Tom Piccirilli: The Fever Kill

"Now you drive careful in this county."

"I will, sir."

"Oh, I know you will."

Crease drove slowly away and watched Edwards in the rearview wheeling across the double yellow again and backing into his spot. Crease wondered what the man would've done if he'd told him his true name.

When he got back to Reb's house he saw that she'd spruced the place up. She'd spent some time on herself, used better-applied makeup to cover the worst of the bruises. The swelling was almost completely gone. He knew she was already trying to tempt and bait him for whatever she might be able to get, and he liked the fact that their relationship had such clearly marked parameters. You were safe so long as you knew where you stood.

She moved to him with an easy grace today, sweeping along like she was dancing. It was the way she used to move, how he remembered her coming into his arms when they were teenagers and spent most of their time talking in whispers against each other's necks.

"What did you do today?" she asked.

She didn't say it the way Joan used to say it, like he might actually be able to tell his wife what he'd done on the job. She'd be standing there in the kitchen stirring batter in a bowl, expecting him to discuss a strangled baby in a bassinet or some crack whore who'd been selling her children out of the back room. Joan just smiling so beautifully and vapidly at him, the bleached white apron trailing across the bottom of her sun dress. The batter whipping around and around and around. It would make Crease so nauseous he'd have to back away into the bathroom.

Reb asked with a real understanding, aware that he was on the hunt, that he had to chase something down. He told her about the cemetery, Dirtwater and the boy, running into the sheriff.

"Why didn't you kill him?" she asked. "That's what you wanted, right?"

He looked at her. "You're having fun, trying to get into my head, aren't you? I can tell you're enjoying yourself."

"You're a break from the usual, I'll say that much."

"I never said I wanted to kill him."

"You never said you didn't either. If you don't want him dead, what's the point of coming back?"

"I don't know."

"You are a very confused soul."

His course seemed very clear, he just didn't know to what purpose, what he might get out of it in the end. "I want to know who kidnapped Mary Burke and what happened to the money."

"And if your father really shot her."

"He said he did. I believe him."

"My god, killing a child."

"Yeah."

The man was already on the downturn, but that night finished him. Maybe because of shooting Mary Burke, maybe just because he'd missed his chance at the fifteen grand score. Crease had tried to give the memory of his father the benefit of the doubt, but the more he thought about it, the longer he was a cop, the less he figured icing the kid had anything to do with it. His father had wanted that fucking money.

He sat on the couch and Reb drew up alongside him, slinky and soft enough to get his head turning to other thoughts. Like he didn't have enough on his mind, all he needed was another woman, maybe another kid.

"Did you rob him?" she asked.

"Now who we talking about?"

"The dealer you were pals with. Did you steal any of his cash or his drugs?"

"No," Crease said.

That stopped her. She drew her chin back, giving him a quick once-over like she had to reassess. Then she grinned. "I don't believe you. I bet he's after you right now because you stole a briefcase that belonged to him. Stuffed with cash. How much? A hundred grand? Two hundred?"

"He used to offer me that much to go kill competitors, guys using the harbor a little too freely, but I always turned him down."

It was the truth, but not all of it. Crease used to walk side by side with Tucco and Cruez into apartments where they knew the competition had closets full of uncut coke, maybe a thousand vials of crack. In the bathroom a do-it-yourself meth lab. He never took money for it, but he did it anyway. One day he helped Tucco take down a five-man Colombian crew that was edging into his turf. They got the name of a major connection. Crease wouldn't take any cash for it, but he did spend the night with three of Tucco's ladies, thinking of Morena the whole time. It was a bad night. Three days later, the commissioner decorated him in a private ceremony, shook his hand, patted his back, gazed on him fondly. Cameramen took photos that could never be printed. Crease thought that if his father was only half as confused as he was himself, it was no wonder the old man had gone over the big edge.

"Then why do you think he'll be coming after you? If you didn't take anything from him?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"Explain it to me."

Crease wouldn't be able to, but he gave it a shot. "It's part of the whole situation. He can't let me walk out."

"Why not?"

"It's not in his nature."

"Sounds like you boys don't play a much different game than folks around here. Than guys like Jimmy. Nobody likes to lose. It's hard enough looking in the mirror."

It was true. The game was faster and nastier but essentially the same.

"You want to go to bed?" she asked. She started to unbutton his shirt, working her fingers in his chest hair, the way she used to do, and then over his flat, muscular belly. His stomach rumbled and she drew her hands back as if she'd been stung.

He said, "How about a steak?"

~* ~

She had nothing in the fridge so Crease went into town again, to buy some food. The supermarket had a couple of nice sirloins.

He had just put the last bag in the trunk of the 'Stang when he glanced up the street and the heat began to crawl across the back of his neck.

A bulky guy a little too dark for Hangtree was walking towards him with his hands in his coat pockets. It threw off his swaggering walk a little. His eyes were focused down and to the left, so that Crease was in his peripheral vision the entire time. The guy only looked up when he was about ten feet away. He smiled in what was supposed to be a disarming fashion, but it gave him a kind of animal leer.

This one was the first wave of muscle. This one wasn't supposed to survive. Tucco was sending him in just to get an idea of what Crease was capable of. To see if he'd relaxed any. Tucco and Cruez would be waiting at the other end of town, near the highway, where they could bolt if they had to make a run.

Crease reached under the dash to the magnetic drop box where he kept his. 38 hidden. He plucked it free just as the guy came up very close, crossing the line of personal space. Muscle liked to get in close. They felt comfortable there, thinking they were so imposing that everybody else would just freeze in fear.

"Excuse me, buddy, but you-"

There was some foot traffic around so Crease had to be fast. He brought the butt of his gun up against the guy's forehead twice. It staggered the thug enough to make him completely pliant but didn't knock him out. His hand came free from his coat and a butterfly knife rolled down the length of his fingers and clattered on the street.

Tucco and the butterfly knives, always with the knives.

They looked cool but took too long to get out, all that whirling and snapping, and they were messy as hell to put away after being used. Crease picked the blade up quickly, pulled the guy by the elbow around to the passenger side of the 'Stang and stuffed him inside.

The thug had one wide hand clasped over his head wound and blood was seeping out from beneath it. Crease said, "Don't bleed on the seat."

Nobody on the street had seen anything. Crease got in the 'Stang and drove in the opposite direction of Reb's, back up to the highway. Tucco and Cruez would be around, pulled off on the side, maybe drinking tequila and listening to something with a good salsa beat. They'd look up and see Crease drive by and start laughing, give him a chase before dragging ass back to whichever motel they were holed up in. Morena would be in the back seat taking it all in, making plans of her own.