Выбрать главу

Gabe — the name he and David had heard over and over again. That’s the guy, Jack thought. No matter what happens afterward, I’ll get him at least.

The Mexican pounded against the second door; there wasn’t a handle on this side.

“Open up!”

A white guy with a nose ring and a shaved head opened it. As Jack stepped inside the house, the smell of the cooking meth hit him. It stank like chemical cleaners. He was instantly light-headed, like he’d stood too fast. He tried to walk straight, to pretend it wasn’t bothering him. The others didn’t seem to notice.

Misfit led him into the kitchen. A group of people were sitting at a table working. Jack tried to get his bearings, tried to count the people and determine what kind of situation he was in. But his wooziness wasn’t going away — it was getting worse. He felt nauseous, dizzy. Not all that different from the time in boot camp when they had to go into the tear-gas chamber. He saw a table full of equipment: burners, pans, boxes of cleaning supplies. He saw bags of powder on the counter, lots of them. An AK-47 was leaning against the wall and an Uzi was sitting by the sink next to a box of Cheez-Its.

Misfit led him through the house and he followed. A couple guys were sitting on the sofa watching an old Clint Eastwood western. Jack couldn’t tell which one. Beer bottles and ashtrays were all over the coffee table, and a sawed-off shotgun. A pit bull in the corner stood up and started barking at him, then someone — Jack couldn’t figure out who — yelled at it. It sat back down. Jack noticed the dog was lying near a rusty brown stain about the size of a stop sign on the gray carpet. Jack wondered if it was blood.

They went down a hall and Misfit knocked on a door.

“There’s a cowboy here to see you.”

“A what?” It was a girl’s voice.

Misfit cracked the door.

“A cowboy. He’s just passing through. Said Stuart Kicking Bird told him where to go.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” A male voice this time. “Okay. What the fuck ever.”

Misfit opened the door, and Jack looked past him and saw it was a bathroom. A pretty Indian girl sat on a chair facing the tub, where a man was lying in bathwater. Several candles were burning. Incense. A two-by-four lay across the tub, spanning the guy like a bridge. A black rubber strap and an empty syringe sat on the wood. A pistol sat on the linoleum floor by the tub.

“Wow,” the girl said. “He really is a cowboy.”

Jack reached up and tipped his hat.

“Ma’am,” he said.

It wasn’t something he would normally do. He felt giddy.

The guy in the tub shifted to get a better look at Jack. He had brown hair, shaggy and almost to his shoulders. The hair on his face was an unruly mess somewhere between a beard and a few days’ stubble. His eyes were so bloodshot Jack could see the red from where he was.

“Well, come on in, cowboy,” Gabe said, his smile suggesting he found this funny in a way no one else quite would.

The girl stood.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” she said.

She walked past Jack and stared at him as she passed by, so close that he could smell her over the chemicals. She was so pretty he couldn’t believe it. Not pretty in any done-up way. Just cute. Long straight brown hair. Clean almond-colored skin. Eyes dark like rich fertile soil. Why couldn’t he meet a girl like this back home?

“Be nice to him,” she said to Gabe, not taking her eyes off Jack. “He’s a cute cowboy.”

Jack smiled at her. He wondered if there was still hope for her. He thought about not going through with it all, then he stepped into the bathroom, telling himself to get his head straight.

“Pedro frisked him,” Misfit said. “Motherfucker’s clean.”

Misfit shut the door behind him, leaving Jack alone with Gabe.

“Sit down,” Gabe said, picking up the pistol, a Glock, and laying it on the two-by-four.

Jack sat.

Jack stared, unblinking, at the campfire. He and David had hardly spoken all evening. They built the fire, cooked hot dogs over the flames, and sipped beers in a sort of robotic daze. Now a mound of red and orange coals lay beneath the few logs. The coals were hot, twisting with orange and red and black shapes. Jack could see images in the coals, like flaming clouds. Faces, tortured visages. But he couldn’t seem to make himself look away. He felt almost like he was losing his mind. He’d looked at his brother’s dead body in the Carson City morgue that afternoon, and now he couldn’t quite make sense of anything.

Across the fire, David pulled out his can of Kodiak, hit it against his palm to pack it, and then put a pinch in his lip. He spit into the fire.

“Want some?” he said.

Jack shook his head no.

David took a deep breath. “I tell you what,” he said.

Jack knew immediately that his brother had been planning to say what he was about to, had been mulling it over all evening, waiting for the right moment.

“That lawman ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing,” he said.

“Nope.” Jack put another log on the fire without looking at David. The wood caught immediately, and the flames rose. The night was chilly — it was summer, but they were in the mountains — and Jack’s back was cold while his knees, close to the fire, were hot.

“He might as well have said, ‘He’s just some drug dealer; it ain’t like he was somebody who mattered.’” David spat onto the log. The tobacco juice sizzled like hot grease. “Like they got better things to do. This is Carson City. How many murders they got here?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said, taking his hat off, setting it on a log.

He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, running his fingers back and forth through his hair. He closed his eyes but could still see flashes of orange on the inside of his black lids. The fire was dry against his face and hands. All he could think about was what he should have done differently. He’d seen something was wrong with Jamie when he was home for Christmas, and he suspected it was drugs. But he never guessed how far Jamie must have been involved in that world. He’d wanted to say something, take him aside and give him a good talking-to. Instead, though, when he drove him to the airport, they were silent most of the way, and as he shook his hand and said goodbye, all he’d said was, “If you ever need anything, let me know, okay?” Jamie nodded and that was it. The last time he saw his brother alive.

“Well, if the law ain’t gonna do nothing,” David said, “I think we should.”

Jack looked into the fire again and not at David. He’d been thinking the same thing, speculating on how realistic it would be for him to ask around town and track down who Jamie had been hanging around with. Then, if he could figure it out, could he go through with killing those who’d done in his brother? Jack’s four years in the army fell between the two Gulf wars; he’d never been in combat but felt confident he’d be able to handle himself.

“I say we go home, get some shit — guns — and come back and start asking questions.” David spat. “What do you think?”

“I been thinking the same thing.” Jack paused for a long time and then, still looking into the fire, said, “Only just me, not you.”

“He was my brother too,” David said.

He was right. Even at sixteen, David was old enough to want his brother’s murderers brought to justice.

“I know,” Jack said. “Still.”

“I ain’t a kid no more. I can shoot as well as you. I—”

“Just shut up and let me think,” Jack said.

Jack thought about going home, telling his ma and pa what happened, and trying to put the whole thing behind him like a bad memory. But he already had memories in his mind that he couldn’t push away, things he wished he’d done to help Jamie before it got this far. He hadn’t said anything when Jamie failed out of the University of Nevada and moved to Carson City with friends. He just figured it was his brother’s life to do what he wanted with. And then at Christmas, with Jamie looking so pale and as thin as a post, Jack hadn’t done anything. Jamie had smiled just like always, like nothing bothered him. His grin had always been infectious, but in December all Jack could think about was how yellow his teeth seemed to look. And yet he still didn’t say anything.