I parked at the mortuary not far down from the strip mall where I’d done my surveillance. I filled in my boys on what we were there for and why. “You said you trick the unwary. You make people smarter,” Zeke said. “How’s this make them smarter?”
“No, I said I trick the unwary to make them wiser and I punish the ones who are beyond learning. Killing the helpless and the lost for entertainment is beyond education.” It was dark, almost eight, and the mortuary’s parking lot deserted; the living who took care of the dead were gone for the night. “School was over for these particular assholes before it ever began. No pizza days. No skipping class. No homecoming. No games. Well . . .” I opened the trunk and ran one finger along the polished wood inside. “A game, but one they won’t walk away from.”
“How long has it been since you just tricked, didn’t punish?” Griffin asked at my side. Always the ex-demon with the Boy Scout questions, he was good as gold and better by far than any angel. I’d never figure out where I’d gone wrong with him.
“Every day, sweetie. Every time I serve a watered-down drink or sell a tourist a map to an undiscovered gold mine.” I tugged at his earlobe and started loading him up with baseball bats. Which was true, but tricksters were also at times judge, jury, and executioner. Or in this particular case . . . a facilitator. Sometimes justice doesn’t feel right unless you snatch it with your own hand. Vigilante was only a bad word in my dictionary if you didn’t have your information straight. Then it might be your turn to be served up on the bloody platter of the wicked or the failed fact-checker. And there were no unemployment benefits on that platter, so it paid to make sure you were right in the first place.
When I finished with Griffin, I turned Zeke into my second pack mule. He’d given up on the grumbling . . . for the moment. He knew I took my job as seriously as he did his and sharing it with him to take his mind off his current unwilling vacation was me doing what I could for him. I was giving him his daily dose of violence . . . all in the name of what was just and true, of course, but like kiddies needed cartoon-shaped vitamins, Zeke needed some ass to kick.
Kick it. Shoot it. Blow it up. He wasn’t that particular. It was easy to please Zeke.
With the guys carrying the baseball bats, we walked down the sidewalk, cars on the street passing us. Not a one was a cop car and not a one slowed down at the sight of what was being carried. Someone had once said that all that was necessary for evil to triumph is for wise men to do nothing. These days wise men did nothing a hundred times faster than they had a few hundred years ago, but they were still as blind and useless as they’d ever been. That was why a trickster, an ex-angel, and an ex-demon were going to step up to the plate.
As we moved among the homeless, skirting carts, piles of clothes, and cardboard beds, I saw the sheen of cautious and confused eyes gleaming under the street-lights. I took a baseball bat from Griffin’s pile and parked it on my shoulder. “So? Any ex-baseball players here? Anyone want to grab a bat and show three murdering sons of bitches how to really hit one out of the park?”
It was a long moment before someone spoke up, but someone did. It only takes one push to get the ball rolling . . . only one person to get the mob ready to run.
“Girly, you know what you’re playing at?” a voice of gravel rolling in tobacco juice spoke at hip level. I looked down to see eyes neither cautious nor confused. They were hard, dark, and knew exactly how to play, if I could convince him that I could too. “They’re big men, did what they did. Steroid-popping, raisin-balled bastards who never did an honest day’s work, but they know how to hurt people. And they’re good at it. They ain’t had to dig for their last meal out of the Dumpster behind a 7-Eleven and been happy to have it. Not many of us can say the same.” He was about sixty-five with one leg ended in a stump at his knee. It could’ve been from war or diabetes. He had a beard, iron gray streaked with snow and half the teeth he’d once had at eighteen. But for tonight, he was a baseball player through and through.
I handed him the bat and then pulled my Smith as I sat beside him. “Sergeant, this girly knows how to level the playing field.”
“How’d you know I was a sergeant?” He looked at the gun with approval. “And why not just shoot the bastards dead if you’re carrying that in your panties?”
My panties were not where I was carrying it, but I let it go. “Because you, unlike the ones who are hurting you and yours, do know the value of an honest day’s work. As for shooting them dead, why should they get to go that easily? Your friend didn’t.”
“Jimmy Whitmore.” That was the name of the man the news said had been beaten to death. “The Whit. Always cutting up about foolish shit. He weren’t no friend.” A big hand clenched tightly on the wood. “Full of himself and I’ve seen brighter, but you’re right. He didn’t go easy.”
“And neither will the ones who did that to him.” I waved my free hand at Griffin and Zeke. “Go on, guys. Pass them out. Then find a spot while I sit a spell with the Sarge and talk a little trash.”
“You from the South, girly? Tennessee? Alabama?” The eyes softened a fraction. “You have a way about you.”
I smiled as I rested the gun on my knee. “Sugar, I’m from everywhere. There’s no place in this world big enough to hold me.” No yard with enough toys. No playground with enough swings. No amusement park with enough rides. No place I hadn’t been. No place I wouldn’t go. But that was the past and the future, intriguing physics theories aside. And right now the present was good enough for me.
An hour passed and I was telling the sarge about my favorite memory of Tennessee. “Honeysuckle,” I said in dreamy remembrance, propping my chin in my hand. “On those humid summer nights where you can stand outside and there’s no air, only honeysuckle. You can smell it; you can even taste it.” The last time I’d been there, it had been so strong and thick everywhere that I was surprised even now people didn’t smell it on my breath when I exhaled. No one could smell honeysuckle and not instantly become a kid again, tasting the nectar. There was nothing in the world that tasted quite like that. Not the best of wine or the sweetest fruit heavy on an orchard tree.
“That’s home, through and through.” He nodded. “Too damn cold in the winter and a tornado every day in the summer, but the honeysuckle nights I miss. I rightly do.”
Zeke interrupted the nostalgia, calling from farther down the street, sitting to blend in as I was doing. Waiting for those three bastards to come play. Griffin had taken the other side of the street, buried in the homeless and street noise. “Trixa,” Zeke snapped, “some guy is exposing himself to me. Only Griffin gets to do that.”
Maybe we were lucky Griffin was on the other side of the street. He considered their personal life to be just that and not shouted down the street over people’s heads. I choked back a laugh, because Zeke was trying to be good since this was my show. Most times he wouldn’t mention the little annoyances of life and take care of them himself, which was rarely a pretty picture. “Did you tell him to stop?” I asked.
“Twice. Which are two more warnings than I normally give,” came the exasperated reply.
I shrugged to myself. Sometimes the Zeke way was the right way—once again, not pretty, but still occasionally right. “Sounds like someone needs a lesson. You can be a trickster intern for the night.”
After that I heard a grunt, a loud one to make it as far down as I was sitting. I didn’t hear a silencer’s muffled cough though, which was good, but better safe than sorry. . . . “You didn’t shoot him, did you?”
“No, I hit it with the butt of my gun.” Considering the size Zeke’s guns tended toward, that was one unfortunate flasher. “He’s curled up and I can’t see his dick anymore, but I heard a crunch. A nice, loud crunch. Is that enough of a lesson or should I go ahead and shoot him?”