The devil knows you're dead

This is part 3 of a 3-part story. Part 2 is here.

The next morning I got up early and headed to Mikey’s. He didn’t answer when I called so I banged on the door some.

“Jesus, Jarl. It’s date morning don’t you know, just me and the missus…”

“Uh, huh.”

He looked closely at me. “You look like hell.”

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“The Devils’ pawn anyway. Suit up.”

It took him about five minutes, so I figured date morning wasn’t a total wash. On the way up, I explained it to him.

“Case D, Case C was a screw job and you are still stuck in the cross hairs. But now you got two devils.”

“Ayuh.”

“What do you figure?”

“I figure the screwballs ain’t got it, we ain’t got it, and my well-dressed new best friends ain’t got it.” I patted the dog sitting between us for emphasis.

“It’s still on the mountain.”

“Now you got it,” I said.

We pulled up to the cabin. Sun was up. I pulled the brick out of from behind the seat. “Goblin. Souk.” Goblin put his nose down and began ambling about in concentric circles.

“Rain gonna wash it out?”

“Nah, holds the scent to the ground. He’ll be good.”

“Providing it’s here.”

“Providing that. If they had the dope, would I have gotten remodeled yesterday morning? He’s dead right there.” I pointed at the body. “He didn’t show them nothing.”

“He just got popped?”

“Been thinking tons about that, too. Don’t make no sense. Makes sense if they popped him and then put their own spotter in place, but they didn’t do that or they wouldn’ta lost it. What I figure is the goof balls never cared about spotting the dope. They just set up their camera and planned on bushwhacking whoever came out. Jenness scored the drop as planned and either planned on double-crossing the suits and blaming us, or just hid it out of prudence. After waiting around for a while and nobody on camera, the goofs probably figured the same thing. They came up here to ask Jenness WTF and he tripped coming out the door and blew his own fool head off.” I pointed at the socks. “Also, I’m just guessing here, but I think if somebody else had stuck that gun to him, it would’ve blown off more towards the back of his head.”

“Plus, why leave the guy, shotgun is untraceable. And,” Mikey added, “if anybody else had done it, they would’ve been on camera.”

“Exactly. That leaves the dope on-premise.”

“Optimist.”

“It’s all I got.” I grabbed a spade out of the bed and started following the dog out as he got into the scrub at the edge of the clearing. The Cascades are a lot of rock, and a lot of till. Some places you can’t dig at all; some places it’s easy. Not too far from the trailer, Goblin came upon a little holler. The duff was freshly disturbed and he began digging frantically. By the time I got there, he was already down to the plastic. “Good boy, buddy. It’s more steak and red wine for you tonight.”

“You some mighty spoil that dog.”

“Ayuh. But, tonight is date night.”

“Shoulda figured you wouldn’t splurge just on account of him saving your ass.”

We got a couple of sheets from the trailer and improvised sacks. It took four loads to get it all in the truck.

“Gonna cover that up?”

“Gonna call in the body?”

I drove like hell down the mountain and we made plans for the next day. River was still high, but a crazy man with two contracts on his head and a decent hangover could probably handle it.

Sometimes you get to make a plan, sometimes you get dealt a hand. There was not much planning to do here, I just had to connect the dots, and look for a way out along the way.

The next morning was befittingly crappy. It felt like somebody had upholstered the inside of my skull with shag carpet like some 70s party van, and yet the pain in my thigh was completely undiminished.

I didn’t want to involve Mikey because the Devil didn’t know he was dead, so I picked up the goofs at the pull out and drove them to the park just before dawn. I’d worry about getting back to my trailer if it got that far. Mikey’s boat was already in the water, with Goblin on a hard stay beneath a tarp in the stern. That dog would stay like that for two days if I told him to, providing nobody tried to get into the boat, and he made a real effective deterrent. Everybody on the river knew I had that dog in the boat, everybody except the two goons.

As the light came up, I got my first look at them. Filthy with bad teeth, they would’ve been loggers once before meth became the major industry in the valley. They still wore the uniform though: greasy ball caps over unkempt hair, plaid wool shirts, and Carhartt’s pants and jackets. They carried two big hockey-style duffels each. Mostly empty. It was the mostly that worried me. However, just because they were killers, they thought they were tough, and that gave me an edge. I began rigging a couple of Spey rods.

“What the fuck you doing?”

“You don’t look like dudes, but if I go down the river in a flood without rods rigged, people will automatically know something’s up. Now they’ll just wonder for a while about my strange customers and then forget. Relax.” I didn’t offer for them to get into the boat dry before I pushed off, but made them wade for it and climb over the gunwale. They didn’t seem to know any better and I scored one small victory, warm and dry in my waders.

The rains had started back up and I knew we had a small window on the river before it was impassable, but I also knew we wouldn’t have any company.

It took all my concentration to guide the boat through the rougher sections, especially as I was trying to rock the boat as much as possible without completely flipping it. They asked a couple of times how far it was, but I pretty much ignored them as we got tossed down the river. Finally, we neared my spot. There was a big-ass sweeper just as the river split. Ninety percent on the front side and ten percent on the back side of this little island. A sandbar, actually, when the river was below flood.

I got the boat to maximum velocity and launched it directly onto the bar. They were knocked forward in their seats and almost out of the boat. Right then I shouted “Hup!” and Goblin came out of the stern directly onto the first goon, while the second started fumbling for one of the bags. I slid the oar out of the lock and jabbed him straight in the throat with the blade, knocking him backwards onto the platform on the bow. Goblin wasn’t doing too much damage through all the bulky layers, but the medulla oblongata effect was in full swing. I kept the goon pinned on the bow.

“You move and I’ll take your head clean off.”

Goon two had gone to duck and cover and was too busy to reach back for the duffles.

“Aus!” Goblin backed off, but kept his full focus on his prey. “It’s like this. You are going to take those bags and toss them back here. Soft like, and one at a time.” He did as I told him, nervous as hell about the dog. As each bag landed at my feet, I picked them up and slung them hard as I could into deep water, keeping pressure on the oar with my other hand and shoulder. It felt like a couple of shotguns and some handguns, but I couldn’t be sure. While I had been rigging up, I was pretty sure they weren’t packing anything directly on them, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure about that either. “Now the coats.” As I watched them peel down in the steel rain, I’ve never been so happy for my Patagonia.

“You are so dead. I’m going to make you watch that mutt die, and then I’m going to kill you slow.”

“Ayuh, but you were going to do that anyway.”

“So, now what?” asked the other.

“I don’t care about the dope, never did. But I did find if for you, in fact you’ve been sitting on it this whole trip.” They began sputtering in synchrony, and I leaned a little on the oar. “I just want to get out alive. You can’t travel the river without me, so we are going to do it this way: Now that you don’t have guns, you just sit your asses right there, and we will float out. At the bottom of the run, you put your dope in the car and we part ways.”

The one in the bow smiled. “It won’t be over.”

“It will be over,” I said and they looked at me slyly, like they were dealing with an imbecile. “You,” I motioned to Goblin’s chew toy. “Get out and push us back into the current, then hang on and get your ass back in the boat, or I leave you here.”

He managed to get back in, but not without a good soaking.

“There is nothing to be gained by making a move on me before we land, boys. Besides, you can’t get by the dog. Just face forward and enjoy the ride.” For good measure, I had them put their hands on their heads and then rowed like hell for the take out. I was almost home, and thus had a lot more to lose than I did a few minutes ago. I was just hoping my nerves would last.

I grounded the boat at the take out and let them get out slowly. They looked at me like I was the stupidest guy in the world and then took off running for the car. That made me certain they had other weapons stashed. They never got to them, though.

I heard a brief scuffle, and then my two well-dressed friends backed their SUV down the ramp. My criteria on the goons was: don’t ask, don’t tell. I didn’t want to hear shots, and I didn’t want to have bodies. The businessman assured me that wasn’t going to be the case and I like to believe that. On the other hand, I also told him I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days watching my back, and he told me not to worry about that, either. Life is a conundrum.

Sometime during all that I heard the unmistakable whine of a rotary engine take off down the river road. I just looked at Goblin and gave him a sad nod.

About a week later I took a break from working on the trailer and went fishing up to this little brookie lake that was stocked by the alphabet agencies during the depression but now is pretty much forgotten about. When I came home, there was a brand new Clacka Craft drift boat in my yard. I stashed my gear and started looking over the boat. Sure enough, right under the seat was a bunch of hundred-dollar bills wrapped up into a neat plastic brick – my finder’s fee.

I was just dropping the seat back into place when Mikey showed up.

“Looks like you made out okay.”

“Ayuh.” I looked at him without saying anything for a while.

“What’s up?”

“Well, I been thinking. It never really was my idea to go to Fools’ Lake. It was your idea.”

“Okay.”

“And you got back into the business awful fast.”

“I don’t like what I think you might be saying here.”

“And it was always my truck.”

“And?”

“How’s the RX running? You finally get that rotary fixed?”

“What are you saying?”