Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz Page A

away.
    Clarence was anxious. He wouldn’t be anxious about capping Nail. That kind of thing was old, old news for him, and probably wouldn’t even get him to look up from his desk as he dispatched somebody to take care of it. It was something else. Might be he had bigger problems. Might be he needed some help.
    Nail jumped down off the loading dock platform and got in the backseat of the car. The driver, a big dude wearing a stocking cap, nodded at him.
    Clarence came down the stairs, around the other side, and got in back as well. His bodyguard got in the front. A good sign, Nail figured.
    The driver took the car around the building and headed toward the street.
    Clarence spat into the bottle again. Nail kinda wished he’d use a can or something. The brown juice sloshing around the bottom of the bottle was visible through the clear plastic, and it was goddamn disgusting. He forced his attention from it.
    It was all Nail could do not to ask where they were going. It would be useless—he’d get no answer, or one he couldn’t trust—yet basic humanity made him feel that the question ought to be asked.
Stupid
.
    â€œI got dead guys, Owens. I got guys in jail.” Clarence rolled the bottle between his hands. He wouldn’t look at Nail, just kept staring at the open mouth of the bottle.
    â€œThat’s rough,” Nail said, “but it ain’t got nothing to do with me or DeWayne.”
    â€œYeah, well, I don’t know about that.”
    Nail waited, but Clarence didn’t add anything.
    â€œYou looking for him?” Nail asked.
    â€œWhat do you think?”
    â€œI think you got your money. You don’t need nothing else from him.” Clarence’s expression remained flat and skeptical, so Nail continued. “Look, he didn’t rat. The cops picked him up—”
    â€œThe feds picked him up.”
    â€œSix of one, half a dozen of the other.”
    â€œNot really.”
    â€œAnd they gave him a hard time, and then let him go when they didn’t have shit.”
    Clarence spat. “Yeah? How do I know that?”
    â€œâ€™Cuz I’m telling you.”
    â€œUh-huh. Dead guys, guys in jail.”
    â€œYou know my brother didn’t have nothing to do with that.”
    â€œI got a guy says he saw him leaving. That’s all I need to hear, till I can talk to him.” He coughed. “Got a guy says he saw you leaving, too.”
    â€œYeah. Cuffed and dragged.”
    â€œAnd here you are, while I got dead guys and guys still in the can.”
    â€œYeah, well, it turns out they can’t charge you just for being present at a massacre.”
    â€œHmm.”
    Nail couldn’t tell where they were headed. This part of town, everything was seedy strip malls, all pawnshops and payday loans, sometimes with sorry-looking brown palm trees to try to dress them up. The car could be going in circles, for all he knew.
    â€œWant to tell me what you were doing there?” Clarence asked. He’d stopped staring at the bottle, and he’d fixed his gaze on Nail’s face.
    â€œHad a friend in trouble. Thought I’d get her out of that shit before she got hurt. That didn’t work out so good.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    The driver pulled into a cracked, rutted parking lot. There were maybe a dozen cars parked here, most of them at least ten years old and battered. Two of the suites in the strip mall were vacant, and one of those had had its main window smashed out in some long-forgotten act of vandalism. Next to it, a noodle joint, and next to that a weary-looking hardware store.
    The driver brought the car around back to another loading dock. The one behind the hardware store, Nail was pretty sure.
Lots of bad shit in a hardware store.
The thought came unbidden, and with it the sickening tang of his own fear.
You wanna fuck somebody up, here’s the too
ls.
    â€œGet out,” Clarence said. “Something I want you