Night of Thunder

Swagger didn’t know quite what to feel-relief that the boy had held steady and hadn’t given up his name, or laughter that poor Thelma seemed way up the wrong tree and barking hard. Or maybe in some way this Cubby Bartlett fit into it.

“Sir, you said you wanted to be there for the arrest. Now if you give me your word you won’t cause no trouble, I will let you sit stakeout with us tonight and watch as we bring him in.”

“I’ll be there,” he said, and she gave him the details.

TWENTY

“You’re an idiot,” said Brother Richard.

“Brother Richard, if we don’t do this here job, and it looks like we won’t, then your ass ain’t worth a cowpie in January. So I’s you, I’d get myself long gone, ’cause when Grumley business be finished, my boys may remember how mean and disrespectful to them you’s been. And when that happens and specially since they have the taste of blood on their tongues, maybe they get a hunger for you.”

“You’re an idiot,” repeated Brother Richard.

“Grumley come first,” said the Reverend. They sat in his office off the gym floor of the rec center. The boys had already locked and loaded and headed out, just to keep a watch and see if and when that fellow came back into town, after which point all Grumleys would coordinate and vengeance would be taken, as it mightily should be, amen.

“Don’t you think you’re overstating the drama of the two men you lost? Those boys were professional strong-arm men. They were begotten of and by violence. That’s the life they chose. They lived high on it, scoring kills and drugs-”

“My boys don’t take no drugs!”

“Yeah, you don’t work with them on a daily basis like I have the last few weeks. I know Grumleys a lot bettern’ you, old man. Anyhow, those two, Carmody and Blow Job-”

“Damn you to righteous flame, you bas-”

“Carmody and Blow Job had the kills and the swag and the dope and the whores and probably even a good girl or two along the way, because there do seem to be some good girls who find outlaws amusing. They lived a life of the superego unrestrained, like few men, the great thrill of the criminal lifestyle and its secret true reward. They ran hard and lived hard. It was always in the cards that at any second of any day they could run into some country cop who knew how to shoot, or take a corner too fast and smear themselves on the concrete. That’s the cost of doing business in the business of violence, and it turned out that their number came up. It’s an anomaly, it’s unfortunate, from your twisted-sister viewpoint it might even be a tragedy, but it is what it is, and there’s no money in it for any of us and we have worked too goddamned hard to give it up for some nickel-and-dime sense of vengeance on someone who, after all, was only defending himself in a square gunfight and appears to have been faster on the trigger and truer on the aiming part than your boys. Vern was right. Vern’s the smartest Grumley.”

“Sir, you do not understand family. And I am disappointed in son Vern.”

“Sir, I do understand family. No man you ever met understands family more than me. Now, I’ll tell you what’s interesting in all this. It’s my sense you have been looking for a way to fail. I believe you were coerced into this plan by someone smarter and tougher than yourself, because it is too clever for a fellow like you to think up. You’re no strategist, your only product is the rawest of force. That’s what you sell, that’s all you know. But this thing is too cool for words and you are about to give it up not in spite of your best instincts but because of your best interests. You want an excuse to fail, to go down in some fucking massacre shootout in a blazing barn, a gun in each hand. You have ‘death wish’ written all over you, goddamnit.”

“You have fancy words, Brother Richard, and you speak cleverly but your words ain’t but spit compared to the Grumley family tra-”

“What’s he got on you? Bet I know.”

This threat alone, of all the things Brother Richard had said, shut the old geezer up. And when that happened, Brother Richard knew he was right and bored in for the kill.