Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

“They got the drop on me,” he explained.

“You was asleep, I’ll bet,” she accused.

As they marched the bouncer back out Neal heard Doreen mutter, “This ain’t no life for a white girl.”

They went back to the corral. Randy left as Neal and Cal covered him. Cal went out next-Neal didn’t want him shooting anyone just for laughs. With Bekke and Vetter covering him from the car, Neal backed out and then jumped in the front seat.

“Head west,” he said to Dave Bekke, who was behind the wheel.

“But-”

“Do what I tell you,” Neal ordered. “They’re going to figure the robbers came from Reno. Might as well oblige them. We can double back later.”

“Whooee!” Randy hollered. He was counting the money.

Neal asked how much.

“Looks like about eleven thousand!”

“Not bad,” Neal said.

“Not bad?”

“Not bad,” Neal repeated, “for a warm-up.”

“But we’re only going to rob from vice mongers, Jews, and race traitors, right, Neal?” Craig Vetter asked anxiously.

“You bet, Craig,” Neal answered. He and Cal exchanged amused looks.

Craig added, “Otherwise it would be immoral.”

“We sure wouldn’t want to be immoral,” Cal said.

The occupants of the car broke into laughter, yells, and whoops of general merriment as they rolled down the highway.

Thus the Sons of Seth struck their first blow against the Zionist Occupation Government in the form of a low-rent cathouse, and Neal Carey touched off the great north central Nevada crime wave.

It was modest at first. They did another shabby cathouse down by Liming, then hit an after-hours card game in Battle Mountain. They found a marijuana runner in Elko and hijacked his truck on a switchback at Antelope Pass. A long weekend in Reno netted them a pimp’s money roll as well as the worldly wealth of a pickpocket whom Neal lured and then followed back to his stash.

They chose victims unlikely to complain too much to the cops and who were themselves engaged in some form of evildoing, at least in the minds of True Identity Christians. They worked fast and clean and used enough force so that they didn’t have to resort to actual violence, a condition Neal enforced because he was “not going to do any more hard time just because any of you guys get scared or trigger-happy.”

As the money came in, Neal’s stock rose. He was becoming what he needed to be to get on the inside: a necessity. He was getting the group hooked on money. What had first seemed like a windfall was becoming an expectation. They were becoming junkies to his pusher.

It wouldn’t be long before he had enough on them to put them all away. Having lured them into committing crimes they never would have thought of, he would then turn state’s evidence, testify, and disappear again. But not yet. He still had to make the crucial connection between Hansen’s boys and C. Wesley Carter. Ed wanted the whole enchilada.

And of course there was Cody. Or there wasn’t Cody, more to the point. Through the weeks of planning, practicing, and carrying out the robberies, Neal had seen no sign of the boy. He could be anywhere. Farmed out to some Identity family in northern Idaho or Washington State or Arkansas someplace, or left in the care of somebody’s loyal woman in a dingy trailer court anywhere west of the Missouri. Or he could be dead.

Neal didn’t want to accept that possibility, although he knew that Strekker and Carlisle, at least, were capable of killing a child to cover up his father’s murder. But it seemed too much, somehow. Too much to deal with, too much to believe and still keep going on. And he had to keep going on.

He knew it was only a matter of time before the boys in the bund brought him into the inner circle. Only a matter of time, and not much time at that before they’d give anything-even their secrets-to keep the money flow coming in. But time was an enemy to young Cody McCall, if he were indeed alive.

And time is certainly an enemy when you’re undercover, and Neal soon came to realize that he was under a kind of double-cover, living one life with the Sons of Seth and another with the Mills and Karen Hawley.

It was a tough thing to juggle, working with Steve then sneaking over to Hansen’s for a training session or a lecture. Going to Brogan’s for a beer and trying to ignore the gang in the corner. Having dinner at Wong’s with Karen, then making some excuse for leaving so he could run with the wolf pack that night.

There were a few close calls, like the time he was in Strekker’s pickup headed to Reno and just saw Peggy’s Volvo coming the other way from a shopping trip to Fallon. Or when Karen had slept over in the cabin for a change and the boys had come to get him at six in the morning for a little dawn training patrol.

Then there was the time he showed up at Phil and Margie’s all bruised, stiff, cut up, and bowlegged from riding that damn horse.

This particular beast’s name was Midnight, and it was black all right, all the way down to its malevolent soul.

“Why do I have to learn to ride?” Neal asked as he sat on a corral rail. Midnight stood in Gandhiesque tranquility next to him.

“Might need to someday,” Bob Hansen answered cryptically. “Besides, Midnight here is the gentlest gelding we have.”

Midnight looked up at Neal and whinnied softly in reassurance. He did look gentle, Neal thought. He was small as horses go, and skinny. And he had soft warm eyes.

Neal lowered himself into the saddle. Midnight turned his head and looked back at him and nuzzled the rein.

“Take him for a spin, Neal,” Billy McCurdy urged as he smiled his cretinous smile at the rest of the gang.

Neal picked up the reins. “Is this the steering wheel?”

Jory swung open the corral gate.

Midnight looked back at Neal with a gentle are-you-ready expression.

Neal gave the horse a slight nudge in the ribs.

The horse took off like he had a rocket up his ass. His soft eyes now burned with a demonic fever as he headed straight for the nearest barbed-wire fence.

Neal wanted to get off, but the horse didn’t feel so small anymore and it seemed like a long way to the ground, especially at this speed. So he just held on as Midnight found the fence, turned left, and galloped alongside the wire, leaning in ever so slightly to graze Neal’s leg on the barbs.

Neal heard the roars of laughter from the corral, and Billy’s proud voice warbling, “Yep, that damn horse is doing it again! You can’t teach that, you know-he comes by it natural!”

“I wish you still had your balls, Midnight!” Neal hollered as he felt his jeans rip on a barb. “So I could cut them off myself!”

Midnight responded by racing beside the wire for another hundred yards or so and then bearing down toward the trees by the creek bed.

Or more accurately, one particular tree. A scraggly old pine with the dead limb sticking out, the limb about as high off the ground as say, a man on horseback.

Not being as smart as the horse, Neal didn’t see it coming until they were about fifty yards away.

He pulled back hard on the reins but Midnight plunged ahead like a New York cabbie at a yellow traffic light.

Neal jerked back harder.

Midnight ignored it and pulled his head down.

“Have you ever heard of Alpo?” Neal yelled.

Midnight was so intimidated that he sped up as he galloped under the limb. Neal managed to get his hands up over his face as he smacked into the tree limb, did a little trapeze dismount, and landed on his back on the ground.

As Neal struggled to get some air back in his lungs, Midnight walked over and gently nudged him with his nose, like Fury trying to wake up Joey.

Then he bit him.