Layla's Score Read online

  “And?”

  “I'm the best,” said Brooks flatly. “I don't know a lot of these new guys, so maybe there's someone who's better now, but I don't know him.”

  Lefty looked at him and said, “How do you know I'm not the guy?”

  “If you really wanna know, it's because of her,” said Brooks, pointing at Layla. “She weighs you down. To be really good at this, you can't have emotional baggage. You can't love anyone. It doesn't work like that. Those things are mutually exclusive.”

  “But what about your ex-wife?” asked Lefty. “You loved her?”

  “I'm not sure I did. I respected her, and I liked her a lot, but I don't think I loved her. That's not a knock against her, but by the time we met we'd both killed more people than we'd really ever known in life. We were both cold and removed. Neither one of us was a warm, loving person. Because we were stone cold killers. We didn't get attached. We both knew better. So that little girl in there? I'm glad she's got you to take care of her, and I'm happy for you. But to be really great at this thing, you can't have emotional ties. You can't have anyone in your life that you're not willing to either walk away from or put into the ground without hesitation.”

  Lefty said, “That's pretty bleak.”

  “Life is bleak,” said Brooks. “But our life—the crime life—is even more so. That guy in your story, that Abelli? He deserved what he got in a way.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “Because he had no business being in that line of work with young kids at home. He put them in danger. If I was the boss, I wouldn't even hire guys like that. They're a liability.”

  Lefty looked him in the eyes. “It sounds like you're judging me.”

  “I'm sorry it sounds that way,” said Brooks. “But I'm not. Not at all. I'm happy for you. I'm sure you're good at what you do. You seem like a bright kid. But I don't think you can ever be the best and truly live up to your full potential with that kid in tow.”

  “You mentioned people like that being a liability,” said Lefty. “Why would you work with me if you felt that way?”

  “I get a good vibe from you. I think you're a good guy and I think your heart is in the right place. And I won't be putting myself in a position where I could be damaged by you or your baggage. I watch out for myself. I'll be fine. And I don't think you're gonna try to double-cross me like a lot of guys will, not with your kid being there with us.”

  Lefty nodded and changed the subject. “Are you prepared to split your share of the money with Dixie?”

  “No, I'm not. Do you want me on this job?”

  “Absolutely. That's why I'm here in goddamn Tulsa, Oklahoma. Do you think I want to be in fucking Oklahoma? Cause I'll answer that for you real quick—the answer is no, I don't want to be in fucking Oklahoma. There are only two things I give a shit about in Tulsa, and both of those places are apparently gone now. But I came to talk to you, Brooks, so yes, I want you on this job.”

  “Then Dixie gets a full share.”

  “She gets a third?” asked Lefty, irritated.

  “She gets a full third.”

  Lefty thought about this. “$666,000 is less than a million dollars.”

  “Last time I checked, yeah, it is. But it's still a lot of money.”

  Lefty looked at Layla sitting at the table playing on her tablet. He considered doing the job alone and keeping all the money himself, but he wasn't sure he could do it alone. And there was Layla to consider. She needed him, so he couldn't afford to take unnecessary chances.

  Brooks saw him looking at her. “Are you sure you wanna take her? I mean, this man, this Bruno De Lorenzo character, apparently has no problem killing little girls.”

  Lefty looked at him, serious now. “She stays with me. The thought occurred to me, absolutely, but I'm all she's got. She needs me. And if I'm being completely honest, I need her. I think I've become co-dependent on her. You know how a heroin junkie can't function without that smack in his system? That's how I am with Layla. If I don't have her, I don't know how to function. And if that makes me less at this job like you say it does, then fine. I'm getting out after this job anyway.”

  “But will she be safe?” asked Brooks.

  “I'll do everything I can to make sure she is,” said Lefty. “Rest assured I'll take care of that little girl. Anybody tries to hurt her…”

  “What?”

  “They die, simple as that. And they don't just die, they die really fucking badly. They die the kind of death the bad guy dies at the end of a Bruce Willis action movie. The kind that makes the audience cheer and go nuts. That's how they get it, on some Medieval shit, violent and gruesome. I'll make that shit Bruno did to Abelli look like child's play.”

  Brooks didn't doubt it. “So Dixie?”

  Lefty considered the matter. After a minute or so passed he said, “What the hell? Bring her along.”

  “She gets a full share?”

  Lefty nodded. “Full share.”

  Brooks put out his hand for Lefty to shake. Lefty smiled. “We're doing this now?”

  “This is how it's done.”

  Lefty shook his hand, thankful Brooks didn't do any of that silly macho white guy stuff where he squeezed his hand as tight as he could to prove how tough he was.

  “One thing,” said Lefty.

  “What's that?”

  Lefty put his hand up, making a fist. He extended it towards Brooks, who looked at it as though it were a foreign thing.

  “What am I supposed to do here?”

  Lefty chuckled. “Make a fist.”

  Brooks did. Lefty extended his fist toward Brooks. “Bump my fist.” Brooks did, not completely sure what was happening.

  “This is what they do now?” asked Brooks.

  “This is how it's done.”

  “Is that a colored people thing?”

  Lefty grinned. “Old man, this is a new day. That's an everybody thing. Everybody bumps fists. Even crusty old crackers like you.”

  “Knock off that old man shit, kid,” said Brooks. “I'd hate for you to get killed by a crusty old cracker in front of your kid.”

  And so it began.

  Lefty was not enthusiastic about the addition of the old man's ex-wife. Brooks informed him that Dixie lived in Oklahoma City. Lefty was thankful that she only lived two hours away from Tulsa, as he wouldn't have wanted to waste extra time driving somewhere far away to get get her.

  “You gonna call her?” asked Lefty.

  “No,” Brooks said, shaking his head. “We don't really do the phone thing.”

  “Shouldn't she probably know we're coming?”

  “If I called her, she wouldn't talk to me.”

  “You guys don't get along?”

  “She's my ex-wife, kid. How do you think we get along? That's why she's my ex-wife.”

  “But you think she'll do it?” asked Lefty.

  “I do,” said Brooks. “Last I knew she was working this stupid, dead-end job there in Oklahoma City. She'll jump at the chance to make that much money for a couple days' worth of work. Besides, she's like us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being a hitter is in her blood.”

  “It's not in my blood,” said Lefty. “I'm trying to get out.”

  Brooks grinned at him knowingly. “You say that now… Thing is, you can get out of the life, but that don't mean you can get the life out of you.”

  It was agreed that they would ride together to meet Dixie in Lefty's Cadillac. Brooks packed his bags fairly quickly. “I've still got one last thing to do,” he said.

  “What's that?”

  “You're gonna have to help me dig.”

  “Dig?” asked Lefty, not wanting to dig.

  “When I quit, I buried my weapons in a box in the backyard. Everything but the .45 I carry for safety. So I need my guns before I can do this thing.”

  Lefty sighed. “Alright, I'll help you dig. But I'm not doing it all. You're gonna have to do some digging, too.”

&nb
sp; Brooks smiled. “You're not afraid of wearing out an old man? I mean, if I die out there digging, you're gonna have to go by yourself.”

  “I'll take my chances. I think your old ass will be just fine.”

  Brooks only owned one shovel, and Lefty carried it. Once they were outside, leaving Layla in the living room watching Spongebob, Lefty looked around the sad little yard. It was mostly empty, save for an old rusty frame for a swing set that no longer held any swings. The grass was freshly cut, the sure sign of an old man with too much time on his hands. Lefty thought of his neighbor back in Chicago. The old man got up twice a week and started mowing his yard before the sun even started to rise. Lefty wondered if Brooks did that. Was that a universal old man thing? There was an old dilapidated wooden privacy fence surrounding the yard. The fact that it was even still standing was possible proof that miracles existed.

  “Watch out for snakes,” said Brooks. “I get a lot of 'em out here.”

  Lefty hated snakes. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “What kind of snakes?”

  “How the hell do I know? Do I look like a snake expert?”

  “Well, what do they look like?”

  “They look like snakes,” said Brooks. “What the hell do you think they look like? They're slimy-looking little bastards. My favorite thing in the world is to run over them on my riding mower and chop them to pieces. Then they go flying out the side of the mower with the cut grass. That kind of amuses me.”

  “I thought you didn't kill anymore.”

  “I make exceptions for snakes,” said Brooks.

  “But you don't know what kind they are?”

  Brooks looked at him, an irritated look on his face. “They're the kind that slither around and scare the shit out of me. Someone told me they were garden snakes, but I don't know if that's their proper name.”

  “I didn't think you were scared of anything.”

  “You got a lot to learn, kid,” said Brooks. “I'm scared of lots of things.”

  “Like what? What scares Brooks Barker?”

  Brooks thought about it for a second. “Women. They're scary. You know what's even scarier? Living with them. That's scary shit for sure.”

  Lefty nodded. “That's the truth.”

  “I'm afraid of dying… Don't get me wrong, I do what I have to do when I'm out there doing a job. It's not so much the act of dying that scares me as the actual being dead part. I'm not a big fan of that, the being gone.”

  “Do you believe in heaven?” asked Lefty.

  “You ask a lot of questions, kid.”

  “I guess it's my nature.”

  “You're a pain in the ass, just like your old man. You know, I'd like to believe in heaven, but I don't know. My first wife, Bernice, died when we she was twenty-three. I like to think maybe she's up in heaven, waiting for me, but I don't really know what I believe anymore. I think that's okay, though. Because whether or not heaven does or does not exist is not gonna change because of what you or I believe. How about you? Do you believe in heaven?”

  “No,” said Lefty. “But I want to.”

  “I guess you gotta fake it till you make it.”

  Brooks led Lefty to the skeletal remains of the swing set. “I buried the guns under there.”

  “Why do you have a swing set?”

  “When I get bored I go out and swing,” said Brooks dryly.

  “You wouldn't get too far without swings.”

  Brooks just looked at him.

  “So where did you get the idea to bury the guns?” asked Lefty.

  “I saw it in a movie, I think.”

  “You always do what you see in movies?” asked Lefty. “Do me a favor, Brooks. Don't watch Silence of the Lambs. I don't want you to start eating people.”

  “I mostly only watch westerns,” said Brooks. “John Wayne, Randolph Scott.”

  “John Wayne has a movie where he buries guns?”

  “I don't know,” said Brooks. “He might though.”

  “We've only got one shovel. Who's gonna dig?”

  Brooks grinned at him. “You're the one holding it. Beauty before age. How's that line go? There are two kinds of people: guys with guns and guys who dig. And you dig.”

  “That's from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But you ain't got no gun. How you gonna make me dig? You gonna write me an IOU that says you'll shoot me after I dig up the guns?”

  Brooks grinned. “I can go back into the house and get my gun.”

  “You really are a pain in the ass,” said Lefty.

  He started digging. As he did he asked, “You like Tulsa?”

  “It's not bad. I've seen better, I've seen worse.”

  “Have you been many places in your life?”

  “Not really. I went to Vietnam.”

  “What was that like?”

  “It sucked. It was the kind of place that makes you appreciate what we've got here.”

  “I didn't know you were in the Army.”

  “There's lots of things you don't know about me, kid. After being in the Army, getting paid to kill people made sense,” said Brooks. “I guess you could say Uncle Sam made me the man I am today. The Vietnam War was kind of a gateway drug for me. And the pay as a hitter was a hell of a lot better than what I made working for Uncle Sam.”

  “So you killed people when you were in the Army?”

  “I did a tour in Danang,” said Brooks. “I hated it, but it's funny. I don't know why, and I guess this isn't uncommon, but despite my hating it, I look back at that time now as the best time of my life. I don't know why that is. Was it really the best time of my life? Probably not, but I look back on that fondly. I was so young then. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I made a lot of friends over there, and I lost a lot of friends, too.”

  Lefty continued digging. He stopped for a second, leaning on the upright shovel handle, wiping his brow. “You wanna take over?”

  “I got a bad back,” said Brooks. “I'll tell you what: you keep digging and I'll make it up to you. I'll buy you dinner or something.”

  Lefty didn't really mind now that he was digging. So continued.

  “So when we get to Detroit, how do we find Bruno De Lorenzo?” asked Brooks.

  “He lives on the top floor of some hotel. I've gotta meet a guy when we get to Detroit. Some kind of broker, a middle man. He'll give me the details about the job, where to find De Lorenzo.”

  “I'm sure he's got security around him,” observed Brooks.

  “We can handle that. Does that concern you?”

  “No, but that's more work. We get paid two million dollars to terminate De Lorenzo, but we don't make anything for having to kill those other poor bastards working for him.”

  “It's a hard knock life,” said Lefty. “But still, it's two million dollars. I think we'll get by.”

  “But you have a contact there?”

  “I've got a contact. He's the guy who'll pay us when the job is done.”

  “Good,” said Brooks. “It would be a shit deal if we whacked De Lorenzo and then didn't get paid.”

  “We'll get paid.”

  “Another thing to think about,” said Brooks. “A contract this big, there are gonna be other hitters showing up, trying to muscle in. There's gonna be competition. Hell, for all we know De Lorenzo's already dead.”

  “That's why we need to hurry up and get our asses to Detroit. Hopefully we don't have any more stops to make after we get Dixie.” Lefty was about to make a smart-assed remark about Brooks bringing extra people along when the shovel struck something solid. He looked up at Brooks.

  “There you go,” said Brooks. “We'll get the guns up out of there, and then we're off, on our way to Oklahoma City.”

  Forty-five minutes later they were inside the Caddy, packed and ready to go.

  “Brooks is coming with us?” asked Layla.

  “Yes, Tator Tot.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The next place we're going is a place called Oklahoma City.”r />
  “Oklahoma City?” asked Layla. “What's in Oklahoma City?”

  “Nothing worth a damn,” answered Brooks.

  “Then why are we going there?”

  “We've got to meet another person,” said Lefty.

  Layla thought about this for a moment. “What's his name?”

  “It's a lady this time,” said Lefty.

  “Dixie ain't no lady,” interjected Brooks.

  Layla asked, “Is she gonna come with us, too?”

  “Probably,” said Lefty. “We won't know for sure until we talk to her.”

  Layla nodded, taking it all in stride. “Daddy, can we listen to some music?”

  “What do you wanna hear?”

  “Sam Cooke.”

  “The little girl likes Sam Cooke?” asked Brooks. He hadn't spent much time around kids, not since he'd had his own, and even then he hadn't spent much time around them. He was surprised that a small child liked Sam Cooke, especially in this day and age of hippity-hoppity music and heavy metal.

  “She's got good taste,” said Lefty, retrieving the CD from the carrying case.

  “She does,” agreed Brooks.

  “You like Sam Cooke?”

  “Who doesn't like Sam Cooke? Now that I think about it, Spook was a big fan of his music, too.”

  “He was,” said Lefty. “One of the man's only redeeming traits.”

  Lefty slid the CD into the stereo, pushed a couple of buttons, and Sam Cooke began singing “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

  “Nice choice,” said Brooks.

  Lefty looked at him. “You actually like this?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I just thought…”

  “I know what you thought,” said Brooks. “This might surprise you, kid, but I was in a parade with Dr. Martin Luther King once.”

  Lefty was visibly impressed. “No shit?”

  “No shit,” said Brooks. “Proudest day of my life.”

  “You're probably the only hitman who rode in a parade with Martin Luther King. How'd that happen?”

  “I was working in a car dealership. They were thinking of having one of their cars in the parade, but none of those racist old bastards wanted to drive in it because they were opposed to what King was doing. So I said, 'I'll do it.' They said, 'You support him?' I said, 'Yes, I do.' They didn't like hearing that, but I wound up driving in the parade.”