Ride the Lightning Read online

  For Andie

  straight from the hip

  A scrawny guy in his mid-thirties with a weasel face, Miro Knotts took his eyes off the road, flicking the Newport butt out the window. Fumbling around, he relit the pipe, holding the smoke until the floaters came back, melting into the seat, laying down the accelerator, calling up the two hundred and ninety horses.

  A truck whooshed in the opposite direction, stacked with lumber, the two-lane becoming his own. White lines and pines blurred by, Miro in the radar-red Challenger, pushing ninety-five, toking his way through God’s country.

  He let the MyGIG do its thing, the seek button landing on some Tom Jones number, not the “What’s New Pussycat?” crap but one from Praise & Blame, Tom Jones belting it out about heaven and hell. Drumming his fingers, Miro bopped in his seat till his bladder reminded him he hadn’t pissed since the McDonald’s in Spokane. The supersized drink. No way he’d make it across the top of Idaho without a pit stop.

  Pulling off the interstate at the Farmingdale exit, he rode the back road a half mile and stopped by a stand of cedar. Throwing the door open, he stood in the cool air, getting relief, writing his name in the gravel.

  Filling the pipe with the last of the honey oil, he looked around, everything so green. Lighting up again, breathing the smoke into his lungs, he lay across the hood, looking up at the boughs and rolling clouds, dozing off.

  Waking, he reached for a Newport, catching movement through the trees. Three hundred yards off, a bighorn sheep stood munching grass. Heart leaping, Miro made out the trophy rack and slid off the hood. Easing the door open, he reached under the seat for his Vaquero and was moving easy, careful not to snap twigs. He stepped his way around moss-covered trees, making it to the edge of the clearing. A few more bighorns grazed in the distance.

  Before the big boy could catch his scent, Miro took his stance and brought up the revolver, sighting down the barrel. On a breath, he picked his moment and squeezed, the .357 bucking in his hand.

  The ram froze, then dropped where it stood, the other sheep scattering at a run. Miro paced off ninety strides, thinking Bob Munden couldn’t have made a shot like that; neither could Todd Jarret who once shot a thousand rounds in about ten minutes.

  Not exactly dressed for hunting in his Polo and Tony Lamas, he pulled out his iPhone, snapped a few shots of his kill, then held it arm’s length and got in the portrait.

  Grabbing the horns, he tried dragging the two-hundred-pound ram to the car, thinking to call the Guinness people, guessing he had a record shot on his hands. He got about ten feet, slipping in the grass, blood on his pants. Wiping his hands on the grass, he thought better of it, snapping a few more shots before giving up and walking back to his car.

  salt in the wound

  Back in Belltown, Miro wouldn’t shut up about it, sitting on the stool at Monty’s doing shooters with a school-aged Lolita named Anita. He let her smoke his Newports, bragging about the shot he made.

  Monty, on the other side of the bar, didn’t like this guy pawing the girl, felt sure she was underage, but who could get a word in to ask for ID. Miro was showing the pics of himself with the dead bighorn, telling how he counted off ninety strides. Anita, on her third Irish Car Bomb, seemed intrigued and didn’t mind his hand on her leg, asked him if he ever shot anybody, Monty saying yeah, somebody that wasn’t a sheep.

  Explaining how dangerous a ram could be, Miro got set to tell her about a guy he shot when the kid came in wearing the kind of jacket football jocks wore around high school, hair up in spikes. One look at Miro with his hand on the girl’s knee and he came over, yanking the hand away.

  “Fuck are you?” Miro said, looking surprised, then pissed, his other hand wrapping around his glass.

  “You screwed my kid brother out of a vial of oil yesterday, remember?”

  “Like fuck I did. Don’t know any kid brother.”

  “See if I can jog your memory.” The jock caught a handful of shirt and lifted Miro off the stool. “You give me back Jimmy’s C-note, and maybe I’ll let you get back to your faggy drink.” He turned to Anita, half this creep’s age, asking if she was blind.

  Miro threw his Car Bomb in his face, the jock sputtering, hands going to his eyes. Miro shook loose, landing a head butt, sending him to the floor.

  Monty wasn’t having any of this shit in his place, yelling, “Hey asshole, knock it off!” Reaching under the bar, he slapped his blackjack on the wood top, glaring at Miro, making his point.

  If Miro had let it go at that, the shit that followed might never have happened. But Miro was putting on a show for the girl. “You heard the man, kid.” He sent the toe of his Tony Lama into his crotch. Then he dragged the howling kid to the door, tossing him out on the pavement. For a topper, he unzipped his fly and marked his territory, telling him to try some of his faggy drink.

  The Seattle narcs that paid him a visit the next morning were Holsten and Quinn, two GIU officers, said they were acting on a tip.

  “Got a warrant, boys?” Miro blocked the door with his foot, standing in just his briefs, with Anita behind him, a Seahawks jersey fitting her like a nightgown.

  Quinn pulled a baggie of pills from his own pocket. “Got probable cause right here.”

  Miro put on the grin, saying, “I know my—”

  Holsten straight-armed the door, shoved Miro against the wall, telling him if he didn’t shut up, he’d get more rights than he could handle.

  Miro stood with Anita and watched them toss the place, turning up nothing but a dirty pipe, some butane and PVC. Not enough to bring him in.

  “Happy?” he said, shivering from the cold.

  On their way out, Quinn pocketed his baggie, picked up the framed photo of Miro’s kill from the coffee table, asking, “You do sheep?”

  “For your info, it’s a bighorn.”

  “Yeah?” Quinn studied the photo, listening to Miro brag about his record shot from ninety paces, Miro forgetting he was half-dressed and cold. Quinn held up the photo to his partner, asking what he thought.

  “Looks like a sheep to me,” Holsten said, adding that nobody could make a shot like that, not from ninety paces.

  “Not the first time you boys been wrong today, huh?” Miro said.

  At the door, Quinn looked at this bone-rack in his dingy briefs and told him this wasn’t over, then told Anita to give her head a shake. Then they were gone.

  The next morning Miro stood under the shower, the water never hot, the pressure so weak he could keep his cigarette from getting wet just by tipping his head back.

  True to his word, Quinn came back, Anita answering the knock at the door, and being on a first-name basis now, she let him walk in with the two guys he introduced as Pierce and Newcombe from Fish and Wildlife.

  “What the fuck is this?” Miro came into the hall dripping, a towel around his waist.

  Quinn picked the photo off the coffee table, handed it to Pierce, Pierce asking Miro to explain this. Wrapped in his towel, Miro found himself charged with felony and misdemeanor poaching, staring ninety days in the face, along with restitution for the domestic Merino ram that had spent its days chomping grass on the Chugwater Ranch of Montana. Pierce and Newcombe let him get dressed, then led Miro out in cuffs, Quinn hanging back, doing his best to convince Anita to call her folks and get as far from this guy as possible. She guessed he was right, looking to his holstered sidearm then back to his eyes, and asked if he ever shot anybody.

  getting in tight

  Wally Levitt scratched under the black do-rag, telling Mitch Reno how he got chummy with Sunny, the waitress down at Chickie’s Diner. She’d been supplying
them with names for the past six months, fat-cat customers with nice places to break into. And he’d been paying her fifty a pop, Wally not mentioning he laid another hundred down each time he climbed into her bed.

  “We just kind of hit it off, you know.” He put on his shit-eating grin, took a toke and turned his head, hearing a thump from the garage. “You hear that?”

  “What?”

  Just his imagination. A couple more tokes and he’d be Gumby with no feeling below the knees.

  Mitch waved off the joint, the smoke making his bowels churn—high time to ease up on it, the Thunder Chicken, too, the name Tolley had for Wild Turkey back in the Hat. Trade it for some Sunny D.

  “What I’m saying is we make what,” Wally said, “a hundred bucks to run this shit, fifty each?”

  “Yeah, so?” Better than nothing, waiting for Sunny to come up with someplace worth hitting.

  Wally puffed smoke at the ceiling, looking down the hall of the grow house, making sure Jeffery was still in the can, keeping his voice low. “So, why not grow our own—make some real dough?”

  “What the hell we know about it?”

  “Half the people in B.C. grow the shit.”

  “Going against these guys . . .” Mitch shook his head, but then pictured getting Ginny a stove with all the burners working and slapping new shingles on her roof.

  Holding the smoke in his lungs was like trying to hold a beach ball under water. Letting it out slow, Wally drew forward, the sofa springs digging into his ass. “This shit goes for what—two Gs a pound?”

  Mitch shrugged. It wasn’t time for math.

  “Thirty plants to a pound. We bagged what, a thousand or so last night?”

  Mitch cleared his throat, a signal that Jeffery was coming out of the can, the old man flushing, hacking like he was passing a furball, tugging his jeans over his paunch, snugging the chromed Python into his belt. Jeffery called it the king of handguns, the thing sticking out from his pants like a big dick.

  “What’re you girls jawing about?” Jeffery put on the hard-ass, flexing his knees and zipping up, no use for either of these assholes, two-bit punks Stax sent over, mules making the drop to JayMan at the docks, something he’d done solo going on a dozen years. Suddenly Artie was letting Stax run things, making Jeffery feel too long in the tooth to take care of simple shit. It pissed him off, thinking he deserved better after taking care of the Asian guy who owed Artie ten grand six months ago. No questions asked, Jeffery got it done, catching the guy in his garage, knocking him down, setting a Lawn-Boy over the black-haired dude’s face, giving him a choice, pay or get his face mowed.

  Jeffery reached for the joint, Wally letting go of it, thinking no way he wanted it back after this guy put his scurvy lips on it, lips the color of earthworms. Reek rose off Jeffery like smog, his leather neck disappearing under the dingy wife-beater, his yellow eyes with the white shit in the corners, hair tipped with grey, looking like it was greased with Valvoline.

  “One of you girls out in the garage just now?” Jeffery asked, nodding toward the side door, trying to remember if he had locked it.

  Wally shook his head.

  “So what you hanging around for?” Jeffery wanted to get back to his April issue of Barely Legal.

  Wally and Mitch started to get up when the side door flew in, kicked off its hinges. The crack felt like an electric charge. Wally and Mitch dove for the floor, Jeffery yanking the Python from his belt, running into the kitchen and ducking behind the counter. “Come on, girls, let’s get dangerous.”

  The blast of the hand cannon got them crawling for the front door, four sets of fingers scrabbling for the doorknob.

  The intruder fired, the shotgun blast tearing a six-inch hole in the kitchen ceiling. Another bark from the Python, Jeffery fired through the wall, guessing where the guy with the shotgun was. It sent the intruder running out the side door and around the front of the house. Jeffery headed him off, shoving Mitch aside, ripping the front door open.

  The guy with the shotgun outfoxed him, standing poised, the Slugster barrel up as Jeffery opened the door. The blast knocked him back, tore him out of his sneakers and punched him down. A grunt came from his throat, Jeffery’s doll’s eyes looking up at the Florida light.

  Mitch and Wally were both down on the floor, looking up. A second guy in a white van, pointing a shotgun out the window, peeled down the driveway, screeching rubber. The gunman ran and dove into the open back of it, yelling, “Go, go, go.”

  The van hopped the curb, wobbled on jelly springs, the driver bouncing like a bobblehead. Swiping the neighbor’s mailbox, the bumper torn off, the van ripped through a bed of marigolds before getting back on the road, racing to the intersection, making a hard right and was gone.

  Mitch got to his feet, watching the getaway, Wally crawling to Jeffery, the king of handguns slipping from the old man’s fingers, a wet sucking sound coming from his throat.

  Jeffery stared up, blood bubbling from his mouth, finding it hard to speak. “One of you dickheads give me a hand.”

  Wally knelt next to him, caught the foul breath and the sucking sound, blood pooling under him, Jeffery’s chest looking like bloody hamburger. Wally picked up the Python, saw himself in the chrome, spinning its cylinder, saying, “Think you’re done being dangerous, huh, Jeff?”

  The distant sound of sirens got them moving, Wally tucking the Python in his belt. He ran across the street to the knocked-over mailbox, getting out his all-in-one, thinking he’d look up the guys in the van, give them first bid for the license plate, pretty sure he’d seen the one driving someplace before. The second bid would go to Stax, the guy who hired him and Mitch to transport the weed. With a few twists, he had the plate from the bumper and chased after Mitch, going through the backyards, the pickup he stole waiting on the next street.

  taking the mickey

  Marty Schmidt was doing it again, that infectious laugh getting everybody going in the Global Trace office. Great sense of humor for a bunch of bounty hunters, all of them in shirtsleeves, handguns in shoulder rigs. Karl Morgen crossed the room, tossing back what passed as coffee, crumpling the takeout cup and scoring a basket in Marty’s trash.

  Marty showed him the pickup order Albert the manager had left on his desk, pointing with his finger. “Get a load of this one. Guy skips on a five-K bond, charged with gunning down a sheep.”

  “A what?”

  “Thing that goes baah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The asshole likely sampled more Special K than he should’ve, drove all the way to Montana and shot this thing standing in a field minding its own. Thing is, the asshole did it with a handgun.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Farmhand witnessed it, a single shot from near three hundred feet. One of them cowboy guns.”

  “Guess he got lucky,” Karl said, guessing Marty was getting stranger by the day.

  Marty didn’t buy it. “Guy’s too high to tell a bighorn from something you make sweaters out of, but he hits it with a single shot from a handgun, and from distance.”

  Karl looked over the paperwork, saw that Miro Knotts’ grandmother put up the bail, guessing they had a real sweetheart on their hands, asking, “Where you want to start?”

  Marty checked the clock next to the photo of the pair of them, same photo used in the Seattle Times’ story about their exploits. The sign underneath repeated a quote from the article: “If your man’s breathing, we’ll find him; if he’s not, we’ll point out where he’s buried.”

  On a twenty-dollar tip from a hooker out front of the Jack in the Box, they tracked Miro to an all-night rave in Belltown. Sipping Cokes and stuffing down cold Jumbo Jacks and fries, they waited in Marty’s Cooper, listening to the thump of techno coming from the house.

  Around two, most of the partiers had gone home and things quieted down. Karl and Marty went in like they own
ed the place, checking the faces of the zombies left doing their rave dance moves, found a few more lying around like refugees. Miro Knotts was in the basement, out cold and bare-assed on a sofa, arms and legs spidered around a skinny girl with red hair and a black eye.

  “You Miro Knotts?” Karl asked, nudging him, knowing he was from the photo in the file, the oldest guy there by a mile.

  Miro popped an eye open and made a move for the Vaquero under the sofa, yelping when Karl pinned his fingers under his shoe, empty wine and beer bottles rolling around on the floor, a water pipe tipping on the table.

  “Fuck are you?” Miro cried out, guessing it was a cop shoe standing on his fingers, and this was another bust.

  Yanking him up by the hair, Karl cuffed his hands behind his back, telling him who they were.

  The girl looked like she didn’t know Monday from Sunday, her eye nearly swollen shut.

  “Got two questions for you,” Marty said to her, holding up a pair of fingers, checking her eye.

  She nodded when he asked if this guy gave her the eye and told him fifteen when he asked how many birthdays she’d seen.

  “Told me eighteen, lying bitch,” Miro said, catching Karl’s elbow. When he got his breath back, he said, “You here for me skipping, right—like that Dog asshole on TV?”

  The next shot left Miro sucking air, trying not to puke on himself. Marty took a closer look at the girl’s eye, finding out her name was Alice.

  Five diehards with pool cues came down the stairs, the fat one saying this was his place, asking what the fuck was going on.

  “This guy’s in custody,” Karl said. “Have to ask you to stand back.”

  “Soon as we see some shields,” the fat guy said, the five guys fanning out.

  “This do?” Karl lifted his windbreaker, showing his Smith, watching them turn and file back to their techno and lights, the fat guy asking them to close the door on their way out.