--Yes, son?

Paul spits in his face.

--I don't love you, Dad. I never loved you. Ever.

He turns and pulls the door open.

--Go away, Dad. Run away. You're in a lot of trouble, so run away. If you don't, I'm gonna kill you or something when I come home.

He goes out and closes the door behind him.

Kyle Cheney grabs the doork.n.o.b, twists it, starts to pull the door open, and closes it before he can see the street outside.

He walks back to the livingroom and looks at the mess. The boy unconscious in the hall. His neighbor on the floor. He sits at the dining table and picks up an uncorrected test and a red felt tip pen and makes a few marks on the paper. Some of his son's spit rolls down his chin and onto the table.

He gets up and goes to the bedroom and dresses in brown corduroys and a blue and pink madras shirt and blue socks and a pair of brown moccasins. From the nightstand he takes a photo of himself holding his five year old son; crouched behind him, arms around his middle, Paul squirming. He takes the picture from its frame, folds it in half and slides it in his breast pocket and gets his keys and checkbook and ID and walks past the wounded bodies and out of the house.

The sun is cracking the sky above the Altamont.

He walks around the block and finds his car and gets in and starts it and drives to the QuickStop. He doesn't have any cash, but the man lets him write a check because he recognizes him and because he has ID. He takes his bottle and gets in his car and takes a long drink and sits and thinks for a minute.

If he closes his eyes, he can remember exactly where it was his wife's car slipped the embankment. He can picture what the car looked like when he got the call and drove until he saw the flashing lights of the police cars and ambulance and fire truck. He can remember the elation.

He starts his car and pulls it onto the freeway and drives fast.

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--Seriously, boss, why the h.e.l.l you bring a gun with only two bullets?

--I got more.

Ramon laughs.

--I'm not lying, guys. I don't think I can walk much, but I bet I can hop on one leg. After he shoots me, the rest of you got no problem.

--Shut the f.u.c.k up.

--Fernando, you promise me, you guys, too. Whelan, Hector, you all promise me you'll kill this fata.s.s, and I'll get up and hop right at him and make him shoot that last bullet at me.

Ramon looks at the bullet hole in the wall again.

--h.e.l.l, I could get lucky, he might miss.

Geezer puts his back in a corner of the room, Fernando and Ramon to his right, the kids to his left.

--Gun can be reloaded, a.s.shole.

--Yeah, how fast? Whelan, Hector, you guys in? Want to play some chicken with fata.s.s?

George is shaking.

Hector pulls his hand free of George. He picks up the length of chain crusted with his own dry blood and stands up.

Ramon claps.

--That's it, vato, that's what I was talking about before, homies sticking together.

Hector stares at him, swallows more blood.

George grabs at Hector's hand.

--Sit down, man. Sit down.

--No.

George watches the barrel of the derringer swing in his direction.

Geezer thumbs the hammer back.

--George, I promise you, these spics try to rush me, you're gonna be the one taking the bullet.

Ramon sits up.

--Hey, I like that even better. You mean, I come at you, me and my brother and Hector come at you, you're gonna blast Whelan? Ese, hear that?

Fernando yanks the splinter out of his b.u.t.t.

--Yeah, I heard it, bro.

George is pulling on Hector's hand.

--Sit down, man, I don't want to get shot, sit down.

Hector edges down the wall, out of his reach, watching Ramon.

Ramon's hand dips between the couch cushions and returns, holding the hacksaw.

--Yo, boss, look what I left lying around.

Gla.s.s shatters as Paul throws the bag of meth through the sliding door, making the hole Hector punched in it big enough to climb through.

--I got your s.h.i.t, fata.s.s, let my friends go.

[image]

Bob stands slowly, the lump on the back of his head throbbing. He goes to the phone and picks it up. He dials 9, but sees something he'd forgotten and doesn't finish. He hangs the phone up and goes to the end of the hall and walks over the broken door, his foot punching a hole in it, and finds a gla.s.s and fills it with water and goes back to the boy on the floor in the hall and pours the water in his face and throws the gla.s.s over his shoulder and bends and takes the boy by his hair and slaps him.

--You, f.u.c.khead, wake the f.u.c.k up, you little piece of s.h.i.t, wake the f.u.c.k up. Where are my sons? What the f.u.c.k is going on and where the f.u.c.k are my boys?

[image]

The garage pitches and rolls and Andy thinks he's going to go back to sleep, but he doesn't.

He folds the plastic back around the parts of Jeff's head that are still there. It's weird, how it looks almost exactly the way it looks when he imagines shooting someone in the face.

He gags. But his stomach has been empty for awhile now and nothing comes out, but it makes his eye and his head hurt.

He stands up and pokes around in the chemicals and gla.s.sware and trash and piles of broken furniture and c.r.a.p and finds a bent piece of rusted rebar with a clot of broken cement jutting from its end.

He swings it back and forth a couple times.

He sees himself standing behind the door when someone comes out to the garage as he brings the rebar down on their head and it gets lodged in there and they fall down and pull the rebar from his hand and it cuts his palm as it jerks free and he has to wiggle it back and forth to pull it loose from the hole in the skull of the dead body on the floor.

He swings it a couple more times, raising it above his head and letting gravity pull it down in an arc. He guesses at its weight and thinks about the density of bone and resiliency of flesh and figures that swinging it like that you wouldn't have to add much force to it at all to create enough momentum to shatter bone and cause sufficient trauma to a person's brain so that they wouldn't get back up. Swinging it from the side like a bat will take more force. He tries it. The bar wants to slip from his hands, but it doesn't.

He wonders how long it will be before someone realizes that he must be in the garage because they've eliminated everywhere in the house and then they come out to look for him.

Then he hears a gunshot.

And then breaking gla.s.s.

And then the screaming starts.

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George watches as the bag of crank hits the floor and pulls Geezer's eyes from him, the aim of the derringer drifting away, and he jumps at the fat man who is reaching for the drugs with the snapping claw of the grabber.

The bag is about the same size as a football.

Fernando sees George making a move and dives and rolls and cuts George's feet from underneath him and tries to cover the bag with his body, but it's snagged on the end of Geezer's f.u.c.king grabber and is pulled away from him.

Ramon gets his crutch planted in his armpit and shoves himself forward, a stream of blood pulsing from his leg, pivoting on the rubber tip of the crutch to face Paul as he comes through the hole in the gla.s.s door, and being totally blindsided when Hector whips the chain across the side of his head, ripping his ear open.

George flies, his legs suddenly out from under his body, and plows headfirst into Geezer's gut and Geezer grunts and jerks the grabber and the claw rips the plastic bag and it falls and he lets go of the derringer as he tries to grab the meth, but both drop to the floor, the bag spilling dirty yellow crystals.

Ramon swings the hacksaw backhand, the blade tearing through Hector's black jeans and into the meat at the back of his knee. Hector's leg folds and he goes down, swinging the chain, watching it wrap around Ramon's crutch, and yanking as he hits the floor, bringing the jailbird down on top of him.

On the floor, Fernando lunges and wraps his fist around the shaft of the grabber as Geezer moves to s.n.a.t.c.h up the fallen derringer. He wrenches it free of the fat man's sweaty hand and throws it across the room and curses all the saints as George flops on top of the gun.

Geezer looks at the floor, at the bag spilling his meth, at his favorite gun disappearing under Bob Whelan's son, and at his grabber across the room. He doesn't even try to bend and pick anything up. Knowing he'll never be able to rise without help, he heads for the door.

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Paul sees Geezer running. He wants to hurt him. Hurt him so bad for sending him to get the meth, for sending him home. He runs past Hector and George, struggling on the floor; going after the fat guy, crying.

George covers the derringer as Fernando comes down on him, driving his elbow into the back of his neck. George's face goes into the floor and he feels Fernando's hands digging under his chest, going for the gun, grabbing his thumb.

Fernando wrenches, and George's thumb breaks.

Geezer's hand slips off the doork.n.o.b. He screams and wipes the sweat off on his chest and twists the k.n.o.b as the big kid comes charging after him. He swings his arm and catches Paul in the b.a.l.l.s with his huge fist and the boy folds and falls and Geezer is out the door.

He chugs to his Seville, gets in, fumbles the key into the ignition and the AC comes to life with the engine. He hits the gas and the engine roars, and he almost plows head on into a 4x4 rounding the corner. He cuts down the street, thinking about money and where to get some.

Hector has one end of the chain in each hand, stretching it across Ramon's neck as Ramon sprawls on top of him, one forearm shoved under Hector's chin as his other hand feels for his dropped hacksaw.

George goes blind from the pain of his thumb breaking, he can feel it as Fernando grabs his other thumb, but this time he just pulls George's hand to the side and worms his fingers around the derringer.

Curled around the pain between his legs, Paul watches as Andy comes through the door from the garage, something dangling from his hand.

[image]

Ramon has the saw. He twists his head, trying to keep Hector's chain from biting through his throat and plants the blade on the back of Hector's wrist. But he never draws it across the skin to shred the tendons. Instead he goes limp as something impossibly heavy hits the back of his head, and his body falls away from him.

Fernando pulls the gun from George's hands and rolls off and flips over just in time to see the little Whelan kid put his foot in the middle of Ramon's back and twist an iron bar and pull it from the hole in the back of his brother's head, something heavy and red dragging at the end of it.

Andy stumbles backward as the rebar jerks free from Ramon's skull. Everything is working pretty much the way he thought it would. He turns, but Fernando isn't on top of his brother anymore. So that was a miscalculation. One of the risks of entering a situation that is inherently chaotic. He watches Fernando point the derringer at him. He looks at the two barrels, and watches the hammer snap down. And nothing happens. And he knows this is not random chance, remembering the sound of the gunshot he heard, he knows this is a product of order, of things working as they should. And he moves to maintain this order.

The kid is coming at him. He's running, hefting the iron bar, raising it above his head. Fernando pulls the trigger again. But the hammer isn't back and the gun doesn't go off again. He pulls the hammer back as the kid gets closer and pulls the trigger and the gun still doesn't go off. And he realizes that you must have to pull it back further to fire the second barrel. And then the kid is in front of him and the iron bar hits his hand and shatters the bones and the gun is gone and the kid is raising his b.l.o.o.d.y weapon over his head.

[image]

It looks different, which is obvious, but it also feels different, which is less obvious. When the chunk of concrete at the end of the bar crushes Fernando's face, it both looks and feels different from when it crushed the back of Ramon's head. Less resistance. More blood.

Coming onto the porch, dragging Timo Arroyo behind him, Bob stares through the open front door and watches as his young son brings the bar down. His strange and incomprehensible boy. The boy he changed everything for, the boy he has nothing in common with, nothing to share with, killing a man twice his size.

He watches the teenager next to him watch his brother murdered.

He takes him by the throat and squeezes, and slams him into the side of the house.

--Keep your f.u.c.king mouth shut.

He releases him.

--Run.

Timo doesn't move.

Bob slaps him.

--Run.

Timo runs.

And Bob Whelan walks into the house and he gets the boys on their feet and makes them help Andy out to the 4x4 and he finds the Coleman fuel in the garage and he spills it over the blood and the bodies and he sets it all on fire, burning the house the boys came to rob.