by Eyre Price
Daniel staggered backward. He wobbled on his feet.
A moment of silence. And then blackness.
An instant later, Daniel was looking up at the sky. Rabidoso was straddling his chest and punches were falling like rain in the Pacific Northwest.
“Stop it!” Moog ordered.
Rabidoso ignored him.
A size 14 Ferragamo kicked Rabidoso to the ground. The Desert Eagle convinced him not to push the matter. “Now get him up and let’s go.”
“Fuck you!” Rabidoso got to his feet, but he wasn’t compliant. Not anymore. “You think you’re running this show? You ain’t been running shit! Not since we left! You think you the only motherfucker with a cell phone?” He pulled his phone out of his pants. “Fucking Motorola Android, esse. Top of the line. You not the only one talking to Mr. P. Why you think he sent me along anyway, you stupid ape?” He put his phone away. “How you think those fucking bikers keep finding us, you dumb motherfucker? I’m the fucking capitan calling the shots. You think you got a future, asshole?”
Under other circumstances, Moog would have finished their discussion with his fists, but something about the question—an uncertainty that had dogged him since they’d started their trip—left him speechless and flat-footed.
“You’re the past, esse. I’m the motherfucking future. And you ain’t in my plans. And you ain’t in Mr. P.’s plans. Now, I’m going in there and I’m getting this cocksucker’s fucking son. And if you want to stop me, you take your shot now. But if I get back to Vegas and tell Mr. P. what he could have had, what you kept from him, it’s only going to make your retirement party that much more painful. Trust me,” he glared back at the big man. “I know. I’m the fucking retirement committee!”
Daniel used the time they’d spent arguing to struggle to his feet. “No!” He’d come too far, gone through too much to let anything happen to Zack now. He stumbled forward like a George Romero zombie. “I won’t let you hurt my—” He made a desperate rush at the Mexican, grabbed him around the waist, and dragged him back to the ground.
There was nothing skilled or noble in the way Daniel fought. It probably wasn’t even fighting as much as it was a flurry of mammalian fury, a parent protecting its child. He pressed his thumbs as hard as he could into Rabidoso’s eye sockets and then swung his fists wildly. He grabbed handfuls of hair and bit down hard on the little man’s ear, all the while growling and snarling like an animal.
Pound-for-pound Rabidoso was as tough as they came, but even he could endure such an attack for only so long. He struggled to push himself away and got to his feet, staggering around unsteadily as his brain worked feverishly to process the pain that had been inflicted on him. When he’d gained sufficient sense of it, Rabidoso rushed at Daniel, who was just getting to his feet. He tackled him hard and drove him into the green Dumpster at the end of the alley.
The two men hit the Dumpster with such force that they drove the heavy metal receptacle back a full foot. The crash of their impact echoed in the night as they bounced off it and fell to the pavement. They rolled and tumbled back and forth, but it was Rabidoso who ultimately got the best of the struggle and pinned Daniel beneath him.
Bloodied and beaten and with all his psychoses fully engaged, Rabidoso was no longer thinking about satisfying his employer or career advancement—or anything else. When he pulled the blade from his pants pocket, the only thought in his twisted head was cutting Daniel’s heart from his chest. He raised the knife high above his head.
There was no telling where the dog might have come from. The most logical explanation would have been that the pup was a stray that had made a home behind the Dumpster and was responding instinctively to a perceived threat to its territory. It could have been that it was a runaway from the neighborhood that occasionally supplemented its kibble rations with a trip to the Dumpster. Or maybe it was simply that from time to time, things happen that are beyond explanation or understanding, things like love and music—and even the occasional charging dog.
The dog was tan and white, seventy pounds or more, and even more vicious than Rabidoso. It went straight for the arm that was poised to bring the knife down into Daniel’s chest and sank its teeth into the flesh until tooth hit bone. As the dog’s jaws tightened, it rolled its head violently back and forth, sinking them in farther and tearing the wound wider and wider.
Rabidoso screamed and cursed as he tried in vain to shake his arm free of the mutt’s snarling maw. Gritting his teeth, he transferred the knife to his left hand and then slashed at the dog, opening a wound along its left side. The dog squealed in pain, released the arm, and then ran scampering off behind the Dumpster.
“What did I tell you!” The words came out of Moog’s mouth, but the voice was deeper, colder, and crueler than his own. “What did I fuckin’ tell you!”
Rabidoso was focused on inspecting the deep wound in his arm and so was surprised to find the big man advancing on him. “What?”
“I told you if I ever saw you touch another dog again—” The big man’s eyes flared with rage.
Uninterested in continuing their rivalry any further, Rabidoso turned his attention back to the wound, which he was certain would require stitches. And a shot.
“I warned you,” the big man growled.
He looked up, distracted and annoyed. “What are you talking about?”
Moog’s right hand wrapped itself into the front of Rabidoso’s jersey and lifted him off the ground and above his head like he was just a toy psycho killer. “You love her so much? Meet your motherfucking Muerte!”
Maybe Rabidoso’s boasts that he’d never known fear in his life were true, but he more than made up for it in that moment. Frantically, he reached back for his pistol, but just as he found its grip the big man brought him down, crashing him into the steel Dumpster with a force that dented the Dumpster and shattered bones. The pistol tumbled from the Mexican’s limp hand.
Again and again, Moog repeated that simple motion, lifting Rabidoso up into the air and then bringing him down on the Dumpster. Over and over, he smashed him until the Mexican’s body was completely limp. Moog held the broken body over his head and then let it fall to the ground.
A second later the big man staggered back, unsure what had happened or what he’d done. He looked down the alley. Rabidoso lay motionless in a deepening pool of his own blood. He looked up the alley. Daniel was gone. The money was gone too.
In the distance, Moog could hear sirens. He couldn’t be sure who’d witnessed what he’d done there, but he was certain the cops were coming for him now. He looked down at his feet; they were splattered with blood. His suit pants too.
The sirens drew closer.
He wondered if he should even bother to run. Would his escape be worth the effort? Escape to what? His fate was set. But he couldn’t help wishing that for just once in his life…he could beat his fate.
Tires squealed at the end of the alley. He looked up at the car. It was a maroon Monte Carlo. Daniel was behind the wheel.
“Get in the goddamn car!”
Daniel had driven almost to Yakima by the time Moog was ready to speak. And even then it was only a hushed, “Why?”
“That’s a big question,” Daniel quipped. “Why what?”
“Why would you come back for me? You were out. You had the money. Why not just keep running? Why’d you come back to pull me outta there?” The big man’s voice was hushed and troubled. “I’m thirty-two goddamn years old and nobody ever helped me outta nuthin’.” He’d intended those words to resonate with pride, but after hearing his declaration out loud he wasn’t sure what there was to be proud of.
They rode for a while in silence, though it was clear something was still troubling Moog. After a dozen miles had gone past, he turned to Daniel and admitted, “You savin’ me makes me feel funny. Like I owe you, but it’s like you sold me something I didn’t wanna buy.”
“Forget it.” Daniel didn’t bother to take his eyes from the highway. “That o
ne’s on the house. You don’t owe me anything.”
“’Cause this don’t change nothing,” Moog announced, more vehemently than he knew he needed to. “We can share some miles, but you ain’t my friend. You just a paycheck. That’s all, all you ever gonna be.”
“Got it.” Daniel ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I just thought—”
“Well, don’t,” Moog snapped. “You think too goddamn much!” He crossed his arms across his massive chest. “Just don’t you do it again. I look like I’m goin’ down, you just let me sink.”
Daniel was too tired to say anything more than “All right.”
It wasn’t enough to satisfy whatever was eating at the big man. “If you ain’t nothin’ to me, then how can I be anything to you? How can I be anything but the badass motherfucker who’s gonna turn you over to that crazy Russian cocksucker?” He asked the question like he knew it didn’t make sense. “’Cause that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“Maybe my chooser’s broken?” Daniel offered. The thought of her brought a smile to his face.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Daniel had no intention of sharing. “What do you want me to say? I guess I thought that buried underneath all your homicidal intent there’s a good man, too good to just leave with the trash in the back of an alley.” He sighed, weighing whether to continue. “And I still think you’re too good to—” And then he stopped.
“Too good to what?”
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know, I just don’t understand what someone like you is doing as a muscled manservant to that Soviet psycho.”
“You just check yourself one damn minute.” The big man held up an open hand like he was an oversized crossing guard stopping a car in a crosswalk. “I ain’t nobody’s servant. I’m an independent contractor.”
“All right. You’re an independent whatever-you-say-you-are.”
“I’m an independent contractor, motherfucker,” Moog repeated, in case there was any confusion. “That’s what I am. It ain’t much but—”
“Then why be it?”
“’Scuse me?”
To Daniel the question was simple. “If what you are ‘ain’t much,’ then why not be something different? You know, something more.”
To Moog the question was a complicated one, but the answer was simple. “I was born on the bad side of Kansas City. Whatchu think I was going to turn out to be? A fucking doctor or lawyer?”
Daniel just smiled. “I’ve just spent the last two weeks following the path of dozens of guys who were born into situations that were a fucksight tougher than yours. And you know what they did?” He didn’t bother to wait for an answer. “They changed the fucking world!”
“First off,” Moog was getting wildly angry now. “It hasn’t been no two weeks yet.”
“All right,” Daniel easily conceded. “It hasn’t been two weeks, what else did I say that was wrong?”
Moog was furious, but he wasn’t sure at whom. After a silent mile or two, he muttered something like, “Make more money than any of those old guys ever did.” Daniel didn’t respond and that only made the big man grumble more. “Independent contractor, goddamn it.”
They didn’t talk for a long while. Daniel just drove and Moog just fumed.
When the silence finally began to bother him more than what Daniel had said, the big man asked, “You know he’s just gonna kill you, right?”
“I think we’re both pretty sure of that.” His calmness surprised even Daniel.
“Then why you doing it? ’Cause he ain’t gonna kill you easy.” Moog felt bad saying it out loud to someone who’d probably just saved him a life stretch in the Washington State Pen, but it was a truth. “Hell, if you want to die so badly,” he said, “get yourself a room and a girl, a bottle, and some pills. Go out real easy.”
“It’s not as easy as you’d think,” Daniel said with a degree of authority that surprised his traveling companion.
“Whatchu mean?”
They had nothing but time and miles in front of them. “You ever been in love?”
“Proper love?”
“Any kind of love.”
“No. Probably not.”
“You’re a lucky man,” Daniel assured him. “I was in love once.”
Moog had been to Connie’s house and already knew the story’s ending. “Went bad, huh?”
“When my son, Zack, graduated high school,” Daniel explained, “my wife and I threw him a big party at our house. All our friends and family. His friends. His girlfriend. Her family.” Daniel’s voice trailed off.
“And?”
Bad thoughts can be hard to escape and Daniel had a lot to get lost in. “What?”
“You were saying something about a graduation party,” the big man prompted.
“Right. Well, Zack’s girlfriend brought her parents and little sister. She brought her older brother too. And to give you some idea of this guy, he’d just dropped out of community college to pursue a career as an actor because he’d landed a walk-on in Mega-Python versus Gatoroid II: The Rematch.”
“I saw that movie,” Moog chimed in before realizing that wasn’t really the point.
Daniel chuckled anyway. “Well, halfway through the party everyone’s out on the main deck and there’s a large crash. Of course, everyone turns and there’s my wife and this kid. They’d been upstairs in our bedroom and—whatever contortions they’d gotten tangled in—they managed to crash through the sliding glass door and land right on the balcony.”
After all the years passed, Daniel only wished he could find it as funny as Moog did. “I’m sorry,” the big man whined after he finally stopped laughing. “For reals?”
“For reals.”
Moog wiped away a tear and shook his head. “Well, a woman’s like a dresser.”
“How’s that?”
“Always someone running through her drawers.”
Daniel laughed.
“And the dude?”
Daniel gritted his teeth. “Randy.”
The pieces fit. “That the boy that Rabidoso did back at your old lady’s place?”
Daniel nodded.
“Maaaaaaan,” Moog stretched the word out to express his amazement. “If it makes you feel any better, that crazy little Mexican hurt the boy all kinds of ways before he finally put him down and out.”
“It really doesn’t.” Daniel felt he had to be honest. “Not a lot anyway.”
“I knew that wasn’t your son.” Moog wanted Daniel to know.
“I thought you did. But I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t tell Rabidoso.”
“That psycho was sick. Turning someone like that loose on someone’s kid, man, that ain’t right. Ain’t professional.”
Daniel was curious. “How’d you know it wasn’t Zack?”
“When we first broke into your ex’s, I was lookin’ around upstairs. Saw your boy’s bedroom. Lots of pictures of him in there. Saw your ex’s bedroom too. Lots of pictures of her with the guy Rabidoso worked on, so I just figured he wasn’t the son.”
Daniel nodded. “Can’t argue with that logic.”
“Freaky pictures.”
“I get it.”
“I mean some freaky, nasty pictures.” Moog shook his head. “I mean the things were just unnatural…I mean—”
“I get it,” Daniel snapped.
Moog smiled sheepishly and tried to steer the conversation back. “So what happened with you after all that?”
“After my wife fell out of the window screwing my son’s girlfriend’s brother?”
“Right.”
“Well, she went off with him. Sued me for divorce and took half of everything.”
“Except your cash,” Moog pointed out, ever the glass-half-full kinda guy.
“No, she took most of that too.” Daniel was growing tired and the story wasn’t helping. “I fell into a depression. Tried to deal with it with the bottle. Tried to deal with it with pills. Tried to deal with
it with the bottle and pills. After a while, I couldn’t work. Couldn’t be a father. Couldn’t be anything. And so one night I decided I didn’t want to be anything.”
“Dark times, huh?” Moog had seen his share.
“People think hell is all about the evil, but that’s not how the story goes. Devil doesn’t start out hating God. He loves Him more than anything. But it’s not enough. God loves someone else. That’s what hell is. It’s not sulfur and flame, it’s being discarded. It’s being told that your love—everything you got, everything you are—just doesn’t matter. You’re inconsequential. That’s what hell is.”
Moog knew there were all sorts of hells, but he didn’t bother to interrupt.
“So one night I took a handful of pills. Antidepressants. Antianxiety. Pain relievers. Sleeping pills. Everything that had been prescribed to me over the course of my descent. Took it all and washed it down with whisky.”
“What happened?”
“Turns out hell’s not that easy to escape. My son stopped by my place unexpectedly. Found me there in a pool of pharmaceuticalgrade, Technicolor vomit and called the ambulance. I spent thirty days in a psych ward.” He shook his head wistfully. “If you think success can build you up quickly, you ought to see how quickly the sickly stench of failure will bring you right back down again. The whole thing wiped me out.”
“And that where Mr. P. come in?”
Daniel nodded. “I got an idea for a reality show. I used to handle a band called Mission.” He turned expectantly.
Moog nodded halfheartedly. He’d heard the name but not the music.
“Well,” Daniel said with a shrug. “They were fairly big about ten years ago. And then they imploded. Booze. And coke. And pills. But I got an idea that I could resurrect them and follow them on tour—not headlining or anything—but, you know, hit the state fairs and just show how they handled their sobriety out on the road.”
“I’d watch it.” Moog didn’t own a TV, but it seemed like the right thing to say.