Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

  “Y’all want some eggs?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t we get Cody over to the police station?”

  “Sure we will, but the kid’s gotta eat. You should, too. I’ll get some coffee going.”

  “Thanks, Hank,” Cody said.

  Cody went into the bathroom and I went into the kitchen. Hank was at the stove, his broad back to me.

  “You want the yolks in or out?” he asked.

  “I’ll take it however you’re giving it,” I said, sitting down in the single chair. “Why do you think this guy Lovell would be after Cody?”

  “Can’t rightly say,” he said, separating yolks from whites and dumping the whites into a sizzling pan. “But whatever it is, you can bet it’s bad.” He shook his head. “Take it from me, you don’t want a guy like Mr. Lovell gunning for you.”

  Cody came into the kitchen, water beaded on his stubbled head.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “Honest. It just happened.”

  I arched an eyebrow at Hank. Hank split the enormous mound of scrambled egg whites among three paper plates and then pulled three identical Tupperware containers from the fridge. Each container held a single cooked chicken breast. He placed one plate on top of one of the containers and handed the stack to me, along with a plastic fork and knife. Then did the same for Cody, taking the last one for himself.

  “Coffee’ll be up in a minute,” he said. “Y’all want hot sauce?”

  Cody and I sat on the couch and Hank sat in the recliner. For a few minutes, we just ate. The cold chicken was plain, dry and flavorless, the egg whites bland as toilet paper. It took about a gallon of hot sauce for me to choke half the food down, but neither Cody or Hank seemed to care. They were just shoveling and chewing like machines refueling. Hank took a short break to bring out three paper cups of strong black coffee and a plastic shopping bag.

  “All right, Cody,” Hank said, pulling bottles of vitamins and herbal supplements from the bag and downing handful after handful. “I think you’d better start filling us in here.”

  “Look, I told you,” Cody said around a mouthful of chicken, “It just happened. He said it was no big deal.”

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “You know I’m going to Vegas to be on All American Fighter: The Next Generation,” Cody said. “Well, Hank knows. Matt Kenner came out to our school scouting talent for Team Kenner in the new season of All American Fighter where all the guys are supposed to be eighteen to twenty-one. Have you seen the show?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s these two teams. And all the team members have to live together in one big house with cameras rolling 24/7. They fight against the other team and guys get eliminated and the one guy who wins at the end gets an AAFC contract.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Of course you know Matt Kenner, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “He’s only the current heavyweight champion in the AAFC,” he said like I was from Mars or something. “He’s a real cool guy too, and said I had the most potential out of all the students. Told me to be at his dojo in Vegas at 8 am sharp this Sunday morning, that the filming for the show would be starting that day. There’s no way I’m gonna miss an opportunity like that, right? This is my big chance. He gave me his card, see?”

  Cody dug out his wallet and took out a business card, handing it to me. Kenner’s name and the name and address of an MMA training camp in Vegas.

  “Right,” I said, handing the card back to him. “But what does that have to do with this Mr. Lovell?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Cody said, slipping the card back into his wallet. “I’ve been fighting for Mr. Lovell at Kikima for like four months, but I have a year contract. He gave me an advance and, well, I still owe him seven more fights. But I wouldn’t be able to fight at Kikima while I was on All American Fighter, so I asked him if there was any way he could let me out of the contract early. He said sure, if I could pay back the money he gave me. Only I already spent it.”

  I was starting to see where this was going. My bland breakfast felt like a brick in my belly.

  “Well, Mr. Lovell also books these other fights. In Mexico, no holds barred. All the students do it, so it’s like no big deal. Anyway, Mr. Lovell wanted me to fight for him in Mexico.” He looked over at Hank and then down at his feet. “He wanted me to throw the fight.”

  Hank stopped with another handful of vitamins halfway to his mouth. “What?”

  “Well, what the hell was I supposed to do?” Cody asked. “I didn’t have any other way to pay him back.”

  “But you won that fight,” Hank said. “Knockout in the first round.”

  “That’s the thing.” Cody said. “I didn’t mean to do it. I just caught the guy right on the button with that knee. He dropped right into it. It was like, an accident. I was supposed to submit in the third but that fucking knee... Anyway Lovell said he understood. He said I could do a rematch tonight and he’d make double. He said he understood and it was no big deal.”

  “Well I’d call sending a bunch of coked-up bangers to shoot you and your father a pretty big deal,” Hank said.

  Cody went pale.

  “You think this is my fault?” he asked in a small voice.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “We have no proof it was Lovell that sent those guys.”

  “But he might have.” Cody put down his plate on the cluttered coffee table and stood. “And if it is true, then it’s my fault that my dad’s dead. I should never have agreed to meet him. If he’d never met me, he’d still be alive. Fuck.”

  Even if it was true that Lovell was responsible for the shooting at the diner, Vic could have died a thousand other times during his crazy self-destructive life. I wanted to say this to Cody, but couldn’t seem to form any words. I looked down into my empty coffee cup.

  Hank stood.

  “Now, just take it easy,” he said.

  “Fuck that!” Cody said, tensing like he was getting ready for another round of table throwing. That kid had apparently inherited Vic’s Italian tantrum gene in spades. “I’m gonna kill him.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Enough already. This isn’t doing anybody any good. Now pull yourself together and let’s get you down to the police station. You want them to catch whoever’s behind all this, don’t you?”

  “It’s Lovell,” Cody said. “I fucking know it!”

  “What’d I tell you about that kind of language?” Hank asked.

  “Fine, look,” I said. “Let’s say it is Lovell. You want him to get arrested for what he did, don’t you?”

  Cody sat back down, nodded.

  “You’re the victim here, kid,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. But you can’t just go after this guy on your own.”

  Luckily, no one else in the room knew how laughably ironic those words sounded coming from me.

  “You don’t know me,” Cody said. “You don’t know anything about me or what I can do. And I’m not your fucking kid.”

  “Mind your mouth, son,” Hank said, voice stern and serious. “I done told you once, I ain’t gonna tell you again. I won’t have no disrespect to women in this house.”

  “Sorry,” Cody said, looking down and away.

  “Look,” I said. “Maybe you’re not my kid, but you are Vic’s kid and before he died he asked me to take care of you, so that’s exactly what I plan to do whether you like it or not. Now I’m gonna go get cleaned up and I want you to pull yourself together and be ready to go by the time I get out.”

  Hank busied himself clearing away the remnants of breakfast while Cody pouted and made a big show of putting on his boots. I grabbed my go-bag and headed into the john.

  It was pretty grungy in there, but not appallingly so. Sad, cheap shower stall, glass cloudy and thickly scaled from hard water. Everything was wet, like Cody hadn’t bothered to close the shower door. The only towel was soaked and crumpled up on the floor. My search for a fresh towel revealed lots
of mentholated muscle rub, more fight magazines and even more pill bottles, if that were possible. Mostly meds for pain and inflammation, but also other stuff I’d never even heard of. Eventually I found a clean towel, shucked off Hank’s t-shirt and slipped into the shower.

  I had to wait on washing my hair, since there was no shampoo or conditioner anywhere in the bathroom. I pictured Hank washing his stubbled head with bar soap and smiled to myself. Then I started to picture the rest of him in the shower and had to kill that line of thinking if I wanted to get out of there any time soon.

  I got out, dried off and slipped quickly into clean clothes from my go-bag. Comfortable, athletic clothes that were easy to run in. That’s pretty much all I ever wore anymore. I figured I’d take the waitress uniform with me and toss it into a public trash barrel in another town, just to be on the safe side.

  7.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Hank had squeezed his thick torso into a skintight, long-sleeved black spandex shirt with the same bad logo that graced the t-shirt I’d worn the night before. He was lacing up his battered sneakers.

  “Did you remember to take your Topamax?” Cody asked him.

  “Oh yeah, right,” Hank said, fumbling through a drawer and sorting through handfuls of pill bottles. “I’m pretty sure it’s in here somewhere.”

  Cody picked up a bottle off the floor near the couch and tossed it to Hank.

  “What about the Klonnopin?” Cody asked.

  “I’d just as soon skip that one. At least till after class,” Hank said. “I’m stupid enough without it.”

  “Well, bring it with you,” Cody said. “Just in case.”

  “My momma’s been dead for twenty-two years,” Hank said, suddenly testy. “And I been getting along just fine without her, thank you very much.”

  Hank downed a couple of tablets from the bottle Cody gave him and followed them up with several more from various other bottles in the drawer.

  “All right you two,” I said. “Let’s get on the road.”

  The three of us squeezed into Hank’s old pickup. Cody drove. No one talked.

  We dropped Hank off at the martial arts school first, since he had classes to teach. The school was inside a long narrow storefront and through the big plate glass windows I could see pairs of young students practicing throwing each other down on the mat. Hank got out slow on stiff joints, then turned back and offered his bulky paw.

  “It was a real pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Even under the circumstances. Good luck out there, Angel.”

  I took his hand in both of mine, held onto it for a moment longer than I should have, then let it go.

  “Take it easy, Hammer.”

  He flashed that big, child-like smile again and then shut the door and turned away.

  Cody watched Hank walk over to the door of the school, then put the truck in gear.

  “He’s a legend, you know,” Cody said. “One of the best. I never would have made it onto All American Fighter if not for him.”

  Cody waited for another, nearly identical truck to pass by, then pulled away from the curb.

  “When I was growing up,” he said, looking at the road, not at me, “I was pretty much on my own most of the time. Never had anybody to make sure I did my homework or brushed my teeth. My mom...she’s got her own problems and my dad, well, you know about him. I was getting into fights all the time. Failing everything. Then I started training at Richland’s and I met Hank.”

  “He seems like a real decent guy,” I said.

  “People love to talk all kinds of shit about him on the forums, that he’s a loser and a has-been, and sure he’s been through some rough times, but when he was at the top of his game, fighting in Japan, man, he was unbeatable. Pound for pound the most dangerous welterweight in the sport, no question. Better than Richland, even. So versatile, you never knew what he was gonna throw at you. You wanted to stand up, he’d knock you out so fast and so clean you’d be down before you even knew what hit you. You wanted to go to the ground, he’d play chess with you, give you a little slack just to see what you were made of and then when he got bored, he’d submit your ass without breaking a sweat. His title fight against Shinya Fujita was a fucking clinic. But you know, the fans here don’t want to watch a master technician like Hank. They want a big showy brawler, throwing haymakers they can see from the cheap seats. That’s why Hank never got a fair shake in this country.”

  Cody went on and on like that, and I just watched him talk. Not listening so much to his specific words as the intense passion behind them. He seemed to love the sport in general and Hank in particular. Hank had obviously stepped in to fill the daddy-shaped hole that Vic left behind while he was off being a fuck-up. I couldn’t help but wonder, if Vic had lived, would he have stood a chance of filling Hank’s sizable shoes?

  “Don’t be mad if I say this,” Cody said in an abrupt conversational swerve, “but I saw you in some videos online. You and my dad at first, because I was trying to find out information about him, but then I saw you with some other guys too. I couldn’t watch the ones with my dad in them. Even though I never really knew him, it was...I don’t know. Just wrong. But you? You were awesome.”

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling slightly and looking out the window.

  “You were his girlfriend, huh?” Cody asked. “My dad, I mean. You know, before...”

  “A long time ago.”

  “What was he like?”

  Man, that was a loaded question. I felt swamped with a hundred vivid and painful memories, none of which were appropriate to share with Vic’s teenaged son.

  I remembered our first scene together, how Vic kept on whispering the most outrageous, hilarious things in my ear and cracking me up while I was trying to be all sexy and serious. I remembered our first time off camera, silent, slow and kissing the whole time, pressed so tightly together that there was no room for a shooter to get between us. I remembered Vic cranked out of his mind and screaming on my lawn at 4:30 in the morning, waking up all the neighbors. I remembered Vic strung out and weighing less than I did, looking like a hollow, wasted shell of who he used to be.

  I didn’t want to talk about Vic just in terms of the way he fucked, like Cody and Hank had talked about each other in terms of the way they fought. I also didn’t want to talk about Vic just in terms of the way he’d fucked up.

  “Well, he was real sharp and funny,” I finally managed to say. “He always made everybody laugh and never took himself too seriously. He would do anything for his friends.” I looked up at the big sky. “He was from Chicago originally, like me, so he never had that flaky shallow L.A. mentality that you get so often in the business.”

  “My mom hates him,” Cody said quietly. “She never wanted me to meet him.”

  I nodded, said nothing. We drove.

  “There’s the station,” Cody said, pulling up opposite a sleek modern building fronted by decorative desert foliage. “I’ll jump out here, and you can take Hank’s truck and leave it in the Greyhound lot. It’s just a few blocks down First.” He pointed through the bug-smeared windshield. “Make a left on 17th Place. That’s 17th Place, not 17th Street. Leave the key under the mat and I’ll pick the truck up later. It’s not like anyone would want to steal this piece of shit.”

  “Right,” I said, but couldn’t say anything more, because I suddenly didn’t want to let him go.

  Not that I had a brilliant alternative suggestion or a better plan or anything. I just felt like he was my last connection to Vic and to my old life.

  “Don’t forget to watch me on All American Fighter!” he said.

  I couldn’t decide if his relentless teenage optimism in the face of all this chaos and murder was brave or stupid or maybe a little bit of both.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  He leaned across the seat and threw his arms around me in an intense, breathtakingly tight hug. Me, I’ve never been much of a hugger. I’ve been told a million times that I’ve got intimacy issues, and
I suppose it’s probably true. It’s one of the few things my uptight shrink Lindsey actually got right. To be honest, I would have felt much more comfortable giving Cody a blow job.

  Eventually, he let me go and got out. I scooted over into the driver’s seat and watched him cross the street without looking, causing an old Mexican lady in a Corolla to swear at him in Spanish as she passed.

  I should have felt relieved, but I couldn’t shake this sense of nauseous dread. I’d spent the last nine days at Duncan’s working very hard at not thinking about my own situation. Duncan was a don’t ask, don’t tell kinda guy and I didn’t have any real answers anyway. I knew eventually I needed to come up with some kind of realistic long-term plan, but I was so worn down, so emotionally drained and numb and empty inside, that I really didn’t believe in any kind of happily ever after. My plan to escape all this and start a new life abroad someplace warm and beautiful suddenly seemed just as childish and fantastical now as it did when an old friend suggested it the night before he died. More so, even.

  But of all the brilliant plans I might have made, hanging around in front of a police station waiting to get noticed was at the bottom of the list. If the guys who were after me had been able to find me in WitSec, they clearly had deep and powerful law enforcement connections and would be able to find me the second I created even the smallest blip in the system. Better to keep moving, keep my head down and stay off the radar. Vic’s kid was going to have to sink or swim on his own.

  I was just about to drive away when Lovell’s horny toad and his big Native American pal got out of a dusty Range Rover and walked up to the door of the police station.

  8.

  Back when I’d heard that familiar Croatian voice in Lindsey’s office, it was horrible and terrifying but in a strange way it was exactly what I needed. Like everything came into sharp, clear focus. I could breathe again. I had been living this fake life, trying to be this fake person who’d never existed, and then in that instant, I became my real self again.

  Driving away from Lindsey’s, from that impossible voice and whatever kind of hell was taking place inside that office, I started running a checklist in my head. Car was gassed up, since I never allowed the tank to go below half full. Still had the shovel in my trunk. Gym bag on the passenger seat with a spare set of clothes. Nearly a grand in the slim fanny pack I wore all the time, even when I slept. The things in my apartment were irrelevant. Set dressing for a dull sitcom that had been canceled due to poor ratings. But I had other things, things that mattered. I hadn’t told Lindsey about those things, because she would have said that I was being paranoid, not letting go of the past.