Vengeance: Pulp World, #1

By Jim Ford

To avenge what she loves she must do what she hates...

After Angie Rice's husband and 5-year-old daughter are senselessly murdered during a drug hit in a small desert border town, the sociopathic sheriff, Buck Dankworth, displays the bodies of two Mexican men to the media and declares they are the killers.

Angie knows the real killers are being shielded by Dankworth, who is protecting his empire of crime and corruption. And she knows the only way she will get justice is by taking the law into her own hands.

A darkly engrossing thrill ride, Vengeance is a shattering tale of violence, corruption, loss and redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pulp Master
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201545260

Jim Ford

Jim Ford is the pen name of an award-winning thriller and horror writer.

Book preview

1

Even after all the blood and horror and tears and sorrow to come, it would be her burnt finger that Angie Rice would remember first when she thought of that day.

Because it had made her curse at her daughter, and those four words were the last she ever spoke to her.

Oh, for Chrissakes, Holly! she said as the kid, in her eagerness to get a glimpse of the birthday cake Angie was baking for her, crowded her as she opened the oven door to check if the cake had risen.

Crowded her and got her to put her finger on the hot metal.

Angie sucked her finger and went to the sink to rinse it under cold water and the kid wailed.

Pete, her husband, big sweet, gentle Pete, scooped the girl up and said, Come on, honey, Mommy doesn’t mean it.

Angie stood at the sink and closed her eyes and knew she should turn and smile and hug the girl.

But everything, the debt, the losses, the move from nice suburban New Jersey to this desert dustbowl, got caught up in the pain of the finger.

Along with the guilt of knowing that her daughter’s birthday wasn’t going to be the way it should be.

No friends.

Not enough money to spoil her.

And the cake was probably ruined.

The oven was cheap and didn't seal, and the glass was smoked black, and she’d had to open it to see the cake and now it had probably flopped.

Jesus.

Hey, Pete said.

Yeah?

Slow down, Ange.

Don’t manage me, Pete.

Okay, he said, we’re gonna go into town and get some ice cream.

You do that. You go get some ice cream.

Saying this in an accusatory, self-pitying way.

Hating herself for sounding like this and just not having any way to stop it.

They walked out and she heard the car—the shit-pile old Nissan they were forced to drive because the bank had taken their SUV along with their house and everything else, including her pride—churn and die.

Churn again and then fire and rattle away.

She turned and looked out the window and still could not believe where she was.

Could not believe that she wasn’t looking out of her kitchen window at the maples and the elms and the rear of the Cabot’s house rising over the foliage.

Hearing the dogs barking and the kids playing, and the hiss of sprinklers on lush green grass.

Now it was just desert.

And a hot, nagging wind.  

Tract houses rising from the dirt like ships adrift in a sea of dust.

She could see a sign, faded, tilting, banging, loose of its pole. An artist’s rendering of some fantasy.

TALLGRASS EXCLUSIVE HOUSING.

There was no grass, just sand.

There were no trees, no fences, just narrow concrete walkways leading from the front doors to the road like unfurled tongues.

The houses were mostly uninhabited.

Some developer had gambled that people would want to live here.

Few had.

Feral packs of adolescent boys on too-small BMXs came from God-knew where, laughing ugly forced laughs, and threw stones and broke the windows.

Last week one of them had flapped his fat pink penis at Angie when she’d gone out to berate them.

So she stayed inside now.

She went back to the oven, wearing a mitt and opened the door and looked at the cake and wanted to sob.

It had a dent in the middle like a sinkhole.

2

Buck Dankworth, a towel around his narrow waist, hummed along to Satie’s Gymnopédies as he shaved at the bathroom sink.

He was a shaving purist.

Mixed up a froth of foam in a cup with a brush.

Used a cutthroat.

The blade stropped to a hair-splitting sharpness.

He dried his face and patted on a bay leaf balm.

Wiping steam off the mirror, he combed his thick blond hair back from his forehead, squinting at himself through eyes as pale as broken glass.

A whore in Palestine, Texas, once told him he resembled a younger Brad Pitt.

But given her profession the compliment hadn’t resonated as much as if she’d been a civilian.

Lean and sinewy, he whistled and squinted and scratched at the scar beneath his left nipple. A knife wound given him by a Choctaw Indian, who’d all but severed his aorta.

He’d pulped the Indian’s head into the blacktop with a lug wrench before keeling over and nearly dying.

The scar had become an early warning signal.

A barometer.

It lay quiet when all was well and then itched like a bastard when heavy weather was incoming.

Putting these thoughts from his mind he left the bathroom, tongues of steam licking at him like lap dogs, and went into his bedroom.

It was spare as a monk’s cell.

A single bed.

A closet.

A teak bureau.

A wooden chair by the window.

No pictures.

No ornaments.

He changed the music, clipped a Montecristo Petit No 2, and set fire to it and stood a while at the window and looked out at the sand and the soiled hills in the distance.

He opened the bureau and removed a fresh pair of skivvies and stepped into them, adjusting the hang and the heft of his tackle.

Then he crossed to the closet and opened it and removed the perfectly pressed navy pants and pulled them on.

Last he shrugged on the tan short-sleeved uniform shirt, the sheriff’s six-point brass star gleaming like butter.

He tucked the shirt into his pants and buttoned it.

He sat on the bed and pulled on his boots, two little images of himself in the pointy toecaps.

Standing he took a gander in the mirror and liked what he saw.

He puffed and closed his eyes and blew a smoke ring that floated like a halo over his reflection.

He laughed, showing his fine white teeth.

He nipped the cigar and killed the music player.

He locked then both away.

He found the pack of Winstons and put them in his shirt pocket.

He loathed cigarettes, but that’s what he smoked in public.

He walked out to his Ford Expedition.

The house was on what had once been a horse ranch before his daddy had gone bust.

Just a little packet of land now.

He fired up the Ford and the painful warble of Hank Williams filled the car.

He hated Hank Williams like hemorrhoids, but that’s what he listened to out here in the world.

No Satie.

No Monte Christos.

In private he read the classics and drank cognac and smoked cigars.

In public he professed never to have finished a book, drank beer, and smoked Winstons.

Let them think they knew him.

They did not know him.

They did not know what he was capable of.

As he sped along a dirt road the burner phone in his pants pocket rang and he took it out and jabbed at it, wondering if the itching scar had been a portend.

Problems? he said.

Nope.

Then what?

Just informin you we’re good to go.

You’re calling for this?

Yessir—

Say my fuckin name and I’ll geld you with a pair of blunt wire cutters. Just get it the fuck done.

Buck killed the call and heard Hank moaning about how he’d had lots of luck but it’d all been bad.

He ripped the CD from the player and drove on in silence.

3

No mirror went ignored when Billy Truluck was around.

He was just too goddam pretty.

He’d tilted the rearview so he could check himself out while he lounged behind the wheel of the Honda and talked to Sheriff Dankworth.

Now he saw himself blink when the lawman dissed him.

He smacked the mirror away, catching the view of an old Nissan as it rattled by behind him and parked.

A big guy and a girl kid got out, kid’s hand lost in the guy’s mitt as they walked to the strip mall.

S’up? Harvard said from the shotgun seat.

His name was Elmore but he went by Harvard because he was dumb as a bag of rocks.

Very young, very skinny, hardly more than a boy.

He wore a pair of baggy blue jeans over work boots and a zippered pea jacket too hot for the weather.

A red cap with the numerals 14 in white above the brim sat slightly askew on his head.

His hair was dirty brown, falling in greasy strings over his collar.

All cool, Billy said.

So different from his companion.

Boy band hair, gelled.

Face of a fallen angel.

That’s what Father O’Malley’d said back at the boys’ home when he’s sucked his dick for coin.

But Billy was no fag.

Dressed in name brand sweats and running shoes that would keep a family of beaners in food for a year.

You ready? Billy said.

Yeah, Harvard sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

Loved the fuckin hillbilly heroin did Harv.

Billy reached for the sawed off and pumped it.

Checked the Glock in his waistband had one in the pipe.

Harvard, all fuckin thumbs, tried to ape him, checking out his piece, shoving it into his pants.

Careful you don’t shoot off your pee pee, son, Billy said, though Harvard was in fact two years older than him, just so stunted and malnourished with fetal-whatever-syndrome shit that he looked like a kid.

Leave the shootin to me, yeah? Billy said. You just wave your fuckin piece around like a hosepipe and look scary, okay?

Aw shucks, Billy, can’t I even shoot but one?

Next time, Harv. Next time, ’kay?

Promise?

Billy put out his fist and Harvard bumped it.

Didn’t need him going fuckin off script on him.

Okay, let’s do it. Billy rolled on a ski mask.

Harvard stared at him blankly.

Where’s the mask, Harv?

Ah... He scratched his pimples. Still at home I guess.

Jesus fuckin Christ, man.

Billy popped the glove box, rooted around.

Maybe he’d find a scarf or something.

Fucker owned the car was a neat freak.

But hey, bingo, he found a sanitary napkin, still in its wrapper.

He ripped it loose, pulled the backing off the tape.

Harvard gaped at him.

That’s a fuckin jam rag.

Hey, it’ll work.

He stuck it to the moron’s face and had to force himself not to laugh.

Nobody gonna fuck with you, Harv. Let’s do this.

Billy opened the door and slid out, weapons invisible beneath his sweats.

Harvard stood up and dropped his piece on the blacktop, scrambled to pick it up.

Billy sighed and walked toward the phone store between an ice cream parlor and an off-track betting joint.

4

Pete Rice felt the sun blast down on his balding head.

He squinted, blinked away the sweat that ran into his eyes.

God, this place was like Mars.

He felt Holly’s hot little hand in his and cursed himself for leaving her sun hat at the house.

There’d be freaking hell to pay when they got home if Holly was sunburnt.

His wife, once so breezy and confident and happy had morphed into a shrew.

He got it, really he did, but hell it was no picnic.

When Holly was born he’d quit his job at a sporting goods store and did the stay at home dad thing.

He’d loved it.

Angie was pulling down serious moolah at some investment bank.

To be honest he hadn’t even really understood what she did.

But it made them enough money to live in the nice house with the nice cars and take holidays in France, for Chrissakes.

Then the whole thing had gone belly up.

Big time.

Some insider trading thing.

Angie’s boss was in prison now.

She’d testified against him.

And boom everything just went away.

Angie couldn’t get another job.

And suddenly it was big Pete with the shot knees from playing wide receiver in the junior leagues all those years ago who had to man up and find a job.

He’d called in a favors from a guy from years ago and he’d landed a