Crimes in Southern Indiana (17 page)

Mitchell hadn't turned it in as evidence; it now belonged to him. He lied, “See what I can do.”

And Crazy said, “Orange County, me and my set sling dope at dogfights, help muscle the crowd. I dump dogs who lose.”

A cannon sounded in Mitchell's mind when Crazy said dope. Mitchell asked, “That where the money came from, dope?”

“Yeah.”

“The fights, the dog ring, who runs it?”

“Man call himself Evans.”

“Chancellor Evans?”

Crazy pursed his lips and said, “Yeah.”

Chancellor Evans came from a long line of backwoods gunrunners and dogfighting. Had a lot of reach even with the law enforcement in that county, hard man to bust, paid a lot of people off, rumor was even the cops bought and sold from him. But mixing with the Mara Salvatrucha?
Goddamn, every cop had been trained to know their story. Immigrants who came up from El Salvador to the West Coast in the '80s. Got harassed by others. Formed their own gang to fight back, to survive. Eventually became the most vicious of all gangs, and why? Because we busted them, housed them in our prisons, where they were schooled in savagery. They didn't just kill men, they'd disembowel
them, hang their insides up like party decorations. Taught their new tactics to others. Were now street soldiers for the cartels of Mexico, and those guys were even scarier. They had embedded themselves within most major cities and now were showing up in the heartland, as Crazy's presence attested. They'd all heard about it, knew they were coming. Mitchell knew the Mexicans all worked down at
the chicken plant, but Crazy was the first real-life MS-13 gangster he knew of who'd been in custody in all the surrounding counties.

This could be a big break for Mitchell, a promotion.

“How the hell the MS get hooked up with Chancellor?”

“We, the Crazy Blades, we get word that Chancellor need meth to sell during fights, Angel wanna spread our trade deeper.”

“Angel?”

“First in command.”

“These fights, they held at Chancellor's place in Orange County?”

“In Orange County, yeah. Never at Chancellor's.”

“How often?”

“Every so many months. Take time to set up. Secretive.”

“And the dope?”

Crazy teethed on pause, ran this through his mind. The other MS set they ran dope with didn't have a problem killing cops or an MS rat.

Mitchell sensed his hesitation, leaned forward and said,
“You want my deal I need ever'thing you know.”

“Twice a month we meet other MS members on the Ohio River. They travel by boat. I trade money from what we sold for more dope minus our cut. Sometime is weed but most time is meth.”

“Damn, we used to make all that stuff here on our own,” Mitchell interrupted, mostly talking to himself.

“I don't know,” Crazy said. “People say your stuff shit.”

Mitchell came back to the interrogation. “The cash in your truck?”

“From crystal at the dogfights.”

“You said it was
your
money.”

“My money. I take it. You want me to deal, I need keep it or I become a question floating on river.”

Deal? Looked like Crazy was willing to talk. Fucker had been skimming from the hand that feeds him. Letting him keep the cash was a risk, but Mitchell couldn't blow
Crazy's cover, he'd have to let him take it. The dog ring he'd place on the back burner, use it after he busted the network running drugs on the Ohio River and into Indiana. The drugs would net a bigger bust, more attention for Mitchell. Another notch in the food chain of law enforcement's politics. This was big-time. Crazy needed to document his story on paper and video, the how and the who,
and quick.

 

Early-morning sun heated the rusted tin roof of the barn where the bark and whine of caged dogs vibrated down the hand-planed walls, chipped the lining of Iris's conscience. It had been two weeks since the fight. Two weeks of training dogs from dusk to dawn. Every night he left Chancellor's farm, returning to his own mattress. Pouring whiskey down his throat, wanting to wash away
his wrongs, to bring back what had once been right.

Opening the cage for Spade, Iris's arms were bruised and stiff, joints quartered by sharp blades of pain from attaching the heavy-gauge chain to the hounds, setting traps, and catching coyotes. He leashed the bluetick hound, led him out of the barn.

Iris had been a master in the realm of breeding, raising, and training a hound for hunting coon.
He had retired from being a town street supervisor, keeping the sidewalks clean. Signs changed. His wife had passed from diabetes, taking one limb and then the next until she was no longer human. Aft er burying her, he fell into a dark well of existence. Wanted a new challenge. Heard men at the Leavenworth Tavern speaking in hushed tones about fighting dogs, the battling and the rush that it
delivered.

Iris forfeited everything he once knew. Got pulled in by the addiction of battle, blood, and the exchange of cash.

Stopping in front of the twenty-by-twenty practice pit, the soil turned up fine and blotted by other animals passing from this life, he bent down, hefted the hound, stepped over the thick lumbered walls colored by past kills. Training, Chancellor called it.

From a distance,
he heard the cigar-voiced greeting of Chancellor. “Mornin', Mr. Iris. How goes?”

Iris ignored him. Set Spade on the ground. Was reminded of his own dogs he used for fighting. Iris filled troughs with hot and cold water, training Ruby, Ring, and Checkers to endure shock, something a hunting dog didn't need. They enjoyed the hunt, knowing they'd be rewarded by the dead coon and the aff ection it
brought from the owner afterward, not maimed trying to win or because they lost a fight. But just like training his hounds for hunting, the fighters got walked in the morning, taken swimming in streams and ponds in the evenings. Iris also used weighted chains, attached them to his fighting dogs' collars when he removed them from their cages during the waking hours of man to strengthen their necks.
Combined vitamins with loin for lean fuel, fed to them in the morning and evening. Coyotes were trapped, restrained with choke poles, led to the practice pit for the hounds to get the taste of battle and a fresh kill. Just like the one whose left hind had been disfigured from the metal teeth. Trapped this morning, now chained to the log post smeared with the graffiti of fur and innards in the pit's
center.

The coyote's mangy frame tensed and twitched every time it tried to touch its left hind to the ground, growled and bared its teeth.

The pat of boots across the dead grass lot grew in pitch and Chancellor said, “You's 'bout a stubborn ol' son of a bitch. Least you is still able to see the world flourish with all its color.”

In one of the pit's corners, Iris kneeled down, kept Spade from
seeing the coyote, and said, “Ain't nothin' purty 'bout what I been doin'. And just 'cause we got a deal don't mean I got to like it.” He felt Spade's heart vibrating his ribs, flexing his tendon and muscle. Spade could smell the coyote, hear its scratch and whine. Iris removed the collar, held Spade as if this were a real fight. He thought about how none of his friends knew what he'd been doing.
Only God knew his wrongs.

Spade growled, slumped his shoulders. His ears hung like limp tissue at the sides of each jaw. Iris moved beside him. He'd grown fond of the hound over the weeks, as it reminded him of his first hunting dog, Eddie, when he was a boy. Iris whispered in Spade's ear. “I's sorry.” As if he understood the old man. Chancellor just shook his head. And Iris released Spade.

The bluetick mainlined for the coyote. Feinted low. The coyote's fur finned up across its spine. Tried to back away, stand its ground. The chain around its neck went tight, the left hind gave, the coyote bared its teeth and tried to stand its ground, and Spade went to the neck. Jerked and tugged from side to side while its claws pushed the coyote into the soil. Bawls lit up the air. Birds flew from
trees and Chancellor sipped his coffee, swallowed, and said, “Be damned if that don't get your eyes puckered with glow for the rest of the day.”

Iris's stomach clenched and burned as he watched this dismantling of the weak, listening to the yelps that were pleas for help the same as a human injured and defenseless against his or her attacker. He watched Spade work and part the fur of the coyote's
throat until movement was gone. He knew then the difference between the hounds he'd raised and the ones Chancellor raised. Knew how he'd make things right, or as right as he could.

 

Eyes burned with the stench of rot. Angel's words still coursing through Crazy's head with what he'd been waiting for, telling him last night, “Tomorrow after work, we motor to the river, make a swap.”

Crazy stood
in the chicken factory, tired of waiting to become another number riddled across the land. Using a stainless edge he parted the dead and plucked chickens that hung from the steel shackle line. Crazy had been sneaking around. Texting. Making phone calls. Feeding Mitchell intel about future dope deals running from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and even Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Telling
about the house out in the country where they cut, weighed, and repackaged the dope for resale. Mitchell had their routes on and off Highway 62. He was waiting to nail the runners and Crazy's set on the next swap down along the Ohio River—at the old lighthouse. Pull Crazy out and place him in the custody of U.S. marshals, where he'd begin a new life.

Until then, Crazy kept a standard daylight
profile working at the factory. But that profile was eating him up inside. He was tense, his nerves rattled day to day, not wanting to get caught, and Angel still offered questions.

With a latex-covered hand, Crazy fingered out the bird's stringy opaque guts, splashed them into the metal trough. The night he'd got caught, made the deal with Mitchell, and put everything to paper while being filmed,
he'd made it to the apartment after sunrise. Angel waited up. Wanted to know where he'd been. Crazy told him he'd been out with a female. Angel wanted to know why he didn't call or text. Crazy told him he'd lost track of time. That it wouldn't happen again. And Angel told him
no
, it wouldn't. Then Angel questioned him about coming up short; the higher-ups had questions.

The higher-ups were the
leaders in the big house, prison. Word had come from the prisons, snaked its way through the states with the other sets who made the swap with Crazy and his set. Seemed their totals were a little off sometimes. Crazy told Angel he didn't know. Maybe he should question those who trade with them. Angel told him, maybe they should.

The waiting and not knowing what Angel had running through his head
had become worse than knowing.

As he passed the pimpled fowl down the line, Angel's words were a repetitive jolt. It was a relief to Crazy that he'd be out soon.

The first break bell rang. Crazy let Hyena and the other workers file out in front of him. Followed behind in shin-high rubber boots and white overalls stained with the heated insides that hid his inked flesh of La Santa Muerte, Saint
Death, gothic angels, clowns, roman numerals, and knife scars.

Keeping his distance, he watched the others entering the chicken factory's tiled restroom. Made sure he was alone. Texted Mitchell, telling him,
tomorrow.Swap@lighthouse
.

Crazy walked into the restroom, pulled off his rubber gloves, tossed them into the metal trashcan. Took in the streaks of blood that outlined them as they lay piled
with the other gloves.

He stepped to the marble-circled washing station, grabbed a bar of soap, and eyed his boys Shank and Flame. With bristled heads and lean, gnarled frames, they were the first two young men Angel and Crazy had recruited after crossing the Rio Grande, paying the coyotes to bring those two and ten other MS-13 members up to Angel and him in the Midwest. They had jumped them
in this very bathroom. Six years ago. And now he'd ratted them all out for his chance at freedom.

Mashing the metal bar to the floor beneath the rounded washing station, Crazy pushed out a steady flow of water, lathered his hands. Then he rinsed away the stink of his labor, stepped to one of the porcelain dryers that lined a brick wall, elbowed the chrome button that reflected his body, and dried
his hands. Caught Shank and Flame nodding to the handful of factory employees to get out. Footsteps and chatter exited.

Hyena guarded the bathroom's doorway.

Crazy took a deep breath, clenched his fists. Something was going down.

Shank and Flame stood in caramel-colored work uniforms, shirts buttoned to the top, with their backs to a scuffed bathroom stall. Flame rattled his knuckles on the
stall door. Beneath the door boots dropped from standing on a toilet to the floor. The door swung open. Crazy serpent-eyed Angel, taking in the pitted and scarred facade that highlighted their past. The bold letters MARA across his forehead, bleeding into teardrops down his left jaw. Angel held the duff el bag of cash Crazy had hidden in his truck.

Angel tossed the bag across the grouted floor
at Crazy and tongued a question. “Why you do this, Crazy?”

Crazy didn't blink. His insides iced over. “Do what?”

“Don't play me for stupid. Know how much cash is in there? More than the higher-ups know about.”

Crazy ran his hand through the white suit and into his pocket, thumbed the far left button, number one. Mitchell's number. Shit was about to hit the fan.

Not wanting to be punked, Crazy
said, “Tired of this never knowing. Want a life of 'gevity without worry of when it end.”

Angel chuckled. “You become wormlike. American bitch.”

Crazy felt the other's eyes puncturing his frame from every direction with a zillion ice picks. These guys, his family, they wanted to fillet him, feed him to Chancellor's dogs, and he said, “No, I am Salvadoran. Want to one day become elder Salvadoran.”