Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

I parked in front of Fallon’s neat little bungalow, but I didn’t make it up the front steps. The shed door was open, creaking as it swung lazily in the early evening breeze. I reached around for my. 38. Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. Besides, cemeteries just tend to throw me off my game. No one likes confronting the inevitable. When your life spreads out before you, there are countless possibilities. Not in the end. In the end, it’s all the same. Death is the most egalitarian of things. Cemeteries, like a constant whisper in the ear, had a nasty way of reminding you of that fact.

“Fallon!” I called out. “Mr. Fallon. It’s Moe Prager, Katy Maloney’s ex.”

The only answer was the whine of mosquito wings. They’d come out for a light supper. In the distance I heard a faint clink, clink, clink — ing. When I grabbed hold of the door and peeked around, I saw why it refused to close. Mr. Fallon’s work boots were doorstops. The caretaker lay face down, one end of a pickaxe stuck so completely through his left shoulder blade that the handle nearly rested on his back. There wasn’t much blood, not on his back anyway. His head was pretty well smashed up. The little blood that had pooled around the wound was thick with mosquitos.

I looked up at the door header and ceiling of the shed as I backed out. Fallon hadn’t been killed in the shed. No way an assailant could have swung the pickaxe high enough to gather the momentum it would have taken to gouge through the body that way. I took a look around. On the far side of the equipment barn, I found the source of that faint clink, clink, clink — ing. Fallon’s abandoned backhoe was still running, the exhaust cap popping up and down in rhythm to the puffing of diesel fumes. The blood missing from the shed was all here, but not pooled all in one place. The caretaker had received quite a beating before dying.

My cell phone buzzed even as I grabbed it to call the sheriff. It was Brian Doyle.

“You were right, boss,” he said. “The tattoo babe confirmed it.”

“Thanks.”

I clicked off and called the sheriff.

“Pete.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Have you seen my daughter?”

“Sarah? She was just in here with Robby, why?”

I let out a big sigh of relief. “Keep an eye on her.”

“Why? What’s up?”

I didn’t bother explaining. “Listen, Fallon’s dead.”

“Fallon, the guy from the cemetery?”

“Yeah. I’m at the cemetery now. Fallon’s in the tool shed, a pickaxe sticking halfway out his back. My guess is-”

I never finished the sentence because a baseball bat had, at that instant, introduced itself to my right kidney. It’s way back. The leftfielder’s on the warning track… at the fence… looking up. That ball is… outta here! I’ll be pissing blood for a month, I thought, crumpling to the ground, if I live that long. My cell phone seemed free of the bonds of gravity and flew off somewhere, far far away. The involuntary tears and choking mucus that filled my eyes, throat, and sinuses was the least of it. The nausea, the puking, that was the bad part. It made everything else that much worse, especially the pain. When I was done puking, someone slipped a pillowcase over my head, taped it closed around my neck, and cuffed my hands behind me. Two men-I guessed there were two and that they were men-dragged me by my elbows along the dirt and gravel. I was shoved into the back of a car-my car, by the sound of it-and driven away. Someone spoke. The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Brightman’s or Barto’s.

“You didn’t think you was gonna blow up our kitchen and get away with it, did ya?”

It was Crank.

The ride was a fairly short one. That much I could say, but I was still disoriented from the whack in the kidney and the growing pain in my head. The tape, tight around my neck, wasn’t helping my respiration any, and the buildup of my own vomit-sour fumes in the pillowcase was hard to take. When we stopped, I was yanked out of the car and dragged along some new dirt and stone. A door opened. I was bent into a sitting position with my legs and ass on a cool, damp floor and my back against a rough wooden wall. Something tore open the linen cocoon around my head. The rush of fresh air made me swoon. If there had been anything left in my guts, I would have puked again. As it was, I dry-retched until my head nearly exploded. Someone kicked me in the ribs and the dry heaves stopped. I wish I had known that trick in college.

“Okay, Prager,” Crank said, straddling my legs, twisting my shirt in his hands. “Who are you working with?”

“The KGB.”

“Funny man.” He backslapped my face, but not as hard as I supposed he could have. There was also something in his eyes that belied his angry demeanor. “We know there’s someone working for the Feds inside this organization and you’re the outside contact.”

I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I looked around the room. We were in a cabin not unlike the one Crank and I had been in the last time. For all I knew, it might have been the same cabin. Standing behind Crank were four bikers from central casting. Behind them was a suit. The bikers wore black leather and greasy cut denim, beards, big boots, belt buckles, and bandannas. The suit had cop written all over him, but he wasn’t local. No, Suit’s brown eyes had the requisite sheen of condescension found primarily in Feds.

“ATF or DEA?” I asked the suit.

He smiled. I didn’t. Suit opened his mouth to speak.

“Come on, Prager,” Crank interrupted, “talk to me now and we’ll skip the blowtorch and pliers bullshit. Gimme a name.”

“Make some suggestions and I’ll give you a name. I’m not joking here. I just don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Get the barbed wire,” said Suit to the bikers. “We’ll rearrange his face a little and when he sees how much blood pours out, then maybe he’ll-”

“Wait a second!” Crank barked. “This is my thing. The lab blew on my watch. I’ll handle this shit.”

“Yeah,” Suit said, “like how you let him slip away the same night you let a few million dollars of potential income go up like a Roman candle? I don’t think so.”

Crank jumped up, pulled a hunting knife out of the sheath on his belt, and stuck it right under Suit’s chin. For a barrel-bellied guy, Crank moved more like a ballerina.

“Listen, Swanson, you dickless motherfucker, don’t start giving me fucking orders. You get your cut from us, not the other way around. Remember that.”

“And I fucking protect you guys,” said Agent Swanson.

“And we’re paying for your retirement, asshole.”

“Gee, and I thought cops were the only ones who hated Feds.”

Crank back-kicked his leg and hit me square in the belly with his heavy boot. “Who the fuck asked you? Unless you got a name for me, shut the fuck up.”

That one hurt, but the damage could have been much worse had he got me in the jaw. Probably would’ve broken it. As it was, I couldn’t catch my breath.

Crank refocused on Swanson. “Back the fuck off, you suited prick. I don’t take orders from nobody. Just ask my Desert Storm commander. I broke his arm in three places, one place at a time.”

Swanson tried to look cool, but there was real fear in his eyes. “Okay, okay, but we need that name.”

Crank pulled the knife away from the agent’s neck and put the blade back in its sheath. He turned his attention back my way, lifted me off the ground and shoved me into a chair. He spoke softly to me, almost cooing, trying to cajole an answer out of me.

Wouldn’t I feel better getting it off my chest? Wouldn’t I rather avoid the torture, which would surely come? Wouldn’t I like a chance to live until morning? Wouldn’t I…