12:00.
After two drinks at the bar and a long walk around downtown, I returned to the apartment at 12:00.
I always enjoyed spending time walking around downtown; it was the highlight of every drug deal I had made in Chicago. I usually decided to walk, even if it would make more sense for me to drive or take the train.
Even when the world was falling apart and I was almost definitely going to die, walking around downtown made me feel better.
I walked to Water Tower Place, to the Chicago Theater, to Buckingham Fountain and all the other places in the city I had been too busy to see over the past month.
Chicago was the most beautiful place I had ever been, and I had been too busy selling drugs and figuring out how not to get murdered that I hadn’t even explored the majority of it. If a sale wasn’t scheduled to go down near a famous location, I hadn’t been there.
I got back to the apartment at 12:00 and the place had been demolished. Shattered glass littered the floors, the art that had once adorned the walls had been torn down, and no piece of furniture had been left unturned. Someone had been there, and they had probably been looking for me.
“Gabe!” I yelled, not even considering the possibility whoever had ransacked the place might still be there. “Gabe! Are you here?”
No one answered, and I considered the possibility Gabe was still unconscious, though it had been hours since I was carried away by Geet and Scarface.
After finding the chairs we had been tied to both completely empty, I ran from room to room, looking for any sign of Gabe’s fate. Anything could have happened since the night before, including Gabe’s escape, or even his execution.
And though I was worried, I found myself confused about why I was so worried about him. Our friendship flip-flopped back and forth from simply putting up with each other to feeling seething hatred for one another, but as I realized there was a good chance he could have been killed, I felt tears welling up in my eyes.
I had never hated Gabe as much as I told myself I did, at least I didn’t think so. He had the ability to be a completely terrible person, but we had managed to stick together since the very beginning, and facing the idea something might have actually happened to him made my stomach churn.
“Gabe!” I cried.
I made my way from the living room, to the den where I had found him last time, to each bedroom and bathroom in the apartment, but I was alone.
‘What the hell have you done?’ I asked myself as I sat down on the couch. The cushions had been ripped apart and cotton was strewn across the room. I assumed Geet had been looking for the missing money and decided to destroy everything until he found it.
Realizing I was completely alone, I cupped my hands over my face and let the tears roll. Every connection to my past life had been severed long ago, and now my only real connection to my new life was gone, too.
The surf shop was gone, Ford was dead, Gabe was likely dead, or at least captured by Harrison and very close to becoming dead, and Fuchsia was gone, too.
Fuchsia; where was she?
I had instructed her to come to the apartment and hide out with Gabe until she heard from me, but she was nowhere to be found either. And truth be told, Fuchsia was more expendable than Gabe, meaning if he was dead, she was definitely dead.
‘What have you done?’
I raised my head up and wiped away my tears as I heard a strange noise coming from down the hallway. Standing up, I immediately looked around the room for something to defend myself with, but surprisingly found nothing of actual use. Tiptoeing into my bedroom, I sighed relief when I saw the painting hiding the knife I had purchased from Bob still hanging on the wall, not even slanted as if someone had made an attempt to move it.
The painting was heavy, but I manage to pull it off the wall completely, but cringed as the knife clattered against the wood floor, sounding more like shattering glass in the silence of the apartment.
I picked it up, trying to decide how to hold it to best defend myself if one of Harrison’s men was still in the apartment. I heard another noise from down the hallway and decided as long as I held the blade away from me, it would probably get the job done if I needed to stab anyone.
The hallway was dimly lit, as the light fixtures hanging from the ceiling had been shattered, the glass littering the entire length of the hallway as if it had been smashed by a baseball bat. I continued tiptoeing towards Gabe’s bedroom, a room I had already checked once, realizing my attempts to be quiet were ill. Each step I took echoed more broken glass throughout the entire apartment.
Gabe’s bedroom door stood completely ajar, and I walked in, holding the knife like a serial killer in a slasher movie. I felt like an idiot, but had no idea what I might soon be facing.
I heard the noise again and turned immediately towards the closet. The door was closed and the wooden slats were closed. I couldn’t see inside.
I froze. Should I tell whoever was inside I knew they were there and to just come out? I should fling the door open and attack? Should I run down the hallway and out the front door before I ended up getting myself killed? I honestly had no idea.
I took a breath and tightened my grip on the knife, telling myself I would be ready to defend myself, though I knew I was lying. I reached towards the door handle, noticing how much my free hand was shaking. As my hand moved closer and closer, I decided I would stab first and ask questions later. The way things had been going, I couldn’t afford to take chances.
Before I could even touch the handle, the closet door swung open and the figure hiding inside lunged at me, knocking me to the floor and the knife out of my hand. It clattered across the floor and slid under to a stop against the far wall.
“Shit!” I screamed, rolling onto my stomach, trying to crawl towards the knife before whoever had attacked me pulled a gun and shot me dead.
“Jamie?”
I stopped mid-crawl and rolled back onto my back. Gabe stared down at me, holding a wire hanger in his hand, his mouth slack-jawed.
“Gabe,” I gasped.
He rolled his eyes and dropped the hanger to the floor, holding out his hand to help me back to my feet. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, out of breath.
“What the hell am I doing? What the hell are you doing?”
I felt anger wash through my body as I regained my balance and let the terror of thinking I was about to fight for my life leave my mind. Gabe may hate me, but I had bought us a little time by lying about the location of the money, and I doubted he would go so far as to kill me right then and there, especially not after pulling me up from the floor. It was a small gesture, but it was a gesture nonetheless.
Before I could take a breath, Gabe’s arms wrapped around me in a bear hug, and I found myself in more shock than I had ever been in my life. He held onto me for what felt like ages and let out a sigh of relief after letting go and stepping back.
I stood, speechless.
“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “I just thought you were dead.”
“I thought you were dead, too,” I managed to whisper, a lot happier he wasn’t than I was letting show.
“How are you not dead?”
“It’s a long story. How are you not dead?”
“I hid,” Gabe said, still embarrassed. “I got loose from the chair about thirty minutes after they left with you, and when they broke back into the apartment, started destroying everything, I hid.”
I tried to picture the scene in my head; Gabe making a run for it as Geet and however many others came rushing through the front door. I imagined Gabe taking refuge in the closet with only a wire hanger to defend himself, but one question remained in my mind.
“Where’s Fuchsia?”
Gabe shook his head, his messed up hair flowing everywhere. “She showed up and told me you’d sent her to stay with me until things got better or worse or whatever. When Geet showed up, I made it into the closet before he and the others saw me, but she d
idn’t. I don’t know what happened, but if she’s not here, we can assume it wasn’t good.”
My heart sank. I had sent Fuchsia to the apartment, if foolishly, for protection, and now I was almost sure she was dead.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said. I couldn’t be sure, but in true Gabe fashion, I felt like he was apologizing for more than just failing to save Fuchsia.
“Me, too,” I said quietly.
Gabe nodded.
“So,” I began, not sure how to ask if the two of us still hated each other or if we were going to bury the hatchet for the hundredth time.
“What you did, when they were torturing me, that was completely stupid, but you might have saved my life. Thanks.”
I was lost for words; Gabe’s face showed true gratitude for what I could only assume to be the first time in his life. I thought back to him being tortured and cringed. His body still looked worse than it ever had before, but he was alive, and according to him, at least in part due to my actions. His body and mind had been through more in the past month than I had my entire life, but he was alive.
“You moved pretty quickly with that hanger for a guy who had some of his fingernails ripped out and cigarettes put out on his chest last night,” I said. It wasn’t meant to be a joke, but for some reason sounded hilarious when the words left my mouth.
“Whatever it takes to stay alive, right?” he asked.
I didn’t respond.
“So, what are we going to do?”
I stared at him in shock, not sure what to make of him asking me what our plan was. Gabe had never been one to take my advice, or even ask for, but him asking me in this very pivotal moment proved to me we had set our differences aside, even if just until the smoke cleared from our latest catastrophe.
“This might sound crazy,” I said, “But we have to kill Harrison.” I couldn’t believe I had even said it; I had been telling myself for weeks this wasn’t the way it needed to go down. But he had my brother, and I was going to do whatever it took to get Kip home safe.
Gabe smirked, obviously happy to finally have me completely on board with the plan.
“And we have to do it tonight,” I said.
“Right,” Gabe agreed. “I’m not at one hundred percent, though. I need you to promise me you’re not going to back out. I’m going to need you to keep Geet and any others at bay while I kill him.”
I nodded, agreeing, but had to ask, “Why do you want to be the one who does it so badly? I don’t want to do it, believe me, but you’re very adamant about being the one who actually kills him. Just tell me why.”
Gabe tensed up, but let out a sigh. “I lived with my brother for a while a few years ago. He was already working for Harrison, I was having a really hard time in school, and our parents sent me here to live with Geet. They had no idea what my brother was doing, or they would have never made me come.
“Harrison took me under his wing, and believe me, it didn’t take much convincing. But things got out of hand, and he killed one of the only friends I ever had.”
I suddenly felt more remorse for Gabe than ever before. I had lost Airic because of getting involved with Gabe, and Gabe had lost his friend because of getting involved with Harrison. I never would have guessed the two of us had such similar stories.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “When all this goes down, I’ll make sure you get to take him out. I promise.”
Gabe forced a smile onto his face and wiped at his cheek, though I hadn’t actually seen a tear fall. The last thing he wanted was to seem vulnerable. “We’re going to need some guns,” he said. “There’s nothing left here.”
“Don’t worry. If you have the money, I know a guy who can help us out,” I said, thinking of Bob and his fully-stocked pawn shop.
Gabe smirked.
“What?” I asked.
“You know a guy,” he said. “Man, you’ve become a professional.”
“Don’t seem so excited; we might still die tonight.”
Gabe and I spent the next half hour or so plotting out our exact game plan for the rest of the day, possibly our last day. We would leave the apartment and make our way to Bob’s pawn shop with the stolen money; we had a feeling five thousand dollars would get us plenty of guns, maybe even more than we needed. We would then make our way to Harrison’s office building. We had never been there, but we had a feeling if we just walked in like we owned the place, we would get taken into custody pretty quickly. That, or we would be shot on the spot. Harrison still saw us as valuable and hopefully would let us live long enough to make his point known. Guys like Harrison always had to talk your ear off before they killed you, or at least they did in the movies.
I didn’t tell Gabe about Officer O’Kelly.
Officer O’Kelly was the only part of the plan I honestly felt like had a possibility of working out. No one would be expecting him, nor would they be expecting the dozens of Chicago police officers he would hopefully be bringing with him.
I had accepted the fact I would either die or be arrested when all was said and done, but it didn’t matter to me anymore. The only thing that mattered was that Kip got out alive.
No matter what happened within the next six hours, the only variable that couldn’t change was that Kip survived. If he didn’t, then I didn’t.
I would walk with open arms into a hail of bullets if something happened to him.
After we had planned everything out as best we could, Gabe painfully slipped on a leather jacket, giving me an angry glare when I asked if he needed help. “Are we ready for this?” he asked.
“No fucking way,” I answered.
I opened the apartment door, prepared to go out and get this over with as soon as possible, and froze in fear as Geet swung a baseball bat, hitting Gabe square in the stomach, sending him spiraling backwards and onto the floor.
I looked down at him and saw he was out cold and immediately tried to make a run for it. I managed to duck and roll past Geet, but was met by Scarface as I got to my feet.
“You’re lucky Harrison wants you alive,” he said as I tried to judge the probability of making it past him and into the elevator before being taken down by him.
I took the chance and tried to run past him, but before I could even move, Scarface’s closed fist slammed against my nose, sending maroon blood spraying against the wall as I slammed against it and slid to the floor. I tried to crawl away, not even caring I was moving in the opposite direction than I needed to, away from the elevator.
I was dizzy. The punch had disoriented me. My brain could barely function enough to tell my arms and legs to “MOVE!”
Scarface’s mud-caked boot slammed against my ribcage, sending my rolling onto my back, immobilizing me. I looked up at him as he smiled, his grey scar more visible than it had ever been.
His boot connected with the side of my head, and everything went black.
(You Would Have Gone Far, Kid)
Old Habits Page 24