Buddy Lee pulled out the piece of paper. He stared at the drawing, then at the kid in the chair.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. Ike straightened. He went over to where Buddy Lee was leaning against the pallet of mulch. He left the tamper near Andy.
“What is it?”
Buddy Lee showed him the piece of paper.
“I took this off the fridge at the boys’ place. I thought it was an orange, but I suppose it could be a tangerine. But I don’t know what that building is,” Buddy Lee said. Ike thought of the napkins he’d found at the house.
“You think it could be a bar? Maybe Isiah was going to meet this Tangerine girl at a place they hung out a lot?” Ike asked. Buddy Lee pushed off the pallet and turned his back to the kid. He dropped his voice to the bottom of his chest.
“What if she was supposed to meet them and then they got killed? Whoever killed them might be the one who hired Junior over there,” Buddy Lee said.
“He might be the one the kid at the bakery was talking about,” Ike whispered.
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“We should lean on him some more. I bet if I smash one of his toes he’ll remember who hired him,” Ike said.
Andy watched them as they turned their backs on him and huddled close.
“What if he don’t give it up?” Buddy Lee asked.
“They always give it up,” Ike said.
Andy raised his head. It was now or never. He strained against the right zip tie. He relaxed, then strained again, this time twisting his upper body and pulling his right arm toward the left.
Ike heard a snap a millisecond before he turned and took a chair to the head. The kid was swinging it like a club. His left wrist was still attached to the armrest. His bare feet hadn’t made a sound on the cool concrete floor. Ike took the full brunt of his swing to the left side of his head. He went down to all fours like he was searching for grains of gold dust.
Andy shoved the chair at the thin white guy. The guy instinctively grabbed the chair legs, and Andy pushed him backward toward the pallet of mulch. Buddy Lee felt his feet slip on the concrete even as he gripped the chair by its legs. His chest rattled and his lungs begged for air. Was he passing out? He wasn’t sure, but the next thing he knew, his ass was on the floor and his hands seemed to go numb. A coughing fit picked the absolute worst time to possess him. The kid pulled the chair out of Buddy Lee’s hands and raised it above his head.
The shadow the chair cast over him was the shadow of death. Buddy Lee felt a desperate surge of adrenaline course through his veins. A huge wad of phlegm escaped his chest at last. Sweet oxygen filled his lungs like ambrosia. Buddy Lee grabbed his jackknife from his back pocket. As the kid swung the chair downward, Buddy Lee rose to one knee. In one smooth motion he flicked the blade out with his thumb and shoved the knife in the kid’s belly up to the hilt. The hole in his belly took some of the power out of his swing. Buddy Lee raised his free arm and blocked the blow rather easily. He watched as the kid stumbled backward. He pulled himself off Buddy Lee’s blade. A languid stream of crimson began to pour from the hole in Andy’s gut.
Ike shook his head side to side like a hound dog killing a rat. He jumped to his feet and grabbed the tamper. As the kid stumbled back from Buddy Lee, Ike gripped the handle with a two-handed high choke grip. He swung the tamper like he was sending a pitch into the upper deck. The flat tempered iron connected with the back of the kid’s head with a dull fleshy thump. The kid crumpled to the floor with the chair landing on his chest.
Ike stood over the kid.
His thin lips were quivering like the death throes of some strange woodland creature. The kid had hit him with the chair. He’d tried to kill Buddy Lee. He’d broken into Isiah’s house. He’d spit in Ike’s face. He had probably been lying about some guy hiring him. He probably knew who had killed Isiah. The kid’s eyes rolled back in his head. Hell, he might have even been the one that wrecked the headstone.
“You motherfucker!” Ike screamed. He raised the tamper and slammed it down onto the kid’s head. The skin around the eye socket split and bones beneath shifted. The kid looked like he was having a stroke. Ike raised the tamper again and brought it down with all his strength. His biceps and deltoids worked together with long practiced synchronicity. He’d done this same motion thousands of times. Hundreds of thousands of times. His wide forearms burned as he rammed the tamper into the kid’s face again and again. He felt something wet splash against his face. Bits of bone and teeth flew up from the floor.