Hellbox

15

PETE BALFOUR

He had plans now. Oh, baby, did he have plans now!

Felt real fine when he got up Wednesday morning, no hangover even though he’d put away pretty near a fifth of Jack Daniel’s yesterday and last night. Slept like a baby. Rarin’ to go, full of piss and vinegar, blood and fire.

Fed Bruno, thought about feeding the woman again, but why bother, just be a waste of time now that he knew what he was gonna do with her, and left the house at seven. Stopped off at the Green Valley Cafe for a quick breakfast and just grinned and shrugged when fat-ass Jolene threw her mayor look at him. Nothing and nobody could get his goat today or ever again. Then he drove straight to the fairgrounds, got there just as Eladio was opening up the storage unit. The Mex seemed surprised to see him, but he knew better than to say anything. Thing was, meeting the deadline was important now-keep Tarboe and Donaldson off his back. Ought to be able to get all the major repairs done on time if he worked Eladio and the half-wit and himself bitch-hard for ten or eleven hours today and part of tomorrow, until it was time to run his errand in Stockton, then promise them double overtime pay to finish up.

He’d be tired as hell the next couple of days, but not too tired to take care of business. No siree, not with what he had brewing.

Luke Penny’d helped give him the first plan yesterday afternoon. He’d pulled into the Shell station for gas on his way back from Freedom Lanes, and Penny come out of the garage and wandered over, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. Pete Balfour wasn’t the only ugly dude in the valley-Luke was no prize, either, and the slather of grease across his chin hadn’t helped his looks none.

“Hell of a thing about Alice Verriker.”

“Yeah. Hell of a thing.”

“Guess you ain’t the sorriest person around, though. Huh, Pete?”

As mean as he’d felt then, he’d of liked to punch the greasy bastard’s lights out. Or tell him to go fuck himself, like he had that faggot Tarboe. But going off on Tarboe had been a mistake-he’d realized it sitting there in the Freedom bar with Verriker’s voice pounding away inside his head. He couldn’t afford to call any more attention to himself, not if he didn’t want people getting suspicious of him when he finally fixed Verriker.

So he’d swallowed his rage and said, “Me and Ned had our differences, but that don’t mean I’m not sorry for his losses. I feel real sorry for him, you want to know the truth. Real sorry.”

“Sure you do.”

“The truth, Luke. Some of the guys in the Buckhorn last night, they started a collection to help pay for Alice’s funeral and I kicked in more’n my share. Plenty more’n my share.”

Penny didn’t look like he believed it. But then he shrugged and said, “Well, Ned can use the help, that’s for sure.”

“Might want to kick in a few bucks yourself.”

“I’ll do that. Tonight, after work.”

“What I heard, Ned spent the night with the Ramseys, but they don’t have enough room to let him stay on there. Jolene, over at the cafe, said Jim Jensen might fix him up at his place.”

“That’s old news,” Penny said. “Jensen offered, but Ned said no thanks.”

“That right? How come?”

“Don’t care to be a burden to anybody. He’s pretty tore up, just wants to be alone for a while. So Frank’s brother’s letting him stay in his cabin up at Eagle Rock Lake until he pulls himself together.”

Oh, man, he’d near whooped when he heard that. “Might be best at that. When’s he moving up there?”

“Later today sometime. Joe Ramsey’s going up with him, get him settled.”

Once Balfour was out of the station, he’d smacked the steering wheel and let out the whoop he’d been holding back. That cabin up on the lake… fishing cabin, sat by its lonesome on the east shore. He’d never been there, never been invited, oh hell no not him, but he knew where it was and how to get to it. Verriker and Stivic and Ramsey and some of the others had batted their gums often enough about what a perfect getaway place it was.

Yeah, perfect. They’d never know how perfect.

By the time he got home, he knew just what he was gonna do. Thinking about it made him feel real good for a while. Good enough to let the woman out there in the shed have some food and water. The look on her face when he’d plunked the dog dishes down in front of her and told her to slurp it up the way Bruno did… worth a chuckle all the way back to the house.

But then Mayor Donaldson called up, and for a while he wasn’t feeling good anymore. Just for a while.

Where had he been all day? Why had his cell phone been out of service? Then the miserable old fart started in on him for insulting Tarboe and walking off the job. Said his behavior was inexcusable, said he had a foul mouth and a poor work ethic and no community spirit, whatever the fuck that meant. Said if he didn’t have the fairgrounds work completed by midnight on the third, he wouldn’t be paid the rest of the money due him on the county contract, and he might well have his construction license revoked for malfeasance, besides. Malfeasance. Jesus! Threatened him and ragged on him for three or four minutes until he was furious enough to slam the phone down, hard enough to bust the bugger’s eardrum.

Ramsey and Stivic and the rest of them wanted an asshole mayor, well, they already had one. You couldn’t find a bigger asshole politician in the county than Fred Donaldson. Matter of fact, they didn’t have to go looking for another valley to collect assholes in, because they had this one right here. Donaldson, Tarboe, every one of ’em who got a kick out of making Pete Balfour’s life miserable, they were the real assholes, not him, and they’d taken over and turned the whole valley and everybody else in it brown. Green Valley wasn’t Green Valley anymore, it was Asshole Valley.

Pretty soon the poison had started eating away at him again, and his hate was as big and hot as ever. He’d poured himself a double Jack and followed it quick with another, trying to take himself down from a boil to a simmer. But what the whiskey did, it made everything real clear in his mind, and he’d seen what he should of seen a lot sooner. Seen it clear as looking through a pane of new glass.

Killing Verriker would be sweet, but it wouldn’t change anything. Not one damn thing. The rest would go right on calling him mayor, pretending he was the one with “A for Asshole” tattooed on his forehead. Making a fool out of him, persecuting him, never giving him a minute’s peace.

Well, he wasn’t gonna let that happen. Wouldn’t let them drive him out, neither, with his tail between his legs like a whipped dog. He’d had as much as he could take. It was payback time again.

And that was when the second plan come to him.

Real quick, too, as if it’d been percolating in the back of his mind all along. Well, maybe it had been. Maybe it was what he’d been heading toward from that first night in the Buckhorn, when Verriker and the rest of them turned his life into a living hell.

Seemed pretty far out at first. And scared him some because it was Payback with a capital P, the kind that’d have every cop in the country after him. If he went ahead with it, how was he gonna save his ass afterward? But then the answer to that part of it come to him, too, how he could get away clean, and just where he’d go. The more he thought about it, the less scared and the more excited he got. They hadn’t shown him any mercy, why should he show them any? And the timing… oh, man, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

So then he’d put in a call to Rosnikov’s legit business number in Stockton. The Russian was there, late as it was, and when Balfour told him what he wanted, not in so many words because you had to be careful on the phone, Rosnikov said he could supply the package by Thursday night, and quoted a whorehouse price. Real cool, that Russian, like they were talking about apples and oranges. Didn’t even ask what he wanted it for. Not that that was any surprise. Rosnikov didn’t care what you did with the black market stuff he sold.

That cemented it for Balfour. He had the cash, with plenty enough left over. He had the time and the place all worked out. He was gonna do it, and no backing out at the last minute. Once his mind was made up, it stayed made up.

Oh, he was gonna raise some hell, all right.

Pure, sweet hell.