In the wry, fast-paced comic thriller that follows, we learn that it’s not the instrument—it’s the music.
BAD BRASS
Bradley Denton
1. Lost in the Woods
With only a fragment of moon above, and surrounded by the twisted limbs of live oaks and Texas cedars, I wasn’t worried that the five thieves in the crooked house might spot me. For one thing, I was forty yards away in the woods. For another, it was late on Saturday night—1:30 A.M. Sunday morning, really—and my targets were seventeen-year-olds who were oblivious to anything that wasn’t on their smartphones or in their pants.
As far as I could tell, the most dangerous thing about them was the Hank Williams III country punk that blasted out every time the front door opened. These kids were poor excuses for crime kingpins, which was one reason I liked the idea of taking their ill-gotten gains. I doubted it would be much trouble for me, and maybe it’d be a learning experience for them. Win-win. Besides, if my ex-wife called me to come teach again next week, and if any of these kids happened to be in my class, then ace substitute Matthew Marx would have the pleasure of seeing the hangdog expressions on their pimply faces.
At the moment, though, I thought I needed a better look. Besides the scrap of moon, the available light consisted of off-white beams stabbing from the house windows and a custard-yellow glow from a bulb on the front porch. Not bad. But I had been watching with my folding binoculars for almost forty-five minutes, and I had realized I was too far away to have a good view when the money changed hands. Especially if it happened inside. I needed to be sure I could tell which kid took the cash—and whether that kid kept it, split it with the others, or stashed it.
I also wanted to see how much they collected. There wasn’t much point in tailing a teenager for a lousy hundred bucks … or in burglarizing this dump later if there was nothing inside but empty beer cans and Cheetos bags. I had been in that situation before, and I had been bitten by a previously undetected Chihuahua for my trouble. Then the Chihuahua had only sold for twenty bucks, which hadn’t been enough to cover my pain and suffering. I hoped he had ended up in a stir-fry.
That misadventure had taught me that appearances could be deceiving. The Chihuahua’s house had been a minimansion occupied by successful marijuana importers, yet it had yielded next to bupkis. This rural house with the crooked frame, in contrast, was little more than an oversized Dogpatch shack. It had once been a spiffy guest cabin on the third-largest ranch in Kingman County, but now it was old, ugly, and warped. Yet it might contain a heart of gold.
I had swiped the directions here from a smartphone belonging to a Kingman High football star named Donny. In the hallway before one of my classes, I had heard him brag to a friend about his off-season criminal enterprises. That was the advantage of being an old dude at a high school, and a substitute old dude at that. Unless I stood right in front of them and yelled in their faces, the kids didn’t even see me. And they ignored the school rule against phone use during class. So I could eavesdrop, or walk past their desks and read their texts, as if I were a ghost.
Once I had the directions, some persistent Googling had revealed that the crooked house plus five acres currently belonged to the bidnissman-father of another high-school kid named Jared. I hadn’t laid eyes on that one at school, but I had figured out which one he was from my vantage point in the woods. Assuming Facebook photos didn’t lie.
It didn’t look as if Jared’s daddy was interested in mowing or other upkeep for this little country retreat. No doubt he’d bought the place as an investment before the latest real-estate bust. So now his seventeen-year-old heir had a clubhouse. And since the next occupied home was a half mile away, the club might as well indulge in some illegal activity.
I was pretty sure no hard drugs were involved, so I doubted that I needed to worry about assault weapons. Sure, this was Texas, so there might be a few shotguns or deer rifles inside. But I wasn’t too scared of anything that needed to be cocked between rounds.
I didn’t have a gun myself. I never do. Guns are a crutch for those who aren’t in good enough shape to run. I did have my Swiss Army knife, but that was just in case I needed a compact burglary tool.
And I didn’t think I would. So far, these kids didn’t seem bright enough to lock their doors.
2. Defective Merchandise
At 1:55 A.M. by my watch, a pair of headlights came toward the crooked house from the county road to the north, bouncing along the dirt-and-gravel driveway just east of my hiding place. I crouched behind a live-oak trunk until a grimy, rust-spotted white van with no side or rear windows passed by. This looked promising.
The van drove past a PT Cruiser, a Honda Civic, and a Ford pickup that were all parked in the grass on the other side of the driveway. It pulled off a wide patch of dirt at the end into the weed-tangled front yard, then backed up until its rear bumper was almost touching the porch steps. The rear doors opened.
On the porch, a skinny guy with shaggy brown hair—Jared—and a tall girl with long, straight blond hair had been making out on an old sofa beside the front door. Now they jumped up. Jared opened the door to wave at someone inside, and Hank Williams III fell silent. I could hear crickets and cicadas again, but the voices from the porch were just a mumble.
I closed my binoculars flat. No one would be looking in my direction now that the van had arrived. I jammed the binoculars into the back pocket of my black jeans, then zipped up my black sweatshirt and flipped up the hood. Late April in Central Texas, even in the middle of the night, was too warm for this ensemble. And the sports eye black I had smeared over my face made me itch. But sometimes comfort had to be sacrificed for style.
I left the trees and angled fifteen yards across the driveway in a low scuttle, ducking behind the PT Cruiser. I paused a moment, then made my way to the Civic. My knees didn’t hurt enough to slow me down, but I could still feel them more than I would have liked. At my checkup right after the move from Chicago, my new Texas doctor had said I was in decent shape “for a forty-three-year-old who smokes, drinks, and already has a touch of osteoarthritis.” This from a seventy-year-old G.P. with peanut-butter breath and a gut like a beach ball. I might not have minded if he hadn’t gone on to ask if I wanted to do something about my thinning hair. “At least mine’s still brown,” I’d said. “Tick-tock,” he’d replied. My kind of guy.
I stopped in a crouch behind the left-front fender of the Civic, holding my breath. I could hear hi-how-ya-doin’ chatter from the porch. But under that, there were soft voices from the bed of the Ford pickup on the other side of the Honda.
“What’s happening?” It was the whisper of a teenage girl.
“They’re about to make an offer,” a male whisper answered. “Don’t worry. Tyler’s got this.”
“Shouldn’t you be up there, too, Donny?”