That's How I Roll: A Novel Read online

  “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.

  Fire in the hole, everyone around here has seen something like that. Or at least what it leaves behind.

  But when the fireball smoke cleared th
is time, there was nothing to see. Nothing at all.

  One of Lansdale’s men ran over to where the barn had been. He was a big, heavy-built man, but he moved at a nice trot, covered ground fast. When he came back, he wasn’t a bit short of breath.

  “There’s a hole in the ground big enough to bury a fleet of semis, boss.”

  Lansdale looked down at me. I mean that physical, not personal. I don’t know if he’d looked down on me as a man before that day, but I knew he’d never do it from then on. None of them ever would.

  “That big hangar those bikers took over, it’s not really theirs. Doesn’t belong to them, so they can’t go to the County for utilities,” I told him. “Probably running all their electric off a generator. Heating a place that size, they’ve got to be using a lot of propane tanks.”

  “So it’d look like—”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I cut him off. “And everyone knows about meth labs. The way they’re put together, they blow up all the time.”

  That was the beginning of the steady employment I’d bet my life to get.

  always tried to keep the two bosses separated as much as possible. Not just in my mind, but from each other. Men like that would always stay suspicious of each other—my only goal was to keep them from getting suspicious of me.

  Even though there was a world of difference between Lansdale and Judakowski, they were both in the same business, and killing was part of that business. They weren’t killers for hire, but they wouldn’t draw the line short of that mark if you interfered in their cash flow.

  Either one would have you killed in a heartbeat, but only if you forced them to.

  In fact, that was one of their business cards: a reputation for killing anyone who crossed them. That’s a reputation you can only get from passing the same test a number of times. There’s always wolves watching the campfire, smelling that meat cooking.

  But, like I said, they weren’t a bit alike. Two people can do the exact same thing; it’s only when they have a choice about it that you know the truth about who they really are.

  here was an understanding between us: either one could summon me anytime, but they could only send a message, never a messenger. Nobody could come to our house. Anyone who did that, he’d be coming as a stranger. And treated like one.

  One night, I was called over to the DMZ, which meant both of them needed something done. I had Tory-boy roll me inside right across from them. Then he took up his post, standing a little behind me, like always.

  Before anyone even started talking about the job, one of Judakowski’s men got up and walked around behind us, probably looking to get himself a drink from the side bar. I didn’t see how it happened, but I did see that man suddenly go flying across the room like a big sack of flour tossed down from a truck.

  He hit the wall so hard his neck twisted. You could see he wouldn’t be getting up on his own. Probably wouldn’t even want to.

  Three of Judakowski’s men jumped up. I saw Lansdale shake his head “no.” Just in time—Eugene already had his hand in his jacket pocket.

  By then, I’d learned that Eugene didn’t smoke. Didn’t carry a gun, either. But I’d seen him work, and I knew what he’d been reaching for. One night, two men got off their bar stools at the same time. They started to walk over to Lansdale’s table. Slow and casual, but anyone in our line of work could see what they intended.

  It was like Eugene just disappeared from his chair and rematerialized standing on the floor. By then, one of the men had pulled a heavy length of chain from inside his sleeve, and the other was bringing up a pistol.

  Eugene left them both on the floor, paralyzed. They’d started bleeding out before either one realized he’d been cut.

  I didn’t see any signal from Judakowski, but his men all sat right down. Not even pretending they were sorry to be doing it, either.

  Then it went quiet. I reached back and patted Tory-boy, making sure he’d stay still.

  Finally, Judakowski said, “That Roddrick boy, he always had cement for brains.”

  Lansdale nodded, as if he was agreeing with Judakowski’s wisdom.

  That was a nice touch. Just right. Swept any pride issue right off the table.

  Judakowski turned to his own men. “How many times have we seen that fucking moron pull that same stunt? He had—what?—fifty damn feet of room to walk in, but, no, he just had to pull his shoulder-bump number on the … on Esau’s brother. Yeah, good fucking luck with that.”

  “Tory-boy just thought he was shielding me,” I said, taking even more of the pressure out of the situation.

  Judakowski’s men were like he was: hard and strong, no doubt … but way too prideful. Seeing how they acted that time, that’s what taught me that ego would always be the unseen enemy in any room they entered.

  I was grateful for that knowledge. A man’s ego can be a real weakness. And the worst kind of weakness is one you don’t know you have. Like a man who thinks four-wheel drive works on ice.

  “Damn!” Judakowski said. “What would he do if he thought someone was actually going after you?”

  “Anything,” Lansdale answered, watching me close as he spoke. “Any damn thing at all.”

  I nodded. It was the truth. But the unseen enemy that infected all Judakowski’s men surfaced anyway.

  “You think he could turn a bullet?” one of them said. That branded him as the kind of man who always has to say something, when even a born fool would know it was the wrong time to say anything at all.

  He’d put his sneer-question to me, but it was Lansdale who answered again, all the time keeping his voice as calm as if he’d been asked directions to the highway. “Turn one, no,” Lansdale said. “But a bullet wouldn’t stop him, either. Shoot that young man when he’s already coming at you, that’d be like giving Eugene a butter knife and locking him in a cage with that Chainsaw Massacre guy. Eugene might get himself sliced up some, but old Leatherface wouldn’t be the one walking out.”

  “You know a lot about him, do you?” Judakowski said to Lansdale. Everyone knew he wasn’t talking about Eugene.

  “I know what happened to the Lawrence boy,” Lansdale said. “You know, that dimwit the cops found with his spine snapped?”

  “Tree fell on him, right?” Judakowski said.

  “That’s what the coroner ruled,” Lansdale half-answered him. Smiling just a little bit now, like he and Judakowski were sharing a private joke.

  I remembered that day. I don’t know how much money might have been bet. Or maybe the whole thing was nothing more than trying to show off for some girl. I’ve seen men die over less.

  What had happened was that the Lawrence boy just walked up to me and dumped over my wheelchair. Same way the Beast used to.

  Maybe Tory-boy still had a memory of that, or maybe he just couldn’t have anyone hurt me. I never asked him why he snatched the Lawrence boy up in his two hands, held him way up high, and broke him across his knee like a stick of dry kindling.

  Everybody scattered as though they were running from a burning building.

  I wasted a few precious minutes convincing Tory-boy he had to go back to our place and wait for me. He didn’t want to leave me out there all alone, and he couldn’t figure out how I could get home without him driving me. I knew he’d obey me, but I wouldn’t resort to that. I never let him see the urgency I was feeling, just stayed calm and reasonable, soothing him with my voice. He finally drove off.

  Took me another hour to get people over there to drag the Lawrence boy into the right spot, close to that big dead-inside oak, then to loop chains around the tree and pull it down.

  I paid well for that work. The men I called expected that, just as I expected them to forget they’d done it.

  “That true?” Judakowski asked me. He didn’t like Lansdale knowing anything he didn’t know himself.

  “I only know what people say,” I answered. “And you know how some people’ll say all kinds of things, just to be talking.”

  I thi
nk Judakowski understood what I was telling him. In fact, I’m sure of it, because, instead of getting belligerent, he just said, “Your brother’s got some temper.”

  “Tory doesn’t have any temper at all,” I told him. “He’s the same as any man—you act like you’re fixing to hurt his kin, he’s going to hurt you first.”

  “What if he makes a mistake about that?” Judakowski said, watching me close, knowing he was baiting me about Tory-boy not being known for his intelligence.

  I swallowed the bait and spit out the hook at the same time. “It might be he could do that,” I said, shaking my head a little, like the thought made me a little sad. “Wouldn’t change anything, though.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. If your brother were to make that kind of mistake, the man he makes the mistake on, might be he’d have kin, too.”

  “I don’t believe there’s anyone around here who’d take it that way,” I brushed off the threat. “Folks know Tory-boy’s judgment might not be so good, so they always cut him some slack.”

  “Is that right?” Judakowski said. It wasn’t a question, not with the sharp edge he put on it.

  “They know me, too,” I went on, like Judakowski hadn’t spoken at all. “They know my brother would never hurt anyone out of meanness, so I’ve got a right to expect them not to blame him for making a mistake.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “Yes, I do. People know my brother, so that should guide their conduct. People know me, so that should guide their conduct as well. If anything ever was to happen to my brother, they know I wouldn’t have to be nearby to settle that score.”

  “Hell, everybody knows that,” Lansdale said. Not to back me up, to push Judakowski away from crossing the line. Giving him an out.

  Now, that’s a truly dangerous man, I remember thinking at the time.

  I was never proved wrong on that.

  didn’t spend any of the new money when it started coming in. Not at first. What I did, I invested it. First thing was to build myself a machine shop. We had to make the house easier for me to get into, and easier to move around in, too. For that, we needed all kinds of power tools to cut wood and metal.