HORTON HUNG UP, closed his eyes and let out a long, shaking breath. Playing Mason had been tough. Horton’s time on the force had honed his internal lie detector but he would never be a great liar himself. Having to lie meant that you were in deep shit; the lie itself was just a way to move the confrontation with said shit a little further down the line. He didn’t believe in his own magic bullshit dust and it made lying hard. He thought it might be all right. Hoped it would. Mason had sounded calm and collected, like he’d bought everything Horton had said. Hell, Mason had sounded nice. And that, of course, got Horton’s lie detector going off like the alarm bells in Mission Control during a launch fuck-up.
“I’ll get your back,” Horton muttered into the empty motel room. He grabbed a smoke off the night table, lit up and dragged, listening to the tobacco crackle. He imagined Mason at his back and wondered what it would feel like to take a slug or a blade in the spinal column. And Mason favored that enormous .44. Thing had a bore like a train tunnel. Even if he only clipped the bodyguard’s back, Horton’d end up needing someone else to wipe his ass for him. Mason had called him “son”. And had it come from anyone else, Horton, even with his cop issue lie detector, would have believed it. Jesus, what a load. Horton exhaled dirty blue. “Frosty the fucking psycho.”
But he’d done it. He’d thrown a chess move and could only hope that the Mason play would work when it all came down. In another—he checked his watch—couple hours he was going to drive a professional hitter to meet another professional hitter. They might make nice and give Horton the boy. They might go Wild Bunch on each other and anyone else in the vicinity. Or they could join up and take the boy, and if they pulled that, it was all over. Horton was confident in his abilities, but he wasn’t good enough to take on both priests. And he wasn’t counting on the first option. Calvin wasn’t just going to give up the kid. But in the back of his mind, like a stupid, hateful itch you know better than to scratch, Horton held the hope that Calvin might.
That was fool’s gold and he knew it. Horton wasn’t about to count on something so tenuous. Any way you looked at it, he was out-gunned. And as far as information was concerned, he was unarmed. He didn’t know where they were going, or what they would find when they got there. He needed a piranha and that’s where Mason came in.
Four years ago, Horton, Sinclair and Finch had been sent to lean on a business partner of Mr. Mason’s. The guy was a Cubano raft-jockey who’d made good in the U.S.A. through an exotic fish business. Or rather, he’d made good by using his exotic fish business as a cover for moving a few keys of China White every now and then for Mason. Unfortunately, when Mason performed a surprise audit on El Cubano’s black books, he’d uncovered some serious sSeung. It had ended in a cluster fuck.
They stood in a warehouse, Sinclair and Finch indistinct in the shadows under an elevated display tank, Horton off by the door and everyone pointing guns. One guy covered another guy covered another like a Quentin Tarantino movie, except everyone was ready to piss himself and no one was dressed all that well. El Cubano and his boys had been waiting for them. (How they had known Mason’s men were coming Horton never figured out.) For what was probably less than half a minute, but what felt like an hour, they stood that way, six hair-triggers away from a very messy domino effect.
El Cubano had taken a huge gamble then. Later Horton would remember the man with admiration. The raft-jockey-made-good lifted his arms in the universal “Okay, you got me” gesture, and in the instant it took for everyone to process what was going on, he fired. The slug smashed through the big fish tank, spilling its contents all over the floor… and all over Sinclair and Finch. Horton never took his eyes off his man and unloaded as soon as he heard the shot. He retrained his gun on El Cubano as a bullet cut the air past his left ear. Horton opened up again and there was one less Castro-hating-raft-jockey-made-good. Sinclair got the last guy with a wild shot. He was busy spinning around like a man-shaped tornado, throwing random lead until his gun clicked dry. Finch was rolling around on the floor like he was trying to extinguish himself. Each man was clothed in a jacket of snapping piranhas.
That’s what Horton needed now, a piranha, a wild card. Horton had no idea if Mason would go nuts in a way that would make matters better or worse. His only certainty was that Mason would go nuts, and perhaps in the ensuing chaos, Horton would be able to catch a break. The last time someone had played the piranha card, Horton was the only one to end up without a mark. He hoped it would be the same this time. But then, the man who’d played the wild card before had wound up dead.
Horton stubbed out his cigarette and stared at the wall. Through those eight inches of drywall and lumber Father Bob was catching some blessed beauty sleep.
“Hope you like fish, motherfucker,” Horton whispered. And oh, wasn’t that perfect? A slow smile settled on his face as he realized what day it was—Friday.