasmine and frying bacon. He’s disappointed at how his little investigation turned out. Even if he could get the police interested in what happened to Oscar, there’s nothing tying the kid to the ranch, so all Taggert has to do is deny ever knowing him. And to get the cops interested, Boone would have to admit to violating his parole in so many ways, they’d throw away the key.

It’s a fucked-up situation: he uncovers the truth, but the truth isn’t enough. Joto smiles at him and lifts his leg on one of the Olds’s tires.

Olivia and Virgil are smoking on the couch when he returns. A water glass serves as an ashtray.

“This okay?” Olivia asks, holding up her cigarette.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Boone replies.

She’s a pretty girl, but there’s a hardness in her face, in her eyes, all out of proportion to her years. Too many late nights, too much dope, too many bad men — something is grinding her down.

She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts, a purple cropped T-shirt, and flip-flops, and Virgil is in his baby blue warm-up suit, the one he was sporting the night they busted him at the Tick Tock. Both of them have the same dangerous vibe that a lot of guys in the pen had: like they could joke with you at ten, gut you at eleven, and have trouble remembering any of it by noon. The sooner they’re out of here, the better.

Boone walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge. A carton of eggs and a twelve-pack of Pepsi.

“You guys want a soda?” he calls into the living room. It’s not coffee, but it might help them get their asses in gear.

“What kind?” Virgil replies.

Boone carries the cans to them and walks over and opens a window to let out some of the smoke. Joto is standing in the middle of the room, his eyes locked on the newcomers. At the same time, Boone feels Olivia watching him, sizing him up, trying to figure out how big a mark he is, how much she can take him for.

Virgil pats the couch and calls to Joto. “Here, boy.”

The dog considers the request for a moment before walking over and sniffing the kid’s outstretched hand.

“Looks like he’s done some fighting,” Virgil says as he scratches Joto between the ears.

“So they tell me,” Boone replies.

Olivia lifts her Pepsi can from her bare stomach, wipes away the condensation left behind with her index finger, then slides the finger between her lips, all the while staring at Boone with a sly smile. Flat-out stripper stuff, supremely strange this early in the morning.

“What are you going to do now?” she asks him.

“Now?” he replies.

“Now that you know what happened to Oscar.”

Boone shrugs. “Not much I can do, considering my circumstances.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s none of your business, but I just got out of the joint, and I’m still on parole.”

Olivia sips her Pepsi and peeks at him over the top of her can. “For what?”

“Like I said, none of your business,” Boone replies.

“Come on. You think you’re gonna freak
me
out?”

“I beat the shit out of someone I shouldn’t have,” Boone says. He feels like he’s bragging now, like some kind of asshole.

Olivia smiles. “See, I knew you were a badass,” she says. “The way you took Spiller out, that was, like, totally professional.”

Boone points to his bruised and bandaged face. “Totally.”

Virgil is watching him with a strange expression. When Boone catches his eye, the kid looks away. Boone wonders if he finally remembers their previous encounter. All the more reason to get them moving.

The kid tugs on Joto’s ears and says, “What’s up with dude’s teeth?”

“Taggert,” Boone replies.

“Is this that dog?” Virgil says. He turns to Olivia. “I told you about that shit.”

“I thought he looked familiar,” Olivia says.

“Oscar brought him home from the ranch and took care of him until he died,” Boone says. “I bought him from Oscar’s friends.”

“Fucking Taggert,” Virgil says.