The Subtle Art of Brutality

Gunshot. Just like that. Loud as cannon fire in this enclosed space. Danny slumps. Still breathing. Not flailing or moaning. Just taking his time to blink out.

I hear something pouring. Quick and consistent at first, then a drizzle. Then individual splashes. The carpet beneath him is red.

35

A blur.

The van yanks to a stuttering halt and banks off to the left. We hit something. Another car. Gunfire. Blimpie screaming; even through the two vehicles and all the glass and metal and the smell of gunfire and the shots resonating, I can hear Roscoe’s whipping boy in his death throes.

Cherry screaming to no one left alive: “I ain’t goin’ back to the fuckin’ pen on a third strike! I’ll play the game on my own! Fuck you guys!”

A screeching halt. Engine killed. I look around the bases of the seats. See his leg sticking through. I shoot it. There goes his entire knee.

Screams. He empties his weapon. Half in the ceiling; shock, surprise, agony. The other half back my direction; way too high. He doesn’t know what he’s shooting at. He’s just shooting.

I count fifteen empty clicks from the weapon. I hear the glove box fumble Then nothing. I stand up. Claim my prize.

36

Danny’s facial expression is that telltale mix of blank, relaxed and peaceful that only the dead wear.

Blimpie is slumped over his steering wheel, forehead resting on it. His brains painted along the inside driver’s window. A mess. Cherry has lost so much blood his skin as white as the innocence of a newborn.

We’re at least a half-mile off the road. This part of Three Mile High is desolate, near the foothills of the mountains. Bizarrely flat. No wandering cars or police will be moseying by unless they see the snow tracks running off the road back a ways. I figure I have a little time, which is more than Cherry does.

In my back pocket I keep a pair of good latex gloves. Slap them on.

I take a bottle of water rolling around the inside of the van and flip the cap off. Splash Cherry. Must be freezing.

“Uhhh—” is all he can manage.

“What is this girl’s name?”

Delirious. Pain-racked and mostly dead: “I just—I...”

I shake him. Think about splashing more water. “Her name. What did Dobbins say her name was?”

“Start with...a ‘B.’ No...‘D.’ As is...I can’t think now. My leg...”

“Dobbins said she was living with her father?”

“Yeah...”

“Did he say when?”

“Now...I guess...he—”

I wait. Nothing. Splash some more water. His eyes jut open. Shock of it. Frigid shock.

“What did Dobbins do?”

“He had an...address...”

“Hers?”

“Don’t- don’t know. It—she lived...Dobbins gave—”

“Gave it to you?”