Knuckles Read online

  “Tristan? What’s wrong?”

  Tristan looked at Lauren.

  “Hmm?”

  “Your face—you look like you saw a ghost.”

  Tristan stared at his wife, his hand going subconsciously to the long black beard on his chin, tugging at the coarse hair.

  How lucky does a man have to be to be married to that? And how stupid does one have to be to leave it?

  Lauren was beautiful, with bright green eyes, high cheekbones, full lips. And a nearly perfect body.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing—just going to miss you guys, is all.”

  Lauren’s red lips turned downward, and he immediately regretted the comment. But before he could take it back, Timmy chimed in.

  “You sure you have to go away, Dad? I mean six months is a real long time.”

  Tristan did his best not to let his expression mirror his wife’s. To fight the urge, he smiled a little too broadly.

  “A man’s gotta do what—”

  “—a man’s gotta do,” Timmy finished for him. “Yeah, I know.”

  Tristan took a deep breath.

  “Hey, how about I take you to school today, instead of your mom? Would that work?”

  Timmy started to smile, revealing a gap-toothed smile.

  Injecting heroin, and he doesn’t even have all of his adult teeth yet.

  The thought almost made Tristan laugh, but not quite. After all, they had arrested an eleven-year-old with nearly a grand worth of the yellow powder not two weeks ago.

  And besides, he had seen the ravages of the drug. Eventually, users’ teeth rotted and fell out. At that point, it didn’t really matter.

  “That would be great!”

  Tristan looked to Lauren next and she nodded. He was happy to see that she was smiling now, too.

  “Then finish your—”

  A buzzing sound from the counter cut him off. He turned, and he finally lost the battle with the frown that so desperately wanted to assault his features.

  There were two cell phones on the counter: his usual Blackberry and the other one.

  The one that looked like it was from the mid-nineties. The one that was supposed to ring when his contact on the inside was going to tell him it was time to go.

  Tristan looked up at his family and faked a smile

  “It’s time,” he said softly as he grabbed the phone. “It’s time, and I love you both very much.”

  Both his son and wife moved toward him and he embraced them. Kissing the top of his son’s head, he closed his eyes and tried to make the moment last forever.

  If he had only known; if he had only known that this was the last time he would see them alive, he might have done things differently.

  He might never have woken up that morning.

  Chapter 4

  At first, Chris wasn’t sure what was worse: the pain or the sound—the dull, resonant crack—that his humerus made when it snapped.

  Later, he would be convinced that it was the pain, but for now, he wasn’t as confident.

  A low groan escaped his lips, and he staggered. Tony was kind enough to hold him on his feet and prevent him from falling forward and smashing his face on the desk before him. Chris bit his lip, struggling to keep the tears that welled behind his eyes at bay.

  “I’m sorry, Chris. I truly am. But I warned you—I warned you about what would happen if you didn’t pay up.”

  Chris swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I understand,” he gasped. Yori chuckled, but this time he couldn’t do anything—not even shoot the guy a sour look.

  All he could do was continue to bite his lip, to try and will the pain away.

  “You have a spiral fracture of the humerus. Put it in a sling, get a cast if you want, but it’s not necessary. In six to eight weeks you’ll be as good as new,” Tony informed him. Chris turned to face his strangely compassionate assailant. “That is, of course, if you are back here in a week with the money that you owe plus the vig. If you don’t, well…”

  The man’s face was stern as his sentence trailed off. Despite the apprehension the man had so obviously expressed at the idea of breaking his arm, he had done it—he hadn’t even hesitated.

  No, he didn’t have to finish his sentence for Chris to get a good idea of what might happen to him if he returned with fake one dollar bills.

  “I got it, I got it,” Chris replied through clenched teeth. “One week. I’ll find the cash.”

  “You better,” Yori said softly.

  Chris exercised every ounce of willpower to avoid looking at him and instead turned toward the door, his left arm dangling uselessly at his side.

  Every step he took sent a shock wave of pain up to his shoulder, and he somehow succeeded in not crying out. The last thing he wanted to do was to give Yori the satisfaction of knowing that he was in pain.

  He opened the door and stepped into the gym, not pausing to give his eyes time to adjust to the dim lighting.

  “One week,” Tony hollered after him, but Chris didn’t turn.

  The gym reeked of sweat and the undertone of funk that came with not washing for days. It wasn’t much of a gym, not really; more just a warehouse with a series of free weights off to the left, and some punching bags and a speed bag in the corner by the front door.

  The only thing that would have looked out of place in someone’s unfinished basement was the large boxing ring square in the middle of the gym. Two men were sparring in the ring: a tall shirtless man with a sun tattooed on his left shoulder blade, and a wiry black man wearing a sweat-stained muscle shirt. The shirtless man was being battered, and his face was a puffy mess.

  Chris swallowed hard, pain flaring up his arm again. He wondered if his face would look like that if he didn’t come up with the money by next week.

  And then he thought that maybe that would be the least of his worries.

  The men caught him watching and the dark-skinned one stopped, popped out his mouthpiece out and shouted down at him.

  “Hey, what you lookin’ at, pussy? You wanna spar?”

  Chris said nothing, choosing to simply avert his eyes and pick up his pace as he made his way toward the glass doors at the front of the gym.

  “That’s what I thought, fagget. Keep your eyes to yourself.”

  Tony ran an illegal boxing and MMA circuit out of the gym, hosting fights once or twice a month. Although Chris had never attended any, by all accounts they were quite popular, and must bring in considerable cash for Tony to continually run the risk of being shut down.

  But the fights were just a front, Chris knew. The real money was in another business entirely.

  Chris might have run into a wall when it came to money-making schemes—including his decision to print counterfeit money—but he wasn’t dumb.

  A picture of the dollar bills in his wallet, which could have just as well been printed on photo paper, flashed in his mind.

  Or maybe he was dumb. But one thing he definitely wasn’t, was unobservant. Given the number of old ladies that he had scammed out of pension checks over the years, he had learned to be aware of everyone and everything around him. And it had been those years in the old folks’ home that had helped him hone his charm. A handsome smile and the ability to just listen was often enough to make even the most unbelievable story seem reasonable. A strategy that, for a while, had proved very lucrative for Chris, one that worked well with lonely old ladies.

  Part of him wanted to believe that his charm was also the reason why Tony had taken a liking to him, why he hadn’t gotten Yori to kill him outright already.

  After the storm, people had been desperate for answers, and while Chris had seized the opportunity to provide a compassionate ear in exchange for pension checks or insurance payouts, Tony had taken a different approach. Instead of helping people remember the lost, he helped them forget. Or, more precisely, the heroin he provided helped them forget.

  A dagger of pain shot up his arm, forming a knot in his shoulder, and Chris gasped.r />
  Yeah, Tony just fucking loves me.

  As Chris finally made it to the front door, his eyes fell on the black and white advertisement that had been taped to the glass.

  The profiles of two men filled the page. The one on the left looked familiar to Chris, and he realized that he had seen him in the gym several times before. He was oddly handsome for a fighter, despite his severe expression.

  Peter Glike.

  But while Peter would pass for handsome, no one would dare claim the same for the other man. His brow was thickened, casting a shadow over sunken eyes, and his nose so crooked that it was a wonder he could even breathe.

  Jermaine Pinker, the words across his forehead read.

  At the bottom, in thick, bold type, was Riot 7: Don’t miss it.

  The date of the event was next Friday, the exact day that he was to return to give Tony his money.

  Coincidence? I think not.

  A scheme began to fester in his mind and the pain in his arm suddenly took a back seat to visions of glory. Visions of having a wallet stuffed not with fake one dollar bills, but real, genuine hundreds.

  Chris pushed the door to the gym open and stepped out into the sun, a smile plastered on his face.

  Riot 7… no, I don’t think I’ll miss it.

  Chapter 5

  As soon as Tristan stepped out of his house, he stopped being Tristan. Instead, he assumed the name that was listed on the ID in his wallet, the one that he had helped fabricate: Dirk Kinkaid.

  The ID and backstory weren’t foolproof, but it was good enough for Tony and his crew.

  It had to be enough.

  And, besides, Dirk wasn’t meant to be a long-term gig. His entrenchment with Tony was supposed to last three months, six tops, which should be enough time.

  Dirk hoped it wouldn’t even take that long.

  His sole objective was to figure out where the heroin that was flooding the streets of the tri-county area was originating from. It was primarily being moved through Tony’s gym, that much they already knew, but the man was just a small time player, a once bookie turned dealer.

  He wasn’t the source—there was someone else backing him.

  They needed to stem this dam at the neck if they wanted to stop the flood. Askergan was already overrun, and Pekinish was on the verge of following in its big brother’s footsteps.

  The car that he had been given, that Dirk Kinkaid had been given to fit with his persona, was a 1998 Camaro that quite literally belched and spurted every time he pressed the gas pedal.

  It was as obnoxious as it was ugly.

  Thankfully, the drive to Pekinish County was only forty minutes, which meant that he made it to Askergan in under twenty. The plan that he and his superiors had concocted to figure out where the heroin was coming from had taken the better part of three months. And that was only because there was someone on the inside, someone who vouched for him, had gotten him his first job with Tony’s crew, which soon turned into two or three.

  His introduction had been slow, but the demand for Tony’s product was insatiable, and he had cut some corners in order to grow. And that’s when Dirk had gotten the call.

  Officially, he had been told that they needed some extra protection for an upcoming boxing match, but rumors had it that there was another player in town, one that was poised to make a move.

  Dirk turned onto Main St in Askergan, and the air was suddenly sucked from his lungs.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. A sudden foreboding sense of doom came over him, something of the like he had never felt before. It was like a pressure in his chest, as if his diaphragm hadn’t just been paralyzed, but removed entirely.

  He didn’t even glance up as an Askergan PD squad car passed. Instead, he pressed the gas pedal, trying his best to ignore the throaty rumble of the engine as he tried to get through Askergan as quickly as possible.

  Tony’s gym was just outside the Askergan city limits, and just inside those belonging to the much smaller Pekinish County.

  As he neared the gym, the pressure in his chest subsided, and when he pulled up just outside the plain gray building, it had become something of an afterthought.

  Dirk parked his Camaro at the edge of the lot and sat in the car for a moment, staring at the concrete cube with the words ‘Tony’s Gym’ spray-painted above the entrance.

  This place, this “gym” was to be his home for the next three to six months. And in that time he had to figure out where the drugs were coming from. The best way to do that, Dirk knew, was not to follow the drugs, but to follow the money.

  The party line was that in order to kill a snake, you had to cut off its head. Except the heroin problem in Askergan and Pekinish wasn’t a snake. It was a worm. And if you cut the head off a worm, you were left with two worms. Take away the worm’s food, however, and the only thing remaining is a starving, desiccated nematode drying on the sidewalk.

  No money, no product. No product, no user.

  No food.

  Dirk took a deep breath, put the car into park and then grabbed his duffel bag from the backseat.

  Then he opened the door and stepped out into the sun.

  Three months; three months and then you can go back to being Tristan. Starve the worm, and then you can go home to Lauren and Timmy the Tiger.

  Chapter 6

  “So Tony says that we can count on you,” the driver said. He was a tall man, thin and wiry, with arms that were so long that they were almost bent at a ninety-degree angle so that he could comfortably grip the steering wheel. “And Tony is usually right about these sort of things.”

  Coggins remained silent—he didn’t detect a question that required answering. Over the course of the past three or four months, he had done several dead drop pickups for Tony, but this was the first time he had done it with Yori.

  Tony’s right-hand man was unusually chatty compared to the others. Problem was, Coggins wasn’t interested in conversation.

  He had a decent rapport with Tony, but thought the man to be fairly reckless with whom he hired—something that would likely come back to haunt him. After all, a simple background check would have revealed that Coggins was an ex-cop. If he knew of his past, would he still consider Coggins someone he could count on?

  The other possibility was that Tony was well aware of his past and that he was using it as an asset. Maybe Coggins was trustworthy because he had experience dealing with other bad guys.

  Who knows.

  Who cares.

  Coggins certainly didn’t. He just did his job, standing watch while the other man, Yori in this case, made the pick-up. Then he collected his fee and grabbed himself something to drink.

  Coggins licked his lips, and then massaged his temples. The headache was still there, but the sip of whiskey and a half-dozen aspirin had forced it to the sides of his skull.

  After the storm, he had wandered aimlessly for a while, doing everything in his power to stay away from Askergan County, to push the memories to the sides just as he had his headache that morning. The farthest he had made it was South Carolina, but this lasted only a month. Eventually, he found himself meandering back north, eventually congregating in Pekinish County, Askergan’s less majestic brother, keeping a lowish profile, not telling anyone that he was back.

  Every morning that he woke up with a hangover and the last vestiges of a horrible nightmare, he wondered why he had returned to the tri-county area.

  But deep down inside, he knew why.

  Askergan and its brothers had a hold on him, a strange pull that he could never fully disengage from.

  Cooome.

  “You packing?” Yori asked, snapping Coggins out of his head. He turned to face the man, sizing him up. The question struck him as odd, given that none of the other men he had ridden along with had asked him before.

  “No,” he said simply.

  Dana Drew’s assertion about him being one of the good guys might have been misguided, but Coggins most definitely wasn’t a bad guy.
/>   He hadn’t been in Pekinish for more than a week when he noticed the thug pushing heroin on the street corner just outside his rented apartment. At first, Coggins ignored the man. After all, it wasn’t in his nature to interfere, and that, coupled with trying to go unnoticed, rendered him morally ambivalent. But when the dealer started badgering two kids that looked to be on their way to middle school, complete with matching spider-man backpacks, Coggins had seen red.

  His intention had been to scare the punk off, but the prick must have been sampling his own supply and had had the gall to take a swing at him. Coggins’s response had been swift and decisive, and before he knew it, the man—kid, himself, really—lay unconscious on the ground, blood pouring from his nose, his lips a similar bloody mess.

  Even though every fiber of his being was telling him to run, to get the fuck out of there, Coggins stayed to make sure that the man awoke. But when he did, the first thing he had done was place a call. Within minutes, another dealer arrived on the scene, then another. And unlike him today, they were all packing.

  And that was how he met Tony. The thick, tanned man who was strangely congenial and reasonable given his profession, had actually listened to what Coggins had to say.

  To Coggins’s surprise, he actually agreed and had delivered his own beating on the street dealer. Then he said that they wouldn’t do business around schools, hospitals, that sort of thing—that they wouldn’t sell to kids who looked like they couldn’t grow even a whisker on their chin.

  And then Tony had offered Coggins a job: accompany one of his men on a dead drop.

  Coggins had received a small severance from Askergan after he left the force, and only because Paul had helped him with some creative reporting.

  PTSD, hypothermia, bereavement; the report had all of the buzzwords that triggered long-term disability leave, even though both he and Sheriff White knew that he wouldn’t be returning.

  But it wasn’t enough. And his travels south had quickly eaten through his cash.

  After negotiating a fee, Coggins agreed. But he had his rules, and he made it clear to Tony that unlike his payment, these were non-negotiable: he never carried a gun, and only did dead drops. He also wasn’t to see heroin, touch heroin, deal heroin, or even hear the word. And that had worked out for the both of them over the past few months. Until Yori posed the seemingly innocuous question but a moment ago.