David Corbett - The Devil’s Redhead

“Fat chance, liar,” Lyle said.

“How come you know he’s my brother?” Roy said.

“Oh, come on.”

“You’re just some stranger, met Frank at the goddamn Wagon Wheel, how come you know shit about me or anybody else standing here?”

“A mentally retarded rock could peg you three for brothers,” Abatangelo said. “I’m tired of being on my knees. I’m standing up.”

“You stay put.” It was Lyle, shouting. “Come on, Roy, snap to. Fuck this fool. Him and his goddamn mouth.”

Abatangelo turned his head around to where he could meet Roy’s eye. “I’m standing up,” he said again, and began to rise.

“Fuck you will,” Lyle said, and he charged forward.

Roy cut him off. “We got a problem here, Lyle?”

“What the fuck’s gone wrong with you?”

Lyle shoved Roy, Roy shoved back, neither blow enough to do anything but get the other brother’s attention. Maybe that was why the younger one didn’t step in. He just stood there, blank-eyed, no stake in the winner. Lyle, sensing he was being stared at, looked away from Roy just long enough to say, “You see something funny, Snuff?”

Abatangelo reached his feet and brushed the knees to his suit pants. Roy, Lyle, and, of all things, Snuff. Brothers, oh yeah.

“This is Frank’s handoff,” Lyle shouted at Roy. “Hell’s bells, you’re the one who brought it up.”

“If I was a handoff,” Abatangelo interjected, sitting down behind the wheel, facing out, “I’d make Frank bring his stuff to me, wouldn’t I? If he made me come out here looking for it, I’d come with a gun. Think about it, thief.”

Lyle took a lunge toward Abatangelo. “I’ve about had it with you.”

“Knock it off,” Roy shouted, collaring Lyle and throwing him back. They glared at each other, weapons ready. The young one, Snuff, remained frozen to the spot, looking utterly lost.

“You want a beer?” Abatangelo asked.

Snuff didn’t answer, but he did shoot back a look that said, Don’t joke. Shortly, whatever was meant to pass between the older brothers ended. Roy made a gimme gesture, Lyle handed him Abatangelo’s car keys, then Roy turned back to Abatangelo and said, “Get the fuck off my property. I see you again out here, there won’t be time to talk me out of it.”

“I want my money back,” Abatangelo said. He nodded toward Lyle. “And the registration. Admit it, I haven’t done anything to you.”

“You want your money,” Lyle said, “get up off your ass and claim it.”

“Put the gun down,” Abatangelo said, “make it a fair fight, I’ll claim a lot more than my money. Right here. Your brothers can watch.”

This brought a smile to Roy’s face, as though he could just picture it. Even so, he turned to Abatangelo and said, “I told you, leave. Don’t push your luck.”

Abatangelo looked at each of the brothers in turn and realized it was his last chance. He glanced up the gravel road again, at the glowing crest of the first hill, and briefly considered some ploy to get back there, use the phone, the can, anything, just to see if she was really there. Lyle brought him around by banging on the car hood with the stock of his shotgun.

Abatangelo closed the car door and turned the ignition over. As he did he felt his hand trembling. He put the car in gear and the two older ones started in on the young one, Snuff, like it was all his fault. Abatangelo backed out toward the road feeling sorry for the kid.

Ten minutes later he was back at the market named CHEAPER, sitting in his car, staring at nothing. He asked himself, as the Baltimore Catechism of his Catholic boyhood had asked him at the end of each chapter: What have we learned from this lesson?

Shel might as well be on the moon, he thought, that’s what we’ve learned. What were the words in her letter, Got a whole new life. Things are complicated.

Got that right.

Her old man- Frankie, as they called him- he’d fucked up major from the sounds of it. And if there was any spine to Roy Akers’s ranting, old Frankie was in for an ordeal the likes of which Abatangelo wouldn’t mind knowing about, truth be told. He doubted it’d stop at Frank, though. The Akers clan didn’t seem the type to discriminate too subtly when it came to revenge. Frank’s friends were their enemies. He had to assume that meant Shel, too.

You should have stayed, he thought. Gotten her out. Yeah, sure- how, exactly? Figure it out on the fly, just go, do it. Turn around. Now. No. Go back, you just get yourself killed. Get her killed, too. For what? You’ve been gone ten years. Admit it, you haven’t got the faintest idea what’s going on.

He put the car in gear and drove, not sure where he was headed and doubtful he much cared. He reached the Delta Highway but did not get on, continuing instead toward the seedier neighborhoods rimming downtown.

The storm that had been approaching from the west finally arrived, dropping a thick and steady mist over everything. Ghosts of steam rose through sewer gratings. Inside an all-night Laundromat, an old man folded his clothing. Beyond the lobby window of a cheap hotel, an old woman sat alone, illumined by the jittery light of an ancient TV. That’s you and Shel, he thought. Years from now. Old, forgotten. Apart.

He turned blindly onto a cross-street and found the sidewalk dotted with working girls. The sight made him wish he’d brought his camera along. The women manned the doorways of dark buildings, standing out of the rain, peering out from the shadows like the undead. Gotta make sure the pump still pumps, he thought drearily, remembering the cabby’s words from that morning outside the Tucson airport. Fuck her till she cries. The women here looked like they were well beyond crying. One Latina in a raincoat leaned against the wall of an SRO hotel, standing there barefoot, singing, pulling at her hair, staring into her empty pumps as they filled with rain. Beside her, a sign posted on the hotel’s door read:

IT IS UNLAWFUL

for Anyone to Sell, Use, or Possess

any Controlled Substances

NARCOTICS

Except as Otherwise Provided by Law

Abatangelo drove on. Just beyond the streetwalkers lay a strip of seedy bars: The Spirit Club, Earth Angel, Cinnabar, The New Déjà Vu. Above an empty lot, a spotlit billboard read: CALIFORNIA LOTTO: YOU’RE ONLY SIX NUMBERS AWAY.

As the twins sat side by side on a sagging couch, passing the pipe back and forth, Frank kept reminding himself: You’re almost there. He pictured Shel in the guest room by herself, moody, smoking, staring out the window at the sodden pasture. No more of that, he thought. She’s gonna be standing on a beach in Baja, walking along the surf, wind in that long red hair. The money’s downstairs, stay calm, do it right- you and your shiny white nurse can put a world of distance between you and Felix Randall’s redneck mafia. Get gone, vanish, start over. Be happy. He liked the sound of that. Happy.

“Yo, Frank,” Mooch said. “Bring the fire.”

Snapping to, Frank held a flaming rum-soaked cotton ball in a set of tongs beneath the bowl as first Mooch then Chewy drew deep and long from the pipe. Chewy had set the Ruger on the floor. From time to time he stared at it, puzzled, rubbing his knees. Frank picked it up and ran his finger down the slide chamfer. “What’s to be scared of, Chew?”

From his pocket he withdrew the hollow-points and fitted them one by one into the magazine’s viewing port. He pulled back the breech to load a round into the firing chamber, put the safety on, then removed the magazine and added an extra round. He shoved the clip home, released the safety and held the gun out for Chewy to take.

“It’s not alive,” Frank said. “It only does what you want it to do.”