The Whale

by Lawrence Kelter

  Once they crossed into New Jersey, her father pulled the car onto the side of the road and let her out so she could ride in front. They sat in silence for the next fifty miles, Fiona chewing her nails and doing her best not stare at her father too closely.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he asked: “So what happened?”

  “A boy at school gave me a pill. I’m sorry I took it. I was stupid.”

  “You were curious.” He smiled. “It’s one of the best things about you. But you can’t take a teenage boy at his word.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I’m sure you’ll never do it again. Did the cops identify you?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t tell them my name. Didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Good. And I bet they’ll want to cover all this up. It doesn’t reflect well on a department when a kid steals an officer’s car. I’ll make some calls, see if anyone’s making an issue of it. If they are, well, someone down the line probably owes me a favor.”

  “Thank you.” Relief swept through her like a warm wave. She added the mileage from the highway signs and figured her body had traveled some hundred-fifty miles south while her mind orbited Mars. At least she had done it (somehow) in a single afternoon; she could plead illness at school tomorrow. Her mother, working yet another epic shift at the hospital, would have no idea what happened, provided her father kept his mouth shut.

  Fiona suspected he would. Her father never liked starting drama, and things had been powder-keg tense for a long time between her parents.

  Her father’s next question snapped her back to reality: “What was the boy’s name?”

  “August.”

  “What are you going to do to August?”

  She lashed out a foot. “Hit him in the balls.”

  Her father shook his head. “No, sweetie, that’s not good enough. You need to punch him in the face, not just once but repeatedly. You need to break his nose. Understand?”

  “I don’t want to hurt him for life. Or disfigure him.”

  “You’re such a kind soul, hon.” He squeezed her shoulder. “But if you break his nose, you’re doing him a favor. For the rest of his life, every time he looks in the mirror, he’ll remember what happened. The consequences of doing bad. So maybe the next time he wants to push drugs on someone, he’ll think better of it.”

  It made sense. August might have killed her with that pill. If he did the same thing to someone else, and they died, how could she live with herself?

  “In fact, when we get home, I have a gift for you.” Her father smiled. “Something that might help you out with your friend.”

  The gift was a pair of brass knuckles. Her father taught her how to hit with the added weight on her hand, using one of his worn-out punching bags in the garage. He demonstrated proper technique with his own steel knuckle-dusters, which had a little spike on the pinkie edge (“It’s for opening beer bottles,” he joked). They had a weekend of real father-daughter bonding before he had to leave again.

  The next time August saw her behind the shed, between fourth period and lunch, his eyes sparkled with relief. “Thank God,” he cried, arms spreading wide for the hug. “I don’t know why the hell you wandered off like that…”

  She hit him hard in the face, twisting her hips like her father taught her. The brass knuckles crunched the delicate bones around his nose, and blood flew. She let him fall to his knees without punching him again; her father might have advocated crippling someone who crossed you, but Fiona figured she would show August a little mercy. After all, he had given her the most exciting afternoon of her teenage life.

  “Why did you do that?” August blubbered through his bloody hands. “You’re nice.”

  “You have no idea who I am,” Fiona said, wiping the brass knuckles on her jeans. She didn’t know who she was, either; not really. But she intended to find out.

  This Past Monday

  1.

  They were halfway to the airport when the big black car tried to kill them.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Fiona saw it swerving across three lanes of highway, its fender aimed at their cab’s rear panel. Classic pursuit intervention technique, beloved by cops the world over. No time to scream. She had her seatbelt buckled, as she always did in cars. She grabbed Bill by the shoulder, pulling him toward her, her arms cradling his neck and head.

  Their cabbie never saw it coming. He was too busy talking about making a fortune in real estate, through some scheme involving credit cards and home equity loans. Fiona loved how everyone in New York had a hustle. The cabbie’s last words (“I’m paying the mortgage, double-time, okay?”) were interrupted by the mighty crunch of steel on steel, and his head smacked the scratched plastic partition between the front and back seats, painting it red, as the cab flipped onto its side.

  Bill’s heavy body crashed into Fiona, blasting the air out her lungs. Her face pressed against the cracked window, gravel on the other side—they had stopped on the shoulder. She smelled gas and scorched rubber, felt a slick warmth on her back. She was cut, but how bad?

  “Haven’t we suffered enough?” Bill braced his feet against the partition, levering his body away from her.

  Wincing at the ache in her ribs, Fiona unbuckled her seatbelt and twisted around until her legs were under her, feet flat on the window. She stood, pressed tight against Bill, their heads a few inches below the door that had become their ceiling. She reached behind her back and felt the source of the blood trickling into her waistband: a clean laceration to the right of her spine, long but not deep. Her shirt would staunch the bleeding until she could slap a bandage on it. Hopefully.

  Stuffing a hand through the broken cash hole in the partition, Bill stabbed two fingers into the driver’s bloody neck. “I think this dude died, dear.”

  “Losing half your skull tends to do that.” Fiona drew her pistol and checked that the safety was on. “Cover your eyes.”

  Bill did as he was told. Gritting her teeth, Fiona reversed the pistol in her grip and smashed it against the window one, two, three times until it shattered into a gummy mess, each blow sending fresh pain down her arm. Using the pistol-barrel as a rake, she swept the broken glass from the window-frame, then poked her head into the open air. Nobody took a shot at her. Traffic along the highway had already slowed, dozens of faces gawping at her through windshields.

  The black car was nowhere in sight.

  That was weird. What kind of professional didn’t confirm the kill?

  “Get the bag,” she said, pushing through the window. Her every joint and tendon begged for mercy: too many weeks on the road, too many fights, too many tumbles and punches and falls. The cab rocked under her weight, threatening to tip over. She stood, arms out, surfing it as she sought a good place to jump.

  “Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Bill shouted, and their bag sailed out the window. Because it was filled with lumps of gold, it flew only a few feet before thudding onto the white strip that separated the shoulder from the roadway. Fiona leapt after it, ears pricked for sirens.

  It took Bill a little more effort to squeeze free of the cab. He jumped and stumbled hard, hands flailing for balance. Fiona already had the bag looped over her shoulder, its strap biting into her bruised flesh. She needed to call their contact at the airport, the man who would have changed their gold into cash for a hefty premium. Plans had changed. The new plan was hiding out and staying alive.

  Dragging Bill upright, she led him toward the small thicket of elms beyond the shoulder. Her body felt like a crumpled soda can, everything bent and broken, her pulse too loud in her ears. How much longer could they go before she collapsed?

  “I’m done with this shit,” she told Bill as they ran. “We need out of this life.”

  2.

  The Dean was pissed.

  Or pissing, if you wanted to get technical about it.

  “You might think this is barbaric,” he said, unzipping his f
ly. “But trust me, the desecration is appropriate to the situation.”

  Having justified his actions to God and man, the Dean unleashed a spray on the thick Persian rug, swirling his hips as if trying to scrawl his signature in urine. He whistled a song through clenched teeth, tuneless and off-key. His dark-suited men, lining the walls on either side of him, struggled heroically not to laugh.

  At the enormous desk behind the Dean, Simon also fought to keep his expression neutral. His round sunglasses helped, but it was hard to keep his lips from peeling into a snarl. He busied himself with lighting a cigarette, telling himself: best to let this pizdá get it out of his system. I can always have a rug cleaned, and a war is something I don’t need right now.

  The Dean shook out his last drops, zipped up his fly, and swiveled on his heel. His eyes blazed with fury. From the jacket of his herringbone suit he drew a thin cigar, bit the tip, and spat a wet nub of tobacco at the silver bowl on a nearby table. “Now,” he said, patting his pockets for a lighter or matches. “Where was I?”

  “You were blaming me for Fiona and Bill,” Simon said.

  “Yes, and you didn’t seem to be empathizing properly, so I made an example of your rug.” The Dean, finding no fire for his cigar, snapped his fingers for Simon’s gold lighter on the desk. “Fiona comes to the city, asks for your help, and you not only give it to her, but you neglect to tell me?”

  “I don’t work for you.” Simon blew a smoke ring, making no move to hand over the lighter. “You and I are business partners, out of convenience. And your conflicts are not mine.”

  “That’s what you think.” The Dean took the seat across from Simon. “Speaking honestly, when Bill first stole that money from me, and Fiona joined him, I pictured it as a small issue. Just send men with guns.”

  “A straightforward solution. How many has she killed?” Simon asked.

  “Enough to give me heartburn.” The Dean began to reach for Simon’s lighter, and stopped. It was clear from his expression that he wanted Simon to hand it over, to complete this little power game. When Simon crossed his arms and leaned back, smoke trickling from the corner of his mouth, the Dean’s cheeks reddened.

  “It’s not easy replacing men with guns,” the Dean continued, adjusting his collar. “Not like you can go online and just order more, two-day shipping, satisfaction guaranteed. And now Fiona and Bill are back in the city, merrily wrecking things left and right, which just draws attention to us. You included.”

  “I am not concerned,” Simon said. “What bothers me is, how you discovered she came to me.”

  “We have eyes everywhere. Who crashed a car into her cab?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Someone rammed her taxi off the highway. Not long ago. We have the video. Security camera on a building nearby.” The Dean frowned. “Fiona and Bill ran off. They’re hurt, albeit not badly enough for my tastes.”

  Simon shook his head, wondering (not for the first time) what kind of man used words like ‘albeit’ in everyday speech. “Fiona and Bill make enemies like a dog picks up fleas.”

  “Well, it wasn’t my men who crashed into her.” The Dean, rather than suffer the indignity of begging for a light, chomped the unlit cigar. “So, who the hell did?”

  Simon shrugged.

  “Our purchased cop, he said the cab was on an airport run. They’re trying to get out of town.” The Dean laughed. “We have people at every airport, and Penn and Grand Central, and as many subways as we can cover. We will expose those cockroaches to the light, given enough time. Keep that in mind if she reaches out to you again.”

  “I’ll remember my rug,” Simon said. “Hundred dollars per square foot.”

  “As if you didn’t have the funds to repair it.” The Dean pointed the cigar at the lacquered woods and gold-leaf highlights of Simon’s office, the antique furniture, the ornate paintings hanging on the walls. “Fiona appears, you tell me. No equivocations, no prevarication. Understood?”

  Simon stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray by his elbow and lit a fresh one. His next smoke ring drifted into the Dean’s face. “I understand perfectly,” he said, stuffing the lighter in his pocket.

  The Dean’s cheeks colored heart-attack purple. “Fine,” he hissed through a tight throat. Slipping his unsmoked cigar into his vest, he stood and marched for the door, his men falling into line behind him. “Otherwise, this all ends in tears for you.”

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