In a rundown, industrial neighborhood near the train tracks there was an abandoned gas station. The garage had been torn down and all that was left was the rusted pumps, some broken concrete and a lot of weedy dirt. Not enough of a structure left to entice bored local kids looking for someplace to practice their wannabe gang graffiti, drink beer and/or get pregnant. It was perfect for me.
I passed by twice to make sure I wasn’t followed, then pulled in and popped the trunk for the shovel. The day was bright and the sun felt like a spotlight, but there was nobody around. A car passed without slowing, then a lumbering truck. I waited another minute, then walked back to a rusted car frame nearly buried in the weeds.
Gnats buzzed around my head and the smell of crushed green stalks under my sneakers was far too summery and innocent to fit the seriousness of my situation. When I reached the frame I took five steps from the front of the area that would have housed the engine and started digging.
The small military surplus footlocker I uncovered had been there for over a year. It was dirty, but otherwise none the worse for wear. No one saw me pull it up out of the hole I’d dug except for a scattering of frightened pill bugs.
Inside was a sturdy backpack, which I removed, leaving the footlocker behind. It contained cash, about four grand, spare clothes and running shoes, a Sig P232, a couple hundred rounds, and a pretty decent fake ID from New Hampshire that said my name was Jennifer Tate.
I put the backpack in the trunk and drove a few hours down the 95. After I crossed the state line, I pulled into a Denny’s. I waited till a young couple got into their car and drove away before I got out, casing the lot. Plenty of cars but no humans. I took the backpack and my gym bag but left the shovel in the trunk. I hated to do it, but I knew I had to ditch the car, since it was registered to Lena Morrow, my now clearly compromised WitSec name.
I went into the restaurant and spent a good long minute evaluating the customers. I was looking for single men and spotted three that looked promising. Bachelor number one was a tall, gangly older man with a bald head and a tired hound-dog face sitting at the counter and staring at the remains of his Grand Slam. Bachelor number two was a handsome young Latino with longish hair who couldn’t take his eyes off my tits. Bachelor number three was a sunburned redneck in a tractor cap with a gold cross around his neck.
The redneck was obviously religious, which meant horny and probably not getting any at home. Would be easy to tempt into sin, but also might go too far and turn out to be a serial killer. The Latino guy looked like he would follow my pussy anywhere, but got disqualified when an annoyed girlfriend returned from the bathroom and caught him staring at me. That left number one, who had seemed like the best bet from the beginning. He had the burned-out, weary body language of a man on a long, boring road trip and I figured he’d be thrilled to have company. I was right.
His name was Jim Falmworth and he owned a small company that manufactured a machine for stimulating injured muscles with electric pulses at varying strengths and speeds. He was traveling down the east coast, visiting the offices of chiropractors and physical therapists to try and sell them the new improved version of the machine. He liked anal sex, but his wife wouldn’t do it. I would. I rode with Jim all the way to South Carolina.
9.
If I had a dime for every time I thought I ought to get gone but didn’t, I’d be able to buy my own tropical island. Needless to say, I didn’t drive away. I stayed, sweating and waiting in the driver’s seat. I kept trying to tell myself the two men were there for some other reason that had nothing to do with Cody, but I knew in my heart that I’d been foolish to trust the authorities to save the day. I, of all people, should have known better.
Minutes later, my fears were confirmed when the two men came back out bookending a pale and frightened Cody. They bundled him into the back of the Rover so fast there was no time to think, to figure out what I ought to do. They pulled out, and for lack of a better idea, I followed them.
Not that I had a clue what I was going to do if I caught up with them. I just had it in my mind that I couldn’t let them make Cody disappear. They were flying south on 95 and the traffic was light enough to make me paranoid about being spotted. The landscape was mostly dull, agricultural. We passed the Kikima Casino that Cody had mentioned, a squat, glittery building that had the used-up, shabby glamour of a hooker in the morning. I was starting to worry that they were planning on crossing the border when they suddenly slowed and turned into the driveway of one of several McMansions. Large but painfully tacky cookie-cutter homes that had been built right up against the highway despite the acres of empty land behind them. The one they entered was by far the largest of the group and also the most gleefully tasteless. An automatic iron gate decorated with snarling lions opened and shut behind the Rover. I had no choice but to keep driving.
When I felt I could pull a U-turn without attracting too much attention, I headed back for another pass. There was no place nearby that I could park without being completely obvious, so I just drove slowly past, trying to memorize every detail. Cody and the two men had already gone inside.
There was a fountain in the front yard featuring nude Greek nymphs that had been given a garish paint job. Peachyorange skin, canary yellow hair and bright red nipples. Was this Lovell’s house? There didn’t seem to be a house number anywhere I could see, let alone anything as convenient as a name on a mailbox.
I didn’t feel like I could turn around again so I just kept going.
It took some doing, but eventually I found my way back to Hank’s martial arts school. I could see him through the window, demonstrating some kind of rolling, twisting maneuver that looked pretty similar to the one Cody had used to break the shooter’s arm back in the diner. The students, a mixed-gender group between the ages of six and ten, then paired off and practiced rolling each other over and stretching each other’s arms. Hank walked around the mat, correcting techniques here and there. He didn’t notice me.
I killed the truck’s engine and got out. It was already hot, but I felt a chilly coil of fear inside my belly that made me shiver as I walked over to the door of the school. The sign above it read “Richland MMA Academy” in peeling red letters. The same ugly logo on the t-shirt I’d slept in the night before. Beneath it, aggressive, spiky black lettering that looked designed in a high school study hall invited me to unleash my warrior spirit. I went inside.
There was a small reception area up front. A desk with no one sitting at it. A rack of shoes, above which a handwritten sign read, “NO shoes on the mat. NO EXCEPTIONS.” To one side was a set of doors marked Men’s and Women’s. Between them was a glass case full of gloves, wraps and protective pads for sale, along with dusty copies of a cheaply bound autobiography by the eponymous Steve Richland, AAFC Champion. Above the case was a cluster of framed photos and trophy shelves, all dedicated to Richland and his wife, AWKA Muay Thai Champion Truly Richland.
The husband was handsome and square-jawed and apparently dead. In the center of all the photos, there was a large kitschy painting of Richland wearing fingerless gloves and a championship belt. A lurking Asian dragon floated behind him with a strange, oddly prurient look on its long, dog-like face and beneath him was his name and what had to be birth and death dates. The later date was five years ago.
The wife looked like she should be in the business. Bright red Miss America hair. Big fake tits. Collagen trout-pout. Tiny, surgically bobbed button nose. Her body was flawless, jacked and shredded, with an astounding bubble butt that looked like it could crack walnuts. She was in a g-string bikini in most of her photos, except the fight shots, in which she wore loose pink satin shorts and a sports bra. There was also a photo of the grieving widow standing graveside in a tacky and inappropriate dress that showed way too much plastic cleavage.
“Hi there,” a female voice said behind me. “Are you one of the mothers?”
I turned to face the real live Truly Richland. There had clearly been a lot of Photoshop actio
n in those pictures, but the body under her Richland MMA Academy tank top and tiny shorts was still amazing. She was my age or maybe a little older and had a brittle, anxious smile. Her voice was syrupy and Southern. Up close, her nose job was appalling. It made me glad I never got mine fixed.
“I’m...” I stumbled, suddenly unsure of what to say. I decided to see if I could dig up any dirt about Cody. “I’m looking for Cody Noon. Have you seen him?”
I was expecting something negative, related in some way to the supposed trouble that Cody was in, but the instant, napalm flare of jealousy in her eyes took me by surprise. She couldn’t have conveyed the fact that she was fucking him more clearly if she’d shown me a video.
“How do you know Cody?” she asked, looking like she was about to slug me.
I backpedaled, trying to think fast. Behind me, two teenage boys tumbled through the door and plopped down on the bench beside the shoe rack, horsing around, snickering and texting one-handed while removing their sneakers.
“I’m his father’s girlfriend,” I said, wondering if she’d heard anything about the shootout at the diner, if Vic’s body had been found yet. “His father was worried, said he might be in trouble. Have you heard anything?”
She nodded, visibly relieved for a moment before she was able to construct a more appropriate worried teacher kind of look.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I hear rumors. Of course, I strongly discourage my students from participating in unsanctioned matches of any kind, but you know, boys will be boys.”
At that point the phone on the desk rang.
“Will you excuse me?” Truly asked.
I nodded, and she turned to pick up the phone.
While she went into a detailed explanation of the membership fees, one of the two barefoot teenage boys on the bench spoke up.
“He’s fucked.”
I turned to the kids on the bench. The one who’d spoken looked a little older than his friend. He was Latino or maybe Native American with cornrowed hair and bad skin. His friend was a sunburned towhead with a goofy swooped-over-to-one-side hairstyle and submissive, beta-dog body language.
“Excuse me?” I took a step closer to them.
“Cody,” the older kid said. “He’s fucked.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Come on, man,” the towhead said out of the corner of his mouth, eyeing me like I might bite. “She could be a cop.”
“Yeah, right,” the older kid replied with a snort of lofty teenage derision. “She ain’t no cop.”
“How do you know?”
“Cause I know, puto.” He punched the towhead in the arm. “You ain’t,” he said to me. “Right?”
“Right,” I replied. “I’m just a friend.”
The older kid stood.
“Okay, follow me,” he said. “But take your shoes off.”
I took my shoes off, put them on the rack and followed the two kids into a small weight room off to one side of the large blue mats that took up the majority of the long open space. Hank was still busy showing little kids how to break each other’s bones. There was a large clock on the back wall that read 9:45.
“What time does that class end?” I asked.
“Ten,” the older kid said. “Why?”
“I need to talk to Hank. It’s important.”
The kid nodded and then led me over to a row of lockers on the far side of the weight room. I noticed a black vinyl man-shaped dummy leaning drunkenly against the wall by the weight rack. Someone had slipped a pair of pink lace panties over its stiff cylindrical legs. Its smooth blank face seemed to be watching us.
“So...Mr. Lovell, he sets up these fights down in San Luis, on the other side of the border. Guys who fight down there, like Cody, well, Mr. Lovell has them bring stuff home with them. Bodybuilding supplements that you can’t get in the States.”
“Supplements?” I said. “You mean like steroids?”
“I don’t mean vitamins,” he said.
The towheaded kid was looking increasingly uncomfortable about the topic of conversation. He slowly drifted away and started hitting the heavy bag with his bare knuckles.
“Does Cody use steroids?” I asked, not sure why I even cared, but hoping the answer would be no.
The kid shook his head.
“Nah,” he said. “He’s all obsessed on the AAFC. They test.”
“Okay, so then what kind of trouble is he in?” I asked. “What does this have to do with steroids?”
“Well, they pack the shit into jars of protein powder and you supposed to leave the jars in your locker after you get across the border. Mr. Lovell sends his guys to pick ’em up the next morning and leaves an envelope of cash. Only when they went to pick up Cody’s shipment, it was light.”
“I thought you said he doesn’t use steroids,” I said, frowning and looking over at the battered wall of lockers.
“He don’t,” the kid said, rolling his eyes like I was the dumbest bitch he’d ever met. “But he uses money.”
Jesus. The motorcycle. The expensive clothes. The money he owed. But why steal from Lovell to pay him back? Unless Cody was never planning on paying Lovell back at all. Maybe he assumed he would be safe once he got on TV. No way to find out now. Maybe not ever, if Lovell decided it would be best just to bury Cody out in the desert. Maybe he already had and none of this mattered.
I looked up at the clock. It was ten. The kids’ class had wrapped and Hank was standing alone at the corner of the mat, squinting and lost in thought.
I thanked the cornrowed kid for the info and walked over to Hank. When he heard my bare footsteps on the mat, he looked up and flashed that broad, boyish grin. He didn’t seem even remotely surprised to see me.
“We need to talk,” I said.
The smile faltered slightly.
“Well, okay,” he said.
“Not here.” I looked around. Students in their teens and early twenties were crowding in while harried parents corralled the younger kids and herded them out the front door. “Somewhere private.”
“All right,” he said, taking my arm and leading me into a small office behind the weight room. “But you’d better make it quick. I got another class coming in.”
This office was also decorated with framed photos and trophies, but these celebrated the illustrious fight career of one Hank “The Hammer” Hammond. I was anxious and distracted but I couldn’t help noticing that the most recent item was dated 2002.
“Lovell’s got Cody,” I said as soon as the door was shut behind us.
“God...” he started, but swallowed the curse before it was out. “...bless America.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “What happened?”
I explained everything I’d seen and added what the cornrowed kid had told me.
“Lovell ain’t gonna kill him,” Hank said. “Not yet anyway.”
“What makes you so sure?” I asked.
“Because he wants his money’s worth. If Cody’s dead he can’t fight, and if he can’t fight, he can’t throw it and make back what Lovell lost on him last week.”
I nodded, tried to focus, to come up with some brilliant plan that would save Cody’s life, but my eye kept on going back to a large photo of a not exactly handsome, but younger, less battered Hank with his gloved fists up, wearing tiny black shorts and nothing else. I was all out of brilliant.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, then paused, frowning. “What did you say your name was again?”
I looked into his pale eyes to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. I was starting to get the feeling that maybe he’d been hit in the head one too many times.
“Angel,” I said.
“Well, Angel, here’s how I figure it. We got until at least nine PM so there’s no point getting all bent out of shape right now. I’m on the card tonight too, so after I’m done here for the day, you and I’ll just head down to San Luis like everything was normal. You’ll need to do the
driving, of course, since I ain’t allowed no more on account of my migraines.”
“I don’t have a real driver’s license,” I said. “In fact, I don’t have any legit ID at all, so there’s no way I can go across the border.”
Hank smiled and shook his huge head.
“Ain’t we a pair?” he said. “Why’d they take yours away?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Well then you can tell it on the way to San Luis,” he said.
“I just told you I can’t do that,” I said.
“Sure you can,” Hank said. “I know all the border guards and they pretty much don’t give a damn about anyone American going out. Especially pretty Americans like you. Coming back’ll be a different story, but we can cross that bridge when we get there.”
“I just can’t take that chance,” I said. I knew how serious things had become at border crossings what with the terrorist hysteria all over the world. That was the reason I had been so dead set on scoring a new passport, the whole reason I’d been with Duncan in the first place. I had been so damn close too, before all this.
“Look,” Hank said. “We’ll talk more about this after I’m done teaching. In the meanwhile, you’re welcome to hang out here. You can work out, use the weights or hit the bags. If you like, you can even take one of my classes. The first one’s free.”
“I’ve never...” I looked back up at the wall of photos, eye falling on a shot of Hank standing in the ring with his face masked in blood, a Japanese ref raising his hand. “I mean, I’ve done some kickboxing, just for fitness. Never anything like this.”
Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold Page 6