Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
The Escalade didn’t belong on that construction site.
It gleamed under the morning sun, smooth and shiny like a beetle’s shell, surrounded by dusty pickups and battered work trucks that looked like they’d lived their whole lives in mud and gravel.
Two men stepped out.
They didn’t look like construction workers either. Black jeans. Snakeskin boots. Silver rings flashing on their fingers. Their printed shirts had the cuffs buttoned neatly, but the tails hung loose outside their belts like they didn’t care about dress codes.
One of them wore a straw Stetson-one of the good ones. Three hundred bucks, easy.
They moved carefully across the rutted dirt lot, stepping around puddles and a wide patch of muddy water that still hadn’t dried since the rain two days ago.
The place was growing fast.
A hundred acres of land just off the highway exit had turned into a forest of half-built rental blocks. Concrete frames, scaffolding, stacks of cinder blocks, and the constant hum of machinery filled the air. The buildings were going up almost as fast as people could move into them. By the time the first row of blocks was laid on a thirty-unit building, the leases were already signed.
Times were rough around here.
Ever since the Toyota plant shut down two years ago, jobs had been scarce. But temporary housing for people trying to get back on their feet? That business was booming.
The two men from the Escalade headed toward the lunch wagon where a group of workers stood in line, waiting for coffee and egg biscuits.
Without hesitation, they cut in front of one of the men.
There was a quick exchange. Just a few quiet words. No shouting. No anger.
Then the man stepped out of line.
The three of them walked off together toward the back of Unit Six, disappearing behind the half-built structure and out of sight of the others.
From a distance, it looked harmless.
Just three guys looking for somewhere quiet to talk.
Isaac Kane watched the whole thing from inside the cab of a company pickup.
The truck blended in with the rest of the vehicles scattered around the site. Same dust. Same dents. Same Wiley & Manners Contract Construction logo painted on the door. The only thing that hinted it wasn’t just another work truck was the light bar bolted to the roof.
Security.
Isaac’s job wasn’t obvious either, unless you noticed the windbreaker he wore over his button-down shirt and jeans. Across the back, in big white letters, it read:
SECURITY.
Otherwise he looked like any other foreman on the site-Timberline boots, company ball cap pulled low, coffee cup in hand.
He had just finished the graveyard shift, watching the site overnight.
Places like this were magnets for thieves. Stacks of cinder blocks, power tools, lumber-thousands of dollars’ worth of materials could disappear before sunrise if no one kept an eye on things.
Isaac took a slow sip of his black coffee.
In a few minutes he’d clock out.
Maybe go for a run. Maybe hit the gym before heading home.
He sipped the coffee and watched the three men walk away from the lunch wagon toward the corner of the nearest unit. The laborer was known to him or at least familiar. Young guy. He’d been here since the work started six months ago. Dropped off six days a week before sunrise by the jobbers who brought illegals to the site in buses or vans. He was brother or cousin to some of the other men on the crew. Always joking and laughing with each other but all business at hammer time. Guatemalans from their accents.
The trio walked out of Isaac’s line of sight. He set his coffee in the holder and stepped out of the Silverado to walk around the back of Unit Six himself awhile.
The young guy was on the ground. The hombre in the straw hat was standing with one foot on the fallen man’s chest. He leaned on the bent knee to show the prostrate man his teeth.
“You still owe us,” straw hat said. Guat accent like the man on the ground. They preyed on their own. Second oldest story in time.
“We owe you shit,” the man on the ground said. He got a silver-tipped boot in the kidneys for that.
“We paid you. Five thousand each. Our families paid,” he said, folding up.
Coyotes.
“That was a down payment. You know this word? Now you pay us, every week. Fifty bucks.” Straw hat put more weight on his bent knee. The man under him grunted.
“What if there’s no work?” the laborer said.
“There’s always work. Pick melons. Suck some dick. I don’t care as long as you pay the rent on you ass and I don’t have to come around here again.”
Straw hat stood up to step off the man under him, his full weight on the man’s ribs. The laborer drew his knees up against the pain.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
Straw hat and his partner turned to see a man, a tall gabacho , walking easily toward them from the early morning shadows of the three-story building of bare block and plywood. A rangy looking white dude in clean work clothes. His eyes were hidden by the shade of the ball cap on his head.
“A private matter,” straw hat said.
“That’s just it, sir. You’re on private property. Uninvited.” The tall white guy stopped ten feet shy of them and tilted his cap back. Straw hat could see the scars along the man’s brows now. There was hard tissue there, healed from many cuts and breaks. Straw hat did his share of boxing down in Guat City. He knew the signs of a guy who could take a hit.
“We have business with this boy.” Straw hat smiled.
“That boy’s business is working on these units. My business is to see that he does,” the white guy said. Professional and polite like a cop. But without the cop’s false smile. This guy wasn’t smiling or even trying to pretend to.