A Twisted Path

by Steve Winshel

  Chapter Ten

  Furyk parked the Honda around the back of the gas station a block from the sandwich shop. He walked past the filthy bathroom, the door propped open by a rusty shopping cart owned by the homeless guy ironically taking a leak against the long-dead bushes running next to the station. Furyk rounded the corner and caught the eye of the station owner. He’d done him a favor a year or so ago, a family thing. The parking spot was payment. Furyk nodded at the young man behind the fake bullet-proof glass cashier’s cage, but Hamid’s eyes went wide and he shoved some bills toward the customer standing on the other side of the glass. Hurrying past the register and racks of gum and beer nuts, he pushed out the door at a trot, grasping something in his hand. Furyk slowed down and waited for him to cross the space between them.

  “Mr. Bill, please.” Furyk waited, pulling the sunglasses off so Hamid could look him in the eye. It had taken three years to get out of the habit of keeping his eyes hidden, a cop move he still relied on sometimes. The slightly built gas station owner held out the crumpled paper. It was a postcard.

  “Please, look. Here, it is from Farad.” Furyk took the postcard and flipped it over. A generic picture of the Statue of Liberty, ablaze with lights against a dark sky. He turned to the other side. The postmark was Manhattan, dated three days ago. The note was written in beautiful, curlicued script. Furyk assumed it was script – he didn’t read Farsi.

  “He says, thank you, thank you a thousand million times. Everyone is happy. They sleep well now, even little Sarah. No more nightmares. She sends a kiss to Furyk.” Hamid smiled at his niece’s use of the last name. “Since they have moved…since your help, they are happy now.” Hamid reached to take the postcard but clasped Furyk’s hand instead. It was filled with gratitude. He wanted to give more than just a parking space, but even if he had more it would never be enough. Furyk had helped when no one else would. He held the man’s look and put his own hand over Hamid’s. A few seconds passed and then Furyk put his shades back on and headed to the busy intersection to cross and open up the shop. He absently rubbed the spot on his left thigh where the bullet had entered and passed clean through the night he had stopped Sarah’s nightmares. It still ached sometimes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Merrill dreamt of the murder. The house was filled with a fog. Nothing was in proportion. There was no subtlety to her dream. Carl was on the floor, a knife repeatedly pushing into his flesh. The viewpoint was from above him, she was seeing it through her own eyes. Then it got fuzzy and Carl wasn’t Carl any more. No slow morphing like a movie effect – suddenly, between piercing stabs, it was her father on the floor trying to fend off the blows. She seemed to float up, toward the ceiling, and her perspective widened so she wasn’t the one thrusting the knife at the man on the floor. Carl was hunched over the terrified figure of her father and he was delivering jab after jab, a hundred times, a thousand times. Her father wouldn’t die and Carl just kept stabbing and wouldn’t stop. She woke to the sound of Sally snoring. Shivering heavily as the sweat began to evaporate off her soaked body, she hugged her knees hard.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sandwich shop was in Studio City in a strip mall where all the stores faced the Boulevard and there wasn’t enough parking on a busy day. It was located far enough east of the big intersection at Laurel Canyon to get the business that didn’t want to drive to Jerry’s Deli a mile west but not as far as Universal Studios, so he didn’t have to compete with the thousand joints there fighting for the walkins or the lunch-goers who drove in from Burbank just up the road. Busy, slightly popular, but not overwhelming. It was just the pace he needed.

  Two years earlier he’d been sitting on a darkened curb in downtown LA with his head in his hands and blood dripping onto the street between his legs. He’d counted the splatters and got to a hundred and eleven when the ambulance showed up. The cops had gotten there at eighty-eight, but they knew him and just shook their heads and took off. It had been a quick and ugly bar fight and if he hadn’t been drunk and woozy from Vicodin he would have seen the little girlfriend swing the martini glass even while Furyk was punching out the boyfriend. His 2:00 a.m. epiphany came through the haze of blood and migraine when he looked up and saw the Subway Sandwich store across the street. He was too old for this shit anymore. He needed some balance. A regular life.

  He’d open his own place, a place that made sandwiches. People would come in, order something, sit and eat, and get out. Simple. No booze, no late night scenes, just a lot of day-to-day responsibility. Very different from the random security work he’d been picking up for the last few years or bullshit consulting jobs telling rich guys how to avoid getting mugged on Rodeo Drive. A real business he could focus on, keep him out of trouble. How hard could it be? Turned out it was a huge pain in the ass. Meat vendors, bread guys, health inspectors, menus, furniture. The worst was having to hire people. Every kid who walked in was either a druggie he wanted to bust or a bum who stank like skid row piss. It took him months of doing every menial job himself before he realized not everyone was a jerk or a liar or a scammer. He hired mostly kids needing to save for college or older men and women who’d retired and realized social security wouldn’t even cover the phone bills they ran up calling their kids and begging them to come for a visit. Two years since sitting on the curb counting blood drops.

  Leaving Hamid at the gas station, he walked into the shop at 10:30 a.m. The place had been open a few hours. The morning regulars were there. It was a transient bunch that would get a coffee and sit for a couple of hours, even though the coffee was terrible. Lunch would be rough because he was going to be short-handed – Jimmy was out and Tiffany couldn’t cover, but at least Alycia was there. Seventeen, reliable if a little ditzy, he trusted her with opening and with the register. Not so good at sweeping up or washing her hands between sandwiches, but he’d get through to her.

  “Hey, Mr. Furyk, how ya doin’?” She was slicing tomatoes, which saved him thirty-two cents a pound over buying them that way. Furyk went around the counter and reached behind the door leading to the back to slip on a green apron. “You and me today, Alycia. Until 5:00.” She gave him a smile – she liked him and a few hours alone in the store was a treat. She was one of the few who could get him talking; not about his past, which they all treated like a big mystery, but just about stuff in general. Her brown ponytail was pulled through the opening in the back of her cap, which had the Hoagie Haven logo on the front. Green was the predominant color in the place – Furyk thought it felt fresh, like lettuce, and would encourage people to eat. The walls had long green stripes, alternating with white, and the menu above the sandwich counter was green and brown. The recurring sandwiches were immortalized in plastic and there was a chalkboard that had the daily specials – not so special, really, but when Furyk could get a great deal on some special meat or had a hankering for a particular sandwich or soup it would go on the board. Not in his handwriting, which was miserable, but the girl at the salon two doors away who was apparently famous for her tinting skills. It just cost him dinner once in a while. Dinner and a few hours afterward at her place or his, or occasionally the room in the back of the salon where they washed the hair before it was cut. He still had a bruise on his back from the last time, caused by a hard metal faucet.

  No posters on the wall, no screaming ads for soda or ice cream or entreaties to eat more or bigger sandwiches. He wanted a calm place. The only extraneous piece of equipment was a decent television bolted to the corner of the ceiling at the end of the sandwich bar away from the entrance and register. It usually had the news on, but mostly was there so Furyk could watch a game when he couldn’t get away from the shop in the evening. When he wasn’t there, it played CNN or a sporting event he picked in advance – he’d seen more than one violent argument break out over control of the remote at the bars he’d frequented. Granted, those were at bars where brawls broke out when there weren’t enough pretzels, but just in case: Not here.

  The T.V. was p
laying the local news. They were running the tape from the Wick murder. Now they had footage of the woman being walked in the front of the county jail. She looked even worse than before. For just a second she turned her head up and accidentally looked right into a camera. Furyk felt like she was looking at him. Maybe she was. He remembered that same look, lost, scared, vulnerable, the same as it had been the first time he’d seen her. It was a look that told him he was going to get involved, whether anyone asked or not.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The lunch crowd was heavy and Furyk was covering two jobs and trying to keep everyone happy. Not exactly a skill he’d been planning on honing back when he was a cadet at the police academy, but he could make three sandwiches for the studio execs at the same time he took the order from the guy who probably had limited custody of his nine-year-old and was playing hooky from school lunch hour so he could buy the kid a meal, while still popping over to the register to ring up the secretary from the law firm across the Boulevard who actually unbuttoned the top two buttons on her blouse as she crossed the street in anticipation of seeing Furyk every day.

  Ten minutes later there was one of those lulls where everyone had their food, the seats were full, and no one was in line to order. Furyk went out and didn’t smoke a cigarette. He watched the cars go by, especially the eastbound traffic where the occasional SUV would pull into the center divide to make a left into the strip mall. Sometimes they sat there five minutes, waiting for a break created by a red light a quarter mile up the road. No one ever stopped to let them turn. Furyk was pretty sure a lot of assholes even sped up to make sure nobody tried to make a left turn in front of them. Then those same kind of guys found themselves needing to make the turn and they’d gun in front of oncoming traffic like they had a right. Hypocritical assholes. Sometime Furyk wanted to wade into traffic and put his hand out, stopping the cars in both directions so some old lady or polite construction worker in a beat-up truck could make the turn. Then maybe walk over to whoever was honking the horn to tell him to get out of the way and beat the crap out of the jerk. He didn’t, but thought that a cigarette would go pretty good right about now.

  Hands in the pockets of pressed khakis he always wore to work and Polo shirt tucked in, he headed back into the shop. A few people were getting up and preparing to leave. The ones he liked cleared their tables; the ones who probably sped up in front of a left turn lane didn’t. In the far corner the guy and his kid were pretty much done – there was still sandwich on the table but most of the boy’s soda was now on his father’s shirt and very expensive pants. They were both standing and the dad was bent over the boy, whispering loudly, his voice barely hiding the anger. He had his hand around the boys forearm, up near the elbow, and with each admonition he punctuated it with a hard jerk down on the boy’s arm. The kid’s head shook each time and his longish yellow hair flew to the side. He wasn’t saying anything, had probably already apologized a dozen times, but the guy’s voice was getting angrier. Furyk watched all of ten seconds and his face drained of color. He headed toward the pair, a bull at a matador. He said “hey” in a voice that meant it while still three steps away and had his hand on the boy’s father an instant later. He didn’t spin him or pull him; he just wanted the guy’s attention. Whatever emotional scar the boy got when Furyk broke the dad’s arm or otherwise showed him what it felt like to be bullied would be less than whatever the kid was going through now or, probably, at home.

  “That’s too rough.” Furyk wanted it to be clear why he was standing there. The dad turned to him with anger in his eyes, hand still on his son. He didn’t focus on Furyk right away, frustration and fury overwhelming him. He suddenly came to, as if he were waking up, and looked down at his son. He let go instantly and looked back at Furyk, who waited for him to become belligerent at the interference. Then there’d be the moment where the guy weighed the situation and decided whether he could take Furyk or not. But the guy immediately lost his anger, and the frustration. What Furyk saw was pain.

  “I…yeah. Jeez.” He held Furyk’s look, not afraid like he should have been, but almost pleading. “You’re right, I just, it’s so hard with his mom…” He wasn’t the kind of guy to spill to a stranger. There was a pause while he got himself together. The only fight today was happening inside his head. A winner emerged. He straightened up, no longer leaning in toward his son. He didn’t seem to notice Furyk’s arm on his shoulder, or when it dropped. He stepped toward to the boy who looked like he was about to cry but who did not move away from his dad. He was sad, not scared. The father scooped up his son, though at nine years old he probably was past that, and hugged him tight. He whispered in his ear, and Furyk could hear, he was so close.

  “Teddy, honey, I’m so sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing.” He kept hugging him and turned, still carrying his son who had been stiff but now relaxed into his father and buried his face in his neck. Furyk could hear tears start in the boy’s throat. The man turned to take his son out, ignoring the dripping soda on his shirt and pants, which was starting to soak his shoes as well. He caught Furyk’s eye and something passed between them. Then the father whispered to his son as they headed toward the door “let’s skip your next class and go play some handball at the park.” The boy’s head bobbed up and down, still close to his father’s shoulder. Furyk didn’t mind cleaning up their trash.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cheyenne Wick was getting the star treatment. Mother a murderer, father gone forever, poor young woman with no anchor. And she seemed to be playing the role to the hilt. The reporters who’d found out where she was staying and ambushed her on the way to school or the store didn’t need to bother being so aggressive – she was more than willing to face the cameras and answer the questions. The papers and TV news had already decided Merrill was guilty. Just because they peppered their reports with the word “alleged” and talked about an ongoing investigation didn’t lessen the inexcusable lack of neutrality they all proclaimed. Merrill had killed her husband because she was the mouse that suddenly decided to roar. She was jealous of her husband’s prominence and popularity, the short leash he kept her on – deserved, because she was too meek and ineffectual to take care of herself – and her lack of independence. There was some evidence she’d tried to make it look like a burglary, but it was feeble. The fact she was cowering at the body when found by her daughter was proof of her ultimately weak will – she broke down mid-crime and didn’t have the sense to preserve herself. There was a lot of insurance money, plenty of stocks and property, and of course a great house in the best part of LA. There were whispers of infidelity by Wick, but no one was going to blame him for getting a little something on the side – all powerful men required the support and companionship of quality women and Merrill didn’t measure up. She was a pathetic, ineffective, but cold-blooded killer.

  The cameras caught Cheyenne saying the same thing. She was angry that the one time her mother showed any backbone it was to take away the only person Cheyenne loved. She told a reporter that Merrill’s parents were crazy, too, and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. It didn’t seem to warrant comment that this could be applied equally to Cheyenne. She was her father’s daughter and her vehemence and anger fed the news reports and made it headline fodder for the prime time television shows.