The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

David B. Schlosser Pretzel Logic

from Die Behind the Wheel

The guys who come back the first time, they always say the biggest difference outside is the silence at night. They can’t sleep because it’s too quiet.

The guys who come back a second time, they generally ain’t too self-aware. They say the biggest difference outside is the sensations. The food, it tastes so much better. The girls, they so much juicier. The air, it don’t smell like week-old socks all the time.

Only one guy came back a third time when he was inside. That guy just scored himself a third strike with whatever he could pull off quick and easy that was barely a felony. That guy said the biggest difference is that everyone thinks there’s a big difference between being inside and being outside. But there ain’t.

I ain’t never going back.

The red-blue strobe in his rearview mirror pulled his insides down. Adrenaline roiled him, and he tasted it at the back of his mouth. In his throat, electric and sour. He hit the blinker, searched for a polite excuse for whatever he might be told was the reason for the stop. DWB, dressed up like a burned-out bulb. Yes, sir. No, sir. An expired tag. Thank you, sir, may I have another.

He put the Kia in park. Rolled down his window. Spun the volume on WJAZ to zero. Put his wallet and phone on the dashboard. Put his hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, fingers flung wide. Waited.

“Driver.” A woman’s voice through the speaker. “Step out of the car and place your hands on the hood.”

His head sagged. He took a deep, slow breath. He complied.

The cop was young. If not a rookie, close. She’d be scared.

“Spread your legs,” the cop said as she approached. Her hand rested on her pistol. “And don’t move.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He couldn’t read her name tag.

The cop started a frisk. “Plates say this car is registered to a Randall Baxter. That’s you?”

“People call me Bax.” Her frisk wasn’t very thorough. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Randall Baxter.”

“You prove that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Bax nodded toward his wallet. “My license is there. On the dashboard.”

The cop reached through the open window. “Don’t move,” she repeated. She pulled the license and held it up to compare the photo to Bax’s face. Replaced the license in the wallet, the wallet on the dashboard. “You know why I pulled you over, Mr. Baxter?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I’m going to search your pockets. You got anything sharp in there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Nothing that’s going to stick me?” The cop groped his back pockets, then started to crowd him, almost embracing him as she reached into his front pockets.

“Ma’am—”

“Shut up.” The cop got up close and personal. “You hear me, Mr. Baxter?” Raised her voice to a shout. “I said shut. The fuck. Up.” Spun him, backed him up against the side of the little SUV. Reached inside his jacket to search his inside pockets, then dropped something small and hard in the chest pocket of his shirt.

“Ma’am, I—”

The cop silenced him by grabbing bunches of his jacket in her fists, pulling him close. “Your code is Brooklyn,” she whispered into his face before she shouted, “I told you to shut up.”

“But I din’t do nothin’,” he shouted back. Then he whispered, “Brooklyn.”

Bax’s day had started like most days: coffee, eggs with bacon, and strawberry jelly with sourdough toast at the counter of the diner on the dividing line between the suburbs and his city. Flirting over the newspaper with Venetta, the morning shift manager. Who’d let him take her out a couple of times. Who’d refused a dinner date at his pal Napoleon’s locally famous supper club until he started going to Sunday services with her, her daughter Margaret, and her mom. Who’d squinted up half her face when he’d offered the vaguest possible interpretation of his work.

He recognized the flash off his kid brother’s blinged-out shoes in the parking lot. Recognized his boss’s Lexus SUV.

“Ima take that booth over there,” he told Venetta. “Don’t you come wait on me.”

Venetta started to speak but stopped when he shook his head once.

Bax slid into the booth before his boss’s enforcer, Owsley, opened the passenger door for Reamer Kline. Bax’s balls unshriveled a tiny bit when Owsley, so big that the SUV listed toward the side he sat on, didn’t follow Mr. Kline toward the diner door. Bax knew Owsley’s kind from his bit. Knew Owsley enjoyed the beat-down he put on Russell to persuade Bax to fix for Mr. Kline.

Mr. Kline waited at the diner’s door until Russell figured out it was his job to open the door.

Bax saw some sullen fear in his brother’s eyes and wondered what it was about this time.

Mr. Kline motioned for Russell to slide into the booth first, opposite Bax, so Mr. Kline could contain Russell. “Your idiot brother said I’d find you here.” Keep the kid from rabbiting.

Bax narrowed his eyes. Gave his brother a hard stare. “I’m sorry it couldn’t wait until I got to the shop, Mr. Kline.” Waited for the waitress to serve coffee. “What do I need to fix for him now?”

Russell snorted a protest.

“Shut up, Russell.” Bax and Mr. Kline said it at the same time.

Russell stared at the wall. Slouched lower.

“Your idiot brother went and got all... entrepreneurial.” Mr. Kline waved off menus. “Managed to sell some — ​property — ​that already had a buyer.”

Bax remained silent. Raced through Mr. Kline’s lines of business to assess what property Mr. Kline might be talking about. “Is it property we can get more of ?”

“It is not.”

That ruled out cars and parts, some drugs, and girls. It left knock-off Japanese whiskey and—​

“All them FNs,” Russell said.

Mr. Kline’s backhand across Russell’s face flashed so fast Bax might have missed it if not for the split that opened in the middle of his brother’s lower lip.

“Russell,” Bax said, “you keep your own counsel for the rest of this conversation.” He pushed his napkin across the table. Motioned for Russell to use it to stop the bleeding. “Mr. Kline—”

“I know you thought you’d work off Russell’s debt in the next two, three years.”

“Is this fixable?” Or just more debt?

“I sold that property to the originally interested party.”

“The gentlemen from San Leon.”

“Exactly.” Mr. Kline paused while the waitress refilled his coffee. “And your brother somehow managed to secure a commitment to buy from the — ​how did you say it? The gentlemen from Tyler.”

Bax covered his face with his hands. Cursed silently into his palms. Decades more debt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kline.” Lifetimes. “I... ​well, I’m just very sorry.”

“Now, Bax, you don’t need to apologize.” Mr. Kline moved his hands like he was giving a benediction. “I know young Russell here is just a half-brother. So I can assume he acquired his extraordinary stupidity from his father, not yours.”

Bax kicked Russell under the table to prevent his protest. “Yes, sir, Mr. Kline.”

“Is this fixable, you ask.” Mr. Kline wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. “All the ways I can think to fix this involve throwing your brother to one or the other of the two motorcycle gangs currently waging war over which will control Texas.”

Russell’s face melted from sullen fear to absolute terror.

Bax kicked him again. “Let me think on it for a bit, Mr. Kline, if you will.”

“You can understand why I’d like to find a more successful resolution.” Mr. Kline twisted the big nugget-looking ring that had opened Russell’s lip. “Can’t you, Bax.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But our time is short. Thanks to young Russell’s commitment, now both parties expect delivery within two days.”

“Two days, Mr. Kline.”

Bax’s boss nodded with his whole body. He pulled a long wallet from inside his jacket, opened it, and fingered through the bills. He tugged out a fifty. “That Miss Venetta is quite a catch, Bax.” Folded it under his saucer. “You take good care of her.”

Bax hustled his brother out of the diner as soon as Mr. Kline’s Lexus turned at the end of the block.

“Russell, how you find this much trouble to get into?”

Russell threw a dismissive hand toward the sky. “Man, get off my shit. I just—”

“Your shit?” Bax dope-slapped Russell. “I’m carrying that Wells deal you oughta got dead for, and you talk at me about your shit? You tell Mr. Kline the woman I’m seein’, and you talk at me about your shit? How many times I got to tell you ’bout impulse control?” Bax didn’t flinch as Russell reared back to retaliate for the dope slap. “You need to think before you swing on a man.”

Russell sprawled himself on the smoker’s bench, his ridiculous shoes pointed at Bax. “The Cossacks—”

“Shut up.” Bax swiveled his head. “You stupider than I gave you credit for, you start name-checking the guys gonna peel your skin off.”

“They reached out to me.” Russell admired the rings on his left hand. “They. Reached out. To me.”

“Why you think they did that, Russell? ’Cause you the brains of this operation?”

Russell puffed out his chest.

“Or ’cause you the likeliest to fuck up the deal the Bandidos already done for what both of ’em want?”

Russell’s face blanked. His head tilted.

“Jesus, Russell.” Bax rubbed his palms across his face. “Go back to the shop. I got to think. You just... ​just—”

“Gimme your keys, then.”

Bax shook his head. “Call you a Lyft. Or hoof it. Just sit in my office. Don’t touch nothin’. Or do nothin’. Watch some SportsCenter or some shit like that.”

“But—”

“Don’t you do nothin’ or say nothin’ till I get there.”

Venetta’s one arched eyebrow told Bax about all he needed to know. He showed her his palms as he straddled his regular counter stool.

“You told me you was going straight after your bit.”

“I am.”

“Well, I know who that was you was talking to.” Venetta raised her other brow. “And people going straight don’t spend a lot of time with Mr. Reamer Kline.”

“I’m — ​that was my kid brother. With us.”

“The one you did the bit for.”

Bax had told Venetta most of the truth about his stretch downstate. He hadn’t done what he pleaded to, but he’d pleaded to it to keep his brother out of the system. “Russell fell in with a crew belonged to one of Mr. Kline’s lieutenants while I was doing his time. And he... ​he ended up owing Mr. Kline some.”

Venetta turned her back to him. She started wiping the little spring-loaded pitchers of syrup. “I’m still listening.”

“Mr. Kline, he got to me the day I landed at the halfway house. Told me I could pay Russell’s debt if I fix — ​if I fixed up one of his businesses.”

“Why you work so hard for Russell?”

Bax hadn’t told her any of the truth about that. Not really. Just that doing Russell’s bit had been the right thing for both of them because he’d done some stuff he hadn’t been caught for, that he should’ve gone away for. “Russell, you know, he came up without a dad. He ain’t had nobody to show him how to be a man. And he’s my only family now.”

Venetta let him keep looking at her back.

“Since our mom passed.”

“I don’t want no Mr. Reamer Kline in my diner.”

“I don’t want that neither.” Bax thought carefully about his next move. Moves. Thought that what he really needed was time to think about motorcycle gangs and what they wanted with the shipping container that filled a not-too-noticeable hole in the salvage yard he ran for Mr. Kline. “Can I finish my breakfast here?”

“I saved it for you.” Venetta turned and slid his plate across the counter. “But it gone cold.”

In the diner’s parking lot, the cold half of his eggs riding heavy and low in his belly, Bax opened the Kia’s tailgate and lifted the floor panel covering the spare tire. He pushed the sidewall of the tire until it gapped away from the wheel, reached inside the tire, and fished around until he grasped his most recent burner. Flipped it open and tapped at the tiny keypad: Hudson. U got any friends in DC.

Bax bundled the phone among his newspaper and other trash from his car and stuffed all of that in the stinking, oozing can at the bus stop.

The lady cop had pulled him over between the diner and the salvage yard. Berberian had never responded to a text so fast. The DC ask must have lit a fire under someone important. Bax thought about how he might leverage that as he triple-checked that he’d deactivated all the sounds and shakers on the burner the lady cop had dropped in his pocket.

He found Russell in his office BSing with the guy who knew how to take apart Audis. Bax told the Audi guy to get gone with a chin twitch, then kicked Russell’s feet off his coffee table. “Thought I told you not to say nothin’.”

“I weren’t saying nothin’.”

“Russell, you want to get out of this alive, you need to understand that don’t say nothin’ mean don’t say nothin’. To nobody.”

Russell turned this over in his mind for a few moments. “Even you, that means.”

Bax felt the growl in his throat. “You know what, Russell? That’s the best idea you’ve had in a long time.” He played out the strategy a few moves, imagined all the ways Russell could fuck it up. “Here’s your rule: unless you’re answering a question I ask you, you don’t say nothin’ to nobody.”

“Even Reamer?”

Bax shook his head. “That man’s always Mr. Kline to you. And if he say something to you, the only options you got to reply are yes, sir and no, sir.”

“What if—”

“Yes, sir or no, sir. Or answering my questions.” Bax paused at the door to the bathroom. “You keep your mouth shut, maybe I can keep you breathing.”

In the bathroom, Bax checked his burner.

Brooklyn. 1415 the park.

The park was Berberian’s code for the commercial laundry where Bax took the salvage yard’s floor mats.

Brooklyn, he tapped back to Berberian. OK.

Bax ordered Russell to collect anything going to the laundry and load it in the salvage yard’s F-150. He went out to get chop suey for his crew and get rid of his most recent burner.

After lunch Bax stuck Russell’s phone and his desk phone in a metal locker behind a padlock, then locked Russell in his office and told the Audi guy to make sure no one went in or out.

“This is Parker,” Berberian said. “FBI.”

Parker was a tiny thing, wiry and coiled. She looked like a kid sitting at the Ikea table in the laundry’s back room. She wore a wedding ring with a diamond that looked the size of a bottle-cap.

“I’m Bax.” Her handshake told him she punched above her weight. “Randall Baxter.”

“Berberian tells me that you’re his meal ticket,” she said.

Bax didn’t tell her that he couldn’t care less whether it was Berberian’s ticket he punched or hers. He knew only that if ratting on someone guaranteed that he’d never go back inside, he’d rat on anyone with a pulse. “I try to take very good care of Detective Berberian,” Bax said.

“And why is that?” Parker said.

Bax felt her grip again, but more like it was around his neck. He glanced at Berberian.

“Bax is a man with a—” Berberian said.

“My brother — ​his name’s Russell, and Russell’s my only family — ​my brother made some mistakes when I was in prison,” Bax said. “He screwed up a fentanyl deal for one of Reamer Kline’s lieutenants. Cost Mr. Kline a lot of money. When I got out, Mr. Kline told me I could make up that money for him or watch his man Owsley kill my brother.”

“So you’re out to get Reamer Kline,” Parker said.

“No, ma’am. I got no particular interest in Mr. Kline. But he’s got a very particular interest in me. And I got no interest in going back to prison for whatever he’s up to. But a lot of interest in keeping my brother alive.”

Parker checked Berberian. “What’s Reamer Kline’s interest in you, Mr. Baxter?”

“Bax did a—”

“I did a bit for my brother. I stood up. Kept my own counsel. Mr. Kline, he likes people who know how to stay loyal. And I ain’t had much school, but I’m pretty good at making sure things run smooth.”

“You’re just a good citizen.”

“No, ma’am.” Bax forced the gentle smile he’d perfected to soothe the warden’s mind when it was troubled by uppity Negroes. “But I didn’t much enjoy my time in prison, and I planned to go straight after I got out. Mr. Kline, he gave me no chance to go straight. What I do for Detective Berberian, it’s about the only thing I can do to bend the curve back.”

“And you obviously know how this game is played.”

“I’m always trying to learn.” Bax maintained his smile. “Ma’am.”

That seemed to chill her out a bit, and she was silent.

Berberian couldn’t abide silence. He said to Bax, “Why’d you ask me to call in the feds?”

Bax locked eyes with Parker. “You’re aware of a shipping container from FN Herstal that the police in Los Angeles didn’t get?”

The silence flattened and got heavy. Parker rapped her knuckles on the table twice. “Excuse me.” A third time. Then she left.

Berberian took her chair. “Bax, what the — ​I mean, chop shops and drugs, right, but — ​shit. How did Reamer Kline get hold of — ​I don’t even know what FN Herstal is.”

“It’s Belgian. I can’t pronounce it — ​it’s French, like, Fabric National. They make guns for the army, but also for cops.”

“LAPD?”

“Crazy full-auto shit. Looks like the goddamn Terminator. One a those half-sized containers packed high and tight—”

Parker returned. She leaned against the door she’d just closed, tapping her phone against her chin. “Can you describe the contents of this shipping container you claim to know something about?”

“That, and more.” Bax had grown used to people taking his word since he started fixing for Mr. Kline, and he forced himself to swallow his frustration. “I can give you the numbers off the side of the container, plus who wants to buy it.”

Parker’s phone made a Charlie Brown teacher noise. She held the phone to her ear, then said, “Hang on.” She tapped the screen and put the phone in the middle of the table. “Mr. Baxter, could you—”

“Bax, please, ma’am.”

“Sure. Bax, could you tell us the numbers on the container?”

Bax recited the digits he’d memorized, and then described the shipping seal his Jaguar guy had cracked. “It’s a twenty-foot container. I ain’t taken everything out of it to know the complete inventory, and Mr. Kline, he ain’t showed me the manifest. But the one crate I did take out had four rifles, and there’s a hella lotta crates in that container.”

“How did Reamer Kline come into possession of this container?”

“The driver traded it. To buy his daughter out of Mr. Kline’s stable in Memphis.”

A voice came out of the phone: “You know where it is?”

“And who’s bidding on it.”

Parker said, “Bidding?” at the same time her phone flashed a text message.

Bax pretended he hadn’t seen the message — MAKE THE DEAL — ​and said, “But I need something.”

Bax returned with the three dozen Krispy Kremes that Berberian brought to the meeting to cover for why he’d been gone so long. His crew tore through the doughnuts so fast that only one was left by the time he unlocked Russell from his office.

When Russell started to whine, Bax said, “I ain’t ask you no question.”

Russell stuffed the entire doughnut into his sneer.

Bax pushed him into his office. “I got to go back out again tonight.”

“You ain’t locking me up—”

“The hell I ain’t. The only question is, you want it to be here, or you want me to put a man on you at your room.”

“Man, what you got to—”

“To save your life, brother.” Bax grabbed Russell’s shoulder. “You and me, Russell, we all each other got since Mom passed.”

“Since my dad got killed.”

Bax chewed his lower lip. “He weren’t no kind of man for you to follow.”

Russell threw off Bax’s hand and started building up to something furious.

“No.” Bax pointed at the couch. “I’m full up to here listening to your bullshit about how great your daddy was. I’m sorry you only had our granny to show you how to be a man, because she didn’t have it left in her to tan your hide the way she did mine.” Bax continued pointing until Russell finally sat. “Once was all it took.”

“And look where you ended up.”

Bax enclosed his fury in the safe he’d learned to build in prison, the lockbox that earned him a little grudging respect from the guards and privileges in the library, the commissary. He slowly, quietly closed his office door and turned on his brother. “I did your bit so you could stay in school. I ended up finishing my diploma in prison. You couldn’t even finish your diploma in my old school. And when you started running with Ducornet’s crew instead, you fucked that up so bad that I ended up in a whole ’nother prison when I got outta the first one I went to for you.”

“Hey, Bax, I—”

“You shut the fuck up, boy, and you listen to me. Where I ended up is putting my life on the line to make sure you ain’t skinned alive by the most bloodthirsty savages since you pissed yourself when we watched that chainsaw movie.”

Russell looked out the window.

“So if I tell you I got to go back out and you got to choose where Ima lock you up, the only thing you say to me is here, alone, or in your room, with a babysitter.”

Russell dug at the carpet with his toe. “I got Xbox in my room.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Kline.” Another burner. “Since Russell introduced competing interests, I think we should keep you as far away from this transaction as possible.” Another boss. “Russell handed his party off to me, and if you’ll hand your party off to me, I’ve got a solution that will satisfy both.” Another deal. “But I’m moving the product to a third-party location to limit your exposure.”

Bax’s crew was used to overnight hours, and the chop suey followed by Krispy Kremes had left them feeling like they’d finished a Thanksgiving meal, maybe Friday leftovers, so the grumbling about breaking the container into two truckloads for staging across town was good-natured, and no one asked him why they had to rustle up the lumber to build as many empty crates as they had crates full of guns and then pack them with recycling scrap picked from the yard to match weight.

The warehouse wasn’t exactly abandoned, but the ownership had transitioned into the nether regions of not quite Southland Beverage’s and not quite Bank of America’s. The liquor distributor had built its warehouse across the state line. A single building that could ship into either state and comply with each state’s different regulations and taxes and laws about selling on Sundays. A single building with a concrete wall that sat atop the legal and geographic boundary between the big, mirrored loading bays facing northeast and southwest and overseen by a dispatch room that could look at both sides simultaneously even though neither side could see the other.

And later, at the pizza joint where he bought pitcher after pitcher of Captain Jack to cloud his crew’s faculties and memories, when a thick-necked, tatted-up crewcut set a burner on the counter between the bathroom sinks in which they were washing and said, “Your code is Queens,” Bax said, “Tell Parker I owe this to my brother.”

Bax hadn’t known how Reamer Kline would keep his finger on the deal’s pulse.

He’d known Mr. Kline would take his advice to stay away from any potential dispute between the Bandidos and the Cossacks, because they were as likely to set one another on fire as they were to rape the other’s women or blow up their clubhouses. He’d also known that Mr. Kline’s distance came with conditions, with remote sensors, that could get complicated.

So it was a relief, and some luck, when Kline sent only Owsley. Owsley alone probably was the best he could’ve hoped for. Just one extra guy would make everything easier to manage, but Bax knew Owsley only as a type — ​powerful, mean, not too smart, but singularly focused and therefore clever about what he applied his singular focus to.

As he had when he put Russell out of commission for five weeks to persuade Bax to fix for Mr. Kline.

Since then, Bax made a point of having as little to do with Owsley as possible. Bax figured that probably ended up as a wash: as much as he didn’t know Owsley, Owsley didn’t know him.

“We gonna be up here,” Bax told Owsley, pointing at the dispatch room on the diagram he’d drawn. “The glass ain’t bulletproof, but we laid a bunch of sheet steel on the floor and against the walls, so if anyone starts shooting, just get down. There’s a door to the outside, down a flight of stairs, and we already hid a car there. There’ll be plenty of concrete between us and the warehouse, and I’ve got a couple of guys watching it tonight to make sure no one scouts us before the deal goes down.”

“Clean getaway.” Owsley nodded. “Your guys strapped?”

“My guys are labor, not muscle.” Bax rotated the diagram. “I’ll have one on each side to meet the buyers. The Bandidos come in from the northeast side, the Cossacks from the southwest. Once my guys get them in the warehouse, you and me, we’ll take over from the dispatch office and my guys take off.”

Owsley nodded. “You strapped?”

“I’ll have a nine on my hip and a thirty-eight on my ankle. You?”

Owsley opened his jacket to show twin shoulder holsters. “I carry forty-fives here and a thirty-two in my crotch.” He grunted. “They never frisk your package.”

“Smart.” Bax had learned there weren’t many things a dumb guy liked more than to have someone tell him how smart he was.

“What about your idiot brother?”

“I don’t let him carry.”

“He just hurt himself.”

Bax forced himself to laugh along with Owsley. “You have no idea.”

Bax had braced Russell twice — ​once before Russell went to sleep, once after he woke up — ​to make it sink in.

“You got one job,” Bax told him the night before. “You stand behind me and look mean. The less you talk, the meaner you look.”

In the morning, over coffee in the kitchen, missing his eggs with bacon and jelly with toast and Venetta with him, Bax said, “What’s your one job?”

“Stand behind you and look mean.”

“Good. And how you look mean?”

“By not saying nothin’.”

“Very good. Now Ima tell you your second job.”

“All right.” Russell beamed. “What you—”

“Shut up.” Bax opened the cabinet above the refrigerator and lifted out a big round tin of Danish cookies that had gone stale and hard years before. He wiggled the lid off, lifted out the first layer of cookies, and removed a .38 pistol. “This a Ruger LCP.” He pointed it at the wall, at a framed poster he’d bought at Big Lots, a black-and-white photo of a coastline he didn’t know where. “When you squeeze the grip” — ​a red dot appeared on the poster — ​“it’s got a laser pointer. Now you do it.” Bax handed the gun to Russell. “And don’t point it at me.”

Russell squeezed and released the laser pointer a few times. “This my second job?”

“If anything goes down, you point this at Owsley and pull the trigger before he starts doing the same to you.”

“Wait — ​Owsley?”

“You keep pulling the trigger till ain’t nothin’ coming out of that gun.”

“Owsley gonna be there?”

“Don’t matter. Nothing gonna go down.”

Russell started to fit the gun into his pocket.

“Gimme that back.” Bax extended his palm.

“I thought—”

“Gotta load it.” Bax took a magazine from the tin, slapped it in, and racked the slide. “You think Ima let you wave around a loaded gun in here?”

Bax had set up Berberian’s most recent burner to text QUEENS GO when he pushed just one button, but he had to wear a jacket loose enough to keep the flip phone both open and hidden. He felt like a damn fool in one of Russell’s pimped-out hip-hop jackets.

When Owsley gave him a critical glare, Bax jerked his head at his brother. “It’s his OG jacket.” Rolled his eyes. “Told me he’d feel better if I wore it.”

“That coat, all his shiny banger shoes — ​he must be joking.”

“I don’t even know where he gets those shoes. But I’m his only family.”

Owsley nodded, then shook his head.

“I hear you.” Bax extended his fist for a bump and was gratified when Owsley did the same.

“I got the boys from Tyler,” the Audi guy said through the radio. “Two blue box trucks and a white Escalade.”

“Tyler is in the house,” Bax replied. “Any sign of San Leon?”

“I think they missed the turn and gotta come back around.” The Jaguar guy, his only other labor outside, was on the northeast approach. “Two Ryder trucks just went by on the — ​yeah, here they are. Two yellow moving vans and a... ​ah, shit, they got like a minivan.” Laughter on the open channel. “A black Chrysler.”

“Good. Don’t make fun of their minivan, right? Get them backed up to the docks. Tyler at four and five, San Leon at fourteen and fifteen.”

In the dispatch office, Bax couldn’t hear anything outside, but he felt the bumps as the trucks hit the loading docks. “Tyler good?” Bax said into his radio.

“One truck at four,” Audi said, “and one truck at five.”

“San Leon good?”

“Fourteen and fifteen,” Jaguar said.

Bax pushed the buttons that opened those doors. The Bandidos’ and Cossacks’ rented trucks were lower and smaller than the big rigs the docks had been built for, and sunlight mixed with the overhead fluorescents. A breeze swirled crispy leaves through the Cossacks’ bay.

Bax told Audi and Jaguar to let the dealmakers through the staff doors on each side. “Then you guys head back to the shop. Clock in Russell when you get there, and then make sure that container we emptied out is completely shredded.”

Moments later the Bandidos’ and Cossacks’ leaders entered their respective loading bays. Audi and Jaguar pointed their buyers at Bax perched in the dispatch office. They could see him, but neither could see over or through the concrete wall on top of the state line.

Bax hit the speaker switch for the loading bays. “I’m Bax. We talked last night. Up here are my associates, Owsley and Russell.”

Cossacks and Bandidos began drifting out of the box trucks. They carried shotguns and rifles. A couple waved wicked-looking machine pistols. Half established a perimeter, half trained their weapons on the dispatch office.

“This look like the deal we talked about?” Bax said through the speaker.

The Cossack flashed two thumbs up. The Bandido said, “You hear me?”

Bax thought about his response, how he could respond without betraying that he was talking to two people instead of just one. “I can hear you when you talk.”

The Cossack said, “This looks like what you said,” and the Bandido said, “Looks like what we agreed to.”

“Like I told you when we talked, you can grab any crate to check the contents are what you expect.” Which would work as long as neither gang moved more than three stacks of crates and found the scrap filler.

Two men on each side slung long guns over their shoulders and approached the stacked crates. The Cossacks grabbed the closest crate on top. The Bandidos moved one stack of crates, then another.

“When you’ve confirmed the contents,” Bax said, “then you’ll show me your side of the deal.”

He waited to see if the Bandidos would dig deep enough to get to a filler crate. He grasped the hidden flip phone, positioning his finger on the Send button.

The Cossacks opened their crate before the Bandidos chose a crate from the third stack.

Bax waited until both crates were open. While the guys pulled out sleek, ray-gun-looking rifles, horsed around with them, put them back.

“I showed you mine,” Bax said. “You show me yours.”

The Cossack whistled. The Bandido spun his finger in the air. Cossacks hauling rainbow-striped rectangular nylon duffels emerged from their truck. Bandidos dragging black roll-aboard suitcases strolled in from theirs. Both opened their luggage to show bundled stacks of cash.

Bax pushed Send in the same motion as he raised binoculars to look at the Cossacks—​

“What the fuck you looking at over there?” a Bandido shouted.

That’s when the windows shattered, when Bax yelled “Get down,” when his ears popped and his eyes dazzled from flash-bang grenades, when he heard men yelling over gunfire, “U.S. Marshals — ​drop your weapons,” when men started shrieking, when Owsley started for his shoulder holsters, when Russell painted a red dot on Owsley’s midsection, when Bax bellowed, “Russell, what did you do?” when bullets clanked and plinked on the sheet metal, when a spurt of blood stained Owsley’s shirt and Owsley fell to one side and drew his other pistol.

“Russell,” Bax shouted what he’d rehearsed, springing at his brother, pushing him through the door to outside, drawing his pistol, “you traitorous piece of shit!”

Bax fired three, four, five shots over Russell’s head and kicked the door shut behind him.

Russell was half over the railing when Parker grabbed his belt and hauled him back onto the landing.

Bax grabbed his brother’s head, shook it. “Russell, listen to me.” Got his brother’s eyes. “This is Parker. She’s going to get you out of here.” They flinched as bullets pierced the transom behind them. “You’re getting a new life somewhere else.”

Russell’s eyes got big, then rolled a bit as he pissed himself.

“Are you kidding me?” Parker muttered.

“Go,” Bax said. “I’ll tell you this now because I got to go in for Owsley and I won’t see you again. Ever.” He planted a kiss on Russell’s forehead. “I’m sorry, brother,” he whispered. “For everything.”

Bax crouched low outside the door. “Owsley,” he shouted. “You hear me? Ima open the door.”

No response.

Bax cracked the door. The crescendo of explosions and gunfire shocked him, knocked him back. The smell of gunpowder and smoke covered the smell of Russell’s piss. The plinks on the sheet metal had stopped as Bandidos and Cossacks concentrated their fire on the feds. He peeked in, saw Owsley on his side, leaking blood, one pistol trained on Bax.

Bax ducked. “Owsley — ​can you move?” Owsley didn’t fire. “I got the car. I can get us out of here.”

Owsley rasped, “That idiot brother of yours shot me.”

Bax didn’t tell Owsley that he’d loaded only a single round in the Ruger he’d given to Russell, figuring close range and a laser pointer would get Russell in the general vicinity of Owsley’s bulk without being fatal.

“He set up Mr. Kline,” Bax told Owsley. “That must be what his whole thing with the other gang was about.” Bax crawled through the door. Owsley’s gun arm had dropped. “He set us up and I killed him for it, but now I gotta get you out of here.”

“I don’t—” Owsley yelped. “I can’t make the stairs.”

“I’ll carry you.”

Owsley spit up some blood when he laughed. “You’re as big an idiot as your brother if you think you can carry me.” Then he passed out.

Bax turned down the volume on the TV news coverage of the gang-war gun battle when Mr. Kline came out of the bedroom and closed the door. Behind it, Owsley lay in a queen-sized bed that he made look like a twin, breathing raggedly after the horse-farm vet pulled out the .38 slug and sewed up a couple of holes in one of his lungs.

Bax had held Owsley’s hand through the surgery. His joints ached from the crushing grip.

“Owsley says you saved his life,” Mr. Kline said.

Bax moved the morning’s newspaper off the couch so Mr. Kline could sit. “He’s heavier than he looks.”

Mr. Kline chuckled, then grew solemn. “He also told me that you made sure your brother won’t be assisting the feds he sold us out to.”

“I’m real sorry about him, Mr. Kline.” Bax let the real emotion of never again seeing Russell show on his face. Leak from his eyes. “After all you done for him—”

Mr. Kline patted Bax’s knee twice. “It’s not lost on me that you did a lot for your brother too.”

Bax wiped his eyes. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Mr. Kline knew what he’d gotten away with, what he’d stood up and done Russell’s time for. But he knew better than to acknowledge it, than to give Mr. Kline even more power over him.

“However, I must be absolutely confident we’re covered on that flank. I can blame Russell to the Cossacks, but my assurances to the Bandidos have been met with some... skepticism.”

“Yes, sir. When Russell shot Owsley, I put four in his chest and he went over the railing onto the ground. After I got Owsley out, I put another in his head and put his body in the trunk. I can show you a picture on my phone.” Parker’s people had made Russell look like a chainsaw victim in the movie that had scared the piss out of him.

“Not for me, Bax. But the Bandidos might ask.”

Bax put back the phone he’d started pulling from his pocket. “I drove Owsley here, to your ranch to see the doc, and then drove the car with Russell’s body out to that quarry in Jefferson County. Wrapped the body with canvas and chain, like we do, and sank it separate from the car.”

“Like we do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m out both the guns and money I expected to get for the guns.”

“Yes, sir, I understand that I’m still in your debt.” Bax waited for Mr. Kline to acknowledge showing his belly and got a small nod. “I did hold out one crate of those guns for you.”

Mr. Kline’s mouth twitched to the right.

“The feds are telling the news that it was between the Bandidos and the Cossacks.”

“I believe we shall find that sinking that driver in the quarry will pay greater dividends than I originally anticipated.”

Bax flinched inside. Maybe Berberian could find out whether the driver’s daughter was off the streets in Memphis. “The feds say the Bandidos stole the guns, and the Cossacks ambushed them while they were breaking down the container for distribution.”

“Certainly that’s not the story your brother fed them.”

“I figure that’s their cover for flipping Russell, because they ain’t know I killed him.” Bax shrugged. “But the closest they can get to you from him is me. And I know how to keep my counsel.”

Venetta didn’t take much care when she tossed his plate of eggs with bacon and jelly with toast on the counter.

Bax folded the paper he’d brought with him from the horse farm. “I missed you yesterday,” he said.

She leaned over the counter, one hand planted deliberately over the front-page photo of the still-smoking, bullet-riddled warehouse. “I ’spect you musta been pretty busy yesterday.”

“I finally got it through my brother’s head that he needs a fresh start somewhere else.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Spent the day packing his things and then put him on a bus to Houston. He got a cousin there who can help him get established.”

“You said you’s his only family.”

Bax chewed on a slice of bacon. “I think I said he’s my only family.”

Venetta looked like she might raise an eyebrow, but she didn’t. “Now that he gone, you gonna tell me the rest of that story?”

“You gonna let me take you to the supper club on Saturday night?” Bax finished his eggs, appreciating that they were still hot.

“I have never met Napoleon, but that ain’t our deal.”

Bax nodded. “My mom — ​she was Russell’s mom too, you know — ​when I came along, she was a working girl. After I arrived, she got on a different track. Started waiting tables in a diner.”

“Really.”

“This diner.” Bax smeared strawberry jelly across his sourdough toast. “I bused tables here, for tips, after school, when I was eight, nine years old.”

Venetta perched on a stool behind the counter and took her hand off the newspaper.

“But Russell’s dad, when she took up with him, he wanted her earning more. After Russell come along, he hooked her on dope so he could turn her out.”

“Gonna put his baby momma on the street.”

Bax wiped his mouth. “So I killed him.”

Venetta cleared his plate and ran a towel over the counter. “You did Russell’s bit for what you done that you ain’t got caught for.”

Bax took a twenty from his wallet and laid it on the counter. “I don’t need no change.”

Venetta extended his paper. She didn’t let go of it when he tried to take it.

Bax looked at Venetta’s hand. Its firm grasp on the news.

“Not Saturday night,” Venetta said. “But you can take my daughter and me out for lunch after Sunday services.”