“The kind of work that solves problems?”
“Yes, sir,” I said to Lansdale. I could see Judakowski nod out of the corner of my eye, but when he turned to me, his voice was hard.
“You didn’t come here for some friendly conversation.”
“No, I came because I can fix the problem you both have,” I said, letting a little iron into my own voice. “That problem is a motorcycle gang. They call themselves MM-13, which is a name nobody ever heard of. So it’s probably not any kind of national club, just a bunch of men using the motorcycles as cover. My best guess is that the ‘M’ stands for ‘money.’ And the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, that’s an ‘M’ as well. Money-Money-Money—that about sums them up.
“Now, I may be speculating on that, but I’m sure of this: they’re cooking up crank in that old hangar, and it’s cutting into your business. Both your businesses. Meth is cheap to make. So they can sell it cheap, and still turn a fine profit.
“That’s why that gang keeps adding reinforcements. They know, sooner or later, you’ve got to come for them. Neither of you is the kind of man who lets someone take anything away from you.”
“There’s somewhere around forty of them there already,” Judakowski said. I could hear the tiny trickle of interest as it seeped into his voice. “Plenty of military stuff, too.”
Lansdale didn’t ask him where he got that information. But he didn’t argue with it, either.
My turn: “Like I said, that’s the kind of problem I can fix.”
“How would you be doing that?” Lansdale asked. His voice was as polite as mine. Respectful, even.
“I can make it disappear.”
“The man asked you how,” Judakowski said. Now his tone was back to where it had started. But it wasn’t me he was playing top-dog games with; it was Lansdale.
I sat there for a few seconds, deciding. Then I told them: “I can blow it up. The whole hangar, with all of them inside.”
“What’re you gonna do, wheel yourself up to the front door and toss in a grenade?” Judakowski said, not even pretending respect.
“Even a grenade wouldn’t blow that whole thing up,” Lansdale put in, as if Judakowski’s crack had been an honest question. “You’d need dynamite, something like that. So how would you get that much explosive inside their place?”
“You know that big empty barn about a mile or so south of here? That farm that got foreclosed on about a year ago?”
They both nodded.
“If you take me out there, I’ll show you.”
“Planting dynamite in some empty barn—”
“I don’t think that’s what this man wants to show us,” Lansdale said.
“Count me out,” Judakowski said. “I got better things to do than wheel some crip around to watch a show.”
“No, you don’t,” I told him.
“You know who you’re talking to?” one of Judakowski’s men said to me. He was a big guy with eyes squeezed tiny from all their surrounding flesh.
One of Lansdale’s men—I later learned his name was Eugene—slid his right hand into the pocket of his jacket, like he was feeling around for his cigarettes.
“It doesn’t matter who I’m talking to,” I said to the whole table. “I can’t have one of you thinking I work for the other one—I know how that story would end. So either you both agree to let me show you what I can do at the barn, or everybody’s story ends that same way.”
“Now you’re gonna blow this whole place up?” Judakowski kind of sneer-laughed.
“See for yourself,” I said. Then I pulled up the right armrest on my chair.
Lansdale moved his head an inch or so. The man to his right got up and walked over to where I was sitting.
“It’s … it’s packed with dynamite, boss.”
Before anyone could say anything, I closed the armrest. Then I said, “The other side’s packed just as deep. Enough explosive to send this whole place into orbit.”
“And you’re saying … you’re telling us, we don’t go along to see this little ‘demonstration’ of yours, you’ll blow us all up, yourself included?” Judakowski said.
“That is what I’m saying,” I told him.
“You’re bluffing. How do we know it even is dynamite you’ve got in there?”
In a way, that was funny. I’d only used dynamite because it was something any of them would recognize on sight—I can cause a bigger explosion with stuff I could fit into a pack of cigarettes. But all I said was, “You know my name. I’m a man of my word. Always. Ask anyone. And I need money. Not just a payment; I need a supply of money coming in, steady. You, both of you, you’re my only path to that.
“When I say ‘need,’ that’s just what I mean. If I can’t get what I need, I’m not going to be able to protect my brother after I’m gone.
“I know what’s going to happen to me. That can’t be avoided. And it’ll be coming along soon enough. From where I sit—and, yes, I know what that means, too—if I can’t protect my baby brother, my time might just as well come right now.
“I mean no disrespect, but if you think you’re looking at a man who fears death, you’re not looking close enough.
“So it’s down to one word. ‘Yes’—we take a ride together and I show you what I can do. ‘No’—we all go out together. And you won’t like that ride.”
It was quiet for a long minute.
“I say ‘yes.’ ” Lansdale spoke first. Right then I knew he was the more dangerous of the two—Judakowski didn’t want to lose face; Lansdale didn’t want to lose lives.
didn’t care if they saw Tory-boy driving me away. I wanted them to know him by face anyway—that was part of my plan.
When Tory-boy stopped the van, a car pulled up on either side of it. And a few more behind.
Probably just out of habit on their part—I didn’t need any reminders that I had put myself all-in.
After Tory-boy wheeled me out to the ground, it was my show. “How far away from that barn you think we are?” I asked the only two men who counted.
“It’s a good quarter-mile,” Lansdale said, shading his eyes as he looked across the field.
“That far enough away, or you want to move back?”
“Move back,” Judakowski said. I could tell he was saying it just to be saying something, but it didn’t matter. Not to me, and not to Lansdale, either—I could see that right away.
“How far do you want?”
“Back to that clutch of trees,” he said, pointing.
I nodded to Tory-boy. That was our signal for him to push my chair. It was rough ground, hard to navigate. I could have done it myself easily, but there was no value in letting them see how strong my arms were.
He pushed me over to where Judakowski had pointed, then turned my chair around. I took out my range finder. Before I dialed in the coordinates, I held up this thing that looked like one of those mini tape recorders with a little propeller built into it. I’d built it for checking wind speed and direction, and it was never a tick off.
I wasn’t in a hurry, but I wasn’t stalling, either. I think they could tell that by the way they all stood ringed around behind me. Off to the sides, quiet as tombstones.
“Watch,” I told them all, even though I could tell they’d never once taken their eyes off me.
I removed a model airplane from under the left armrest of my chair. I made sure the propeller spun as easy as if it was housed in light-oiled Teflon—which it was. Then I started the motor. The little airplane buzzed in my hand like an angry wasp.
I let it go.
The plane rose almost straight up, then arced and went into a dive, so fast you could barely follow it.
They all watched as my invention hit the barn. And then they couldn’t see anything but a red-and-orange fireball rising right up out of the ground.