Cruz nodded solemnly. “I believe you. But they’re not going to. They’re going to torture you, you understand? They’re going to cut your teeth out, one by one. They’re going to crush your balls. They’re going to break your fingers and toes. They’re going to impale you through the ass on a stick. They’re going to cut your eyes out. They’re going to do whatever they want. If you talked to anybody, they’re going to find out, and it’s going to be a slow process. The way you can beat that, and die quickly, is to tell them everything up front, right away.”
Smoke started to shake. “Look,” he said. His words tumbled out in a torrent, a flood of chatter. “You win, all right? You win. Am I keeping my mouth shut? No, I’m not. I told you where the money is. We can get most of it tomorrow, if you want. And I didn’t tell anybody. I can prove it, too. For the first couple of years I kept a diary. I wrote in loose-leaf notebooks almost every day. I kept stacks of them. I couldn’t keep it in my head, but I was afraid to tell anybody. For just this reason – I didn’t want to get anybody in the soup with me when you guys eventually showed up. I probably even wrote about stashing the money in the banks. I don’t remember now. But you can look at them. We got all night, right? The banks are closed by now. If we hadn’t spent all day with this…” He gestured at the floor around himself, the dead cats, the blood, his own crumpled form, and somewhere out there, his dead friend Lorena, who only wanted to have a garden.
“…with this bullshit, you could’ve gotten the money…” Abruptly, he started crying, and that surprised even him. But it hurt. It hurt so bad, and they had hardly even fucking started yet. New York was going to be worse. He knew that. He knew how bad it was going to be. His body was wracked by sobs.
“You can have the fucking money. Read the notebooks. It’s all in there.”
Cruz smiled. “Okay, notebooks. That’ll be a start. It won’t be proof that you didn’t talk to anybody, but it might make things easier on you. Where are the notebooks?”
“I keep them out in the workshop.”
Cruz looked at the two men standing by the doorway, watching the sun go down. “Moss, go check out those notebooks.”
The big man smiled, apparently at the thought of this little man giving him a direct command. “You heard the man, Fingers. Go on and get those notebooks out of the shed. We can see what our friend’s been up to all this time.”
Smoke shook his head, the tears still flowing. “The kid will never find them by himself. They’re in there under about a million different things. He’ll never be able to figure out all my junk.”
An amused, mocking light came into Cruz’s eyes.
“You know if you try anything funny, I am personally going to cut your left eye out. You realize that, right? You can’t get away from us, so don’t let something in your mind convince you otherwise. It’ll make your life, what little is left of it, a lot harder.”
Smoke shook his head. “I know all that. I’m just trying to help. The kid won’t find the stuff. It’ll take him half an hour. I’m not even sure where they are myself. But I’ll do a better job of finding them than he will.”
Cruz gestured at Smoke, and Smoke lay there until the two young men came over to help him. They grabbed him under the arms, and lifted. Smoke let his head loll backwards as they raised him.
Then he was standing. “I need my cane,” he said.
Cruz was right in front of him.
“Never mind your cane. Fingers here will help you walk.”
Smoke allowed Fingers to support him as he and the kid passed through the garden backyard and approached the workshop. Cruz followed behind them. They passed the little grave marker for Butch.
“You used to have a dog, Dugan?”
“Not me. The dog was buried there when I got here. I never felt like digging it up.”
Fingers leaned Smoke up against the wall of the shed, and handed him the key chain they had taken away from him earlier. Smoke worked the key in the lock and pushed the heavy door. It creaked as it opened. The shadows were long inside the workshop.
The kid shoved Smoke through the door and Smoke bounced across the room, then fell to the dusty floor. He was lying below the window that led to the back alley, and from there, the street. That back alley was overgrown with weeds that came right up to the window. He locked that window whenever he was away from the shed. But he kept the lock well-oiled and ready to open. It got hot in there, some days.
Fingers laughed at him. “You know what, old man? You’re pathetic. This is the easiest job I been on in my life. You know what I mean? I mean, we didn’t even hurt you. Not really.”
Smoke reached up and used the window to claw himself into an upright position. He leaned on the window sill. He reached up to the top of the window and clamped his hand on the lock. Motes seemed to float in front of his eyes. He was going to pass out again, and soon.
“The stuff is over here somewhere,” he said. “Look, can you turn that overhead light on? I can’t see, I need some light if I’m gonna see over here.”
“Do it yourself,” Fingers said.
Obnoxious kid. “Can’t you just do it? You guys come here, beat the shit out of me, and tell me I’m gonna be killed. Then you push me down onto the floor of my shop. I can’t even fucking walk, you know that? Shit. Fuck it, I’ll turn the light on myself.”
He made a move like he would turn around and pull the chain on the light, the simple hanging bulb. If only it was right there behind him. If only he could move a little better. If only he wasn’t so sore from the beating he had taken. He turned around wearily, creakily, gazing upward at the bulb. It was dark out, getting darker.
“What’s taking so long?” Cruz called from somewhere outside. It sounded like he had drifted back toward the house.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Fingers said. “I’ll turn on the fucking light, you gimp.”
Smoke braced himself as the kid moved into the room behind him. It was too bad it was just he and the kid in here. He wished it could have been everybody. Okay, this would have to do. His hand quietly turned the lock on the window. He imagined himself yanking it open then leaping through, blasting head-first through the bug screen, propelled by both his legs and arms. It would take everything he had.
Fingers played with the chain. “I can’t seem to get this thing to…”
Come on, kid. Light it up.
“You gotta do this fucking thing, you gimp.”
“Why? You can’t turn on a fucking light?”
COME ON.
“All right,” Fingers said. “I got it.”
Whooooosh.
Smoke saw the flash of light played out against the wall. He heard the tiny pop of the light-bulb going and then he felt the sudden heat on his back. An instant later he heard the kid start to scream.
It was loud, like a siren.
Smoke wrenched the window open and sailed through, his back in flames, the fire eating away at the hair on top of his head. He fell to the ground in the alley behind the shop, rolling to put out the flames on his back, patting out the flames on top of his head.
The inside of the shop was already on fire. With the paints he kept in there, the thing was going to blow sky-high. He saw a shadow stagger through the bright orange and yellow of the flames. It was the kid, lit up like a torch. He screamed for only a second longer, then went silent, and keeled over. Smoke pictured the kid inhaling fire. His larynx ruptured, the scream had died almost before it began.
The kid was a goner, but the other two weren’t. Smoke dragged himself up the footpath between yards in the gathering dark. Behind him, the shadows leapt and danced in red and amber.
Precious seconds passed.
Smoke turned right on the quiet street. No one was coming. No one was running. Soon though, they would all come soon enough.
Paint cans. Gunpowder. Blasting caps.
These were just a few of the things he stored in that shed.
He thought of the two ladies, old biddies, sisters, who owned the house. They could have been twins, but after so many decades, who could tell? Neither one stood five feet tall. They both had their white hair pulled back into buns. Neither one could hear worth a damn. They were eighty if they were a day. He rented his apartment from them, and they lived upstairs. How far was that shed from the house? Thirty yards? Less?