to me and I looked it over.
“How bad’s the damage?”
“Just got off the phone with the claims adjuster; they’re on their way to asses.”
“What you want to have happen here, P.?”
“Dump Truck is going with you. I’m pissed, so I’ll let him be the judge.”
“Anything we looking to recover?”
“About two thousand in cash, that’s it.”
“Get what we can, he’ll owe us the rest?”
“With interest.”
I nodded. I knew the interest rate was going to be steep but we didn’t want to say more in front of the cell phones. I shot a text to Aspen that I would be working in the fields for most of the day and I’d be away from my phone - didn’t want it damaged or anything.
As soon as Dump Truck came through the back door, we left the electronics on the big table in the chapel and headed out.
The kid was something like twenty-two or twenty-three and living with his brother in a house off 23rd SW, so not far from the boneyard which was on 15th SW. He was heavy into drugs – meth or heroine, and had to be some kind of a serious bonehead to fuck with our shit.
Well, it couldn’t be helped. He was about to reap what he sowed here in a big way. Best-case scenario, he would come out the other side of this shit with enough of a fear of the gods put into him, he would get his ass straight. That was about as far as I went with the bleeding-heart schtick, though.
“Go around back,” Dump Truck grated and I tossed him some chin in a nod of acknowledgement.
I waited in the overgrown backyard. There was a dog chain back here but no fuckin’ dog, which was concerning.
The chain-link fence that ran around the backyard’s perimeter was a short one – three feet or so and just enough to hem a dog in. I cursed silently when I heard the dog barking its fucking head off when DT pounded on the front door.
Someone inside shouted at the mutt to shut it, and I got ready. As predicted, the back door burst open and dude came flying over the back step. I heard Dump Truck shout but I had a hold of the dude and slammed him down into the patch of dirt at the base of the back stoop.
It was our guy. He ain’t changed from the printed-out image from the security systems at the boneyard. I heaved a fist, and let it crash into his face. Blood spurted and he grunted, both hands going around my one wrist where it was buried in the front of his shirt.
“You fucked up,” I declared. “You got once chance to fix it.”
“Man, what the fuck? I didn’t do nothin’!”
“There you go fuckin’ up all over again by lying to me,” I said and dragged him over to one of those old-school fixed head rotary clotheslines, the base of which had some cinder blocks on either side of the aluminum pole.
“Fen!” I heard Dump Truck call from in the house.
“Yeah, I got him! You okay?”
“Fuckin’ dog bit me. I got him locked in one of the bedrooms.”
“Man, don’t hurt my brother’s dog! Cujo ain’t do nothin’!”
“Cujo.” Dump Truck spit off the back stoop. “Cute.”
“You hurt bad?” I asked.
“Jacket took the most of it, I’ll be alright.”
“Where’s the money?” I demanded without any more preamble.
“Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Put your arm on that block there,” I ordered.
He was already hyperventilating. I didn’t care. I was in that place that was divorced from all emotion. He, of course, didn’t comply.
“I said put your arm out. You can either do that or I’ll put your mouth against this brick and stomp the back of your head so hard it’ll not only knock the teeth outta your lying mouth, it’ll break your fuckin’ jaw.”
He put his arm out.
“Where’s our fuckin’ money?”
“I smoked it!”
I stomped on his fucking arm and heard it snap. He screamed, long and entirely too fucking loud. I looked up and around.
“You got a week to come up with the fuckin’ money and get it to us,” I told him.
“Break the other one,” Dump Truck said and sniffed.
I dragged him around so he could set his other arm up for me and he twisted and damn near broke free.
“Motherfucker, you asked for it!” I grounded out. I got ahold of his other fuckin’ arm and pressed it against my knee. I broke it like fucking kindling. He screamed,