John Lutz - Bloodfire

“Chief Morgan knows them, and he thinks they’re substantive enough to squeeze triggers.”

She laughed softly. “Roberto makes them look tame. Roberto’s enemies make them look like kittens.” She sounded as if she were bragging about Gomez. Carver didn’t like that.

He buttered and ate his last biscuit, then summoned Marlene and paid the check. Left a two-dollar tip. Marlene acted as if it were twenty dollars. Apparently not much of the drug money changing hands in and around Dark Glades found its way to waitresses. There was no democracy in crime.

Chief Morgan was walking into Whiffy’s as Carver and Beth were leaving. He showed his young Gary Cooper smile and nodded to them as he ambled over to a corner table. Marlene had seen him and was already on the way with a cup of coffee.

The sun and humidity were teaming up tough again today. Carver figured if he’d had creases in his pants, they would have disappeared by the time he and Beth reached the car.

They were driving back to the motel over a rutted, slightly elevated dirt road when a rumbling sound, then motion in the rearview mirror, caught Carver’s attention.

A four-wheel-drive Chevy Blazer with huge knobbed tires crawled up from the swamp onto the road and fell in behind the Olds. It was dented and rusty, painted in dull green and brown camouflage,

Carver studied it in the mirror. Suddenly it grew, as it roared up close to the Olds’s rear bumper. No mistaking who was in the Blazer now: B.J. Brainard was driving; the massive shape beside him was baby brother Junior.

Beth had turned and was staring back at them. She seemed afraid, but mostly she looked angry. “Those assholes!” she said, as if they were merely messing up the morning and weren’t in the least homicidal.

Carver held the Olds’s speed at a steady twenty miles per hour, letting the Blazer eat dust from the dry road. “Morgan warned us,” he said, “just didn’t warn us how soon.”

The Blazer fell back about a hundred feet, so B.J. could see more clearly through the thick haze. It held that distance, a tall and outsize caricature of a truck, its huge tires beating at the road.

Turned in her seat, Beth watched it out the back window until Carver braked the Olds and steered into the Casa Grande’s parking lot.

The Blazer followed and parked nose-out at the opposite side of the lot. It sat with engine idling as Carver and Beth climbed out of the Olds and went into Carver’s room. The irregular, deep beat of its motor suggested custom work and plenty of power.

There was only one other car on the lot, a pale blue Plymouth, the kind rental companies used, parked at the far end of the motel. No one in sight.

The rumbling low thunder of the Blazer’s engine could be heard even inside the room with the door shut. Beth, still looking more irritated than afraid, said, “What now?”

“Up to them,” Carver said. “That’s what I don’t like about staying around Dark Glades.”

Beth shot him a dark and furious glance. “Gonna give me the old I-told-you-so shit, Carver?”

The phone rang before he had a chance to tell her that was what he was going to do.

When Carver picked up the receiver, Watts said, “I happened to glance out the office window, Mr. Carver. Saw the Brainard brothers’ truck out on the lot. Them two boys are sittin’ in it watchin’ your room.”

“Thanks, Watts, we know they’re there.”

“Want I should phone Chief Morgan?”

“Not yet,” Carver said. “Call him if they come inside.”

“Will do.” Watts hung up.

Carver limped to the dresser and pulled the Colt automatic out from beneath his folded shirts, then got the loaded clip out from under a pair of Jockey shorts and slid it in. Tapped it tight. He worked the handgun’s mechanism to jack a round into the chamber. The solid clicking of precision steel was comforting.

Beth was looking over his shoulder, standing so close he could feel her breath on his neck and pick up the faint scent of her morning coffee. She said, “I got one of those in my room. Want me to get it?”

“Jockey shorts?”

“Don’t be a wise-ass at a time like this.”

He said, “No better time. Leave your gun where it is for now.”

She said, “You forget who hired whom?”

He liked that whom , but he didn’t answer her. She made no move to go to her room and get the gun he hadn’t known about. If the Brainards climbed down out of their truck and walked toward them, he’d send her for more firepower. Until then, why increase the odds on an accidental exchange of shots?

As if responding to what he was thinking, the Blazer’s engine fell silent. The passenger-side door swung open and Junior hopped to the ground. The truck’s heightened suspension and oversized tires created quite a drop, and his huge stomach jiggled when his boots hit gravel. He reached back into the Blazer and pulled out a shotgun. The other door opened, and B.J. sprang to the ground, light and lean as a jungle cat. He was carrying a handgun, had a large sheath knife attached to his belt, and was wearing some kind of round gray fur cap despite the heat. Looked like Davy Crockett gone bad. They were some pair, the Brainards.

The brothers glanced at each other. Junior grinned. They moved out away from the Blazer and walked toward Carver’s room, keeping distance between them.

Carver looked at Beth and said, “Really know how to use that gun?”

She looked scared now, but she nodded.

“Go get it. Don’t use it unless I tell you.”

She didn’t answer, but moved quickly and gracefully to the connecting door, opened it, and disappeared into her room.

Carver parted the drapes slightly wider and peered back out the window.

The Brainards had stopped and were standing in the sun-cooked parking lot, about fifty feet from the door to Carver’s room. They knew he was watching. Junior, still grinning, winked at him. There was nasty anticipation smeared all over his fat face.

Half a minute passed and no one moved. Possibly the purpose of the Brainards’ visit was to terrorize and not to act. Cats and mice at play. Cats, anyway.

Carver thought, Fuck this. Holding the Colt at his side, its safety off, he went to the door and opened it. Stepped outside.

Neither of the Brainards seemed surprised.

Junior said, “Mornin’, asshole.”

Carver didn’t answer.

B.J. said, “Get it in your mind, Carver, we can open fire on you here and you’re a dead soldier. No way you can drop both of us afore we kill you.”

Carver said, “Junior’ll be my pick. He’s a nice wide target.”

Junior stopped grinning. Sensitive about his weight. He said, “Thing to remember about us, Carver, is we just don’t give a fuck. Honestly don’t. That’s why we don’t scare.”

Carver said, “Times like this, I feel exactly the same way, so don’t stand there wasting my time with bullshit.”

Junior and B.J. exchanged glances. Junior said, “Thinks he’s a tough asshole ’steada just an asshole.”

B.J. said, “Well, dead’s dead. He wants his tombstone to say he was tough, that’s okay.”

Junior spread his feet wide and angled his body, in position to raise the shotgun to his shoulder. “You ready, B.J.?”

Carver figured they were bluffing, but he couldn’t deny the terror that spread through him. He centered his weight between his good leg and his cane. Tightened his finger on the Colt’s trigger.

Behind him, Beth’s voice said, “We’re sure as fuck ready.”

Junior’s little pig eyes actually widened. His body tensed and he drifted around to face Carver square. B.J. looked confused, letting his revolver dangle loose at his side.

Beth moved up to stand beside Carver. She was holding an Uzi submachine gun in a way that left no doubt she knew how to use it. The resolve in her eyes left no doubt that she would.