Trophy 12

It was easy for Frank to keep his word. The Park Department’s cybersecurity was pathetically outmoded. The hardest part of hacking in was actually using their cumbersome filing system to get to the data he wanted. But finally, he got it. Visitor after visitor, all paying for five days’ parking at Lot E, and all with Italian surnames.

He showed up at Lot E disguised as a hiker. Levi’s, flannel shirt, a knit cap, and a backpack full of his gear. This part of the park was little used in the heat. The parking spaces he’d wanted were about the only ones occupied. And it was easy to tell where they went from there. All their footprints formed a desire path, off the asphalt and into the woods, away from the gravel trail to the visitor’s center. Frank followed, hands on the straps of his backpack. If he reached into the unbuttoned collar of his flannel, it’d be easy to get at the Glock .40 holstered under his arm.

The mountain was miles outside the city. Up the slope, he’d be able to see the skyline, but from here, the only sign of civilization was the highway that crawled like a scar from horizon to horizon. No, not a scar. An open wound. The noise of engines and the stink of pollution bled from it. Marring, splitting a wonderful vista. Grassland interspersed by plateaus, mesa, buttes. Frank knew he’d never finish his crusade. There’d be no retirement for him, no end to the work. But if there were… he could feel the call of a peacefulness, out here. He wouldn’t mind much, living in a place like this, letting the peace settle over him and seep into him as much as it could. It wouldn’t get far, but like ice cracking bedrock, it would get in. Right now, he felt impervious to any calm.

Each step reverberated in his body, the rhythm of them finding purchase in his heating blood. How many times had he been in this position: the hunt nearing its end, the battle about to begin? His guns cleaned and loaded, his heart pounding, every blood cell and sinew and bone in his body part of a ruthlessly efficient system. He was at his peak, ready to do what he was best at. His finger itched to squeeze the trigger. The recoil of a gun in his hands seemed like the only thing that could counter the thrumming inside him.

He followed the desire path through a maze carved by water and weather. It led him through wide fallow beds where the rock was replaced by brown dirt, green grass, flowers of many colors. There were tracks of deer, wolf, quail, threading their way around the trail he wanted to follow. The series of gulleys and arroyos seemed endless, but not hard to penetrate. Every few yards, it seemed, there was a Starbucks container, a wadded up McDonalds, a cigarette butt. These people should’ve set up a trash can, if they had no qualms about going undetected.

He seethed, immune now to the glories of nature. Frank didn’t see the pine, the pinyon, the juniper that haired the slopes. Only more trash. There were even bullet holes where the thugs had practiced shooting on beer bottles set on top a boulder.

That proved to be the last hump before the ground sloped off gently into a trampled saddle, the smell of urine faint but noticeable. Before the ground rose again, it led into a cave. The ground all about the mouth was littered with feces, debris, even some graffiti. Frank took it he had his meth lab.

He sidestepped off the trail, into the scrubs, finding a comfortable spot and settling on his belly to observe the cave. He hydrated from his canteen and surveyed the area through his monocular, getting a feel for the place, comparing it to the paper map he unfolded from his pocket and firming the landscape in his head. Minutes passed. He grew certain that he could find his way through the wilderness enough to lose any pursuit. Already, he’d spotted several points he could use to either hide or uncouple a running gunfight.

Twelve minutes after he’d arrived, a man emerged from the mouth of the cave. He was tall, boxy, with a swarthy complexion and a broken beard growing across his jaw like a patch of mushrooms. His nose had been broken so many times that it looked more like a stunted growth than a part of his face. Frank watched him light a cigarette and pace around the small clearing that led into the cave, satisfying himself that nothing was disturbing the peace—and it didn’t take much to satisfy him.

The moment he’d finished his cigarette, he tossed it aside and went back into the cave.

Frank stayed where he was. He continued observing, absorbing, letting the tone of the location sift into him. He needed to be part of its rhythm, able to detect any minute change, any small detail which could mean the difference between life and death.

It wasn’t easy. Broken Nose had been so slovenly, so lazy, that if he was characteristic of the entire operation, it would take no more effort to blow down than a house of cards. But Frank hadn’t survived as long as he had by taking the obvious for granted. Even with a weakling like that aggravating him like a red cape in front of a bull, he couldn’t charge. Wait. Make it perfect. The key to success was overkill—not just in weaponry, but in technique. Any punk could get lucky once. Frank needed to be so good that it didn’t matter whether the punk got lucky or not.

Still, he was no saint, no yogi. As the minutes stretched, his mind wandered. He thought of Bella. Checking in on her as she slept. Watching the artistic beauty of her body at rest. Without her consciousness animating it, it was like a statue, pure loveliness, without sin or seduction. He remembered her soft, easy breathing—long hair flowing over her bare shoulders. Her firm breasts, sensual thighs… all of her a vision of beauty, down to the painted toenails that only sounded a single light note through her dark pantyhose.

The longer he waited, the more his memories ran to her in that love nest. Being rutted by two men at once. The same gorgeous body, but seemingly possessed, animated by the most forthright, greedy sexuality he’d ever seen in a woman. Even Agnes at her worst couldn’t compete with how insatiable she’d been.

It was like trying to hold two opposing facts as truth. The goddess beauty of her and her whorish sensuality. How could a creature so lovely be so depraved? And when he’d talked to her—she was a kaleidoscope of femininity. The uncouth mouth, the sensuous clothing, the lavishly sculpted body… it was enough to make his head spin. He’d even got the sense that she was eying him, sizing him up as a potential sex partner. If that. Frank had the feeling all Bella really wanted was a feast for her rampant sensuality. If she ended up satisfied—somehow—then she had what she looked for in a man.

And a part of Frank could not help but appreciate the challenge. She’d needed two men, at least, to sate her? He felt confident he could satiate her better than any two button men. He was a warrior. They were overgrown children playing at being outlaws, all of them. Not one in ten was worthy of any respect. Their strength was in their mouths, not their guts and definitely not in their dicks.

Frank bit the inside of his cheek until he knew what his blood would taste like and refocused on the cave. Over the course of the day, two or three other men came out—the goombas looked and dressed so alike that it was hard to tell. One still wore an apron as he did a bump of cocaine and then amused himself by kicking at a stunted sapling.

Frank had seen enough. He was satisfied it was a meth lab. He could waste them all now, but that would just be a brick through the glass of the Belucci operation. He wanted to set it on fire.

His stomach curdling, he backed out of view and turned to go. Consoling himself with the thought that he had a target now, somewhere to hit, but when he did, it would be strategic, planned. Not like some abrasive lush throwing punches. No, he’d take apart the Beluccis by finding where the screws were and twisting them the wrong way, until the entire thing was in pieces.