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  John nodded. He’d seen the movie at least a dozen times, just to see Reba holding a gun.

  “You wouldn’t be willing to sell that, would you?”

  “Now you want to buy a piece-of-shit tumbler? Looking to clean those two bullets you just bought?” John asked. “If that’s what you’re thinkin’, I don’t recommend it.”

  Charlie laughed. “No, but my other friend is a huge movie fan and would get a kick out of it.”

  It was one of the dumbest things John had ever heard. That’s when he suddenly thought it was some kind of sting, like maybe it was illegal for Luke to sell those bullets. Maybe the guy was ATF, but then why would he want to buy a tumbler? “That’s not even our good tumbler,” John said. “I been meanin’ to throw that piece of shit out ‘cause it shuts off randomly after eight or ten minutes.”

  “Perfect,” Charlie said. “How much do you want for it?”

  Either the guy is ATF or he’s straight off the turnip truck by way of the big city, John thought, shaking his head. He figured there was no way Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms would bother over two bullets and he was pretty sure he could sell his own tumbler. He’d sold a lot more than that on Craigslist. Tourists were always willing to pay way too much for way too little, though, so John decided to milk it. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  Charlie held his gaze; there wasn’t any doubt that he wanted to buy the tumbler.

  “How about $100?” John said, thinking Charlie would either walk out or try to barter him down a bit.

  Instead, the man pulled out a wad of bills and counted out $100 in a pile of twenties, tens, fives, and ones.

  John shook his head and unplugged the tumbler, then set it on the counter with a clang.

  With a huge grin on his face, Charlie picked up the tumbler and thanked John for his time.

  Chapter 6

  It couldn’t have been much more than forty degrees outside, and Damon rubbed his huge hands together before blowing into them to warm them a little. Even his heaviest black wool coat was no match for the cold winds that blew mercilessly across the plains, and he had his black winter hat pulled down nearly over his eyes. He’d popped the collar up to save his neck against the cold and was in the process of debating whether or not he should grow out a full beard instead of his usual Fu Manchu. Damon stood with a slight tilt to his upper body, down and to the right, a souvenir from a shanking he’d taken in the pen years prior. It hurt worse when it was cold, and it was almost impossible for him to stand perfectly upright. Nose candy was the only medicine that made the pain go away.

  “I’m sure I know the answer before I ask the question,” Damon said, “but do any of you boys know what the word sacrosanct means?”

  In response, he only got three blank, stoned-out stares.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, shaking his head. “Sacrosanct is something too valuable or precious to be interfered with. I heard the word years ago and never thought I’d have a need to use it. Then again, I never thought the stars would align and I’d find myself in such a nice little position either.”

  Damon looked out over the empty plains. At night, it was easier to handle the bleakness of North Dakota, because the place actually looked peaceful. By day, it was just gray skies and cold weather. Everything felt so empty, everyone so far away. It was good for business and made it easy for Rook to keep an eye on things with binoculars or those infrared goggles he liked to use like he’d crawled out of the pages of some spy novel. That far out in the middle of nowhere, the only movement he ever saw was prairie dogs. Damon had taken the three tweekers to an abandoned drill rig. It was quiet in an ominous, eerie kind of way, the derrick stretching into the sky as if the whole place was giving God the finger, and Damon loved that kind of macabre ambiance.

  “You boys,” Damon said, taking a long draw off a menthol cigarette, “have found yourselves in a lucky situation, one I don’t really like to discuss where I think there could be bugs or eavesdroppers. Success makes me paranoid. Things are going well, and I don’t want any fuck-ups.”

  It was clear that none of the three skinny, drawn-out looking boys who stood in front of him, shivering either from the cold or just the need to spike, had any idea why they were there. There was fear lurking in their eyes, and Damon thrived on the control. He liked to walk close to them and tower over them; since he was six-four, only Rook could look him in the eyes. Damon glanced over at Rook, his black face almost without features in the darkness. When Rook wasn’t around, Damon and the boys used to joke Rook was so black, his great-grandma must have been so ugly not even the slave traders would bang her. Rook turned back to Damon nodded to indicate that they were officially alone, minus the driver back in the SUV, who was probably just happy that he could stay in the car where it was warm.

  “We have a big deal going down, and as I understand it from your handlers, you three can be trusted. You make good money and never short us, and I like that. That’s an excellent work ethic, boys, and it should be rewarded.”

  They grinned at Damon’s words just like he’d hoped they would.

  Compliments went a long way to warm the blood, to relax, to lower defenses. “Believe it or not, it helps that you boys have a taste for the product. You know the good shit from the bad. The Baker has cooked up a new batch—a real big fucking batch. I need to know he did it right. I need to know that the weight I’m carrying is worth the money and that I’m not gonna get any blowback from the buyer. Long story short, you guys are gonna get a free high for a few days.”

  They smiled again, and Damon could see the gleam in their eyes, even in as little light as there was out in the middle of emptiness. It was like dangling a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in front of an alkie. He knew if he wanted to, he could probably get them to kill each other over the proposition, but that kind of show wasn’t necessary. Damon didn’t have a taste for dog-fighting; it was much too impersonal.

  Damon held up a finger. “There is just one thing.”

  The stupid, stoned-out smiles started to fade.

  “Your handlers trust you. That’s why you’re here. But that doesn’t mean you have my trust yet. Thus, we’re back to sacrosanct.” Damon rolled his shoulders and itched at the small of his back, adjusting his belt as he spoke. His breath came out in small puffs of air between drags off his cigarette. “Back in medieval times, the royal taster was an honor and a burden. He served the king, an esteemed position of trust, but he also risked being poisoned. I’m not worried about you being poisoned, because we all know The Baker does good work. What I want is to make sure he’s doing great work, amazing work, out-of-this-fucking-world work. I need my testers to tell me, honestly, if this is the best fucking product you’ve ever used. I need trust, but in this line of work, trust is a rare thing.” Damon motioned for Rook to come over. “Put those damn goggles away, would ya? Fun is fun, but jesus,” he said as the tall man approached. He took one last drag off his cigarette before stubbing it out on the heel of his boot and putting the butt in his jacket pocket. “Which of these guys did Luther vouch for?” Damon asked.

  Rook pointed to the one in the middle. “Him, Johnny, said he was good, trustworthy,” Rook said in his gravelly voice, a voice made to intimidate.

  Damon raised an eyebrow. “Luther said that, huh?” He turned to Johnny. “Luther’s not all that easily impressed, so you must be good.” Damon reached back to the small of his back, and his shoulders twitched uncomfortably as he pulled out a silenced Diamondback DB9 pistol, a small gun, only about nine inches long, even with the silencer on it. He put it to Johnny’s forehead and pulled the trigger. With the silencer on, there wasn’t even a pop; it was more like a quick breath of air and the slight sound of crunching bone where the 9mm round entered his forehead. Those doe-brown eyes of Johnny’s were stuck in perpetual shock as his head snapped back and he crumpled to the ground. Damon put one more in Johnny’s head, then handed the gun to the boy on the left without so much as looking up. “Consider this a lesson learned, bo
ys. If I’m willing to do that to a guy I’m told I can trust, what do you think I’ll do to somebody who tries to cheat me?” Damon asked. When he didn’t feel the gun taken out of his hand, he looked at the boy. “What’s your name, geeker?” Damon asked.

  “G-greg,” the boy stuttered. He was a rail with thin brown hair on his head, and he couldn’t have been much older than twenty. He was sans coat and shivered beneath a ratty light grey hooded sweatshirt with holes poked in the cuffs for his thumbs to fit through like a white trash glove. A mist of Johnny’s blood had sprayed across his arm.

  “Greg, take this gun and put a round in Johnny.” Damon looked over at Rook, who had a Glock pointed at Greg’s head. “If you don’t, Rook is gonna add you to the pile.”

  Greg slowly took the gun, pointed it at Johnny’s chest, and pulled the trigger with a shaky hand. His aim was off, and the bullet exploded Johnny’s teeth.

  “Jesus,” Damon said, “right in the mouth? You’re a brutal little son-of-a-bitch, aren’t ya?” He took the gun from Greg and handed it to the other one.

  “My name’s John, too,” the boy said without being asked. He took the gun and, without hesitation, put a bullet in Johnny’s chest. The boy had a foul look, despite being a blue-eyed, blond-haired, surfer-looking kind of kid.

  Damon was impressed and took the weapon back from John. “Cold-blooded, son, but there’s more that needs getting done. I hope you boys didn’t make plans for tonight.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating about it being a long night. First, he had to get two tweekers to dig a grave, then convince them to cut their hands and leave DNA blood evidence behind to tie them to the scene, just in case they felt the need to squeal to the local pigs. It would be a long fucking night, Damon thought to himself. He wondered how anything got done without him. He watched the two meth heads follow Rook back to the SUV to get shovels and his eyes drifted back across the open plains; still and empty once again.

  Chapter 7

  Dick was busy loading the newest batch in a backpack when he heard Clarence clear his throat—or at least that was what he thought he heard. Then again, Dick often heard all sorts of things while he was testing a new batch. Sometimes it mellowed him out and gave him clearer focus; other times, it was completely the opposite. Sometimes he had to focus extra hard, like he had to back in elementary school when he drew spirals and swirls and corkscrews on pages of his notebook, getting bigger and bigger, until they covered the page; when that happened, he simply turned to a fresh, crisp page and swirled more and more and more. The other kids took notes on Abraham Lincoln and Tom Sawyer, but Dick’s pinwheels and spirals grew larger until they filled everything with their constant movement. That was life for Dick then, and things were not much different now. He was still spiraling—downward and fast—and he still couldn’t have cared less about Abraham Lincoln or Tom Sawyer. He just had to keep moving, keep up the momentum, never stop. Dick finished zipping up the bag and turned to see some goofy-looking guy in a cool hat standing in the entryway of their trailer.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Clarence asked, his hairy, scarred hand already reaching toward the drawer where they stored the gun. His arms looked like a gorillas and they seemed to stretch all the way across the trailer.

  Dick didn’t like guns around the trailer because the sparks they made didn’t go well with the meth he cooked, but Clarence was Dick’s handler and wasn’t one to take orders from anyone short of Damon. He was big and mean and reminded Dick of a cartoon bad guy, his body kind of out of proportion, with long arms and torso but short legs. Sometimes he looked normal, but not when Dick was on a spike—which he usually was.

  “Charlie Kelly,” the man said as he stepped forward. Dick’s eyes snapped back into focus.

  Dick hadn’t moved, not really sure what to make of the situation. He just wanted to leave with the backpack. He knew Damon and Clarence would want him to do that, so that was what Dick wanted to do. Besides, the guy in the doorway sure as hell wasn’t a cop, nor was he some basehead looking to score. He could have been one of Damon’s new guys, but he didn’t scowl like the rest of those assholes.

  “Well, what the fuck do you want, Charlie Kelly?” Clarence asked, still moving his long-fingered hand toward the weapon in the drawer.

  “First, I suppose I’d like you to stop reaching for what I can only guess is a gun. I don’t like guns, and I can’t imagine that bullets and meth labs go very well together.”

  Caught, Clarence stopped moving and just stared at Charlie Kelly, but his eyes narrowed as he sized Charlie up.

  Dick smiled a little; he liked it when people said the things he was thinking, as if their tongue had reached into his brain and pulled the words out. He could actually envision it, thanks to the meth he could envision lots of things.

  Charlie looked around the trailer. “Is this one of those shake-and-bake operations I’ve read about?” he asked. “Normal labs have all those chemicals sitting around that can blow up on account of the fumes, so y’all just set up shop with a ton of pills and shaker bottles to make stuff quick?” Charlie’s eyes darted around the room, but he looked sleepy-eyed, unimpressed, bored.

  The whole thing was strange to watch, and Dick felt as if he were watching some kind of performance, maybe a play, because it was so out of the ordinary. Then again, for a meth dealer and user, ordinary didn’t live there.

  “A lot of people don’t know this about me,” Charlie said, “but I grew up in a trailer park. The guys I work with know because that’s what they do. Anyway, it kind of struck me that this place is a lot different from the place where I used to live as a kid. A friend of mine lived there, too,” Charlie pulled a picture out of his pocket and showed it first to Dick and then to Clarence.

  She was a pretty girl, brunette, nice smile, the good stuff hidden by that damn stuffed animal, probably good for a throw, Dick’s scattered thoughts told him as he scrutinized the picture.

  “When my parents split, I went to live with my dad in a trailer park quite different from this one. Sure, we had dealers and whack-jobs there too. Hell, one guy was shot for selling a bag of oregano to a pothead, and another guy poured milk on the grave of his dead cat every day. When the lady who lived next to us moved out with her kids, they found this huge, eight-foot black circle in her living room from a leak in the roof that was never reported.”

  “Is there some point to all this, motherfucker?” Clarence asked in the way that Clarence asked just about every question: not really caring what the answer was.

  “Well,” Charlie Kelly said, “it’s just that I’ve noticed that no matter how much you might know the people around you, you really probably don’t. Even if you’re all like family, you might not realize a meth dealer’s living right next door. See, at the root of it all, I think folks just wanna mind their own business. I’m pretty sure your neighbors are the same way, so we should have plenty of privacy.”

  Clarence, looking like he was done listening, reached for the drawer again, but Charlie cracked him on the jaw harder than Dick had ever seen anyone get punched before. Clarence, all six-three of wiry muscle, stiffened up and hit the floor, smacking his head on the counter behind him on the way down.

  “Shoot,” Charlie said as he tipped his hat back. “I didn’t mean for him to smack his head like that.” He clicked his tongue and looked over at Dick.

  Suddenly, the tweeker’s asshole puckered pretty hard. Dick’s last spike must have been pretty weak, as he realized he’d suddenly sobered up enough to feel all kinds of fear. In one fell swoop, the guy in the hat had knocked out one of the toughest, meanest motherfuckers Dick had ever met, and now he was staring him down. Dick felt very small, almost transparent, all five foot five of him, with a backpack full of crystal meth under his arm and no gun within reach. His fight-or-flight yelled at him to run, so he started to back up. The only problem was that he had nowhere to go. He thought about yelling. But what was he going to yell? Help, this guy is stealing my crystal meth? He decided he migh
t be able to reason with the man staring at him with cold eyes that lead into the abyss. “Listen now,” Dick said, “I don’t want no trouble, mister. Do you know whose stuff this is?” he asked, nodding toward the backpack and waving his arms around at the supplies.

  Charlie shook his head. “Can’t say I do, but I was really hoping you’d fill me in,” he said, just before the world went dark.

  It only took Charlie about ten minutes to tie the two men down, not his best time, but still pretty good. The smaller of the two, the one he assumed to be Dick, was on the crappy Formica foldout table. The bigger man was sprawled on the floor, and Charlie had to use a decent amount of cable and duct tape to hold him there. It took another ten minutes for the two to wake up; they both had glass jaws.

  Surprisingly, the little one started to groan first, probably because he didn’t have the bad luck to hit his head on the countertop on the way down.

  “What the…?” Dick started to say, then faded out a little.

  Charlie walked over and pried his eye open. The little guy didn’t look good, but he was starting to come to. “You all right, fella?” Charlie asked. “Sorry about having to pop you one, but in your line of business, I had no way of knowing if you had a gun in your bag. I’m all about safety first, ya know.”

  Dick groaned as his eyes slowly fluttered opened.

  By comparison, the big man, Clarence, by Charlie’s estimation, woke a bit more dramatically. “What the fuck?” he said, but it had a kind of a swollen sound to it from still waking up.

  Charlie looked back and forth between the two men. “Okay, guys, here’s the deal. I need a few answers, and then I’ll leave you to your, uh…business. What I do before I leave is going to depend entirely on how willing you are to cooperate. I didn’t bother to gag you because I’m hoping this’ll go smoothly, but if you yell, I’ll change my mind.”

  “What the fuck do you want?” Clarence asked; it seemed to be a requirement that he swore every time he spoke.