The Good Fight 4: Homefront Read online

  * * *

  “I don’t believe in an interventionist god

  But I know, darling, that you do . . .

  But if I did I would kneel down and ask him . . .

  Not to intervene when it came to you . . .”

  It’s sappy in a way that only an ex-junkie post-punk Goth rocker like Cave could pull off, a Sinatra-style crooner for the death-cult set and besides, even a girl who views life as one long continuous felony crime spree doesn’t mind a little sap on her wedding day.

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  “Goddammit!” she snaps, kicking me hard in the chin as she says it. “I paid eleven hundred bucks for that gun!”

  “You . . .” I start, rolling away from another kick and firing up the plasma cutter for effect. “. . . have a fucked up relationship with money.”

  She crab-scrambles away from me and regains her feet, dropping into a martial arts stance that may just be too-many-Kung-Fu-movies bullshit but looks authentic enough to my untrained eye. “And you’re not? Why the hell else are we in this business if it’s not to get what we can while we can and stash it away so we can quit before we’re killed or maimed badly enough to wind up as some kind of cyborgized murderbot?” She gives my various mechanical accessories a cursory once-over. “Nothing personal.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” I reply. “I’m in it more for the fun.” On fun I’m in motion, charging at her head-down like a bull, planning to ram her with my steel-plated skull and send her to a reunion with her precious gun.

  The martial arts skills are real enough, I realize, as she sidesteps my attack and drives a fearsome elbow into the back of my neck that has me seeing stars in my good eye and static in the other one. I don’t go down though, and when I rear up to my full height I get the brief satisfaction of those gorgeous eyes going wide with surprise. She recovers quick enough, coming at me with a flurry of kicks and strikes that connect with the cumulative effect of dozens of tiny piercing Africanized killer bee stings.

  * * *

  PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY, CALIFORNIA 2002

  I’ve edged my hemi-powered 1970 Dodge Charger—jet black, of course—up to just over 110mph, and it’s nowhere near the redline. The Dame is crouched on the hood, legs wrapped around the supercharger that juts up from the 440 engine, squeezing the trigger on a Steyr ACR experimental combat rifle (developed for the U.S. military but never mass-produced; the Dame’s got some very interesting weapons connections). I can tell she’s firing wild, more to drive the bastards in blue off our tail than to actually put a cop killing on her permanent record, but she’s got that scary look in her eyes regardless. When she pauses to change magazines and blow me a kiss through the windshield, I realize for the millionth time that I am the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the planet and this is the best honeymoon a guy could ever ask for.

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  Determined as I am not to let this fierce little vixen get her hands on that gemstone, I find myself holding back, pulling my punches, outmoded schoolyard chivalry in action; somewhere deep in the part of my brain that’s still organic is a little Jiminy Cricket reminding me that there’s no percentage in a 350-pound slab of hired muscle death-punching a woman who’s a third his size at most, no matter how lethal she may be. And she notices.

  “You know, you can stop insulting me anytime now. I’m not some delicate little flower.” By way of emphasis, she does a cartwheel that climaxes in a double-heeled kick to my sternum that is almost effective enough to knock me off balance.

  I snap back with a punch that glances off her right arm; if my motivations for playing more defense than offense weren’t sexist enough already, I have to admit I don’t want to break her nose or crush her cheek bones or fracture her eye sockets without getting a good look at her face first.

  “Fucking owww!” she hollers, which seems awfully dramatic since all I gave her was a love tap.

  “I ain’t the only one dialing it down here,” I say. “Or is there another reason you haven’t reached for that second pea shooter under your jacket there?”

  “I was just about to . . .” she says through gritted teeth, turning her back on me and walking over to a large air-conditioning unit. “. . . before you went and dislocated my shoulder!” She slams her arm against the cool steel to pop her arm back into place, practically chewing through her facial cover to keep from alerting all of Houston with her screams.

  * * *

  AUSTIN, TEXAS 2003

  We pay cash for the house in Austin and we both spend a lot of time trying to convince each other that it’s just a money-laundering scheme, a smart long-term investment, a safe house HQ untainted by any association with our day jobs. That we are not, under any circumstances or by any definition, selling out, buying in, or being seduced by the dark side of a neutered suburban workaday rat-race existence.

  In other words, for the first time in our relationship, we start lying to each other.

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  She yanks the balaclava off her face and throws it aside, and even contorted in barely suppressed agony, the sight of her face fully justifies all my previous punch-pulling; she is drop-dead, knock-you-out-your-socks, why-aren’t-you-famous? gorgeous. It’s a vision both exhilarating and disheartening all at once, because like most red-bloods of my stripe, I adore a pretty girl, but with a war-wrecked mug like mine they don’t always adore me back. I mean, sure, I’ve had my share of one-offs and whirlwinds with hot-n-crazies who can’t resist a sampling of my Bad Boy Mystique, but it usually runs its course once they realize I won’t fight one of my running buddies to the death for their attentions.

  While all that’s careening around in my head I barely even clock the running leap she takes so she can punch me in the forehead with a right-hand jab that doesn’t exactly hurt but sure doesn’t tickle. Of course, as soon as she does it there’s regret in her eyes, pain rocketing up her arm and right to that throbbing shoulder I’m sure.

  “Uh . . . you okay?” I ask as she staggers away clutching her bad arm.

  Naturally, my patronizing concern does nothing but piss her off worse.

  * * *

  AUSTIN, TX & VARIOUS LOCATIONS, 2003-2007

  After more or less saving the world during the Eternity Conundrum—and getting zero credit for it, even from the heroes who know what we did—and finding out we’re pregnant, the Dame goes into hibernation mode, and this person I hardly know named Liza emerges in her place. This is an individual who has bought the lie of domesticity and maternal bliss hook, line and sinker. This is someone who nests, who watches HGTV for creative budget decorating ideas and reads—actually reads—parenting books and magazines. Who never misses a doctor’s appointment and starts musing about retirement from “the life” and going back to school to get a Master’s in Some Shit or Another so she can have a goddamn motherloving boring-ass bullshit straight normal dead-end dead-inside subhuman career. A woman who makes demands and asks for promises of things like lawn care and home repair and paying bills on time and doing my share of the shopping and other shit that’s so far outside my wheelhouse it might as well be on the Moon. A woman who wants me “on the same page” and “focusing on the future, our future, our daughter’s future.” A being I cannot comprehend in search of a life I cannot fathom filled with activities and items and accessories I do not want. And neither should she. Because this is not who we are or what we’re supposed to be and nothing to do with what she said in her wedding vows, when she swore to be my “partner in crime until the sweet sting of the final bullet passes through both of our skulls.”

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  “Don’t do that!” she snaps, and even though I know what she means, I still gotta play out my end.

  “Don’t do what? What am I doing?”

  “You don’t get to knock my arm out of its socket and then be all nice to me. For one thing, I’m not some goddamn little damsel in distress w
ho needs a battlefield savior every time she gets a flesh wound. And anyway, it makes you look like a wuss. I mean, who am I really fighting if all of a sudden you’re dropping all pretense of trying to kill me so you can offer me first aid and a big strong arm to lean on?”

  “Well, I never really was trying to kill you.”

  “Exactly! How fucking rude is that? If I were a man, one of us would probably be dead already, or at least laying unconscious and very fucked up a couple floors down in the parking lot. Instead you’re playing games with me because you don’t respect me as an equal.”

  “It’s not that . . . I just . . .”

  She holds up the hand on her injured right side to cut me off, still clutching the shoulder tight to her body with the left. “I don’t know if it’s because you’ve got some henchmen’s code and you won’t fight girls, or maybe you just wanna fuck me. Doesn’t matter. The point is, I deserve the same energy, the same response, the same rage and malevolence that you’d bring to this rooftop throwdown if I was Skyliner or Whipping Boy or RadioAxis.”

  “Listen, I don’t mean any disrespect, lady . . .” Right away, I wonder if saying “lady” is disrespectful all on its own. “Trust me, if I thought you were a genuine threat, I would take you down so fast it’d make your head spin. Off. All the way off.”

  “If I was a threat? If?!”

  Now I’ve really lit her burners.

  “All I mean by that is, if I thought you were actually trying to do me. Not in any way implying that you couldn’t. Just that I could tell that was not where this was heading tonight.”

  She gives me a mean-eyed squint, but the rest of her features relax. Just a little. “Okay, so you understand that I totally could kill you. If I wanted.”

  “Like I said . . .”

  “Well fuck.”

  “What?”

  “Now you got me wondering why it is I don’t wanna.”

  “Don’t wanna what? Kill me?”

  “Right. That. Or even, y’know, do any lasting damage. Any more than you’ve already had done, from the look of you.”

  “Maybe we should discuss it over a nice adult beverage sometime.”

  “Maybe. But are you sure you’re going to want to ever see my face again after I leave with the Blue Scarab?” She says it with a challenging smirk, like she’s expecting me to respond along the lines of Yes, but will you want anything to do with me after I knock you out and take off with the rock myself?

  “Well, I suppose there’s a chance I’ll have to see you again when I come to take it back from your boss.”

  “Oh no you don’t.”

  “Oh no I don’t what?”

  “You don’t get to ‘let me leave’ with the prize. I already laid out for you how I feel about all that chivalry bullshit. Whoever goes home with the goods, it happens fair and square. We finish this little dust-up and the better hench wins.”

  * * *

  AUSTIN, TEXAS 2007

  “Duke’s just so goddamn . . .” Liza furrows her brow, searching for the word that’ll get her point across and sting me at the same time. “. . . passive.”

  “Really?”

  Dr. Shaver, our couples’ counselor, asks it right in time with me.

  “Really,” Liza says emphatically, arms folded across her swollen belly, determined to save our marriage before the little life inside comes squirming into the world.

  “Go on,” the doc says, giving me a sidelong glance as she at once tries to imagine me “passive” and to make sure my ire’s not high enough to start punching holes in her office big enough to cost her the lease.

  “Well, whenever I’m not nauseous or immobile, I am spending every waking moment trying to make a home for us, and get it ready for Cordelia, and I am fucking exhausted. Meanwhile, he’s gone for days, sometimes weeks at a time, and when he comes home he can’t even be bothered to show up with a bag of groceries, or take an hour off his ass to assemble the crib.”

  “Duke, how do you feel about what Liza’s saying? Can you hear what she’s asking for?”

  I am bristling, but I stifle it as much as I can stand; if we lose another therapist because of my “terrifying” temper, I don’t know if Liza’s gonna be willing to do the legwork to track down whoever’s left in town that’ll take our insurance. I still think we should just go see Dr. Highbrow, the Mental Hygienist, and have him mindwipe us back to how we were the year we first met. But he’s cash only and exactly the kind of person who Liza’s determined to avoid having dealings with going forward. Which if you ask me is a real fuck-you to 98.9% of everyone we both know.

  “I am out earning money so we can afford all that shit in the first place, because one of us has to. And since she knows full well the kind of work I do, she knows that the jobs, when they come, require a lot of long nights, weekends, and the ever-present possibility that I won’t come back at all. And with a baby on the way, I need to feather the nest and make sure that they’re both taken care of in case the worst does happen, so I’m holding out my metal hand for pretty much everything that gets pitched my way lately. And when I do get home, I’m beat to shit, worn to the bone, and often nursing a concussion, a slow-healing wound, or just a kind of generalized PTSD . . .”

  “And what kind of work do you . . . ?” Before the doc can finish asking, she looks at both of us and thinks better of it for the umpteen-zillionth time. “Okay, Liza, are you able to appreciate Duke’s side of . . . ?”

  “No. No. Fuck that. He has had nearly a year to consider finding something else to do, something with a steady paycheck, something close to home, something that doesn’t jeopardize his life or ours. And he just flat out refuses to do anything about it.”

  “You knew what you were getting when we stole your engagement ring! You knew ‘cause you were just the same! You’re just mad because you’ve given up who you are and I haven’t! Because this. Is. Who. I. Am! I’m still me, but you sure as hell ain’t you!”

  “Much as I hate to disappoint you, sweets, I am more me than I have ever been. And if you need me to feel bad because I don’t want to raise our daughter in a nightmare reality of endless violence, brutality and crime, I can tell you right now it’s not gonna happen. I am proud that I’ve changed. Happy. Do you know what that feels like, Duke? Being happy?”

  “If you’re so damn happy, what are we doing in therapy?”

  “Because, dummy, I only feel happy when you’re not around.”

  “Duke, can you really hear what Liza’s trying to . . .”

  “Oh shut up!” Liza and I say in unison, the first time we’ve agreed on anything in months.

  * * *

  DALLAS, TEXAS 2000

  After about five more minutes we both realize that we’re just barely going through the motions, and that this fight is a draw. I’m starting to worry that Slip Kid’ll panic and drive away without me if I’m up here much longer. And I think the dame’s just starting to get bored.

  “Okay, how do we do this?” she says finally, dropping all pretense of a fighting stance and just leaning against the edge of the skylight in a casual but flattering pose. “Thumb wrestle? Rochambeau?”

  “Roach-a-huh?”

  “You know rock-paper-scissors? Same thing. Best two outta three?”

  Then it comes to me, and as a guy who doesn’t always have the bestest and brightest ideas in the timeliest fashion, I actually get a little endorphin reward for using the smart part of my brain. “I got a deal for ya.”

  She cocks a skeptical eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

  “Suppose you walk away with the rock and take it back to Motherfinger, that way you get yourself paid and your hands are clean, but you give me a tip on where to look that can’t be traced to you, and I go re-steal it for my guy, which gets me paid and keeps me breathing?”

  She shakes her head and reprises that tongue-cluck that was the first sound I ever heard her make not fifteen minutes ago. “Isn’t that just what I was giving you shit about before? The implication bein
g that you let me leave with what we’re after, and on top of that I’m obligated to give up my employer’s location which I can’t see how that doesn’t come back on me. That hurts my rep on at least two levels potentially.”

  “There’s no let you leave in my version, though. You just got here first. I showed up, it was gone already. But I know where to find it. That’s a story my boss might actually buy.”

  “Thela? If what I hear is true, he’ll just extract the info, slice you in half vertically and send two more goons in your place to get the Scarab while your guts are still steaming on the floor.”

  “Yeah,” I acknowledge with a soul-deep sigh of resignation. “You heard right.”

  “But,” she says, getting up and sort of sashaying towards me across the roof in this deliberate slow-motion runway model way, “If I let you take the rock, and then you tip me off, and I come steal it back . . .”

  “Then he’ll do the whole soul-sucking vertical-slicing thing to both of us.”

  “Don’t underestimate me, big boy. I’ll be in and out before your undying ancient warlord can sing the first verse of ‘King Tut.’ I get paid, you get to keep your parts all attached . . . win-win. I’ll even buy the first round of those adult beverages you promised me.”

  “And if it blows back on us?”

  She comes to a stop right in front of me and locks me down with an upward gaze from those dark, dangerous eyes. “At least we’ll be in trouble together.”

  * * *

  TRAVIS COUNTY 2007

  I’m in prison the day our daughter is born. Serving five-to-ten on a federal rap: grand larceny, kidnapping and intent to commit domestic terrorism. I coulda turned rat on BulletTime, Powderburn and Headshot (we banded together as the Fatal Four, kind of a firearm-themed outfit, a few too many years after themed crews were really even a thing) but it woulda meant taking the whole family into WitSec and I’d seen Goodfellas enough times to know how that’d work out. I woulda busted out for the occasion—Spineless Larry and the Tool had a plan in place and everything—but Liza told me not to bother. They’d come see me when the kid had all her immunizations or whatever.