by Robb T White
He didn’t know Dapper Man’s real name; there hadn’t been time for his usual recons.
I see what you’re up to. Taking your bar slut to your boat. Exactly what I was hoping you’d do …
Wöissell hummed a few bars of ‘Sinner Man’ and kept pace with the strolling couple. Dapper Man’s hand dropped lower until it rode the bump of her rear, her glutes undulating his hand with every pelvic swing. When they stopped to exchange a deep kiss, Wöissell diverted, beelined for the docks, but he needn’t have worried about being spotted. They were engrossed. Lust couldn’t wait.
He felt the thin piece of wire he’d retrieved from a dumpster by the Norfolk & Southern tracks and the scraps of cotton towel he’d padded the ends to protect his palms.
Oh, sinner man, where you gonna run to …
Chapter 31
JADE TRIED TO KEEP her foot from swinging too hard; no need to convey agitation if he were watching from a distance. She couldn’t rule it out. She knew Silva had eyes on her and she made a call to him, remembering to smile and show teeth as if talking to a lover.
‘Stop staring at me,’ she cooed.
‘Sorry.’
Twenty more minutes passed. An ice age. She figured the agents were halfway to Ashtabula. The festival crowds were mostly gone but a few stragglers and families remained gawking in shop windows or chatting in front of restaurants. The cops were just then removing the sawhorses blocking the westbound traffic. Soon, cars filled with twenty-somethings; the nightlife crowd would replace the families and tourists.
Bars of crimson-slashed clouds moved in stately rows beyond the breakwall, a celestial sarabande of beauty no one noticed. Full dark was still at least two hours away.
The Freightliner’s running lights came on and the big engine powered up. She heard it backing up, crunching gravel beneath the big tires, and with a whine of upshifting and release of air brakes, it pulled out of its space. That left the sandwich man’s truck alone on Bridge Street as the only concession truck. All the stalls were empty as far as she could see on both sides of the street. Just iron rod skeletons with canvas cloths rolled up.
She called Silva.
‘I’m going to check out the area down by the docks east of here,’ she said. ‘Keep your phone charged.’
She didn’t think there was any way Sandwich Man could be on to surveillance. His concession truck was an open invitation, and she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary in approaching his truck with Silva. Why wasn’t he in his truck? Would he return or had he abandoned it?
The river was narrower at the lift bridge, forty yards across, and widened to open toward a marina. Except for the railroad bringing in coal from West Virginia, there wasn’t much industry left in the harbor. One door and window establishment, a custom car detailing business, charter fishing boats, and the rest devoted to entrances for the private yacht club or public marinas.
Boaters tying up relaxed aboard their vessels, a mixed crowd of young and old. The big vessels were christened with names like Carpe Diem, Obsession, Serenity. Smaller craft went for puns like Sea Ya, Reel Time, Seaduction, and Sotally Tober.
She saw no private security on patrol; anyone was permitted to walk down to the river’s edge toward the marina. A gatehouse for the yacht club veered off to the right from the narrow road parallel to the water’s edge. The rainbow slick of fuel hugged the pilings and the air temperature dropped a couple degrees but held its heat from the muggy afternoon.
She passed one recreational boat after another. Some interior cabins were lit, but most were secured into their berths with tire fenders and tarps stretched over the flying bridges. A few were having parties, with drinking and dancing on the sterns. Rock ’n’ roll carried across the waters. Northern people enjoying the last warm days before the cold Canadian winds came down.
She passed one more party boat with revelers in bathing suits. Decision time: keep going down the line of boats or turn around and head back to her bench. A slender man in a black speedo called to her and held a cocktail glass aloft. She smiled at him, shrugged, and kept going, as if looking for someone. She called Silva and told him where she was in a Valley Girl lilt in case anyone overheard from one of the darkened boats.
She walked past a Sea Ray, a big sailboat with an outboard, and a Bayliner. All three had mooring lines with rat guards. She doubted the sandwich man would ingratiate himself with the local boating crowd.
She called Silva again. ‘Nothing, I’m on my way back.’
She cleared the last of the party boats, when she heard a noise from an older cabin cruiser. The lack of lights aboard the vessel made her pause and listen more intently. Nothing. Too much noise coming from Happy Daze, the boat moored alongside it. Confronting a boat owner in the privacy of his craft over a noise seemed too risky. She’d tell HRT when they arrived and let them do a surveillance.
Hell with it. She stepped over the gunwale and listened again. A girl in a string bikini on the stern of Happy Daze called out, ‘Hey, the party’s over here!’
‘No, thanks,’ Jade said. ‘I’m looking for my friend.’
‘Plenty of beer here,’ a man with a weightlifter’s physique called out from behind the girl. He slipped a muscled, tanned arm around her waist.
What to do now?
She hoped for an irate boat owner, asleep or drunk below, and moved toward the bow. The outer interior deck was polished mahogany and chrome. The door leading to the below decks cabins was a few feet away. She felt eyes on her, but with so many people mingling, dancing on the fantail of the other boat, she took a chance. The loud music provided some cover.
She opened the door and peered down. The interior of the cockpit was dark.
If the owner was asleep on a vinyl couch below, maybe passed out from his own celebrating, she’d explain away her trespass. The vintage wooden ladder of three steps looked more like an upended book shelf.
One hand on the butt of her gun, she took a first step down.
Her pupils adjusted slowly to the dark. Light, a tiny cone of light like the sort from a banker’s lamp. She made out the edges of furniture but what she was looking at was impossible to distinguish. Nothing behind her—that was good.
A semi-circular, high-backed couch faced her. The boat was big enough that she felt no motion. Solid, comfortable like a modern but small cabin in the woods. Some of the tension in her gun hand eased. No one home. Just a reverberation of a generator kicking in or water echoing against the hull. The partying at the next berth was muffled but loud enough to be understood. An old Stones tune, ‘Anybody Seen My Baby?’
She breathed out, turned around and placed her hands on the sides of the ladder.
But the hands that gripped her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides, were steel bands. She twisted her body, tried to bring her arms up in a counterhold. Nothing. She kicked her way up the ladder steps until she was a human plank at 90 degrees from her attacker. She snapped her head back, smashing his face.
They fell backward to the floor, she on top, that iron grip unyielding so that she could not reach her gun. She practiced breaking grips, being a small woman gave her no leverage when half the world’s population outweighed her. Speed, agility compensated. She raised a leg for a groin thrust with the heel but he swung her over and pinned her to the floor, straddling her back.
It happened so fast and effortlessly she was stunned by the skill that whipped her through the air and slammed her to the floorboards.
This was no boat owner defending his property from an intruder and she was sickened by the lightning bolt of recognition: Sandwich Man himself.
He pulled the Glock from her holster and pushed her head into the floor. As soon as she felt his body lifting, she knew he was going to club her or shoot her; she twisted around, throwing up her forearms to cover her face. The butt smashed into the deck beside her head. His turn to be surprised; she used the opportunity to slide him off her.
She set her right hand on the gun just as his sweep
ing kick knocked it away. It clattered and bounced against the cabin and came to rest somewhere in the dark behind her, snapping an index finger from the force of the kick.
She made it to the third rung of the ladder before he had her in that vise-grip by her ankles. He pulled her free and she belly-flopped hard to the floor, the air blown out of her lungs. He was on her in a second with an arm bar across the neck, a pressure hold she’d never break.
As soon as he released one arm to move into a submission hold, she rolled toward the pinned arm and threw her extended hand toward his throat and connected with his Adam’s apple. Before he rose to his feet, she threw a forward kick into his face that missed his nose but landed solid.
They squared off, two combatants on their feet, neither wheezing for air despite the brutal scuffling. It was like fighting in a closet. His height was no advantage in the confined space but his strength more than made up for it. If she tried to turn and go for the ladder again, he’d ground and pound her into submission. He was far too strong for her. He kept his back to the ladder while he feinted for her head or body, now aware she could fight. He moved forward, willing to take her kicks or punches to land one of his own. She swept her arms to right and left, hoping to feel something useable as a weapon.
Every time he lunged toward her, she moved farther backward deeper into the darkened quarters instead of trying to go through or around him to get to the ladder where a rectangle of light beckoned as her only escape. Being trapped from in front, she instinctively knew the only way out was to go deeper in. Her jacket was ripped and her blouse torn. She slipped out of it and flung it away. He circled steadily, in no hurry. She couldn’t see his face but she sensed his absolute confidence. She slipped on something greasy and collided with a small table bolted to the deck. She felt a rib crack.
Her breathing became distressed, flutey. She only knew she had to stay mobile, upright for as long as she could, or get to the gun before he found it. Her cell’s ringtones chiming Beethoven from her discarded blazer was low comedy. Silva calling, worried, checking in. As if by osmosis, she understood his thoughts at the moment: he’d have to kill her soon because his time for it was shortening.
Her kiai yell didn’t make him flinch. She ran to a porthole, flung the cover off, and screamed into it, ‘Call 911!’
Her head near the porthole made a target for him. Before she could move away from the dingy light, his kick knocked her backwards over a chair.
Jade struggled to get her feet under her, braced for his next move, though her instincts told her to curl up in a ball on the floor.
‘Police … surrounding …’ she said, but the blood pouring from her mouth made her words mush.
She put her weight on her back foot and balled her fists for a strike if he launched himself from the blackness again. She thought, if she could get to a cupboard, find utensils, crockery, anything, she could thrust it into his face. He seemed to be relishing her resistance by refusing to attack and finish her off.
She felt his movement but didn’t see him. He flicked her strikes away from his face, broke her grip on his face with his own strong fingers, bending hers backward so hard she forgot her one resolve not to go down, no matter what, and hit the deck with both knees.
He chopped down at her with short hard punches. One blow smashed her in the face above the brow line. Blood flowed into her eyes. A fusillade of flailing punches from everywhere out of the dark; some missed, but those that connected did damage. Pain, take the pain, her brain screamed at her from somewhere far off. You’ll die if you go down.
A spent fighter on the ropes, more blows rained down. She kept her head a moving target but he found her more than he missed.
Punches gave way to kicks as he found the range; her body absorbed them but they left her weaker each time. Her clavicle felt like hot needles were being driven into it. An uppercut blasted between her fists held high for protection. Dizzy and wobbling like a drunk, she slammed backwards into a cabinet.
She had enough left for one punch, go for his thorax, but she missed, her own wrist bent back against his torso.
Her brain recorded his words, delivered in a flat and unemotional voice as if he were reading the contents on a cereal package. ‘You’re good but I’m through playing with you.’
A leg sweep took her legs out from under her and she landed on the deck with her head bouncing hard on the deck. He was on her chest, choking her out with his fingers on her neck. No more finesses, a madman strangling a woman. She couldn’t even raise her arms to defend herself.
‘Agent Hui! Jade Hui! Are you down there?’
He released the pressure at once, sitting up, alert, listening for the voice’s direction in the black. She couldn’t call out but she gurgled from the blood welling up in her throat. He hissed above her and immediately jammed his forearm across her neck.
Then he released the pressure. She twisted her head to the side to vomit up a mouthful of blood. Her brain sparked to life with one last effort. It was dark and she hurt everywhere. Her mind seemed to be telling her something but she couldn’t understand what that was, and anyway, she was tired, so tired. Sleep, that was all she wanted to do. No longer remembering him or why she was in the dark in this hole in the ground, she just wanted the enfolding blackness to cover her and let her escape the waves of pain that washed up from some far-off storm.
She tried to get up. Nothing worked right. A baby sea turtle trying to escape the diving cormorants. She tried to think of her partner’s name, to warn him there was a dangerous man down here, but synaptic misfiring created too much confusion in her brain. So much pain—and then time did its own number on her consciousness.
It could have been an hour or mere seconds she lay prone, blinking one eye, the other hammered shut. The gunshots—one, two, three—that split the darkness and filled the cabin with the stench of cordite registered as if she were jolted awake from a bad dream.
Good, she thought, Silva—thank you—save me—
Voices in the dark. Pinpricks of light. Then she was floating on still black water so warm it was like bathwater. Drifting, turning in a slow current, doing a dead-man’s float. She forgot about the sandwich man, Silva, everything except that dim sense of herself as a thing, not a person, someone else’s idea of a person drifting away, floating off into a syrupy blackness farther from the other one that was still trying to hold her by the ankles to keep her there.
Chapter 32
WÖISSELL DROVE THE TRUCK steadily with bruised hands, cursing himself for his stupidity, his arrogance. His cheek was swollen, his clothes ripped from the struggle back there. All the signs were there, and he had chosen to ignore them. He thought he was different from others. His vanity alone led him into that mess, and he vowed, if he got free, he’d never make that mistake again.
Where’s your discipline, your control now, brother mine? Freddie mocked him.
He had to get rid of his truck fast. He was seen leaving that boat but how well a bunch of drunks could ID him was anybody’s guess. They already had his prints, his mug shot, and now they’d have his truck; he gave himself an hour before all hell broke loose back there and law enforcement would be summoned.
His right hand shook badly. He clamped it down on the steering wheel and exerted all his willpower to calming himself. He had the athlete’s gift of seeing himself doing something, then doing it. The nearest truck stop was off the Interstate 90 exit just a few miles ahead. He had the FBI agent’s gun under a newspaper on the seat next to him in case he was stopped. Dying in a shootout was better than being caught and languishing on death row for the next twenty years until they dragged him, bloated with starchy prison food, into the lethal injection room. One to the head, finito. Far to be preferred to the humiliating tabloid frenzy they’d subject him to.
He saw the tall sign on stilts high above the freeway: Truck Stop. He swung in and parked in the rear with the semis lined up, some with perishable goods with their engines running for the refrigeration
systems. He put his truck between two shiny Peterbilts.
Now for the hard part.
He sat in his truck and waited, watching the comings and goings of the longhaul drivers. Most were bearded, pot-bellied men with ruined backs and bad digestive systems from years on the road trying to beat their down-time schedules and pick up another load for a small profit. Part of the furniture of the road to be ignored. For all their bravado as social mavericks and free-roaming men, they were automata whose logs recorded everything but their bowel movements. He scoffed at the more country-western ones with their belt buckles the size of canned hams and cowboy boots. Regardless, the corporate names on the front, sides, and back of their rigs showed who owned them.
Like a lion in the bush, he watched them pass by his windshield. Finally, one came out who would do—a giant of a man with a black cowboy hat, black leather vest, a casual toothpick in his mouth. His trimmed white beard highlighted by a ruddy complexion. Charley liked the insouciance of the toothpick. He exited his truck and intersected the driver at the cab of his Lonestar.
‘Hey there, mister, can I have a word?’
The driver appraised Wöissell as no threat.
‘Whatchu want, boy?’
‘My friend just left me at the restaurant back there.’ Charley laughed at the silly misunderstanding. ‘A friendly argument over his girlfriend, can you believe it?’
Wöissell touched his puffy cheek and turned the backs of his hands over to show the swollen knuckles and bruised skin. ‘Think you can give me a ride out of here? I’d be glad to pay.’
‘Company don’t allow no hitchhikers. Fuck off,’ the driver said and turned to hoist himself into the cab when Wöissell jammed the barrel into his liver. ‘You sure about that?’
‘This a got-damn robbery, Jack?’
‘I’m not interested in your money, Jack. Get in and keep your hands where I can see them or I’ll break your fingers, starting with your thumbs.’