Swimming with the Angels

by Colin Kersey

  Ramona made a gargling noise as blood coursed from her mouth. From my kneeling position, I dove into her legs, knocking her down.

  We fought on our knees as I tried to pry the gun from her hand. I managed to trap her firing arm beneath my armpit, but Ramona would not let go. She wrenched the gun, the barrel tearing the tender skin on the underside of my arm where Stu’s bat had left my skin black with contusions.

  I felt my skin ripping as I fought to free the gun from Ramona’s firm grip, and I grunted from the searing pain. I had become very fit from working at the farm, but Ramona’s arm was strong. Her free hand shoved me away. My spine bent as I refused to let go of the gun.

  The memory of my father’s face suddenly appeared. When I was fourteen, I had come to while lying on the kitchen floor, blood streaming from my nose. “Get up,” he ordered. “Be a man for once in your life.”

  My vertebrae began to twist and pop, and still I would not let go. Fortunately, she had only one good leg and, as I discovered, I had the better shoes. As our feet scrabbled for purchase on the concrete floor, my boots won out over Ramona’s shoes. With one foot, I managed to find enough traction to move her backwards, while I kicked her repeatedly in her injured leg with the other.

  “Kick her again!” Vonda screamed.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the blue flames reach Stu. He whimpered as they began climbing his legs.

  Vonda writhed frantically against the tie that bound her hands to the steering wheel. “The knife!” she yelled. “Grab the knife!”

  Through the blood running down my face and into my eyes, I saw the handle of the knife Valerie had thrown protruding from Ramona’s throat. How was she not dead already? I grasped it with one hand and tried to saw at her neck.

  Vonda whooped. “How’s that feel, motherfucker?”

  The hand that had clutched the gun so fiercely suddenly let go. Ramona clutched at her neck with both hands as blood gushed from her wound.

  I yanked the revolver free with one hand. With the other, I dragged Ramona between me and Arturo, using her as a shield.

  A bullet meant for me struck Ramona instead. I felt the impact as she gasped.

  I took aim with Ramona’s pistol at Arturo who fired at me again, the bullet whistling past my head. I began firing from where I lay behind Ramona. My first shots missed wildly, but the next shot connected, twisting the other man backward and he fell.

  Arturo tried to raise his gun. I shot him again, the sound enormous in the metal barn. I would have shot him yet again, but the hammer fell on a spent round.

  I pushed Ramona away and managed to stand, my legs shaking violently, the smell of gunpowder and blood making me gag.

  “Gray!” Vonda yelled. “Hurry!”

  I saw Virgil slumped in his chair. Stu was desperately attempting to chair hop away from the flames that were licking his chinos.

  Ramona writhed on the concrete floor as the hungry flames found and enveloped her. Somehow, she managed to roll to her feet and stumble out the door. Her blond wig remained smoldering on the concrete floor.

  Vonda struggled to free herself as the flames spread.

  I hit the wheeled chair Stu was in and kept going, pushing it out the barn door and across the recently mowed grass.

  It was a torturous hundred feet downhill to the big pond as Stu jerked and moaned. The smell of gasoline, burning clothes and flesh assaulted my nostrils. I gasped from the smoke and exertion.

  The last several feet, the flames began burning my arms and hands. I picked up Stu and the chair like I was a Viking berserker. Rage and adrenalin overcame my injuries and fatigue as I reached the water and tumbled into it, drenching us both. I held onto the chair to prevent Stu from drowning until I was sure the flames were out. Then I dragged Stu, still tied to the office chair, from the water.

  I needed to save the others. Before I could leave, a dark shape rose suddenly from the water and seized my leg.

  At first, I feared it was a third killer. Then I saw the blade handle still protruding from Ramona’s throat.

  “Nada mas!” I yelled. I slammed the heel of my hand into the knife handle with everything I had. The blade bit into bone. Like a light going off, Ramona collapsed.

  I left her floating face down in the pond.

  Still tied to the chair, Stu was moaning and sputtering, but was alive.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  Valerie was breathing, but shallowly with blood bubbling from her mouth. For a moment, I saw Heide’s face, a pool of blood spreading beneath her on the floor of the boat, and I begged, “Don’t leave me. Not again.”

  “Momma said…you would…come.” She blinked once and then she was gone.

  I looked up to see Vonda, still tied to the John Deere riding mower. “Hurry, Gray. Help Daddy.”

  I cut Vonda loose with a knife. While she called 911 from the office, I pushed Virgil a safe distance from the flames that were dying out and freed his arms. The older man was either passed out or having a heart attack. When I saw that he was breathing and had a pulse, I went back to sit with Valerie.

  There was no word to describe my fatigue. All the energy had been sucked from my bruised body, and I began to shiver uncontrollably.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I could have laid there in the grass all night, staring at the sky as the stars came out and the frogs began their chorus, but there were people with questions.

  Two sheriff deputies drove me to the emergency room to have my hands bandaged and forehead stitched. At the police station, they wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and set a cup of coffee in front of me. They wanted to know why two Mexican nationals with long criminal records, wanted by both Mexican and US authorities, would show up at an isolated trout farm intending to kill everyone.

  “Got any aspirin?” I asked. It was going to be a long day.

  Patsy was waiting for me when I arrived back at the trout farm. It was late. I led her to the cabin, poured water into an empty dish from a previous meal, then climbed onto the cot.

  Vonda woke me the next morning wearing only a bathrobe. “You okay?” She held a glass of brandy. One breast peeked from beneath her robe.

  I sat up stiffly, still wearing the clothes from the night before. They smelled of smoke and were soaked with blood and water. I felt like hell, but I was alive.

  “Daddy’s still at the Skagit Valley Hospital. They want to monitor his heart for at least twenty-four hours. Stu’s at Harborview in Seattle. They say he’ll make it—thanks to you—but he may not walk without assistance for a long time, if ever, due to the scarring.”

  I nodded, too tired and too emotionally spent to speak.

  “You said you knew where the money is,” she said. “A hundred million dollars.”

  Her black eye had started to fade. Vonda was still a very attractive young woman. Now, however, she would be dealing with an invalid for however long they stayed married, which probably would not be long. As for myself, I was never going to be able to live a normal life, regardless of whether I was able to retrieve the money. There would always be another Ramona and Arturo.

  “I was just trying to save lives.”

  She nodded. “I saw you with Valerie,” she said, studying me. “You loved her?”

  “Not the way she wanted. You saw her, the way she was. Those cuts were not all recent. She needed help.”

  She sighed. “Now I get to live with the guilt from being a poor sister, too.” She studied the toe of one of her moccasins. “So, tell me, Grayson Reynolds, is that even your real name? What are you planning to do?”

  “I’m leaving, soon as I can. Before any more crazy-ass killers show up looking for me.”

  “You’re leaving me with nothing,” she said. “Just a husband who’s an invalid and this.” She held up the glass.

  “You’ll be okay, Vonda. Quit selling yourself short. You are pretty and smart. And now, you’ll be twice as rich.”

  I thought she might throw the brandy at me, b
ut she took a drink instead.

  ***

  Catania showed up the next day as I was cleaning up and packing my few things. There was a knock on the cabin door followed by the appearance of the agent’s head. “Okay if I visit for a spell?”

  My hair was still wet from taking a shower and I combed it back with my fingers. “News travels fast.”

  Catania sat on the chair. “It seemed appropriate to make sure I had a handle on the situation and apprise you of where you stand.”

  “New boots?”

  Catania stretched his legs and looked down at the shiny black alligator boots. “Nice, ain’t they?”

  “’Ain’t they’? You probably haven’t been here more than an hour or two and you’re already starting to talk like a local.”

  “Mimicry. It is a gift. Or a curse. Depends how you look at it.”

  I frowned. “So how much time do I have?”

  “Maybe a day or two more than last time,” Catania said. “The good news is you killed two of their best. The bad news is…” He paused. “They were pissed off at you before, so you can imagine how they feel about you now.”

  I was back to where I started. Where could I go? What could I do to escape the cartel? The task felt hopeless.

  As if reading my mind, Catania said, “I might have a job for you. Driving a truck. One of those big interstate eighteen-wheelers. The kind with the bed and fridge and satellite TV so you never have to be in one place very long. I happen to know the owner. We do favors for one another from time to time.”

  I stared at him. “Wouldn’t I need a driver’s license?”

  “Yeah, you would.” Catania reached in the breast pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a new wallet. He flipped it open to show a Nevada driver’s license and a photo of me. “You obviously didn’t get this from me.”

  I fingered the license. It said my name was Ray Nelson, age twenty-four, of Las Vegas.

  “This is where you’re supposed to say, ‘What can I ever do to repay you?’” Catania said.

  “It might have saved a young woman’s life if you had come up with this solution earlier.”

  Catania grimaced. “I’d say there were trust issues. On both sides.”

  I nodded finally. “Thank you.”

  Catania held out a business card. “This is the friend I was telling you about. He’s expecting your call.”

  The FBI agent stood. When he reached the door, he turned. “Don’t forget what I said before about leaving breadcrumbs to throw them off your trail. Stay out of trouble and don’t stay too long in any one place and you should be fine.” He nodded and was gone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Eighteen-wheelers were lined up in the vast parking lot like a herd of wildebeests at a Serengeti watering hole and an acrid, hydro carbonaceous haze hung in the midday air. Drivers shot the breeze and topped off fuel tanks and radiators before tackling the infamous I-5 grade known as the Grapevine that I had just descended. The road immediately ahead of me, by contrast, was long, straight, and level and, as I had learned from previous trips, conducive to unplanned naps unless you were well fortified with caffeine. Which was why I was admiring the world’s largest collection of automotive deodorizers while I poured liquid that smelled like burned brakes and resembled used, thirty-weight oil into a Styrofoam cup.

  “Watch yourself, son,” cautioned a tall, sixty-ish guy with brush-cut hair who wore a denim vest, jeans, and a brass belt buckle the size of a dessert plate. “That’ll grow hair where you don’t need it and lose it where you do.”

  I stirred in the contents of a little plastic tub of flavored cream to improve the viscosity. Over the past few months, I had let my hair grow to cover the fading scar on my forehead and added a beard. I was in no immediate danger of losing hair anytime soon unless I discovered a barber in a truck stop, which was not out of the question. Some of these modern-day oases were like a miniature town with their own bank and post office.

  “That your long-nose Pete I seen in the back?” the older man asked. Long distance drivers, as I had quickly learned, were an inherently curious bunch.

  “Yep.” Another minute of this guy’s dialect and I would be back in West Texas, delivering newspapers before my junior high social studies class.

  “Nice rig. Where you pointed?” He emptied the pot into a metal coffee mug the size of a large thermos.

  “Portland. What about you?”

  “San Diego, Ft. Worth, Bozeman. Won’t see home for a good while yet.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Got a forty-acre spread up near Wenatchee. Now that is God’s country, for sure. But for the past thirty-three years,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the parking area, “I have slept in a cab more than a real bed. This might be my last year though. Wife says it’s time to call it quits, or she’s going to find a real husband.” He chuckled as he extended his right hand. “Name’s Tom.”

  “Ray.” I shook the hand that was offered.

  “What about you? Where’s your home?”

  “The truck.”

  Tom’s hazel eyes looked deep into mine. “Forgive me for being nosy. Other than Facebook, this is about the only time for socializing I get.” He pulled a battered leather wallet out of a hip pocket and dug out a business card whose paper resembled a bit of rag and whose type was faded and split by creases. “Don’t get a lot of requests for these, but a feller needs to have a phone number he can call in the dead of night, or a place he can just show up without an invite. The wife bakes a mean lasagna. Makes her own tomato sauce. You ever get up our way, give us a holler.”

  He paid, then waited while I did the same. Together, we re-entered the metallic glare and deafening exhaust of a departing Trailways bus. As I walked toward the truck, I wondered how much longer it would be, if ever, before I did not look like I needed a hand on my shoulder and a word or two of advice.

  ***

  I had been throwing the gym bag with my belongings in the back of the Toyota when I saw Virgil walking down the hill toward me. He had Patsy with him.

  “Was you thinking to just slide out of town, not saying nothin’?”

  “To tell you the truth, Virgil, I was trying not to think.”

  “Still ‘trying to just get by,’ I expect.”

  I recalled that first day, the tractor test, and the rain that pock-marked the ponds.

  “Listen, son. Can I still call you that?”

  “I don’t deserve to be called that. I cost you your daughter.”

  Virgil held up a hand for me to be silent while he fought back raw emotion. I waited, not having adequate words to begin to apologize for Valerie’s death.

  “You were right about Valerie needing help,” he said. “Just like you were right about a lot of things. Fellow at the morgue said she had been hurting herself for a long time. I missed seeing it, just like I missed seeing what was happening with Stu and Vonda. They wanted out of here so badly, they didn’t care who got hurt.”

  I couldn‘t think of anything to say.

  “How are you doing with all this?” he asked.

  “I have to admit, I don’t understand.” My voice quavered a little which embarrassed me.

  High up in the mountains, the leaves of maples and alders were already beginning to turn red and yellow-green and an occasional larch tree blazed with gold fire. Fall would come early this year.

  “I thought it was just me,” I nodded at the sky, “but he doesn’t care about anybody.”

  Virgil spat on the grass as we stood by the small concrete pond, empty now, where he had first told me about the trout that lived there. “Young man, you have a great deal to learn.” He turned to look at me with pale blue eyes that had aged at least two decades in the past twenty-four hours.

  “She’s with him now.” He paused to wipe his eyes with a sleeve. “And her momma.”

  Virgil gripped my shoulder with one large and heavily veined hand. “Vonda says you got a job as a truck dri
ver. A piece of advice. The road is long. It has got its treacherous, rocky parts with no shoulder or places to pull off and rest. And it has got other parts so pretty and sweet you will forget the painful ones. Stay awake. Learn from both the good and bad. Do not go blaming God for what you do not understand. His ways ain’t our ways. And remember, the Good Book is the only road map worth its salt.”

  ***

  On the way out of town, I stopped at the Burlington Library. By now, the librarian was used to seeing me. He took one look at my face and froze.

  “What happened?”

  “Car accident.” According to Vonda, the bloodshed at the trout farm was all over the news and the last thing I wanted was any additional notoriety. “I need to use one of the computers.”

  I had written down a short list of passwords that I had thought long and hard about. If I was right about Heide and her fondness for Istanbul, the cultural center of Turkey, there were several ways to disguise it so it would not be obvious but would be easy to remember. First, I opened an account on the TOR network to disguise the computer’s IP address and its location. Now no one would know if the computer I was using was in Burlington, Washington, or Bangalore, India. After logging on the bank’s web site, I hesitated. I had only three chances to get it right, because once I called up the bank’s login page and attempted to sign into the account, it would set off alarm bells if I failed. I looked at my short list of possibilities, took a deep breath, then typed. If ever there was a longshot, this was it. But what the hell.

  The great thing about hiding money today is that there are many ways to do it. I might not be as smart as Heide or her friend, Jeff, in IT, but I knew a little about cryptocurrency from reading up on the latest technologies at the Burlington Library. Bitcoin was just one example of a blockchain ledger protected by cryptographic algorithms.

  Within an hour, I had created an anonymous digital wallet and sixteen-character private key. To make it even more impossible to track, I opened an account in a third-party service that, together with my TOR account, would guarantee my privacy by combining my transactions with dozens of others so that no one, including the IRS, FBI, or Sinaloa Cartel, would be able to trace the account or track the amounts being transferred. The problem with digital currencies is its limited purchasing power until it is turned back into cash or something else of value—which risks exposure. But that was getting easier every day as more and more banks and businesses accepted them.