"By birth, certainly, they were not prepared in any way to achieve their desires. They were not the smartest kids in the neighborhood. They were not born the richest. They weren’t even the toughest. In fact, they lacked almost all the necessary talents that might have helped them satisfy the appetites of their dreams, except one: their talent for violence."
-- Nicholas Pileggi
The American Dream is a lie.
I don't mean that in the quasi-socialist, Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp plight-of-the-working-class way.
I mean it never existed. This nation wasn't founded with egalitarian ideals in mind. It wasn't founded because of high taxes and low representation. It was founded to be a kingdom for those with the wealth of kings, but no land to rule. The New World would be theirs for the taking, a compact sealed in the blood of the settles of Roanoke. And that was decided before the first shots were fired in Lexington and Concord, before the first treaties to the king, before the first chest of tea got chucked into the Boston Harbor, and even before the first anchor dropped off the coast.
Thirteen Families in all. They've been here since the very beginning, watching and controlling from the shadows. They are the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, and the Vanderbilts all rolled into one. They are the oldest of the old guard, the powers that be, and the keepers of the status quo.
And they use some real bastards to enforce their will.
---
Prairie Rose Indian Reservation
South Dakota
10:23 PM"Tribal Police!"
Dash Bad Horse waited half a second before he kicked the rickety door with his boot. The shot, aimed just below the door's cheap knob, splintered the wood at the doorjamb and sent it swinging back on its hinges. Dash came through the door with his shotgun raised, a flashlight mounted on the barrel gave him light to see. The living room of the house was a sty. Overturned furniture with burn holes in them were cluttered around the room with trash and old styrofoam food containers.
In the next room, the kitchen, Dash found the cook site. Bottles, both plastic and glass, sat on a plastic card table with hot plates, chemicals, and syringes. Dash lowered his shotgun and raised an eyebrow. What had been a simple warrants check for Jody Two Feathers ended up as something much more.
Dash turned when he saw movement out the corner of his eye. Jody Two Feathers, wearing nothing but a pair of stained tighty-whities, blinked at him with a confused look on his face.
"What the fu--"
Jody's question was cut off by the butt of Dash's shotgun to his face. He went down on the dirty linoleum floor, spitting blood and teeth and cursing unintelligibly.
Five minutes later, Jody Two Feathers sat handcuffed in the backseat of the police car while Dash called for backup to remove the meth making equipment inside the house. He walked back into the house and found a sandwich bag of crystal meth from the kitchen table and pocketed it before going back outside.
Even though it was miles away, Dash could see the lights from the casino blinking on and off in the night. The Crazy Horse. It hadn't even existed back when Dash left the rez. A lot of things had changed since he'd been gone. The Army. He'd enlisted and been gone, served some in Afghanistan and Iraq before coming back home.
That's what he told everyone, and that's what he knew had happened. Yet... it didn't feel right. He'd wake up from his dreams in the middle of the night and see images from a life entirely different than what he knew. Dreams of guns and violence and sex and money. Men in immaculate suits and beautiful women in dazzling dresses sitting together at a long wooden conference table. A woman with tears in her eyes, begging him to not pull the trigger.
The sound of a siren snapped Dash back to reality. Franklin Falls Down pulled up in his cruiser and got out. The six member staff that made up the tribal police were a mix of crooks and humps; half of them got their job because they knew someone on the tribal council while the other half were just bullies looking to flex. But not all of them were like that. Falls Down was the one good cop among them. For his part, Dash figured he fell close to the bully category. Three excessive force complaints in his six months on the job, something of a record even among the tribal police.
"Hazmat stuff is in the bank," said Falls Down. "Let's slip it on and box that crap up."
Dash nodded, his eyes drifting back towards the lights of the casino. Something wasn't right. There was a thinness to everything, his current situation and his life in general. Something lurked beneath the surface, something dark and foreboding. Dash knew that whatever it was down there, it involved the people in the fancy dress, the guns, and the crying woman asking him not to kill her.
"Dash?" Falls Down said. "You with me?"
"Yeah," said Dash, shaking his head. "Let's get to work."
---
Center City, WA
12:21 AMLinda Flynn and her girlfriends walked down the sidewalk on unsteady feet. The group of four girls swayed and bobbed on their big high heels, clinging to each other as they walked. All four wore expensive and tight cocktail dresses and heels that were just a bit too big for them. They didn't care how gaudy they looked. They were young, they were rich, and they wanted the whole damn world to know it.
"Denise, you are such a slut," one of them said in a drunken slur. The rest of the pack broke out into a fit of giggles.
"You're the slut," Denise countered. "I saw you with that guy, just grinding on him. He looked so fucking ugly! You're such a slut!"
The girls looked up at the sound of a roaring engine. A large black van raced down the road and skidded to a stop beside them. Two men in balaclavas jumped out with pistols in their hands. The girls let out screams of horror as the two gunmen zeroed in on just one of them. They took Linda roughly by the shoulders and shoved her into the van. The three remaining girls tried to reach out to their friend, but were pushed back by the kidnapper. He aimed his gun at them and put a finger to his lip.
"Tell her father, we'll be in touch," the masked men said. "Tell him if he goes to the cops, she fucking dies."
The two men jumped into the van, slammed the door shut, and the van peeled off into the night, leaving the drunk and hysterical young women to cry and panic for their kidnapped friend.
---
4:48 AMIt was the middle of the night, but Tracy Lawless was wide awake. He sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette and staring through the darkness at the city outside. Sleep was something he no longer seemed to need much of. The dreams had cured him of that. Horrible dreams of a life he couldn't remember leading, dreams of violence and depravity and something always out of reach. Those dreams had taught him how little sleep he actually needed to function. No more than five hours a night and he was good until another twenty-four hours.
The woman in his bed stirred and he looked down at her exposed bare back. Gennelle was her name, or at least her stage name. She was one of the strippers at the club he managed for Hyde. It was stupid, taking her home that night after they closed... but Tracy's base biological functions had been gnawing at him for the past few weeks. He needed to clear the works out, so to speak, and Gennelle with her long legs and rich coffee colored skin was just what he needed. He should have just went to a bar and picked a woman up, or even better bought a call girl for the night. Sleeping with one of the girls would no doubt cause some sort of trouble back at the club.
The cell phone on the dresser across the room rattled as it vibrated. Tracy stood and padded towards it. A blocked number was calling.
"Yeah," he said softly.
"It's me."
The voice on the other end was recognizable enough. John Galston, some lawyer type Hyde just recently started to use as a go-between for him and all the people he dealt with. It made Tracy wonder why he set up the stop-gap. Maybe he was getting paranoid in his old age?
"He needs some work done," said Galston. "Get to his office right now."
"Okay. I'll be there."
Tracy hung up without another word and wondered what was the point of a go-between if he still had to meet Hyde face to face? He walked towards his closet and started to dress. When he was done, he took a key off his ring and placed it on the nightstand beside the sleeping woman. He left her a note, asking to lock up after she left. Tracy tucked his piece, a Smith & Wesson compact .40, into the shoulder rig he wore under his coat and left out of the apartment before the morning sun had a chance to creep up over the horizon.
---
6:02 AMTo look at Sebastian Hyde's office, you would think he was a college professor or some well to do businessman instead of the kingpin of Center City. There were books, shelves and shelves of books on the three office walls. The lone wall not loaded down with books had an entire long pane of glass that stretched across the wall in a window that gave off a pretty impressive view of Center City. The books were all random as hell. Everything from Gibbon's six-part series on the decline and fall of Rome, to Max Allan Collins, to Danielle Steel sat on the shelves. Tracy doubted very much that Hyde had even cracked open one of those books in his library. The man didn't care about books, and he didn't care about his impressive view. The books and window were all a show to anyone who came into the office. It was projecting power. Look at how many nice things I have, it said, look at the entire town that I sit above like a king. All of that boiled down to a simple message: Do not fuck with me.
"Tracy," Hyde said as he came in.
Tracy stood and wordlessly greeted the old man as he walked towards his desk. Hyde wasn't in his usual three-piece, but he still wore dark slacks and a collared shirt. Tracy remained standing until Hyde sat down behind the desk.
"It's late, or early depending on your point of view, so let's skip the usual crap, son. Do you know Thomas Flynn?"
"Rings a bell. Does he owe you money?"
"No, unfortunately not. Flynn owns a good deal of the industrial park here in town. Supposed to be worth half a billion. He keeps his nose mostly clean, as clean as anyone worth that kind of money can be. Early this morning, his daughter Linda was kidnapped by some masked men. They called the house a few hours ago, demanding five million dollars for her safe return. They also demanded no cops be involved. Flynn wants security and he's afraid to go to the police... so he came to me. For a nominal fee, I'm guaranteeing her safe return. For a cut of that fee, you'll provide the service."
Hyde working for money didn't jive true to Tracy. He had more than enough money than he or his kids would ever spend. But what was left unsaid Tracy knew all too well. Flynn was asking Sebastian Hyde for a favor. All it took was for Hyde to get his foot into the door and he owned you. Flynn thought it was a simple transaction, money for goods and services, but it would be so much more than that. For Hyde to get in good with a man like Flynn would give him something much more valuable than money. Flynn got you connections, contracts, businessmen, and politicians. Influence. Flynn was half a billion dollars worth of influence Hyde could call on.
"Do I just watch over the deal, make sure it goes down smoothly?"
"Very much so. And when the deal is over, it is expected you find the kidnappers and liquidate them. These cocksuckers are operating with impunity in my city, son. I will not let that stand."
"And the money from the ransom?"
The old man's eyes lit up and his eyebrows arched as he smiled.
"You know how it is, son. Things sometimes go missing. If Flynn can't recover that money, it's a small price to pay for the safety of his family."
Message received. Tracy nodded and stood, heading towards the door. He hated when Hyde called him son. He made a mental note that when he got his revenge on the old prick, he would hit him in the balls for every time the old man had called him his son. After tonight, Tracy's count was up to 219.
---
Stockton, CA
11:21 AMWhen the gates of the prison opened, Parker walked out a free man. He wore the same shirt, pants, and jacket he'd been picked up in six months earlier. The bullet holes in the shirt were still there even though his own wounds were long healed. He eyeballed the idling car and walked past it, opting instead to hoof it into town. The car followed him down the road. It was a black sedan with windows so darkly tinted you couldn't see inside. The electric window whined as it rolled down.
"Want a lift?"
"Go to hell," said Parker.
"Always the hard case, huh, Parker?"
That stopped Parker in his track. He'd been incarcerated under the name Ronald Kasper. The only people who knew to call him Parker were people who were in the Life. He looked into the car and saw an old man with sunglasses on, a slightly amused look on his face.
"How do I know you?" asked Parker.
"From a past life," said the man. "My name is Graves."
"Don't know you, so get lost."
"Well I know you," said Graves. "And I know all about you and Mal."
Parker felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
"I know how to find him, too."
"You got a minute to explain yourself," Park said as he climbed into the car.
Graves told Parker to look in the backseat and get the case. Parker reached back and got the attache case. He popped it open and looked inside. Resting in the case was a file folder with the words RESNICK, MALCOLM stamped on them. Beside the folder rested a glock and a cardboard box of ammunition with the word 100 written on its top. He looked up at Graves, who just smiled as he drove away from the prison.
"Inside that folder, Parker, is the location of Mal Resnick. The gun, as well as the bullets, are untraceable. Any investigation into the crimes you commit with the gun and ammo immediately stops once they're run through ballistics investigation. You have carte blanche to do what you need to do."
"Why?" asked Parker.
Graves lit a cigarette, using the act to create a pregnant pause inside the car.
"Because Mal Resnick double crossed you on your score, shot you twice, and left you for dead. Because I know you're a man who takes betrayal seriously."
"No," said Parker. "Why are
you doing this? I got sprung after only six months in the clink, that had to be you. Then you give me this gun and bullets and the means to find Mal. What did Mal do to you?"
"He hurt you," said Graves. "That's enough to provoke my ire."
"And what am I to you?"
"An asset," said Graves. "Something that needs protecting."
Graves pulled into the city bus terminal and found a parking spot.
"They still give cons enough money for bus fare?" he asked.
"Barely," said Parker.
"I'm sure you'll manage. You're a survivor." Graves flicked his cigarette out of the window and turned to Parker. "Do what you want to do with the case, Parker. The choice is yours. That's all I am offering you. The means to get your revenge. You are uniquely situated. You have something that almost no one has."
"What's that?"
"The power of choice," said Graves. "The freedom to right your personal wrong... or not. There's power in that choice, Parker. Never forget that. Now take the case and happy hunting."
