S. Gorden - The Duce of Pentacles

"Mr. Shermon? This is Jack."

"Who?"

"Jack Andrews, the school district's attorney."

"What do you want?" snapped Shermon, his anger still boiling from Makinen.

"I was just contacted by Makinen's attorney. You have to pay him his salary. In fact, you should keep him on salary until he is officially fired."

"What! Do you know what the little fucker did?"

"I don't care what he did. You and the district can be held in violation of his contract. That means you can be held personally liable for his salary plus penalties. In other words, he could take you to the cleaners in the courts. As the school district's attorney, I would have to advise them to suspend you from duties if Makinen files a complaint. That would be the only way to limit the district's liability. Are you willing to put your job on the line just to keep Makinen from having his pay?"

Andrews had, at various times, defended some of the worst scum in the region. He had learned to appreciate a good string of cuss words. The string of epitaphs that came from Jefferson were only passing in creativity but in venom they rated an _A_. He decided that he would have to contact a couple of the more responsible members of the school board. They might need to cut their losses and get rid of Shermon. With the bribery of a favorable recommendation, you could usually find a district that would hire a troublemaker off your hands. School boards were notoriously easily swayed into hiring anyone who looked good and had what appeared as the proper background.

Shermon fumed in anger for the next few hours. He had just gotten himself under control when he realized that all their bookkeeping, even the carefully doctored books, had been on those computers. They had kept everything shady on the computers to make it easier to erase if anyone started to check up on the bookkeeping. Could they rebuild the fake books without being caught?

* * * *

Makinen never heard the bullets. He woke to the squeal of tires and a sharp pain in his arm. When he touched his arm, he felt a warm liquid, blood. He turned on the bedroom light. Crouching low, he went into the bathroom to clean and check his arm. He found a two inch long crease along his upper arm. Wrapping his arm in a pillowcase, he got his twenty-gage shotgun. Leaving the lights on, he threw on some clothes and hurried out the back of the trailer.

He ran to the highway ditch just past the edge of his yard. Crouching in the brush, he waited with his loaded shotgun.

When he looked back at his trailer, he could see the light coming through the bullet holes in the side of the trailer. He realized that he would have been killed if he had a bed and not just a mattress on the floor. The dozen bullet holes were placed in a saw tooth pattern stretching across the bedroom just under the windowsill. When he saw this, he started retching up sour stomach acids.

He'd just finished a dry heave when he heard the sound of tires rolling down the road. A car was coasting down the tar without lights and its motor off. As it rolled past his hiding spot, shots erupted from the back seat hitting the area around the bathroom window. James returned fire, filling the passenger area of the car with three rounds of number six birdshot. The car started up amid screams of pain. As the car pulled away, Jim pumped his last two shells into the rear tire area of the car. In the pre-dawn dark, Makinen saw sparks come from the left rear of the car as it settled onto the tire rim.

It was late afternoon when Henry and Al again showed up at Makinen's. James was trying to cork the holes in his trailer with wooden plugs when they pulled up. Henry started the conversation.

"Those look like bullet holes."

"Do they?"

"Arne and his friend John are in the hospital again. They claim to have been shooting rats with a .22 in the dump behind his father's barn. He claims his brother must have thrown away an old box of birdshot. They hit it with a .22 round and the shells went off. Both boys have a dozen pellets in them. You wouldn't happen to have heard anything about that?"

"No. I haven't talked to anyone all day until you showed up."

"It's kind of funny about those boys. They showed up at the hospital with their car all shot up as well. They claimed they were shooting the rats from their car! Do you believe that?"

"Yep. Those boys aren't too smart, you know. If they keep on trying to shoot rats, they could just wind up dead."

"I told them that too. In fact, I told them if they even touched a gun, I would put them in jail for the next ten years just to protect them from themselves. I even have them in jail right now for reckless endangerment and

the firing of a weapon too close to a residence. I talked to their parents. They are going to be in the jail for a while.

"Jim, I think maybe you should visit your kids out west."

"No can do. Just look at all the maintenance I have to do around here, all of these holes to patch. If I left on a vacation, do you really think this trailer would survive? I borrowed the money for it from my father. I don't have any money now, and he can't afford the cost of losing it now that he's retired."

"I'll be watching everything very closely, Jim. I would bring you in for your own protection if I thought it would help. Besides, I wouldn't want you in the same jail with John and Arne.

"You had better take care of yourself. It looks like you're bleeding," Henry added, pointing to Makinen's arm.

"Thanks, Henry. I will"

In the car ride back to the office, Al asked, "Are we in the old west? Why didn't we arrest him?"

"For what?"

"For shooting those kids. That's what."

"You mean for shooting back at someone trying to kill him. You saw those bullet holes."

"Well, how about for lying to the police."

"Exactly what did he lie to us about?"

"We got to do something."

"Yes, we do. Makinen isn't the one who has been lying. So who else has

been?"

"God damn it. You're right! We go after the girl, Shermon and Kawalski."

* * * *

_Hands turn over the next card._

A man lies on the ground. His body pierced by ten swords.

_The hands hesitated at the gruesome sight. Slowly they reach and turn off the light._

Vera woke every morning an hour before she had to get her kids up for school. That hour was the time she had for herself. She put the coffee on and rolled out the stationary bicycle. She turned on the TV to her favorite morning talk show. She rode the bike to the sound of the local news and the smell of brewing coffee. Twenty minutes later when she got off the bike, she modeled her body in front of the living room mirror. She held her arms over her head as she examined her midriff for any signs of giving birth to three kids. After passing inspection, she went to the kitchen for her coffee.

Vera heard a noise outside the window. She saw the backs of some dogs fighting over something in back by the alley. _"Did the kids leave the cover off the garbage cans again?"_ she thought as she went to the back door.

She yelled at the dogs but they continued fighting. She saw what she thought was a white kitchen garbage bag between the dog's legs. She turned to put the garden hose on the dogs but it wasn't coiled up by the back door. Her eyes followed the green hose back to where the dogs were fighting. Carefully, she pulled the hose away from the animals. Once it was in her hands, she turned the water on. The dogs scattered with a series of yelps.

Vera screamed and fainted. Her children found her there and called 911. To the protests of his older sister, Vera's teenage son took a couple of Polaroids of the girl's body before the cops showed up. He was suspended from school for the rest of the week when his study hall teacher caught him passing one of the pictures around to his friends.