Wiley Cash - This Dark Road to Mercy

“Find him.”

“Do you know him?” Eddie asked. The room grew quiet.

“Do you know him?” the Boss repeated. Eddie’s smile caught the corner of my eye.

“From the minors, back in the day.”

“Was that before…?” The Boss pointed to his eye and let his voice trail off.

“Yes. Before that.”

“Is that why you wear sunglasses all the time?” Eddie asked.

My focus stayed on the Boss. “You’re not going to find anyone more willing to kill Wade Chesterfield.”

“Is that right?” the Boss asked. He smiled and looked over at Eddie and nodded like he agreed. “Then why haven’t you killed him? It would’ve saved me a lot of trouble.”

“You’re the first that’s been willing to pay for it.”

The Boss stared for a second, and then he started laughing. He dropped his feet off his desk and fell forward in his chair and put his hands on his knees. “Are you serious?” he asked. He waited for me to respond, tears in his eyes, then he busted out laughing again, harder than he had before. “He is serious,” he said. Eddie snickered from his chair against the wall.

The Boss laughed himself hoarse, and then he wiped his eyes and sat up straight in his chair. He took a tissue from a box on his desk and blew his nose. “Jesus,” he said, out of breath. “It’s been a shitty day. I didn’t know how bad I needed that.”

“There’s nothing to laugh at.”

“There’s nothing to laugh at,” the Boss repeated in a whisper. “Well, I disagree, Pruitt. Your old buddy stole a lot of money from me, and I happen to want it back. What you said is funny because the idea that I’d pay you to do something I can do myself is about the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard.” He started arranging things on his desk like the conversation was over.

“If you could do it then you would’ve done it already.”

“Good night, Pruitt,” he said. “Close the door on your way out.”

“Twenty-five thousand to find him. Another twenty-five and he’ll disappear forever. He’ll be found and killed one way or another; the only difference is that right now you can decide whether or not you’ll get your money back.”

The Boss leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Well, well, well,” he said. “You want to play hit man.”

“It’s not a game.”

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s blackmail. But I’ll tell you what, Pruitt. Here’s what I’ll do: five thousand up front, five thousand if you find him, and then five thousand if I get my money back. Another five thousand if he disappears for good. Deal?”

“Twenty-five thousand up front. He’ll disappear for fifty. Just like before.”

“No way,” the Boss said. “No way. I don’t have that kind of money just lying around.” My hand reached for the doorknob. “Hold on,” he said, his eyes closed like he was deep in thought. “Five thousand up front, ten thousand if you find him, and then ten thousand if I get all my money back. Twenty-five thousand if he disappears after that.” He opened his eyes. “That’s it, Pruitt. Take it or leave it.”

I took it.

“You got ten days,” he said. “Ten days, and then I’m bringing you back in.”

“The take.”

“What about it?”

“How much did he get?”

“Enough,” the Boss said. He pointed at me. “And you’d better bring back every damn cent of it.”

“You don’t have any idea how much he took, do you? If you did, you’d tell me.”

The Boss leaned back in his seat and stared at Eddie, and then he looked back at me. “Don’t push me, Pruitt,” he said. “Do not push me.”

He picked up a pen and scribbled something down on a pad and tore off the sheet. He handed it across the desk; the name Lane Kelly and an address and phone number were written on it. “This guy knows something,” the Boss said. He nodded at Eddie. “But my asshole cousin couldn’t find him either.”

The Boss unlocked a drawer, pulled out stacks of bound twenties, dropped several into a plastic Food Lion grocery bag, and held it out to Eddie. Eddie jumped up from his chair and walked to the Boss’s desk and took it, and then he carried it across the office, refusing to make eye contact until he’d sat down.

I opened the door and the light behind me fell into the dark hallway. Music from the club filled the office. The Boss’s voice stopped me from leaving. “So what do you have against Wade Chesterfield?”

My face turned toward him. “Why?”

“It just seems like you want to find him more than I do.”

“He stole something from me too.”

“Really,” the Boss said. “And what would that be?”

I took my hand off the doorknob and lifted my sunglasses. The Boss’s smile fell when he saw what was beneath them. “Everything.”

The house lights came up at 2 A.M., and the place was cleared by 2:30. My truck sat by the Dumpster in the back corner of the lot, out of the reach of any lights. Movement behind the Dumpster caught my eye. A swift kick flushed them out: the tanning-bed blonde and one of the guys who’d been watching her dance scrambled like rats across the parking lot, the woman laughing, yelling, “Sorry, Pruitt,” over her shoulder, the man trying to outrun her like they hadn’t been together. They disappeared around the front of the building where a few cars were still parked.

One click of the remote and my truck unlocked, another click and the headlights and the roof lights came on. The plastic grocery bag bounced onto the floorboard after hitting the passenger’s seat. The truck’s V-8 rumbled itself to life.

It took half a trip around the parking lot to find Eddie’s new silver Camaro, the same car he usually drove the Boss to work in. He’d backed it in and double-parked it beneath a light on Wilkinson Boulevard on the Charlotte side of the lot. I stopped the truck about ten feet in front of the Camaro’s bumper, my lights illuminating every drop of rain on the car’s waxed surface. Two black thirty-four-inch Pro Stock Louisville Sluggers rested in the gun rack in the truck’s back window.

At first, it was only Eddie’s face in my mind: his skinny mustache, his redneck haircut, the little gold hoop piercing the cartilage on the top outer edge of his left ear. But then his face blurred into Wade Chesterfield’s, the way he’d looked ten years ago. The Camaro’s headlights became eye sockets, the taillights too, and when they busted and the glass and plastic fell to the asphalt, there was the sense of a fading bright light, the world turning black, the feel of something lost forever.

The house sat alone in a dark, wooded cul-de-sac, no lights on inside, the sun coming up through the trees behind it. The.45mm Glock that had been hidden under my front seat was sitting on the dash, my batting gloves lying beside it, the slip of paper the Boss had given me a few hours earlier with Lane Kelly’s name and address on it still in my hand.

Once I was outside the truck there were no sounds except for the engine cooling and the birds waking up in the trees around the house. My eyes darted from window to window looking for the slightest movement in the blinds, shadows on the other side of the glass. The house seemed empty.

A detached garage sat at the end of the driveway, the glass panes on its door covered on the inside with a curtain.

Dense woods bordered the backyard, and with my truck parked down the street and out of sight I thought of hiding there, listening to the birds and waiting for someone to come home. But instead my hands slipped on the batting gloves and tried the knob on the back door. It was unlocked, but the dead bolt wasn’t.

The first kick shook the house and rattled the windows. The second busted the dead bolt through the frame, and the door swung open and slammed against the wall inside.