Airbag Scars

by Jim Heskett

  Micah knelt before the man. “Hey.”

  The man blinked a few times and his head tilted from side to side. “Shh… I shot it all,” he said in a slurring mumble. “I don’t have anything.”

  “I don’t want your stash. I want some answers.”

  The bouncer tried to lift his head, and it took him three or four tries to keep it in place. “You.”

  “Yes, me. Look at my face. You know who I am?”

  The bouncer’s eyes dimmed, and he started working his jaw, as if he was chewing a piece of tough meat. “You came into the club. I saw… saw you.”

  “When did you see me? In the daytime, or at night? Two weeks ago, or three?”

  “You can’t tell him,” the bouncer said.

  “Tell who?”

  “T-t-t-Tyson. They can’t know I’m coming here. I’ll lose… lose my job. Zero tolerance, you know?”

  Micah chewed on his lip for a few seconds. He wasn’t getting through to this guy. Maybe the bouncer wasn’t capable of stringing a coherent sentence together, but Micah had to try. He had to get something out of him.

  “Almost three weeks ago, I came into the club, then I left and got in a car accident, a little north of here where there’s the closed-down gas station. By the industrial area. You know where I’m talking about?”

  The bouncer shrugged and licked his lips, then clacked his teeth together several times. Still chewing.

  Micah gripped the man by the arm, which rattled the chair and woke him up a little. “Tell me about the accident,” Micah said. “You, or someone at the Pink Door knows about it. There was a woman who was nearby, for whatever reason. Her shoe got lodged in the bumper of my car.”

  The bouncer grinned and his eyes fluttered. “You ran over someone? That s-sucks for you. Murder rap is hard to beat.”

  Micah smacked the bouncer across the face, which didn’t do much to get his attention, but drew a couple murmurs from the junkies nearby. “Listen to me, damn it. What happened that night? How is this all connected?”

  The bouncer took a deep breath, and for a moment, his eyes opened fully, then he slumped back into the chair. “Please. Don’t tell them.”

  Micah dropped into a sit, his shoulders falling. He wanted to beat the answer out of this bouncer, but knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  “Hey man,” said a voice nearby, “we don’t tolerate violence here. If you’re going to hurt people, you can do it outside.”

  Micah looked up to find the same vein-seeker who’d been sitting at the top of the stairs now standing over them. Micah took one last look at the bouncer, then stood, brushed some dirt off his jeans, and marched out of the room.

  The first round Micah shot at the gun range, he dedicated to the mysterious owner of the women’s running shoe. Despite finding that news article about the fallen telephone pole and visiting the scene of the accident, he’d almost convinced himself the whole thing had been some hoax. But the words of that jerk from the boxing gym and the pointless conversation with the junkie bouncer at the drug house had only succeeded in muddling everything. He didn’t know how much to trust any of this, tracing it all the way back to some anonymous note stuffed under his door.

  Anyone could push a note under his door. He’d wanted to believe it would lead to something, and staked his hope on that.

  The second round, he dedicated to Roland Templeton. Part of the reason Micah had been coming to this particular gun range three or four times a week was that he kept hoping to catch a glimpse of Roland coming in or out of the apartments above the Pink Door. No such luck. He’d probably been moved, as Frank had said. Micah had been doing his research like a good skip tracer should, but always came up empty.

  The third shot, he dedicated to that relentless and sick thought in the back of his head that a drink would be nice right now. Even sober nearly four weeks, the urge still tugged at him. That yearning to make all of his problems go away. Forget his past; forget the trial and the people he’d sent to prison; forget his best friend who’d died for such a stupid and pointless reason. And to forget the things he’d done that landed him on the federal government’s radar in the first place.

  Even though he knew having a drink wouldn’t nullify the past, and would only pile on more problems, he still felt that yawning desire. Just one drink to drown the pain.

  He emptied the rest of the clip in quick succession, feeling the gun try to raise up after every shot. Something about the rapid squeezing of the trigger excited him.

  Micah flicked the switch up to bring the target to him. The range safety officer, standing right behind Micah, stepped closer as the target arrived.

  “Nice shooting,” he said as Micah carefully set the gun on the platform in front of him, next to his box of ammo. A little residual ringing in Micah’s ears dulled the man’s voice. Micah and the guy had been getting friendly lately, since they were often the only two people in here.

  “Thanks,” Micah said as he took off his ear protection. “Not my best, though. The sights seem kinda blurry to me today.” He’d hit the target four times in the center circle, once in the top circle, and had five complete misses.

  “Tired eyes do make for crappy shooting,” the range officer said.

  The door to the shooting bay opened behind them, and in stepped a short woman with curly black hair. Tiny little thing, really. She looked about Micah’s same age, maybe late twenties, although Micah couldn’t judge age well, and it’s not as if he would dare to ask most women.

  She was cute, even though she didn’t meet Micah’s usual type. And under her modest and not-revealing clothes, he could still tell she had an athlete’s body.

  She threw a quick glance at him before the range safety officer approached her and blocked Micah’s view. Micah slipped his earmuffs back on and sent the target back out to the fifteen yard mark. He opened the box of rounds and shoved them into the 9mm’s magazine, stuffing it full this time. Each bullet in the clip added more tension on the spring, and he had to force the last couple into place.

  A half hour later, when he was done shooting and left to clean up at the washing station, he noted that the woman with the curly black hair was no longer in the shooting bay.

  He nodded to the lady at the counter as he returned his rental pistol and asked her to recycle his paper target. Through the window, he spied that curly hair, standing under the awning of the range. She turned her head, and he caught a bit of sadness on her face when she brushed the curls out of her eyes. It made him want to talk to her.

  He stepped outside as she was looking at her phone, and she smiled at him, a welcoming grin that still seemed forced.

  “How’d you shoot today?” he said.

  She shrugged. “My first time. I had no idea what I was doing. What about you? Do you come here often?”

  “Now, there’s a good pickup line,” he said, laughing.

  She blushed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, got me there.”

  “Are you waiting for a ride?”

  She looked at her phone. “My car’s in the shop, so I was going to get an Uber.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Off Colfax, downtown.”

  “I’m not too far from there,” he said. “My car should be in the shop, but it’s drivable.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m saying I can give you a ride, if you want.”

  She agreed and they made small talk as they navigated through the parking lot, with Micah keeping a wary eye on the Pink Door to make sure he wasn’t spotted. They mostly talked about shooting, about how loud it was, about the feeling of pulling a trigger. Micah lied and said he’d never pulled a trigger before going to the gun range.

  On the way home, he passed by two different liquor stores. Each time he did, he felt the almost imperceptible tug to turn his steering wheel into the store, so he could go to the land of bliss like those junkies in the drug house.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HALF A block away, Donovan watche
d Micah and Hayden chatting out in front of the gun range. How perfect would it be if those two had a little fling, or even started dating? It would make what Donovan planned to do all the more heartbreaking, to get everyone’s emotions involved before they were ripped apart like a steak knife gouging a piece of meat.

  But Donovan was getting ahead of himself. He still had a long way to go before it was time to execute the final stages of the plan.

  Fighting off a sudden urge to jerk off to relieve some tension, he thumbed the green button on his cell to call Glazer’s gym. It rang at least a dozen times before someone picked up, which seemed to be their norm.

  “Glazer’s gym.”

  “Let me talk to Eddie.”

  The guy on the other end dropped the phone and Donovan listened to the sounds of punching bags being smacked for about two minutes until someone else picked up the phone. He missed going to those kinds of sweaty, grimy places, which he used to do all the time. The gym facilities in prison weren’t nearly as pleasant.

  “This is Edgar.”

  “Eddie, it’s your old friend Donovan.”

  Eddie huffed a sigh. “Old friend? I don’t call people I met two weeks ago old friends. Besides, you still haven’t paid me for that little acting job, and I’m getting tired of waiting for you to come through.”

  “You’re going to get paid, don’t worry about that. I wanted to find out if our mutual friend has come back to the gym to talk to you.”

  “Come back? Why the fuck would he come back? I gave him your line about what happened that night. Car drives up, hits a telephone pole, drives off.”

  A pulse went up Donovan’s back. “Wait. What about the woman? You told him about the woman, right? Tall blonde on a bicycle, and he ran her over?”

  Eddie paused a few seconds. “I told him whatever you wrote down for me to tell him. If you wrote that, then I said it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Listen, buddy, I don’t like your tone. Why don’t you give me the cash you promised me and stop wasting my time?”

  The call ended. Donovan stared at his phone for a moment, unsure what to do. The story was supposed to involve a blonde woman, so Micah would be off in one direction, so when Donovan revealed what really happened, Micah would be devastated. But if this punch-drunk boxer had told him something else… this was a complication.

  Without that distraction, Micah and Hayden might come to the truth of what had happened if they started chatting about their recent past. Then Donovan wouldn’t be able to witness the shock on their faces firsthand, but he supposed that would be okay. Everything would still end up in the same place, so maybe the boxer messing up the story wouldn’t matter.

  Micah and Hayden walked around the side of the gun range, and they both slipped into his car. Perfect.

  But then something unexpected happened. As Micah was driving off, two men in front of the Pink Door turned their heads as Micah’s beat-up Honda drove away. And one of them lifted a cell phone to his ear, with their eyes relentlessly following the car as it turned the corner and disappeared.

  They were watching him.

  If they were onto Micah and made him vanish before Donovan got the chance to do it, then all would be lost. No reconciliation with El Lobo’s people. No reclaiming his spot in the organization.

  He needed more time. More time to plan, more time to figure out how to fix things with Caitlin. She wasn’t going anywhere, but he needed to settle this Micah situation sooner rather than later to shift the focus back to her.

  He had to neutralize or at least slow down Tyson Darby and his Pink Door thugs. But if he went in there guns blazing, that opened up a whole new line of problems he’d have to solve. How was he supposed to keep them in check while he was staying on Micah?

  A few crappy options cycled through his head before he landed on the right path. Tyson’s job offer. If that still stood, it was the perfect way to keep everyone happy and still get what he wanted.

  Donovan left the car and strode up the street to the Pink Door. He entered, and when the little man behind the booth saw him, he waved Donovan forward. Donovan navigated the dollar-bill-flaunting patrons and girls juggling drink trays to find his way to the back of the room, and the bodyguards parted to let him through.

  He enjoyed this sign of respect. In prison, respect had to be earned, but on the outside, knowing the right people could achieve the same thing. It seemed cheap to Donovan, but he’d take any advantage he could get.

  Tyson was seated at the back booth, digging his hands into a plate of greasy and disgusting cheese fries. Bacon bits, sour cream, chives, all gooped on top of french fries cooked in lard. Tyson waved him forward. “Mr. Nardell, I was wondering if I was going to see you again. I’ve done some checking up on you, and I’d hoped I wasn’t wasting my time. Seems you’re legit.”

  Donovan took a seat at the booth, even though no one had invited him. The stench of the cheese fries irritated his nostrils. “Does that mean you still have a spot on your team for me?”

  Chapter Twenty

  ON A dreary, overcast day, Micah drove down the street toward the gun range, and as he approached, he noticed two of the Pink Door’s bouncers outside the club, with their eyes on the range. One of them was pacing up and down the street, and he stopped in front of a few of the homeless people, questioning them.

  Did they know Micah was going to the gun range? Had the junkie bouncer said something about seeing his car there, maybe to cover his own ass?

  The two men in suits crossed paths, then they each pointed in different directions, flashing hand signals like they were comparing notes.

  They split up, and one of the bouncers actually crossed the street and walked toward the gun range. Micah jerked his car into a spot along the curb, then sank into his driver’s seat, lowering the seat back so he wouldn’t be spotted.

  This was not good. They had to know that he knew about Roland hiding out upstairs, so they would be quite interested in talking to him, maybe even putting a bullet in the back of his head. Micah should have expected this kind of scrutiny, but he’d been coming here so often with no heat that it had started to feel normal.

  He was supposed to meet Hayden here today, but he didn’t want to give them any reason to take notice of her.

  Micah whipped out his phone.

  Hey, Hayden, not sure I can make it to the gun range today.

  In a couple minutes, she wrote back.

  No problem. Everything ok?

  He could have answered her question any number of ways, but he decided to play it cool. Before he could type, the bouncer exited the gun range, and as he turned to shut the door, his suit coat flew up, revealing a gun holstered on his hip. Big thing, like a Desert Eagle or something similar. The kind of gun meant to make sure no teeth were left behind for dental records. Micah watched him walk toward the homeless people gathered in front of the shelter. He took out his wallet and flashed some dollar bills, which the homeless accepted to talk to him.

  Micah typed:

  Got some stuff to do later. Thought I had time, but I don’t. Sorry to cancel so suddenly.

  She wrote back within a few seconds:

  Do you still want to hang out? I’m getting a massage later but I have a few hours to kill before.

  Hayden seemed eager to spend time with him, and Micah wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Their time at the gun range had been friendly and he liked being around her. Despite knowing what a bad time this was, he had trouble saying no to her. He sighed and typed:

  Sure. Meet me near my apartment. We can go for a walk by Cherry Creek, if that sounds good.

  Micah looked up as a homeless woman wearing a giant knitted shawl accepted a dollar from the bouncer, then she pointed back to the gun range.

  As soon as Hayden left, Donovan figured now was the perfect time to get into her apartment and collect his usual heirloom. Who knew if she was going to survive the coming ordeal, so he might not have a better chance.

  He
’d already put an envelope on his coffee table with the word Hayden scrawled on the front.

  Donovan pressed his head against his apartment’s living room wall and shut his eyes to focus on his hearing. Repositioning until his ear formed a perfect vacuum, he began to distinguish sounds on the other side from the general rumble of central heating vibration and distant music from other apartments. He thought he’d heard her leave, but no sense being impulsive. That had already gotten him into too much trouble.

  Patton the dog brushed against his leg and he resisted the urge to kick the mutt. Then he felt guilty for that momentary pull to violence. He was a good dog, but Donovan didn’t have time to pay attention to him.

  “Later, dog. Daddy has some things to do right now.”

  Hayden had been noncommittal regarding more dates with Donovan after their lunch on the restaurant patio. Not that he had wanted to listen to any more of her babble about her stupid job and her other problems, but at the same time, he figured a woman that fiery must be fun in the sack. But any time he saw her, she played the too-busy-with-work-right-now card.

  She couldn’t keep that up forever. That had been part of the reason he’d set her up with Micah, to see if Donovan could get in the sack with her before Micah did. It was childish, but damn if a little competition didn’t get his blood boiling.

  He slipped out into the hallway and found it empty, so he went to work. Breaking into her apartment would be easy, since the locks in this building were at least a few decades old. Just a credit card in the door-jamb, and then a jiggle to slide it between the lock and door. He entered her apartment and stopped in the living room to orient himself.

  Her apartment was cluttered, with magazines, books, pairs of shoes, and many other objects scattered like grenade shrapnel. A bowl caked with noodles and cheese sat on the living room table. Could have been days or even weeks old.