“What? Yeah, sure as fuck did. Didn’t think I wouldn’t, did you?”
I’d known I’d be scared when SuperCop—Kurston—finally arrested me. Everybody is scared all the time, even if they don’t admit it, but the sheer amount of terror surprised me. Kurston’s gun stayed hard against my head and my fear tightened my brown robe like a noose. My heart stopped as though that noose had snapped it dead.
I managed to look sideways at him. “Who the fuck’re you?”
“Nice try,” the cop said. “Where is she?”
“Who—” I coughed. My vision swam. “Who are you?”
He frowned. “What? I’m Captain Brooks.” He bared his teeth, a dog looking for dinner. “Carson City Police.”
“Where’s SuperCo—Detective Kurston?”
“Who?”
“Detective Kurston. Barefield PD.”
“Never heard of him. I’m from Carson City.”
“Carson? By San Antonio?” I asked.
“San Antonio? Fuck, no. Carson City, Nevada, asswipe. Remember? You shot up my town? Killed a couple of my local thugs? Ringing any bells?”
“Whoa...hang on.” There were huge chunks of that last night I didn’t remember—thanks to the ganja and whiskey—but Nevada? All the way to Nevada, shoot the place up, and then back to Barefield?
In...like...two hours?
“I have never been to Carson City.”
The cop made a game show buzzer sound. “Wrong answer.”
This had to be more of Fagan’s bullshit. This cop—curiously alone, I realized—had to be chasing my father.
“Fagan leave you a message?” I asked. “Maybe tell you it was his New York number? ’Cause that’s what he did to me. I was 16 and it was a damned dry cleaning shop in Little Havana...Miami.”
The cop backed up, but his gun stayed at my head. “The hell’re you talking about?” But instead of letting me answer, he yanked me around to cuff me. “I don’t care what you’re talking about.”
He pinched my arms and I yelped. “Wait, I didn’t do anything.” I stumbled over his feet and fell to the floor. “You can’t arrest me, I wasn’t even there. I was in Barefield.”
And did something there.
“Whoa,” Cope said. “What’s up?”
“Back up,” the cop said to Cope. “This is official business, boy.”
“Boy?” Cope grinned. “Y’all didn’t just say that.”
“You gonna play hero, black boy, beat me to death with the cuke? Kick my ass so I don’t shoot your boy in the head?” When Cope said nothing, the cop nodded. “Thought so.” He looked at me. “Where the hell is she, Hal?”
There was a pause.
“Who?” Cope said.
“Hal. You didn’t tell your jungle bunny friend how you shot up my town and I followed you right into this...church?”
“Darcy,” I said.
The cop’s head tilted. “What?”
“I’m Darcy.”
“You’re Hal.”
“Darcy.”
“Hal.”
“Who’s on first?” Cope’s laugh spiraled into the dank air.
A handful of chanting priests glanced at us.
“Pretty good, lawman,” Cope said. “Y’all ain’t even got the right bad guy.”
“Wrong man? Fuck that noise.” But the cop’s face was red. “I’m here for—” He stopped and his gaze went straight to the visitors. “Son of a bitch. That’s them.”
Then he was gone, across the room in a blur, pushing his way through the tight pack of self-flagellating monks.
But their blood never stopped. They tore it from their own backs and flung it through the air. The tang was the odor of a chemical spill. The blood patterned all over the ceiling and dripped on their heads.
The art of self-mortification.
Staggering in its intensity.
But I was pretty sure this idiot with the badge hadn’t really seen it yet. He’d been pretty well focused on me. Did he even realize he was standing in a chapel built from the living rooms of four mobile homes lashed together, walls removed? Did he see the giant wooden cross hanging over the altar? Or the windows, blacked out with shoe polish? Only a smudge of late afternoon sunlight managed to bully its way in and it was just yellow enough to make the priests appear to be dancing in stale piss.
“What in the hell....” The cop tried to move through the crowd of priests to get at the visitors.
“Best be getting to the door,” Cope said.
I didn’t move until Cope shoved me.
“Do it slow and ritualize all the damned way. Get a little luck and mayhap this cheap Dirty Harry forgets we here.”
When I saw Cope’s eyes, my ass puckered. “Holy fuck, you’re scared.”
Cope slapped me with a hard pop. “Blasphemer.” He nodded toward the cop. “And yeah...that cop scares me. Time for us to be getting on down the road.”
Cope and I both moved our arms in tandem with the other priests, what Cope called ritualizing, whips against backs, blooding our sins out. Doing that, we headed for the back door of the chapel. Through it was the rest of the church.
“Why not the front?”
“Bullets start flying and all them priests gonna head for that front door. They’ll pile up like gristle after a steak fry.”
—Whap!—Whap!—
The cop brought his gun to bear on the two visitors I had thought were cops there to nab me. “You’re under arrest.” But his voice got lost in the chanting and the blood. “You guys are craz—”
“Go.” The visiting man shoved the woman toward the front door.
She tore through the priests, disappeared into the forest of brown.
“Here we go,” Cope said.
He was right. This woman, cutting through the place, brought most of the monks out of their ritualizing trance. At which point they saw the cop.
And fucking panicked.
Most were at the church because they were running from Johnny Law. Or from something that would interest Johnny. So seeing a cop in the place, in the literal and metaphoric sanctuary, wasn’t something they’d planned on.
It was a fucking explosion. Howls and shouts, priests ducking into the shadows. Some priests kept blooding, some yelled at the officer. Some randomly screamed. “Who called the cops?” “I’m wanted in—” “—didn’t mean to kill—” “—the other bodies—” “I’ll kill again, motherfu—”
And then the shooting started.
A single shot and I had no idea which priest fired it. Then a second shot. And then a fucking fusillade. Smoke and the stink of gunpowder. More blood but now in drops and spatters rather than slick lines on a ceiling.
A priest I hadn’t met jerked a gun from under his robe and blasted away. Another priest yanked a knife from somewhere and swung it wildly as he headed for an exit.
The shots hit the walls and pulverized the cheap adobe. Bullets shattered the windows and sent shards through the air like New Year’s confetti in Times Square. Huge gouts of sunlight poured in, the naked neon light from that New Year’s celebration. Monks squinted, yelped, at the sudden explosion of harsh light.
And I couldn’t get the fucking stench of gunpowder out of my nose. Smell reminded me of firecrackers...big ass, industrial firecrackers.
In the tangle of bullets, the cop yelled, “This guy’s wanted for murder.”
“That’s crap,” I said to Cope. “He’s not a cop. He’s lying.”
“What y’all talking about?”
It was anarchy around the cop and the male visitor he fought with. Screams and yells, fists and feet, dust. Bits of wood shot off the cross buzzed through the air. Cordite and adobe, blood and maybe even the piss of scared men. It filled the church and created a gumbo of foul odors. Reminded me of desert roadkill left too long in the west Texas sun.
God, Mama, I really need you. Can’t save myself...obviously...I need you.
Everyone fled for the exits. Somewhere in the middle of the pack,
a head disintegrated in a shower of bone and brain. Beyond him, a single line of bullets poked holes in the walls. Those bullets marched around the chapel and as they got to me, Cope jerked me to the floor. His big paw covered my mouth and though he yelled in my ear, his voice was a whisper.
“Y’all get to the bike.”
Cope had been right. Bodies stacked at the doors. Screaming priests scratched and pawed over those bodies, seeing escape rather than a growing junkpile of flesh.
I headed the other direction. The back door beckoned, damn near a portal to another World where none of this shit was happening.
And maybe a World where Mama was even still alive.
“Brother Darcy.” A weak voice. “Take me with you.”
Brother Enrico. A junkie from Sante Fe who told me he’d been fighting his demons for years. He was on the floor. He’d fallen in the confusion, but when I bent over to grab him, I heard two pops and then watched two blooms appear on his chest.
He looked at himself. “Son of a bitch. I knew that cop was here for me.”
I said, “He’s here for me.”
From the hallway, Cope sneered. “Fuck y’all, he’s here for me.”
Along the far side of the sanctuary, something had caught fire. Flames and smoke rose in meandering plumes toward the stained ceiling. The plastic windows were already beginning to melt open and inch down the frames and walls to the floor, a leper’s skin sliding off his body.
“Shit,” I said. “What is that?”
“Yeah...that’d be a fire.” Enrico coughed up yellow and pink fluids, then blood. “This pisses me off.”
“Damnit. Darcy, what y’all doing?”
“I’m dying, Blackie.” Enrico tried to smile.
From the doorway, Cope looked at him, something soft in his brown eyes. “Then die already so I can get outta here, Mex.”
Enrico laughed up a huge amount of blood. “Is that sass? God, I love him.”
“Love y’all, too, Enrico, now die.”
The fire raced, fed by the carpet and tossed-aside robes and sandals.
“Don’t I get...a...send-off?”
Crossing himself, Cope came to Enrico and said, “Hail Mary, Mother of God, here’s another one.”
Enrico closed his eyes. “Best he could do, I guess.”
“Hang on, Mex, don’t croak out on me yet.” Cope pulled one of his rings off and closed Enrico’s hand around it. “Y’all been a good boy. Maybe this’ll help when you get there.”
Enrico nodded. “Bless you.”
I didn’t think he was quite dead, but we couldn’t wait any more. The place was burning down around us, the heat so stifling that breathing was getting tough. The hair on my arms burned away and I knocked a handful of embers off my robe. So we left him there, clutching Cope’s ring and talking to Jesus.
The hallway was already full of smoke. But it wasn’t black. Rather, it was a dingy gray.
As dirty as the last few weeks.
“Where are we going?”
“Thought y’all had the plan.”
Cope laughed, though damn me if I could see anything remotely funny about this nightmare. I tried to yell at him some, but great gouts of smoke flooded me. So instead of yelling at that old black man, I hacked up his name and then panicked. This was how it was going to end. Not with a bullet to the head or in a cell at the Texas State Prison for the accidental death of my father, but here in a hell fire that was going to roast the outside of me as badly as I had roasted my own insides.
A Little Less Than Eight Days Ago
The streets of Valentine, Texas
There was darkness and maybe it was a dream and maybe it was death.
Either way was fine because I didn’t hurt and that was just fine with me.
Who knows, maybe I’d managed to get out of the church without getting shot. Or maybe I had been shot, but then died and so there was no more pain. There was a certain beauty in that notion.
That was a notion I didn’t believe for shit.
So in this darkness, I saw everything blown away. The church, the guns, the priests, the cop. Everyone in the church glared at me like it was all my fucking fault. Dead or dreaming or both, my guts twisted. Last thing I wanted to see was their faces...or the blood rain from their bodies.
But I saw something else, too.
A skanky tattoo shop, sandwiched between two flea-bag hotels, walls thin enough that everyone could hear how good business was for the five-spot whores. Squalid neon advertising that painted the street in lurid reds and blues, purples and greens, and bent the shadows throughout the wet and scummy streets. Music poured through the open window, sometimes rap, sometimes 1970s soul, sometimes twangy country. The rap came from gangsta wannabees, black and white, who cruised with their hands hanging out windows holding cell phones to look the slightest bit like guns. The twang came from tough country boys who’d grown up on the ranches forgotten in the Zachary County outback and who came to town on the weekends looking to trade their homemade meth for a quick roll with a city chick, preferably dark skinned but don’t tell anybody.
A single, hanging bulb cast the room in the same yellow as the sanctuary, and exactly as in the church, the yellow didn’t hide the blood. The main chair, where the artist had done his work, and the two benches where people waited, were both bloody.
And it was pretty much my fault.
That much I knew. But seeing the room didn’t tell me anything else about that night.
Didn’t tell me who else might have been dead besides my father. Didn’t tell me how they died. Didn’t tell me why I’d killed my father. Or why I’d chopped his foot off and taken it with me.
All of that was lost in repressed memories or drunken memories or just a cheap black hole of fear.
The question was why did that black hole of fear smell like pig shit?
I opened my eyes as we drove past a muddy yard filled to overflowing with swine. Had to be a hundred porkers there, farting and snorting and staring at me with an odd complacency.
“Y’all gonna live or what?”
Live? Probably not. I was, after all, in the side car of a broken down piece of crap that would absolutely kill me. “The hell am I doing here? Where’s my damned cooler?”
“Relax, White-Boy Darcy. Down by y’all’s feet.”
Blue, beat up, and scarred. With a cracked handle. Somehow, Cope had managed to get both the cooler and me out of the church.
“I put my veggie in there, right on top. Why’n’t y’all hand it to me?”
“Keep your food out of my cooler,” I said as I handed the man his cuke. “You did a good job, boy scout, saving me and all. Now stop this thing and let me out.”
“Ain’t happening. Gotta get us safe.” Cope jerked his head toward the church and crunched into the cuke.
My stomach rolled. Above the church, orange fingers scratched at a black smoke that burned the entire Valentine, Texas, sky.
“Holy fucking Mary of God.”
A quick sting snapped my face; not Cope’s hand, but the cucumber he held. He growled. “Blasphemer. Watch your language.”
“Ease up with banging on me, Cope. I get’cha, no problem, but I don’t—”
“Speaking of problems, that li’l fire ain’t our only one.”
Sirens filled the air, a soundtrack to the burning. Squad cars—Jeff Davis County deputies and Valentine police and probably squads from Culberson and Brewster Counties—as well as fire engines and ambulances, blasted through town, smearing screams through the afternoon air while those orange fingers kept gigging at that sky.
Beneath the racket of the sirens, I clearly heard the pops of aluminum melting and wood snapping and the moans of the dying. But I could smell, as though I were standing there in the middle of it, burning flesh.
I leaned over the side and threw up. Ropes of vomitus trailed behind us.
“They all ever’where.” Cope’s voice fought with the sound of the bike engine. “Robe’s trail
ing.”
I grabbed my robe, which had been flapping out behind us, and stuffed it under my ass.
“We got Five-O behind us right now.” Cope eased up on the accelerator.
“Shit fire.”
Though I couldn’t see the cop, I felt him big as day. Cruising behind us, nose up our butts, watching. Probably running the license plate.
“Son of a bitch, he’s going to run the plate.”
“Calm down,” Cope said. “Don’t worry ’bout that plate.”
He signaled, turned, and I wrenched the right side rearview mirror around so I could see. A Valentine city car came around with us, then abruptly stopped, backed up, blasted its siren and headed down another street.
“Jesus Christ, that was close.”
“Y’all best not take that name in vain.”
I chuckled, but Cope did not. He kept his eyes on the road while his lips tightened.
“I ain’t playing. I am a lot of things, White-Boy Darcy, but I ain’t blasphemous.”
“Uh...okay. Sorry.” I swallowed. “The cops can’t find us.”
“Y’all think?”
“Listen to me. They. Can’t. Find. Us. They’ll ask all kinds of questions. Damnit, they’ll want to take us in.”
“I know, Darcy, I know.”
“Fuck. We can’t let them—”
“I know.” Cope’s voice boomed. “Shut up and let me drive.”
“Damnit. It was just a little fire.”
“Little got big.”
All those cops and deputies. They led back to SuperCop. It was inevitable. SuperCop would hear about the fire and he’d know I was involved. He was that kind of detective, made those kinds of intuitive leaps. Ninety percent inspiration, eight percent shoe leather, and two percent Pop-Tarts and Dr Pepper. That’s how he worked, always had been and always would be until they laid him and his shoe leather in a nice rosewood coffin and shoved him six feet down.
“We’ve got to get out of town.”
“Ain’t going anywhere any time soon,” Cope said.
He whipped the handle bars and the bike shot across the street and down an alley. Cope crouched close to the gas tank, maybe looking to disappear into it. He slung us into a driveway, then into a wide garage. A tiny car filled a little more than half the garage. Cope angled the bike sideways and killed the engine.
“Are you crazy? Don’t stop, they’ll find us.”