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  YELLOW MEDICINE

  a novel by

  Anthony Neil Smith

  Copyright 2008 Anthony Neil Smith

  Originally published in print by Bleak House Books in 2008

  Cover Art by Erik Lundy

  E-reader Version

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  To Brandy, the best thing I found in Minnesota.

  *

  Thanks

  ...to Victor Gischler & Sean Doolittle (the Original Crimedogs)

  ...Eric Obenauf for advice and good vibes while writing this.

  ...to Allan Guthrie for all the support and hard work, and mostly for believing.

  ...to the Bleak House gang—especially Ben, Alison, and Veronica—for “getting it” and giving this dirty little baby a home.”

  PRAISE FOR YELLOW MEDICINE

  “On my list of the most original voices in crime fiction today, Anthony Neil Smith easily makes it into the top five. YELLOW MEDICINE is a terrific read, a crime noir bullet-train ride on unsafe tracks.”—Scott Wolven, author of Controlled Burn.

  “YELLOW MEDICINE gets its hooks into you from its first turbulent pages. It is the novel's complicated, captivating hero, Deputy Billy Lafitte, who holds you from beginning to end. He’s a liar, a cheat and a pretty bad guy, but so richly rendered that, before you know it, you find yourself following him through the darkest of terrains, and eagerly.”—Megan Abbott, author of the Edgar-nominated Queenpin

  “YELLOW MEDICINE starts with one of the most memorable and engaging anti-heroes in recent memory. Mix in bent cops, a psychobilly band called Elvis Antichrist, meth cookers in the Minnesota sticks, and a truly nasty pack of wannabe jihadists. Add a liberal helping of guns, knives and explosives. You're gonna love it.”—J.D. Rhoades, author of A Good Day in Hell and Safe and Sound.

  “Anthony Neil Smith has taken the stark, freezing landscape of rural Minnesota and brought it to life with an injection of Louisiana Hot Sauce in the form of Deputy Billy Lafitte. A violent, bawdy, thrilling, edgy, gut-churning masterpiece.”—Victor Gischler, author of Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse, Pistol Poets, and the Edgar-nominated Gun Monkeys.

  “Smith deserves credit for taking a risk by creating a character like Lafitte, whose private code of honor-if any-is far more obscure than an antihero like Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.”—Publishers Weekly

  “All in all, though, Smith has a powerful voice and delivers quite a romp, offering along the way a sort of Tony Hillerman glimpse into a part of the country that is not often the subject of crime fiction.”—Steve Glassman, Booklist

  ONE

  Today

  After two weeks of being shuffled around to similar bland cells, bland interrogation rooms, and bland Federal types asking dull-as-dishwater questions about my “contacts in the criminal underworld,” Agent Rome finally walked into the room. I’d wondered when that would happen. I was worried about Drew, hoping she had made it back to safety. I wondered how the murder of Graham, my ex-brother-in-law and boss, would be received at home—both in Yellow Medicine County and with his family down South. I wondered how many people would blame me. Maybe Rome had the answers.

  I’d been given a loose blue outfit, some rubber slippers. Real prisoner gear. No one had told me what I’d done wrong. They just asked question after question after question of which I could only answer a few. They were unhappy with the answers, but kept asking the same questions anyway.

  They had fucked with my sleep, so I only figured out the date when a lazy agent brought in a folded USA Today and I scanned the headline: “Congress Stall On” and the rest was out of sight. Could be that our little adventure with terrorism was being hidden from the public. Fine with me. That had been the point of the trip to begin with—make the lunatics go away.

  Then, Rome.

  All Federal in his suit and tie, ID badge hanging around his neck, carrying a laptop computer, a legal pad, and some pens. He was alone, although he stopped at the door a few seconds, delivering a lunch order to one of his peons. Lunchtime. Could’ve fooled me. I thought it was more like two in the morning.

  He closed the door, grinned at me from across the room. “Deputy Lafitte, you’re not holding up too well, are you?”

  He was the first familiar face I’d seen in a long time. Tall, thin, black, with military hair. “Please tell me you’re here to get me out. It’s just a big mix-up, right? You only now heard I was being held against my will, right?”

  He made a pathetic little grunt before stepping over to the table, pulling back the chair slowly, maximum scrape across the floor. He sat, opened the laptop with his bony fingers. I scoped out the rest of his haul—the legal pad was blank. I imagined he’d try to get me to write a statement of some sort. Not a confession. He wouldn’t call it that. No, a “statement” by a material witness to help reel in the bigger fish. I stole a look at his wristwatch. 11:30. Put that together with the lunch order and I had my bearings. Or maybe not. Could’ve been a ruse again.

  “It’s not that easy,” Rome said. He took on the posture I’d seen from other administrators when they wanted something—leaning forward, fingers laced together, middle of the table. Tell me your secrets, and I‘ll give you a hug. “I’ve been fighting to get in for a while. It was only when I convinced them that I was sure you’d talk to me if given a chance. We can clear this up, then we can get you out.”

  Lies. All lies. I slouched low in my chair. “I’ve told them everything I know. You know me, man. You were there when those dealers almost killed me.”

  His eyes flicked to the side. Camera in the corner, someone on the other side of the glass. Maybe he hadn’t told them about that night.

  “You remember? The girl with the gun? How you nearly let them kill me instead of stepping—”

  “That’s enough. They tell me all you’ve given us is bullshit, night after night. You should come clean.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  “Really, Billy?”

  I shrugged. “You think I like it here? There aren’t seventy virgins waiting for me in the afterlife, so you think I’m lying for the sheer fun of it?”

  Rome looked at his screen. The blue reflection off his eyes made them seem holographic.

  He said, “Where’s Paul Asimov?”

  No one had asked that yet. They’d all gone straight for the stuff about the terror cell in Detroit. I’d wondered if they had realized my former partner was even missing.

  He waited a moment. Pushed his hands closer to my side of the table. “Hm?”

  “I haven’t seen Paul in a long time. He came to my house, told me what was going on. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Rome’s leg was bouncing under the table. His teeth tugged his bottom lip. The guy needed to ease up.

  “And that’s that?”

  I shrugged. If they had found pieces of him along the road, his stuff at my house, I could say I didn’t do it. The terrorists did. “Paul fucked up. He made a big mistake. If I could bring him to the table right now, he’d try to make things right, tell you everything he knew. The problem is that I have no clue where he is.”

  Rome nodded. This was a game of “Gotcha!” if I’d ever seen one.

  He spun the laptop around so I could see. On the screen was a jpeg of a face. Looked like it was made of clay or wax, and it resembled Asimov just a bit.

  Rome said, “That’s him, right?”

  “Close.”

  “You know what this is a picture of?”

  I almost
had it, something I’d seen on TV, something they’d done with old skulls.

  Rome’s grin crept higher. “Yeah, that’s right. Facial reconstruction. Got a skull but no ID? We let some of our people do the math, throw some clay on there, see who turns up. This time it was your buddy Paul.”

  I cleared my throat. I had to act surprised. “He’s…dead?”

  “Exactly. All chopped to pieces. We’ve only recovered half of him.”

  I couldn’t look at the screen. Seeing his fake face was more gruesome than remembering what we’d done to the body. At least that was an act of kindness. “Jesus.”

  Another minute or two slid by in silence. Rome broke it with, “You didn’t ask where we found him. You want to know?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Come on, throw me a bone.”

  I shook my head, closed my eyes.

  “I’ll tell you anyway. A wild dog in Wisconsin was chewing on charred scalp.”

  I gagged and tried to hold back, couldn’t. Rome grabbed the laptop away just in time. There wasn’t much in me, but I couldn’t stop. Sad pools of pink-tinged saliva. Maybe I had a bleeding ulcer. Then just dry heaves.

  Rome was quiet in the back of the room. He finally knocked on the door, told the agent standing outside to hand him a box of tissues and a Sprite. A couple of minutes later, he brought them back to the table, pushed them across.

  “Take a few minutes, clean yourself off,” he said to me. “Man, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Heard nothing but praise from the Sheriff about you. Fooled me one hundred percent.”

  I wiped my lips, layered a few tissues across the wet spots on the table. The smell of the stomach acids was still heavy in my nostrils. I took the Sprite, sipped, felt the burn push through my esophagus.

  “But now we’ve got all this evidence that says you’re just as dirty as I first suspected. Don’t you want to tell me all about it? Make you feel better.” He smiled. Why’d he have to smile?

  I coughed, felt a sting at the back of my throat, then said, “I don’t know what else you expect. I did my job. I wasn’t involved with terrorists. I didn’t make any deals with them. I just wanted to protect those kids.”

  “Yeah, good job you did.”

  “How was I supposed to know?”

  He rested his elbow on the table, leaned his chin against his fingers. Looked bored. “It’s only a matter of time before your story will get wobbly. Facts will contradict you. Until then, I’m just a dentist. One tooth at a time.”

  “And when it doesn’t wobble?”

  He shrugged, slow-blinked. “I said a matter of time. Didn’t say how much time. We’ve got the whole calendar cleared for you.”

  I was confused. If Rome had the proof, the rest was gravy. No need for his tough guy bullshit. That told me half of this act depended on my response. But I couldn’t shake the feeling he was hiding something big.

  “Why don’t you ask me something?” I said.

  “No need. I’ve already told you, I’m your last shot. Those guys in there—” he nodded towards the glass. “They want to scare you. Want you to do the hardest time there is. Traitor time. Even the baby-rapers will spit on you. Seriously, talking as friends here, I don’t want to see that.”

  “Good buddies, right? This how you treat your friends?”

  He laid his hand on his chest, mock-hurt. “I don’t chop them up and scatter them across three states. Yeah, after finding parts of your old partner, I started thinking maybe you weren’t so innocent after all. And even if it wasn’t you, I don’t see you giving me what I need to put his killers away.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Losing two friends in one week, knowing I was the only one connecting both of them, if I had spoken then, it would be to damn myself to hell. But maybe I’d do that on my own time, not as a “guest” of my own government.

  Rome waited me out a few minutes, then said, “But hey, Billy, after what we’ve been through? You can still come out okay. All that corruption is like rust. You can sandpaper it off. There’s a boy scout underneath.”

  “I appreciate that. Really sweet coming from an undercover man. Takes a real good liar to pull off that sort of work, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded, eyes on the table. He pulled the cap off a pen, laid it on the legal pad. Slid it over to me. “Your involvement with this group, from the first time Paul Asimov brought it to your attention until you were found in the backyard of the house where the cell operated, possibly a witness or participant to a double homicide.”

  “I want a lawyer.” A phrase I never expected to say.

  And a response I never expected to get.

  He laughed. “You didn’t just say that. And I mean, literally, you didn’t just say that.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Hell, shout it out loud. Write it on the walls in blood. I’ll still say it never happened.” He leaned closer, dropped his voice. “Is this real enough for you yet? Do we have an understanding?”

  I looked at my reflection in the mirror, imagined emotionless black-suited automatons with FBI stamped on their foreheads.

  “What happens to me after I write the statement?”

  Rome gave it some thought, tried to think of a way that wouldn’t sound like a lie, I supposed, since there was no way I would be set free.

  So he said, “Tell us the truth, and maybe it won’t be so bad for you.”

  How bad could “not so bad” be? A few privileges—maybe a TV in my cell? More exercise time? Slightly better food? Protection from rapes and beatings?

  Nothing I could say would get me out of their web. Exiled from the real world.

  I shoved the pad across the table. “Not good enough.”

  He turned angry, lines wrinkling his face.

  “We don’t make deals.”

  “I’m not asking for anything. It’s just that I won’t make up lies to get myself a nicer pillow in prison. Waste more of my taxes on me if you want, but it won’t change the story, wobbles and all.”

  Veins on the backs of his hands swelled as he balled his fists. “We are all on the same team, my friend.”

  “I used to think so.”

  Another staredown. This time Rome didn’t keep up the charade very long. He said, “You know where you are right now?”

  I looked around the cramped beige walls and said, “Your rec room?”

  Flicker of a grin. “Outside, I mean. In the open air.”

  I had no idea. I hadn’t even known the time for at least a week until I saw Rome’s watch. I’d been blindfolded when I was moved, carted around in silence for hours on end. I was in a small jet once without the blindfold but with the shades drawn. Must’ve been at least an hour or two in the air. Not given much sleep. Not given newspapers. Soundproof cells so I couldn’t eavesdrop on the guards’ conversations. And this motherfucker wants me to guess where I am?

  “Disney World?”

  “Exactly. Of course. You’re in line for Space Mountain as we speak. Try again.”

  I didn’t take the bait. The games were tiring, working my brain to find an answer only gave me more possibilities to trip up.

  He finally said, “You’re not far from home, actually.”

  Where exactly was that? I was born and raised in Mississippi, and only moved to Minnesota after Hurricane Katrina. “Can we go to the beach, then?”

  Rome straightened in his chair, his face long with surprise. “Hey, good one. I‘d forgotten about that. No, I meant not far from Pale Falls. We’re in Minneapolis.”

  The thought of being back made my heart beat a little faster, made me think about Drew, Graham, Layla, Ian, Heather. I missed the place, the people. The emotion was a surprise. I’d only come to think of Yellow Medicine as home when it looked like I might lose it. What I’d hated about Minnesota wasn’t the people or the scenery, not when I really thought about it. What I had hated was me in Minnesota, the bitter and disgraced me that could take any sunset in any big sky and turn it into som
ething ugly. Bringing me back after all this, though, he might as well have castrated me. I’m sure the natives would’ve wanted to. Yet I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to be.

  “So?” I said. “My cell in Minneapolis looks like my cell in Detroit or Chicago or wherever the hell else you’ve shuffled me.”

  He sighed. A good performance. “Just thought you’d like to know how close you are to the people you betrayed.”

  “I never betrayed--”

  “Hey, you can be noble in your own head, but I’ve talked to Spaceman’s mom. I told her the truth, how you probably had something to do with his disappearance and left her hanging. How those guys she described that met you in the diner were working out financial details for your part in their scheme. You want to deny it?”

  Pissing me off. He saw me as his one-way ticket to Washington D.C., a cozy office, and the power to change lives—or ruin them. I didn’t blame him. He was doing his job, doing it well. Wasn’t I trying to achieve the same thing, just under the table? Rome was the good guy. I was Samson brought low by my own arrogance.

  “Keep it up,” I said, just trying to rile him up. “You’ll get promoted right out of this backwater. They always need another token black guy to help fight the evildoers.”

  He reached across the table and slapped me hard. Felt like a brick. The look in his eyes, I was surprised they weren’t on fire.

  Call it a reflex. I was instantly on my feet lunging for him, but the shackles on my ankles fucked me up. Arm muscles tightened as I reached for his neck with my fingers.

  He was safely away, hands on his hips while he waited me out. But I raged on. Screamed myself hoarse. Fought through nausea and fear, even though I couldn’t make it past the table. I’d rather die of a stroke than let these bastards manipulate my strings.

  Rome let me pulse and yell and swipe and pound my fists on the table until it wasn’t funny to him anymore. “You just flushed your whole life down the drain, you understand?”