Chapter 21: Down These Mean Streets

"My girlfriend just broke a man's face right in front of me," Max said.

They were driving down the road back into the good end of Arcadia Bay towards the Embassy Suites. Chloe was going six over the limit, her heart pumping quicker than she'd have liked.

"I did," Chloe said.

"Does doing shit like this scare you at all?" Max asked. "Jumping off of cliffs? Going up to dangerous criminals and pistol-whipping them?"

"Of course it does!" Chloe said. "I'm fucking terrified!"

Which wasn't entirely true. Sure, Chloe was scared, but she was always scared after she had done stuff that could have killed her or landed her in prison. Before the fact, she just did what she thought needed to be done.

"Why did you pistol-whip a man in public?" Max asked.

"Because that's one of The Bull's henchmen. Cracking him across the face is gonna piss The Bull off."

"You want… to make The Bull… angrier?"

"Yeah," Chloe said. "Angry people are stupid people. I go up and ask him politely, then The Bull might actually do something smart. If I bitch-slap one of his people in full view of the public, he'll be nice and dumb for when I see him tonight. And I know he's gonna go after the bait I just set for him… Does that make sense?"

"Not in the slightest."

Chloe nodded. She had that one coming.

"You don't think any less of me for seeing me do that?"

"No," Max said. "I mean, he's one of the ones who beat you up last night, right? Then I guess he deserved it."

Max said that way too fast.

"Oh my God!"

"What?" Max asked.

"You liked it!"

"I did not."

"You did!" Chloe said. "You're filthy!"

"I'm not an animal," Max said. "I can control myself."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah."

"Okay then," Chloe said. "Do you remember when we kissed the morning after we broke into the Blackwell pool?"

Max looked at Chloe. "Yeah?"

"Then you remember that you rewound it so you could do it again."

This one caught Max by surprise. Her eyes widened and her jaw went up and down as she cycled through all the responses she could have made to that statement before she finally said…

"You shush."

"Three times, Max!"

"You never shush when I tell you to shush!" Max said. "Always with the not-shushing!"


Security had lessened somewhat from the night before, as Chloe and Max did not have to submit to any security procedures from police or hotel staff upon their entrance to the lobby. It could have been because the staff were familiar with the two of them, but if Chloe could walk in with a gun smuggled into her jacket (which she was doing at that very moment), then who knows what else anyone could have smuggled in?

Chloe and Max got to their room and shut the door behind them. Chloe unzipped her jacket, put the unloaded pistol on the table in the living room, and let off a long, loud yawn.

"You didn't sleep last night," Max said.

"No, I didn't," Chloe said.

"Go lay down."

"Max," Chloe said, "if I crash now, I'll be down for the count until, like two in the…"

"Go lay down," Max said. "I'll be in there in a minute."

Max was in Mother Hen Mode. She would be doe-eyed, saintly, and almost impossible to argue with. Chloe threw her jacket on the couch, kicked off her boots, and walked into the bedroom to plop down on the bed on her side. Max came in and lay down behind her.

"I'm always the Big Spoon," Chloe said, shifting to turn around. She was stilled by Max's hand softly clutching her tattooed arm.

"You'll be the Little Spoon today and like it," Max said. She reached under the back of Chloe's tank-top and unhooked the back of Chloe's bra… which had the exact polar opposite effect of lulling her to sleep.

"Oh, Max. How will parents explain to their children how filthy you are?"

"Pervert," Max said. She had a way of saying things so that you could hear the smile in her voice. "I'm scratching your back. I didn't want my fingers hitting bra-strap."

"Oh," Chloe said. "That… That's cool, too."

Max went to work on Chloe's back. Chloe closed her eyes. As good as this felt, she didn't think she had it in her to fall asleep.


Chloe was only asleep for an hour until the phone in the hotel room rang. Max picked it up and started her conversation. Chloe got up, and she felt on her skin that Max had re-hooked her bra after Chloe had fallen asleep. She would say this about Max: she picked up after herself.

She rubbed the crud out of the corners of her eyes as Max hung up the phone and turned to her.

"The Bull called the front desk," Max said. "Nine-thirty at the old Pan Estates."

Chloe looked at Max and nodded. Max picked up the remote for the bedroom TV and turned the set on. She flipped through channels until she found a college football game in the upper-thirties.

"Football?"

"I don't want to watch it," Max said. "I want to ignore it."

Max got onto the bed with Chloe and held her around her waist. Chloe put her arm over Max's shoulder.

The sat that way as the sun went down. As the play-by-play commentators on ESPN called Nebraska at Iowa State. The tableaux of the two of them on that bed was broken only by the occasional kiss to the forehead or cheek that one gave to the other.

Eight o'clock came.

Chloe kissed Max on the forehead and got up off the bed. Max followed her into the living room. Chloe put on her jacket, got her boots back on, and rummaged through the plastic Wal-Mart bag from the previous night and came up with the box of thirty-eight caliber bullets.

Chloe sat down and opened the cylinder of the revolver. She could hear Max jump at the sound.

"Sorry," Max said. "This just got… really real for me right now."

Chloe wordlessly turned her attention back to the gun and began to quietly load the cylinder with six bullets. She closed the cylinder and softly placed the gun back on the table, with the barrel facing away form the both of them.

"Do you know how to use this?" Chloe asked.

Max could only stare.

"It's easy," Chloe said. "The safety's off, so you don't have to worry about that. Don't get fancy and aim for the head. Don't look down the sight. Just take it in your hand and point your fist at whoever comes through that door that isn't me."

"You're not taking the gun?"

"No."

"And you're not taking me?"

"No," Chloe said.

Chloe got up and went to Max. She tried to take her in her arms, only for Max to take Chloe by the wrists.

"I don't want you to go."

"But you know I'm going," Chloe said. "And you know that you don't want to stop me, either."

Tears started forming in Max's eyes. "I went through so much to save you," she said. "It can't end like this."

"Max," Chloe said. "If I don't do this, The Bull won't stop until we're dead. And nobody will be able to find Jennifer Healy. If I don't go, then… I wouldn't deserve you."

"You do deserve me, Chloe."

"If I pull this off," Chloe said, trying not to start crying herself, "then I might start believing you."

Max let go of Chloe's wrists. Chloe and Max took each other in their arms and kissed.

They had to break away from each other eventually.

"Tell me you'll be back," Max said.

Chloe stopped. She thought what she was heading out the door to do was the most dangerous thing she'd ever done. She didn't want to give Max false hope, or be made a liar of after she had died.

But then she thought… Eh, fuck it.

"I'll be back," Chloe said. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Max said.

Chloe turned around. She had her hand on the door.

"Chloe?"

Chloe looked at Max.

"What if the roles were reversed five years ago?" Max asked. "If you had my powers, would you have sacrificed Arcadia Bay to save me?"

Chloe sighed and smiled.

"To save you," Chloe said, "I wouldn't have stopped at just Arcadia Bay."

Max managed to cry and laugh at the same time.

"Well, now I just feel rude…"


They had yet to tear down Pan Estates for the simple reason that no one had actually bought the property to tear it down. It was technically still owned by Prescott Development, which had picked up roots and moved to Washington State. So in the depths of the forest surrounding Arcadia Bay, there sat a compound which consisted of two buildings filled with luxury accommodations, with a mansion at its front, awaiting a grand opening that never came.

Chloe got out of The Beast and made her way to the mansion. Standing at the main door was The Second Guy.

"Hold it," he said as Chloe was about to enter. "You know how this works."

Chloe spread her arms and legs out and The Second Guy frisked her. The only thing that she had on her besides her wallet and keys was the burner phone that she had gotten from the police evidence shed at Big Bob's Storage.

The only illumination that was afforded them was provided by the moon, but even in this darkness, Chloe could see The Second Guy's face. He recognized the phone.

I figured as much, Chloe thought. The Bull probably buys these for his guys in bulk. That's gonna make what's coming next a whole lot easier.

The Second Guy handed the disposable phone back to Chloe and opened the door to the mansion for her.

The lobby of the place was massive, made all the more cavernous by the lack of furniture. What was in the lobby however, were battery powered lanterns. They weren't placed haphazardly, no, they were spaced evenly around the room, as though put there by an interior decorator with a budget of fifty cents. If Chloe didn't know any better, she'd have thought The Bull had placed them himself.

Chloe followed The Second Guy through the door at the rear of the lobby.

This was what Chloe assumed to be the conference room of Pan Estates, smaller than the lobby, but not by much. Where Chloe imagined a massive and ostentatiously expensive conference table would go, there was the same kind of cheap wooden table that professional wrestlers liked to put each other through, upon which a single battery powered lamp provided the room's only light. A folding chair was set in front of it, and The Bull himself was sitting in another folding chair behind it.

And deep in the room's long shadows, there were roughly ten of what Chloe surmised to be The Bull's henchmen. Multiple body types and ethnicities were accounted for, a veritable Benetton advertisement of low-lives and criminals.

He wants an audience, Chloe thought. Good.

The Bull squinted in the low light to see her, and laughed.

"Shit," The Bull said. "Was the water in the ocean so cold it turned your hair blue?"

Chloe didn't say anything. This seemed to throw him off a bit.

"You wanted a sit-down," The Bull said. "So… sit the fuck down."

Chloe did so. As she did, The Bull reached into a canvas bag that was at his feet. He took out a meat cleaver and placed it on the table between them. He smiled.

"Girl," The Bull said, "you go against my orders. You kick me in the balls. You hurt my people in public. And you have the fucking nerve to make demands of me. All you've done is make your death even slower. So I'm gonna tell you what's gonna happen."

"No," Chloe said. "I'll tell you. We're gonna sit here and talk. It won't even be for five minutes. We'll just talk. I won't even get out of this chair. But by the time I'm done, I'll have taken you for everything you have. You'll have nothing except your life. And you know what, Bull? You'll beg me to take that, too."

The Bull rubbed his eyes. Chloe noticed that he wore a gold pinky ring, as if he couldn't get any less appealing than he already was.

"I wanted to see you sweat," The Bull said. "I wanted to hear you beg. I'll still get it though. Your attitude isn't gonna solve anything."

"Sure you did, Bull. You put out mood lighting, you invited your guys to watch you kill me. I seem to recall you saying that you were a dramatic motherfucker."

"Some might call it a flaw," The Bull said, "but I like to consider it a quirk."

"Now that that's established," Chloe said, "why didn't you want me looking into who killed Justin Williams?"

"Because it's none of your fucking business."

"Because Arnold Trainor was the one who killed him. Why didn't you want me figuring out why?"

"Fuck… You."

"Because if I figure that out, then I figure out a bunch of things that go along with it."

Chloe reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the burner phone. She held it up so everyone could see it. She looked into the shadows, and from what she could see from the faces of the criminals in attendance, she could see a flicker of recognition. Chloe's confidence built a little bit more.

"This," Chloe said, "is a disposable burner phone. Pre-paid. Now I'm thinking a lot of you have seen phones like this before. I'm willing to bet that some of you have phones like this on you right now. It's a smart move, Bull, buying these for your guys. It's not exactly as though it's easy to hack one of these, or trace it like you could an iPhone. No internet connection."

The Bull shrugged his shoulders, as if to say So?

"But this," Chloe said, "is a special burner phone. This is the phone Arnold Trainor had in his possession when the cops found his body."

Chloe flipped the phone open and turned it on. She hit a couple of buttons.

"There were two calls placed from this phone," Chloe said. "Only two. The first one was to the Arcadia Bay Police Department, telling them someone broke into Justin's house after he died. The someone wound up being me. Murder is murder after all, and if I go up for it, he doesn't. But the interesting part of this whole thing is the second call he made. A number with a 703 area code. That's in Virginia."

"Someone shoot her," The Bull said.

"Know what's in the 703 area code in Virginia? Besides Virginians?"

"Someone shoot this piece of shit!"

"Quantico," Chloe said.

She didn't say it loudly. She didn't put any emphasis on it. But Chloe could feel the temperature in the room drop.

"I'm sensing some of you know where I'm going with this," Chloe said. "And I'm sensing some of you don't. Quantico is where the FBI training academy is. Arnold Trainor was an informant for the FBI."

The Bull rubbed his eyes and looked at Chloe again.

"Alright," The Bull said. "You want me to come clean? I'll come clean. Arnie ratted on us to the FBI. He was my boy. He was the boy of every man in here. I killed Arnie, because as much as my boy he was, you don't go against me, or my crew."

Chloe could hear the room shuffle around her, but she kept her eyes on The Bull.

"Dude," Chloe said. "Do they call you 'The Bull' because you're completely full of shit?"

The Bull blinked.

"You rolled out the red carpet for me. You put out lights, invited your boys. You don't just want to kill me, Bull, you want to make an example of me, and all I did was snoop around a little bit. You're a dramatic motherfucker, like you said. And you're asking all of us to believe that you killed an FBI informant inside your crew, and you're just telling us about it now?"

Chloe let that hang in the air. She heard a bit more shuffling around her. One guy coughed.

"Being as we've just now learned we can't get an honest answer out of you, Bull, let me ask everyone else here a question. You guys see any black vans rolling around Arcadia Bay recently? Because I haven't. Has anyone you guys didn't know try to get into The Bull's organization? Y'know, guys with crew-cuts and dick-tickler mustaches that just scream 'I'm a Federal Agent?' Because I'm guessing the answer is no. And the reason the FBI hasn't hit this town like a ton of bricks is because they still have an informant inside this crew. And I'm pretty sure, Bull… I'm pretty sure it's you."

Dead silence.

"You and Trainor were tight," Chloe said. "Tight enough that maybe he wanted to take you with him. Of course, if he cut a deal with the FBI… and you cut a deal with the FBI… I'm thinking no one else here did. I'm not an expert in this kinda thing, but I'm willing to bet that an entire organization going down in one fell swoop makes for a sexier headline than just the guy at the top. That'll get that government funding rolling in."

The Bull stood up.

"That's just adorable, Chloe. It really is. But you shouldn't underestimate my guys by thinking they're dumb enough to believe that. Right?"

The Bull looked at his assembled crew in the shadows… and no one said a word.

But one guy did step into the light. The First Guy, to be precise. His nose was bandaged from the blow dealt by Chloe's gun that afternoon.

"How could you do it, man?" The First Guy asked.

The Bull looked shocked. "Grady? You're telling me you believe this shit?"

The First Guy (whose real name was Grady, apparently) started walking towards The Bull.

"I worked with you for five years," Grady said. "I killed and I stole on your word. And now you sell us out? You're gonna do us like this? YOU FUCKING CUNT!"

Grady launched himself past Chloe and over the table, tackling The Bull to the ground. Grady got to his feet and started kicking seven shades of shit out of the prone former crime boss at his feet. He stopped eventually, and Chloe could hear whimpering from under the table. The Bull was crying.

Chloe stood up and walked over to Grady.

"Could you give me his pinky ring, please?"

Grady glared at Chloe.

"Look," Chloe said. "I don't care how you resolve this situation, but I need proof that it was resolved. C'mon, dude, I just kept you out of prison."

Grady looked down at The Bull. "Gimme your ring, fuckhead."

A moment of struggle and a couple of more well-placed kicks later, Chloe had the ring in her hand, which she put in her pocket.

"Thanks," Chloe said.

"Just so you know," Grady said. "I don't think you'll even be able to get a weed hookup in this town after tonight. This doing-favors shit you do? It's not gonna fly anymore. You're bad for business. You and Arcadia Bay don't fit anymore."

Chloe wanted to tell Grady that she and the town never fit in the first place, but wound up not saying anything at all. She turned around and walked out.

She had gotten a couple of steps into the lobby when the air came alive with the sound of two gunshots in rapid succession.

The Bull was dead.

He may have been an awful human being, but The Bull was still a human being nonetheless. And now that human being was dead, thanks to her involvement.

Chloe wondered how good a person that made her.