"Scott Wolven - The Syndicate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolven Scott)

= THE SYNDICATE
by Scott Wolven


What can I say about the Moscow, Idaho sky that morning that hasn't been said about a million other skies, in a million better ways? It was big and blue and bright with sun. Not a cloud in sight. Beyond beautiful. Shining with life. Amazing.

The sky could not say the same things about me. It must have looked down and seen me lying on my back in the middle of a lentil field, just waking up with an empty bottle of bourbon in my right hand, wearing yesterday's dirt-covered clothes. The sky must have looked down and shook its beautiful head and said "Get up, you poor bastard, and quit drinking." I did get up, but I wanted more booze, no matter what the sky said. And I wanted my ex-wife back, all of her, even our arguments. My drinking caused our split and now I was drinking more. Let the sky figure that one out.

I brushed some of the dirt off my shirt and jeans and started walking across the field. On the hill in front of me sat a group of trailers and a little concrete shed, which was my house. As I got closer, I saw Greg standing beside his girlfriend's trailer, working on something with a hacksaw. He looked up as I came across the field and he gave me a half-wave. I gave him the same back and walked toward him. He was wearing a tan hunting vest over a denim shirt, jeans and black roper's boots. He pointed his chin at me.

"Sleep in the field last night?" he asked.

I nodded. I brushed some more dirt off me. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making a Louisville into a slugger," Greg said. He was holding a wood baseball bat steady on top of a rusted oil drum and cutting the barrel of the bat with the hacksaw. After a couple strokes, the upper portion of the bat dropped to the ground, onto a small pile of sawdust.

"Whose model is it?" I asked.

"Cecil Fielder," Greg answered. "He was fat, but he could hit those homers." Greg patted his own stomach, not a flat surface by any means. "Gives regular people hope," he said. He smiled. He held up what was left of the bat, a lethal two-foot stick of solid northern white ash.

"How come you don't use an axe handle?" I asked.

Greg pointed to the knob on the end of the bat and opened his hand, showing how the handle tapered slightly. "Much better grip with this setup," he said. "And it fits under the seat of my truck." He looked me up and down. "You feel okay to work today?"

" Sure," I said. Greg hustled a lot of odd jobs, but his main source of income was bounty hunting and skip tracing. He carried an Idaho license to do what he did, and ever since I d moved to Moscow after my marriage broke apart back East, Greg asked me along as backup whenever a job called for it. I was his unofficial partner, which probably had nothing to do with any special skill I possessed. It had to do with the fact that I was fairly big and agile and lived next door and wasn't above winging someone in the leg versus chasing him or her. "Let's go," I said. We started walking over toward his ugly truck, an old four-door Toyota Land Cruiser that had a piece of home-installed Plexiglas separating the front and back seats, just like the cops. "Do you have any beer we can take with us?" I asked.

"First, man takes drink," Greg said. "Second, drink takes man."

"Just stop at the package store on the way then, Grasshopper," I said. I climbed in the Toyota at co-pilot and Greg got in the driver's seat. He put the sawed-off bat under his seat.

"Get the Berretta," Greg said. I reached into the glove compartment and came out with a slim, black Berretta. I put the pistol in my right hand jacket pocket. Greg was wearing a shoulder holster under his hunting vest. He pulled out a .45 Colt Combat Commander and checked the clip and the safety. We were ready to go. Greg pulled onto the highway and we headed north into the Idaho panhandle.

"What's doing today?" I asked. Houses got scarce and the country was mostly fields and pinewoods. The Rockies got bigger on the horizon.

"Big job," Greg said. "Guard duty."

"Guarding what?" I asked. Broken-down farmhouses passed by on either side as we turned east going through a wide spot in the road called Potlatch.

"Poker chips," Greg said.

"How much do you think we can make?" I asked.

Greg looked out the window and then back at the road. "I figure for both of us, two hundred dollars an hour." He nodded. "If there's anything else, the fee gets doubled."

"Anything else? What sort of anything else?" I asked.

"Gunfire," Greg said. "If somebody shoots at us or if we have to shoot at someone, the fee doubles."

"That's fair," I said. I thought about it. "Do you think somebody will shoot at us?"