Chapter 30
Penn
Stephen’s trapped, and he knows it. The fancy suburban shield is gone. The illusion of his wealth and safety is shattered and laying on the floor by his feet. All that’s left is a pathetic man who has next to nothing left.
No home.
No wife.
No children.
No girlfriend.
And soon… no life.
“We can talk about this,” Stephen says, his voice cracking. His hands shake as he presses them against the siding.
He’s used to getting everything he wants. Everything can be either bought off by his money or his charm. And we’ve taken away both.
“Not much to talk about,” I say.
“You got what you wanted. I’m out on my ass. I’m losing my family. My house. Just let me go and suffer on my own.”
“We didn’t get shit, Patterson,” Kannon snaps, his gravelly tone cutting deep. “You’ve been playing middleman for the Black Venom bastards, and you’re passing yourself off as a pharmaceutical salesman to keep people off your back.”
Sliding down the side of the house, he hugs his knees, curling into himself until he’s half the size he was moments ago. “What more do you want?”
“You have a list,” Capone says. “The names of every dealer you recruited to push Venom Dust, not to mention the harder shit killing even more people.”
He shakes his head. The color drains from his cheeks, leaving him a sickly shade of gray. Sweat beads along his hairline and drips down his temple. “I can’t give you that. If Butch finds out I talked, he’ll skin me alive.”
Pacino grabs him by his collar and lifts him onto his feet. “And what the fuck do you think we’re gonna do to you? Butch ain’t here, so the only people to be scared shitless of right now is us.”
Bending down, Kannon grabs Stephen’s ankle and rips off his leather loafer. I scrunch up my nose when I see he’s not wearing socks. It’s eighty degrees out already this morning, and he’s wearing shoes without socks. “Gross.”
“Yeah, I agree. His feet smell like ass,” Kannon says, pulling a pair of pliers from his pocket.
The metal glints in the bright sun. “Now, you have a choice. Give us names, or I pull out your toenail. Then I’ll move to the next one.
By the time I reach your pinky toe, I suspect we’ll have everything we need, including your mother’s maiden name and bank code pin. ”
“I don’t have a written list!” he screams, his high-pitched voice cracking as he squeals. His whole body trembles, his legs jerking against Kannon’s hold, but neither Kannon nor Pacino loosens their grip. “I swear it! And most of the guys are only reachable by Butch once I set up the business.”
Kannon clamps the pliers onto his toe. Stephen whimpers, trying to yank his foot back. “See, that’s not giving us anything to save yourself with, Patterson.”
“I swear, I don’t know anything!”
The pliers move to the edge of his big toenail, and Kannon slowly pulls, dragging out the pain. Stephen screams and tries to kick Kannon away, but Pacino drops a heavy boot on his other loafer, pinning him against the house and unable to move.
A few people walk by on the sidewalk, and Capone and I just turn and wave our gloved hands at them. Their brows lift, but two of them actually wave back at us.
“Friendly neighborhood,” I say. “Maybe I should look at moving out this way.”
“Nah, you aren’t the type to have neighbors this close. Plus, you’re kind of a ways out from the clubhouse. It would be an annoyance.”
“Plus, you’d miss seeing all of our shiny, happy faces every day,” Kannon says, yanking even more until a little blood appears at the cuticle where the nail bed is ripping.
“I know where the chemical shipments are brought for the new drug they’re pushing!” Stephen screams. “I don’t have exact coordinates, but it’s out in the desert by an old, abandoned quarry near the state line.”
Releasing his toe, Kannon looks up at me as Stephen breathes heavily, tears in his eyes. “There are a lot of abandoned quarries in the fucking desert, especially along the state line. That’s at least five hundred miles.”
“Depends on the state line we’re talking. East or west. Or north. We’re looking at more if he means California,” Pacino says.
“It’s two hundred miles east of here. Almost straight east. It’s the largest snake pit they have, and Butch pays the authorities to ignore anything that goes on out there,” Stephen spits out, words tumbling over each other.
“Like what? Giant shipments of chemicals being used to make shit for people to shoot into their fucking veins?” I snap.
“Like explosions. They’ve had four accidents already. These are hardcore chemicals, and I wasn’t setting up dealers for that shit. Only Venom Dust. I swear on my kids’ lives,” he says quickly, nearly tripping on his words.
Pacino continues holding him by his collar with Kannon far closer to his foot than I’d be comfortable with. He’s not in a position to lie. We’ll kill him either way, but we’ll make it worse if he’s not giving us the truth.
“How many men guard it?” I ask.
“Four or five during the day,” he says, slumping back down when Pacino finally releases him. “More at night, but I’ve never been out there then. I don’t know anything more. If I did, I’d tell you.”
I watch him carefully. His eyes dart to the side for just a second too long. His jaw twitches. “You do have a list of the dealers.”
“What?”
“You were too specific. You don’t have them written down. But you have them saved somewhere else,” I say. “Where?”
Stephen’s chest puffs up for all of three seconds before deflating completely. His shoulders sag. “They’re saved on a USB drive. It’s under a loose floorboard in my office.”
Knocking on the door, Pacino says, “We should take that toenail for lying to us.”
“Technically, it wasn’t a lie. But who writes shit down anymore anyway?” I ask.
“I do,” the other three say in unison.
Of course they do. I forget Zep and I are the only ones who grew up almost fully immersed in the technology age.
Caroline opens the door. “Yes?”
“I need to see his office,” Pacino says. “Can you show me?”
“Sure,” she says, a small, satisfied smirk crossing her face as she glances at Stephen huddled defenseless on the porch.
A younger boy about ten or eleven opens the door and peeks outside. His dark hair is messy, like he just rolled out of bed. “Are you going to take my dad away?”
Great. “Why do you ask that, bud?” I ask, crouching down to his level.
“Mom said he was going away, and he wasn’t coming back. Is that true?”
I look at Stephen who nods his head slowly. “That’s right, Evan.”
“Good.”
He slams the door shut, and I burst out laughing. “Not even your fucking kids are gonna miss you. Guess that’s what a life of shitty decisions gets you, huh?”
Pacino walks back out with three USB drives clutched in his hand. “Turns out, there were a few loose floorboards, and there were multiple drives. Got them all.”
“You know, it might be kind of fun to let him live,” Capone says, leaning against the railing.
All three of us glare at him, but Kannon’s the first to speak with, “Are you fucking high?”
“Think about it. He has no home. No family. And if he goes to Butch, we’re going to out his little skimming operation. If we kill him, his suffering ends quickly. If we leave him alive, he might just take care of things for us.”
“Not to mention, we can easily spread the word he gave us the location of the new snake pit Butch set up for his latest drug,” Pacino says. “He has to get as far away as fucking possible to save the skin on his back.”
I don’t like it. My gut twists. I told Dixie he’ll never come near her again, and the only way to ensure that stays the truth is to watch him take his last breath. But death will be too easy for him.
“Stay away from Caroline and your kids. Away from this house. And stay the fuck away from Dixie,” I say, stepping closer until my shadow falls over him.
“Otherwise, I’ll drive a screwdriver through your right eyeball and watch you flail on the ground in agonizing pain before cutting off various body parts until you slowly bleed out in front of me. Got it?”
He nods, eyes wide despite the threat to take out an eyeball, and we head to our bikes. But he doesn’t move. He just sits there frozen like a statue.
“Fucking leave!” Kannon shouts. “Didn’t you hear what Penn just told you? Are you a moron?”
Scrambling to his feet, he runs, not bothering to pick up his discarded loafer, and hurries to his car. He peels out, narrowly missing us, and drives away quickly. Dust kicks up behind his tires, clouding the air.
“I’ll call Jethro. We’re gonna need to take this to the table before we head out to the desert,” Pacino says, pulling out his phone.
“And buy fucking gas masks,” I mutter.