Deep Dirty Truth

by Steph Broadribb

  We have to stay focused if we’re going to get out of this alive.

  Back in the room, North is stretched out on his bed, asleep or as near as damn it. I lock the door, put the chain across and walk over to my go bag. I glance again at North, checking his eyes are closed, then take out the small bottle of antiseptic and the roll of black duct tape and head for the bathroom.

  Locking the bathroom door behind me, I put the tape and antiseptic down on the basin and take off my leather jacket. I gasp at the pain as it gets stuck on my left arm. Even though there’s a tear in my usually fitted jacket, it’s as tight as a tourniquet, but I have to get my arm free. I don’t want to cut the sleeve. If I do, North will know that I’m injured, and I don’t want that. He might seem happy enough to stick with me for now, but I don’t know his endgame. And until I do, I need for him to think that he’s in a worse way physically than I am.

  Gritting my teeth, I grasp the bottom of the left sleeve and yank hard and fast. The pain is quick and brutal. I feel suddenly light-headed, dizzy. Dropping the jacket onto the floor, I hold tight to the edge of the basin with my right hand and take deep breaths through my mouth.

  The left sleeve of my long-sleeved tee is crusted with dried blood and as tight around my forearm as the jacket. I can’t face the pain of pulling it off, and I can afford to lose the sleeve, so taking hold of the fabric where it’s been ripped by the bullet, I pull. It tears easily, peeling away from my upper arm like a second skin.

  My bicep is painted dark with dried blood. Pulling off the jacket has reopened the wound; a thick trail of crimson snakes down over the mottled skin. Leaning over the basin, I wash away the blood, cleaning the injury. The cool water feels as if it’s as cold as ice.

  It’s hard to get a proper view of the damage, so I use the mirror. As far as I can see the bullet scraped through the outside of my upper arm, leaving a track mark. Still, I need to be sure.

  Clenching my jaw, I press my fingers against my skin, feeling around the wound and checking to see if I can locate a bullet lodged in my flesh. The arm is inflamed and swollen and the pain of pressing it brings tears to my eyes. It’s so bad I think I might pass out. But I don’t feel any foreign objects. If I’m lucky – and I hope to hell that I am – the wound is a through-and-through.

  I take the bottle of antiseptic and pour the liquid into and over the wound. As it touches my raw flesh, the pain punches me in the chest and I bite back a stream of obscenities. Then I grab the duct tape and bind the wound together, hoping to stop any further bleeding.

  It feels like I’m going to vomit.

  I hold onto the basin. Inhale and exhale real deep. Eventually the sick sensation goes and I’m left with a pounding ache in my arm. I know I need medical attention; the wound needs proper cleaning and stitches for sure. Every minute without increases the risk of infection. But I can’t go to an emergency room – they’d notify law enforcement the minute I give them my name, so for now the antiseptic and the duct tape is the best I can do.

  Pulling my jacket back on, I check my watch: 09:31. Less than fifteen minutes until the time Luciano’s given me to get North dead is up.

  It’s time to make my choice.

  26

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st, 09:32

  Kill or let my family die? That’s no kind of choice. But the clock’s counting down and Luciano will take any indecision on my part as a choice to sacrifice Dakota and JT, I’m certain of it. I think back to Wednesday morning, before everything turned about face, remember JT standing behind Dakota, his brow creased in concentration as he focused hard on twisting her strawberry-blonde hair into two raggedy-assed pigtails, and Dakota sitting on the stool, grinning like a Cheshire cat on a sugar high because he was helping her get ready for school.

  It feels like there’s a knife twisting in my belly. I can’t let harm come to them.

  Can’t.

  Shoving open the bathroom door I march back into the room. North’s still lying on his bed, eyes closed, looking real pale beneath his tan.

  Without opening his eyes he says, ‘You call home okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I check my watch: 09:34. I feel a tightening in my chest. I have to make a decision.

  I recall first meeting North, before I knew he was a fixer and believed him to be a friend of Tommy’s. He was kind to me at a time when there hadn’t been many folks in my corner; he would have done more to help if I’d have let him. That still counts for something, I think; it has to.

  ‘They know you’re out here with me?’ North says, eyes still closed.

  ‘Yup.’

  I think about my conversation with JT. How he promised to get out of the apartment and move Dakota to somewhere safer. He’ll have to shake off the mob heavies watching them first; the guys that took the photo of him and Dakota down the barrel of a gun. Men so low on morals that they’d shoot a nine-year-old child dead as revenge for something her momma did ten years before.

  I feel my lower lip quiver and bite it to make it still. Feel the ache in my left arm getting stronger. Hope JT has enough stamina to get free and clear. No matter the tension between us, I have faith in him. And I know for sure that he’ll do anything to protect Dakota.

  Do what you need to do to protect our girl – that’s what he said to me. He will. And I will too, always have.

  Deep breath. Steady hand. Do what needs to get done.

  I stride around my bed to North’s. Stop alongside it, facing him.

  He opens his eyes. ‘What’s up?’

  I shake my head. Stare at him real serious. ‘No talking.’

  North pushes himself up to a sitting position, putting more distance between us. He’s frowning, his eyes searching mine for a clue to what’s happening. ‘I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. Lori, what are you…?’

  I pull the Wesson Classic Bobtail from my shoulder holster and point it at North’s head. ‘I’m sorry, North, but this is the only way. I kill you or Luciano kills my family, and then they kill you and me afterwards anyway. I can’t let my daughter die.’

  For a moment I think North’s going to attack me. But then he shuffles across the bed towards me. Leans in, pressing his head against the muzzle of the gun. ‘Go on then.’

  His reaction back-foots me. This man’s a mob fixer; where’s his fight, his will to live? I wonder if it’s a bluff. ‘Why offer to sacrifice yourself?’

  He looks up at me. ‘I’ve done a lot of bad shit in my time. Guess it’s about time I do what’s good and right. If killing me saves your kid, you best get it done.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘Sometimes things happen that you didn’t cause but you feel responsible for, you know?’

  I shake my head. ‘Help me understand.’

  ‘Luciano has a whole bunch of businesses he operates as a sideline. The Old Man conducts things the traditional way, honouring the old code. Luciano doesn’t. This got the Old Man concerned, so he asked me to keep a watching eye on Luciano’s practices.’ North exhales hard. Glances away. ‘I watched him shoot an eighty-four-year-old woman in the foot because she was behind on her rental payments in an apartment that was damp with mould and had cockroaches crawling across the kitchen floor. Saw him scald an six-year-old kid’s hand in a pan of boiling water because the boy’s meth-head mom had been skimming a few hundred bucks off the drugs money she made selling Luciano’s crystal. I saw these things and I didn’t intervene.’

  I frown. Feel sick at the thought of an old women and a young child being mutilated by Luciano while North just stood there and watched. ‘You did nothing?’

  North looks back up at me. ‘I didn’t stop what Luciano did. And he got worse – brasher and bolder. Thought he was untouchable. The things he did couldn’t be allowed to stand. He needed to be stopped and we – I – thought I could do it from the inside but … it didn’t go that way. So I went to the Feds and offered information about him.’ He shakes his head. ‘Like I said, I’ve done a lot of bad things in
the name of the Bonchese family, but I’ve always had a code, a line that I won’t cross. A man like Luciano, he has no code, no limit. He can’t be allowed to take over from the Old Man.’

  I stare at North. Keep the gun against his head. Think of Dakota and JT, and how we’d just gotten a fleeting taste of how it might be to live as a family.

  I tighten my finger against the trigger.

  It takes a real desperate kind of a woman to kill a penitent man.

  27

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st, 09:35

  Relationships, attachments – they’re a weakness in this business. JT knows that; it’s why he’s always been careful. He’s lived alone, been alone; kept distant from those who think they care about him. Always pushed them away when they got too close, too invested. Until now.

  He looks across at Dakota sitting at the kitchen table, concentrating on her math problem. Her braids have fallen forwards over her shoulders, the tip of her tongue’s poking out from her lips. Damn. It’s attachments like her that make you vulnerable. But ever since he found out, just a few short months ago, that he has a daughter, he realised he wouldn’t want things any other way.

  If Lori believes Luciano Bonchese’s people are watching the apartment he has no reason to doubt her. That means they need to get gone right now.

  ‘Dakota?’

  She looks up and grins. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Your momma’s going to be out of town a while.’ He tries to inject some excitement into his voice. ‘You want to have an adventure?’

  Dakota tilts her head. ‘What kind of adventure?’

  ‘An overnight one.’ He moves away from the counter, towards the door. ‘The rest’s a surprise. You ready?’

  She frowns. Doesn’t get up. ‘Something’s going on isn’t it?’

  ‘I just thought a trip would be fun.’

  ‘Aren’t we going to pack first? Mom always has us pack a bag each if we’re going on a trip.’

  He nods. He hasn’t got a proper handle on this parenting thing yet, but Dakota’s testing him, he knows that much. She’s a smart kid and he won’t be able to keep the truth from her for much longer. He’ll go along with Dakota’s thinking, but won’t let it stall them long. Once they’re free and clear he’ll tell her what’s really going on. ‘Sure, pack your bag. We leave in five.’

  JT’s rucksack is already packed – serving as a temporary go bag – so he slings it over his shoulder, closes the blinds in the front window and locks the apartment door. He takes hold of Dakota’s hand, and they head down the stairs to the parking lot.

  ‘So did you fix the math problem?’ he says.

  Dakota starts to answer, chattering away about the type of problem and how fives are her favourite number. He keeps the conversation going, but beneath the brim of his Yankees ball cap, his focus is on the surrounding area – windows and rooftops especially. Anyplace the mob might use to site a sniper.

  He sees nothing. But that don’t mean they’re not there, watching. They could be behind a drape in a high window, or too far back from the edge of a flat roof to spot easy from the ground. Rifle aimed at Dakota and him. JT walks faster.

  ‘Do you think I’m right?’ Dakota asks.

  He hadn’t heard what she’d said. Nods anyways. ‘Sure.’

  She slows her pace, and gives him some side eye. ‘I don’t think you were listening.’

  He forces a laugh. ‘Of course I was.’

  Dakota halts. Pulling her hand from his, she puts her hands on her hips and sticks her chin out. ‘What did I say then?’

  They can’t stop. They’re easy targets for a sniper. He needs her to move. ‘I’ll tell you in the car.’

  ‘No. Here.’

  Damn, she’s one stubborn child sometimes. That’s what comes from having a dad like him and a mom like Lori, he guesses. Dakota was always going to be a person who knows her own mind. But he can do without the sass now, needs more compliance. Giving her a stern look, he opens the door and folds the driver’s seat forward. ‘The car, now.’

  She looks pissed, then hurt. Biting her lip, she leaps into the back of the Mustang and scoots across the jump seats to the side opposite the driver’s. He folds the driver’s seat back and throws his rucksack over onto the passenger side. This parenting stuff is hard. He’s missed nearly ten years of Dakota’s life. Ten years of a daughter he never knew he had. He won’t miss any more, and he won’t let anything bad happen to her. Even if, sometimes, that means he has to act in ways she isn’t going to like.

  He climbs in. As he goes to pull the door shut, he hears an engine start up somewhere across the lot. Adrenaline fires into his blood. He takes care to act normal, doesn’t look round. Doesn’t want to alert them that he’s onto them.

  Over on the back seat, Dakota lets out a loud sigh.

  JT tries not to let it get to him. Strange really, how he’ll take a guy shooting at him less personally than a sigh from a nine-year-old girl.

  As he pulls away from the parking lot, and out onto the highway he keeps checking the rearview mirror. He’s fifty yards down the street when a brown sedan pulls out of the same lot and settles into the traffic, four cars behind.

  Just as he suspected, they’ve got themselves a tail.

  He cruises just under the speed limit, thinking on his next move. Takes Highway 27 out past Lake Louisa State Park. Needs to lose the tail before they turn onto I-4; if he let’s them follow him that far, there’s a chance they’ll guess where they’re heading. JT can’t allow that.

  The traffic gets more congested as they near the turn for Highway 192. The brown sedan is keeping three cars back. Problem is, a car like JT’s – a dark-blue, 1968 Mustang – is always going to stick out in the crowd. It’s not a car for a job like this, but it’s all he’s got. As they approach the next intersection, the sedan is forced to brake hard by an eighteen-wheeler changing lanes. As JT reaches the lights they start to change. This is his chance.

  Flooring the accelerator, he speeds the Mustang through the lights and takes a left. The signal turns red. The sedan’s stranded, blocked in by the eighteen-wheeler and a bunch more vehicles.

  JT steps harder on the gas, making the most of his lead. Passes Wendy’s, down Morning Star Drive, looping through the residential area. Keeps his gaze part on the road, part on the rearview. Waiting for a sign the tail’s caught up with them. Watching to be sure that they haven’t.

  In this business you make your own luck. Seems he might have got lucky.

  To be sure, he steers the Mustang a few blocks in one direction, looping back around, then going a couple of blocks in another. He takes his time checking and double-checking the brown sedan’s lost them. Then he heads around to Ashtown Chase and back onto Highway 27, a couple of miles back behind the turn they just took off it.

  JT settles the Mustang back into the stream of traffic, but he knows they’re not done yet. He stays alert to the vehicles around him, watching for another tail, or the return of the sedan. You can’t ever be too careful, especially with the mob. Especially when his daughter is in the car. He glances in the mirror at Dakota.

  She’s watching him, frowning. ‘This isn’t about us having an adventure, is it?’

  JT swings the wheel, accelerating hard to overtake a slowpoke red SUV. He says nothing.

  ‘It’s because of the bad guys, isn’t it?’

  He doesn’t meet her eye. Keeps his tone steady. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Momma and me got followed before. She had to lose them. That’s what you’ve been doing, right?’

  He’s not going to lie. ‘Yep.’

  Her voice is quieter when she asks, ‘Will it be like it was before?’

  Dakota’s seen more than a kid ever should. A few months back she’d been snatched, and it’d taken all JT and Lori’s smarts to get their girl back again … but not before Dakota had watched men die and nearly died herself. JT looks over his shoulder at her. ‘I won’t let anyone harm you.’

  ‘Okay.’ S
he’s silent a moment, her expression thoughtful. Then says, ‘Maybe I should learn to shoot a gun.’

  ‘You should not.’

  ‘Girls can, though. Momma can. Did you teach her?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So you can teach me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Your momma wouldn’t like it.’

  Dakota lets out a big sigh. ‘Guess I’ll have to use my slingshot then.’

  JT smiles. ‘I guess you will.’

  They fall into silence. He drives; Dakota plays some game on her cellphone.

  After another eight miles with no sign of a tail he decides it’s safe. Signalling right, he takes them out onto I-4, heading towards Tampa. He’s memorised Lori’s directions. He knows there’s sense in taking Dakota to this place, recognises the options it’ll give them should things get worse, but he’s feeling tense nonetheless. He doesn’t like the idea of involving someone else. But Lori trusts this guy, and JT trusts her, so he’ll do it.

  He takes the Mustang up to the speed limit and stays vigilant for vehicles that could be new tails. As long as they’re in this car and on the highway, they’re vulnerable.

  The drive will take them another hour.

  28

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21st, 09:43

  I hesitate before I press send. Luciano wanted a photograph of North’s dead body, and that’s what he’s getting. I hope that it’ll be enough: for JT and Dakota to get free and clear, and to give me enough time to get back to see the Old Man, explain what happened, and to try and make him listen to reason. It’s not an easy call, but it’s our best chance; our only option.

  I stare at North’s waxy skin; the way his dark eyes stare into nothingness; the crimson stain in the hairline just above his right temple and the scarlet liquid trickling down his forehead, underneath his ear and onto the grey carpet below. I feel sick, dizzy, and the photo seems to blur. I close my eyes, take a few full breaths, then open them again. They focus on the picture and I tap the screen, sending the image to Luciano.