I parked at the mortuary not far down from the strip mall where I’d done my surveillance. I filled in my boys on what we were there for and why. “You said you trick the unwary. You make people smarter,” Zeke said. “How’s this make them smarter?”
“No, I said I trick the unwary to make them wiser and I punish the ones who are beyond learning. Killing the helpless and the lost for entertainment is beyond education.” It was dark, almost eight, and the mortuary’s parking lot deserted; the living who took care of the dead were gone for the night. “School was over for these particular assholes before it ever began. No pizza days. No skipping class. No homecoming. No games. Well . . .” I opened the trunk and ran one finger along the polished wood inside. “A game, but one they won’t walk away from.”
“How long has it been since you just tricked, didn’t punish?” Griffin asked at my side. Always the ex-demon with the Boy Scout questions, he was good as gold and better by far than any angel. I’d never figure out where I’d gone wrong with him.
“Every day, sweetie. Every time I serve a watered-down drink or sell a tourist a map to an undiscovered gold mine.” I tugged at his earlobe and started loading him up with baseball bats. Which was true, but tricksters were also at times judge, jury, and executioner. Or in this particular case . . . a facilitator. Sometimes justice doesn’t feel right unless you snatch it with your own hand. Vigilante was only a bad word in my dictionary if you didn’t have your information straight. Then it might be your turn to be served up on the bloody platter of the wicked or the failed fact-checker. And there were no unemployment benefits on that platter, so it paid to make sure you were right in the first place.
When I finished with Griffin, I turned Zeke into my second pack mule. He’d given up on the grumbling . . . for the moment. He knew I took my job as seriously as he did his and sharing it with him to take his mind off his current unwilling vacation was me doing what I could for him. I was giving him his daily dose of violence . . . all in the name of what was just and true, of course, but like kiddies needed cartoon-shaped vitamins, Zeke needed some ass to kick.
Kick it. Shoot it. Blow it up. He wasn’t that particular. It was easy to please Zeke.
With the guys carrying the baseball bats, we walked down the sidewalk, cars on the street passing us. Not a one was a cop car and not a one slowed down at the sight of what was being carried. Someone had once said that all that was necessary for evil to triumph is for wise men to do nothing. These days wise men did nothing a hundred times faster than they had a few hundred years ago, but they were still as blind and useless as they’d ever been. That was why a trickster, an ex-angel, and an ex-demon were going to step up to the plate.
As we moved among the homeless, skirting carts, piles of clothes, and cardboard beds, I saw the sheen of cautious and confused eyes gleaming under the street-lights. I took a baseball bat from Griffin’s pile and parked it on my shoulder. “So? Any ex-baseball players here? Anyone want to grab a bat and show three murdering sons of bitches how to really hit one out of the park?”
It was a long moment before someone spoke up, but someone did. It only takes one push to get the ball rolling . . . only one person to get the mob ready to run.
“Girly, you know what you’re playing at?” a voice of gravel rolling in tobacco juice spoke at hip level. I looked down to see eyes neither cautious nor confused. They were hard, dark, and knew exactly how to play, if I could convince him that I could too. “They’re big men, did what they did. Steroid-popping, raisin-balled bastards who never did an honest day’s work, but they know how to hurt people. And they’re good at it. They ain’t had to dig for their last meal out of the Dumpster behind a 7-Eleven and been happy to have it. Not many of us can say the same.” He was about sixty-five with one leg ended in a stump at his knee. It could’ve been from war or diabetes. He had a beard, iron gray streaked with snow and half the teeth he’d once had at eighteen. But for tonight, he was a baseball player through and through.
I handed him the bat and then pulled my Smith as I sat beside him. “Sergeant, this girly knows how to level the playing field.”
“How’d you know I was a sergeant?” He looked at the gun with approval. “And why not just shoot the bastards dead if you’re carrying that in your panties?”
My panties were not where I was carrying it, but I let it go. “Because you, unlike the ones who are hurting you and yours, do know the value of an honest day’s work. As for shooting them dead, why should they get to go that easily? Your friend didn’t.”