Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Rodney’s head was thrown back and a silver chain glistened on his fleshy neck, and every time Mavis socked it to him, the Thor’s Hammer medallion on the chain jiggled in a fold of sweat.

Like the governor’s, Rodney’s shaved head tapered smoothly up out of his overdeveloped neck. When the feds had him sweating down in seg at Oak Park Heights, he’d panicked. He’d imagined he heard moans in the dark and he felt the walls go clammy with nightmare sweat. In one of his worse moments, he had tattooed a swastika on the end of his prick with a tiny safety pin and a Bic refill. He did this as a token of goodwill toward the Aryan Nation. Any minute now Rodney hoped that his Nazi logo would squirt ecstatic black spiders.

“Rodney?”

“Almost,” Rodney panted. “I’m close.”

“C’mon, Rodney, this is taking all night,” Mavis said. “You’re into deep overtime, my man.”

“Just a little more,” Rodney said.

“Rodney, baby, like-I’m getting all chafed raw. You can’t leave that zipper open like that. You know the rules.” She gingerly climbed off him and kissed him on his shiny skull. “Better luck next time.” Rodney held up a handful of bills. She plucked them and jiggled off into the gloom.

Rodney watched her go, pouting, “Thirty-two, man, and it’s all over. Just can’t get it up anymore.”

Earl shook his head. “Give up the steroids, Rodney. They’re shrinking your testicles into snow peas.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Morosely, Rodney zipped his fly and struggled to his feet. Six foot three, 260, twenty-four-inch arms. He could bench six hundred. Earl’s war elephant. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s get some grease.”

They cruised and debated restaurants and settled on a Famous Dave’s.

“You’re buying, right?” Rodney asked as they settled into a booth.

“Sure. Go for it.”

When the waitress arrived, Rodney recited, “I’ll have the giant slab of ribs, double cornbread, two cobs of corn, and bread pudding for dessert.”

They made small talk about the weight room until the food arrived. Rodney was always more agreeable eating. Halfway through the rack of ribs, Rodney looked up and wiped his chin. “So what exactly you want to do?”

“Scare a guy,” Earl said.

“How scared you want him?”

“Like a broken-knee scared. Louisville Slugger scared.”

“What’d he do?”

“He’s bothering Jolene. I want him to go away.”

“Jolene.” Rodney’s eyes revolved and were dreamy for a moment. “She still quit getting high?”

Earl nodded. “Started going to meetings.”

“Yeah, and married some old guy?”

“Uh-huh, except the old guy’s dying and this other dude is bothering her.”

“And this is something you can’t handle on your own?”

Earl leaned forward. “I just want you for backup. I don’t want to work up too much of a sweat.”

“Right,” Rodney smirked. “You’re the brain, this messy physical stuff is beneath you.”

“I’m the one using the bat, Rodney.”

“Sure, right. So who is this guy?”

“He’s from up north, he guides canoe trips in Ely.” Earl was about to explain the connection, but he decided not to. Rodney had been spooked in Oak Park Heights and had been doing a lot of coke. He didn’t follow stuff the way he used to.

Like right now. Rodney was staring at the carnage of rib bones on his plate, his eyes kind of misfiring and trying to focus. He said, “You know, I gotta be careful.”

Earl nodded his head. “Look. This guy is going to take one look at you and shit his pants.”

Rodney squinted at him. “Yeah? There’s two kinds of guys who shit their pants. There’s the kind who shits and freezes and there’s the kind who shits his pants more like-what it is-a figure of speech that floods him with testosterone and adrenaline, you dig?” Rodney spread his lips in a lazy shark grin with strings of pork and gristle stuck between his teeth. “Then this second kind of guy comes over and kicks the living dog shit out of you .”

“Not this guy,” Earl said. “This guy is over the hill, almost fifty. He’ll be scared. I guarantee. Then I’ll touch him up a little with the bat and he’ll head back for the sticks.”

“You ever seen the inside of Oak Park Heights?” Rodney asked suddenly.

“Christ, Jesus, no,” Earl said indignantly. They sent people who did his kind of crime to Sandstone, the federal lockup north of Hinckley which was a country club compared to OPH. In fact, Sandstone was like a postgraduate seminar in computer hacking; they had some sharp operators in there. A guy could learn a lot.

“It’s like this big rectangular basement, four levels of meat-locker buried in the ground, and down in the middle they have this yard. There’s a baseball diamond and all, but it’s hardly ever used, and you look out through this narrow window with these two fat bars called mullions and there’s three tiny flower beds and this one tree they just planted. This one skinny little sapling that probably will never make it through the winter. And that’s what you see for the next twenty years.”

Rodney shook his head. “One fucking little tree. Man, growing up in Minnesota, I always took trees for granted.”

“Rodney,” Earl said firmly, trying to bring the guy back on task. “Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up.”

“And go where?”

“He’s staying out on this farm in Lake Elmo.”

Rodney’s eyes balked and his broad forehead furrowed. “Canoes? Farms? This really is not my preferred line of work.”

“Look. We get him alone, he sees you and is paralyzed with fear. I whack him around a little and give him his walking papers and that’s it. You earn three hundred bucks for just standing around. How’s that?”

“That’s fine, if it goes down like that.” Rodney held up a greasy rib bone and gestured. “But if it looks in any way funny, I’m out. If I look sideways they’re going to bust me. I ain’t gonna get raked over on account of something pissant like this.”

“Don’t worry. Look, I need one favor. Trade cars with me tonight. I have to snoop around to make sure where he’s staying and he knows what I drive.”

Rodney shoved his car keys across the table, caught Earl’s toss.

“Take it easy on the wheels, it’s Jolene’s husband’s Expedition. And here,” Earl slipped him a folded hundred. “Go back and get your lap wet. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, and yeah,” Rodney said, snapping a rib bone between his molars and sucking on the end.

Earl took 94 east to the river, then turned south on 95 and cruised the house in Rodney’s Trans Am. He turned off his headlights and slowly rolled down the driveway. Uh-huh. Like he figured. Broker’s busted-down Jeep was still there. Settling in.

Okay. His mind raced ahead. First get rid of Broker. That would give Jolene some space to climb down off her high horse. She’d come around. She was bound to come around not sleeping for a week. He just hoped she didn’t start hitting the bottle again.

So Earl backed up the drive and went up the dead-end access road and waited in a small park where the road intersected the highway. Where he’d have a good view of passing cars. He put on his Walkman and ran some Eminem.

Three times through the tape, more than an hour later, Earl was shuffling his shoes in the compost of Burger King wrappers clogged around Rodney’s accelerator when a pair of high beams cut the gloom: the beat-up red Jeep. Okay.

“Got in the cookie jar, didn’t you, you fuckin’ hick,” Earl said grudgingly as he eased onto the road and followed the Jeep, still keeping his lights off, seeing by the faint light of a sickle moon. “So you’re feeling pretty good.”