“Something is in my leg… My leg is messed up!”
Axel peered a bit closer, and noticed the guy’s leg was in fact covered in blood.
“Well, ain’t that too bad? You’ll probably lose that leg if ya don’t get help soon. Guess the folks back home will call you ‘Hip Hop,’ if you survive tonight, huh?”
“Please just get us to the hospital… just…” The guy stopped speaking, as if it required more energy than he could muster.
“I’ll leave you here to die a slow and painful death, and shoot your friend in the head, put him down like a sick dog, if you don’t get to singin’ purty like a bird named Taylor Swift. Now you answer my damn question.”
“…You’re going on the witness stand. They don’t want that,” the driver blurted, his eyes wide and red. Seemed he’d gotten a second wind. Perhaps staring into the barrel of a gun so close to his face made him perk right up. Like a cup of coffee.
At that moment, Axel realized this wasn’t simply about some revenge plot. He’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, walking in on some big timer trying to cover evidence of a murder he’d committed, then Axel had the unmitigated gall to wipe him off the face of the map. No one in their squalid organization cared if it was self-defense. In their eyes, he should have taken that bullet. He’d compromised whatever was going on, but most of all, he’d seen too much and because of that, the case was ruled a homicide, rather than an accident.
“Witness? Who thinks I’m going to court?”
The driver stared at him. The guy in the back kept coughing. A dying cough. The kind that didn’t last too long, for the end was near.
“Seems to me you’ve got two choices. Talk, or death. I want a name, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll light a cigarette and toss it down on you fuckers and have my own bonfire. Smores galore.”
The driver’s face went from expressionless, to sheer panic. Axel walked around the other side of the car, pulled out a knife he always kept in his boot, and sliced into the gas tank.
“No! Nooooo!!!!”
“Yeah… You smell that? That’s time tickin’ away. It’ll make things easier for me. I’m tired of havin’ to explain myself to the police. If I shoot you motherfuckers, I have to go down to the station and clear my name. Again. Not this time. I want no part of this. Mmmm… that gasoline sure smells good though, doesn’t it? I always wanted to try Texas Barbecue.”
“They don’t tell us names! We’re just runners, man! Small fish!”
“Lies. I fucking hate liars! And let me tell ya right now,” he leaned against the car and peered down at them, “I’m going to make you keep talking until you tell me the truth, and to make sure of that, just so you know, I’m going to make a call to check ’nd see if all that information you tell me pans out. I have connections, too. I know people, and someone that high up, who can have me tailed and harassed for months on end from states away, has some power. He wouldn’t send tiny fish out here to get rid of me. He’d send people he trusts now that I keep icing his people. Naw, you’re special to him. People he thinks can do the job. Now, that type of guy has made a name for himself, for sure. Folks in the life would know. Tell me his name, and if you’re lyin’ to me, the discussion is over. Won’t be no call to the EMT. Won’t be no more chances. It’ll be just you and ‘Backseat Bullet in the spine Betty’ here, burnt to a crisp.”
“Okay… I’ll tell you! His name is… Thunder.”
“I want his real name. Not that street cred shit!” He slipped a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and then a lighter.
“OKAY! OKAY! His name… his name is Clyde Martin! Parker Davis, the guy you killed at that house, the one you were cleanin’ up, worked directly under him. They don’t want you talkin’ to the police and district attorney, man. They need you gone.”
He in fact had been contacted by the Houston District Attorney regarding this drug-dealing group from H-Town. The murder he’d accidentally uncovered led to an FBI investigation, who already had the ring under surveillance. There was a slew of charges which included kidnappings, extortions, drug trafficking, larceny, sex trafficking, witness tampering, and countless homicides. Considering what happened, he was asked to be one of the eyewitnesses, but hadn’t made up his mind yet.
Looks like they want to make it up for me.
Axel took a few steps back, placed the cigarette and lighter in the grass nearby, and slipped his phone out of his pants pocket. He didn’t miss how the driver strained to turn his head and listen in.