Wicked Break

by Jeff Shelby

  I took another drink and didn’t say anything.

  “No, of course not,” he said, nodding his head. “You decided to help him. Plus, you need cash.”

  “It’s your fault.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is too.”

  “I just told him where to find you.”

  “And you knew I’d say yes.”

  “I didn’t even know what he wanted.”

  “Not to take my picture doing a handstand, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, you suck at handstands.”

  Arguing with Carter was like arguing with a three-year-old—a genetic freak of a three-year-old.

  I held up my hand. “Fine. My fault.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and nodded. “Exactly. So what happened?”

  “Went to look for this guy’s brother at his apartment and while I was there, a girl got shot.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’d like to, but you keep asking me questions.”

  I set my beer down on the table between our chairs. He immediately snatched it, held it up to his mouth, and emptied it.

  “Tell me,” he said, setting the empty bottle down.

  I told him about Linc’s place, the girls, Rolovich, and the shooting.

  “That’s some afternoon,” he said when I was done.

  “No kidding.”

  “You gonna keep looking for the kid?”

  I shrugged because I didn’t know now if I wanted to or not.

  We sat there staring for a few minutes at the bouquet of purples and yellows in the sky at the far edge of the water. The crowd on the boardwalk was slowly dissipating as the evening trudged in.

  “You wanna go out?” Carter asked, gesturing at the water. “Decent swells should be here soon.”

  I closed my eyes. “Nah.”

  We sat there again quietly for a few moments.

  “You saw her, didn’t you?” he said finally.

  “Saw who?”

  “The Virgin Mary. Who the hell do you think I mean? Liz.”

  I didn’t say anything. Of all the annoying things about Carter, perhaps the one that bugged me the most was his ability to read me like an eye chart.

  “Did you talk to her?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Didn’t feel like it.”

  “Right.”

  The truth was I didn’t know why I hadn’t just gone over to talk to Liz. Maybe it was because I was afraid of what she’d say to me. Not talking to her had become weirdly comfortable and I wasn’t sure I was ready to give that up.

  Carter stood, yanked off his tank top, and grabbed the eight-foot G&S surfboard next to the sliding door. He tucked it under his arm and stepped over the small stone wall onto the boardwalk.

  He turned around. “You know I can’t stand her, dude. I really can’t. It would be fine with me if I never saw her again, never had to hear her name again.” He shook his head. “But if you’re in love with her, or whatever, you’re just being chickenshit. Flat out. So she’s pissed at you. Big deal. Liz is pissed at everyone, as far as I can tell. Deal with it and quit sulking. I’ve watched it for too long now and I’m tired of it.” He shook his head. “I’ve never thought of you as a coward, Noah, and I don’t really wanna start.”

  He turned and walked down the sand toward the water and the exploding hues of the horizon and left me to think about that.

  Six

  After a night of restless sleep, Rachel’s eyes, Liz’s face, and Carter’s words rattling around in my brain, I decided I needed a few more details from Peter Pluto. I needed to see what specifically he’d meant by maybe Linc getting hooked up with a bad crowd. Did he know about the gang or was there another crowd I needed to be aware of?

  And as much as I wanted to avoid the subject, I wanted to know more about their father. Nothing he’d told me about his brother had added up and I ended up watching a girl I’d just met take a bullet. I didn’t know whether the shooting was tied directly to Linc Pluto’s disappearance, but it sure seemed like an awfully big coincidence.

  I walked up Mission to the Enterprise rental office, and after fifteen minutes drove away in a rented Ford Taurus. My car was still impounded and I didn’t mind sticking a few more dollars on Peter Pluto’s tab.

  His home was in Clairemont, a nondescript suburb north of the downtown area and twenty minutes from my house. The community rests on the hills just above Mission Bay and stretches two dozen miles to the east. Middle-class housing, strip malls, and neighborhoods that had deteriorated marked what had once been a desired address. Most of the original residents had vacated to the sprawling suburbs of the east and north, seeking newer homes and newer schools, leaving most of Clairemont in search of an identity.

  His address was just off Balboa, in the Mount streets, so named because the streets were named after the mountains of the world. I turned right on Mt. Arafat and then right again on Mt. Everest.

  Not something you do every day.

  I found Pluto’s house near the end of a cul-de-sac on Mt. Everest. The ranch home was a faded gray, with a giant plum tree in the front yard. A beat-up basketball hoop rested above the garage and the grass in the yard was a mix of green and brown. A bright blue Ford pickup was parked in the driveway.

  I walked up the drive to find both the screen door and front door wide open.

  I poked my head in the entryway. “Hello?”

  No one responded. I stepped onto the small tiled area just inside the door.

  The living room had been ransacked. A TV was on the carpeting, smashed to pieces. The furniture was flipped over, pushed into a pile in the middle of the room.

  I turned to the dining room. The table was dumped on its side, the oak chairs splintered into jagged hunks of wood. An overhead light had been yanked off the ceiling and crushed into glass shards.

  My heart picked up speed.

  Someone had issues with Peter Pluto’s house.

  I heard footsteps down the hallway off the dining room and stepped back, reaching for my gun, then realizing it was stuck in the glove box, impounded with my Jeep.

  A guy somewhere in his twenties with a shaved head emerged. He was about my height at six-three, but thicker. He wore a gray T-shirt, dirty jeans, and scuffed black boots. The scowl on his face didn’t detract from the quarter-sized black swastika tattooed just above his left eyebrow.

  He paused when he saw me, then took a step in my direction. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “That was gonna be my question for you.”

  The scowl on his face tightened and I noticed what looked like blood on the knuckles of his right hand.

  He took another step toward me, his small eyes narrowing. “You fuckin’ with me?”

  I held up my hands. “Just wondering if you were the one who did the redecorating in here.”

  He stared at me for a moment, completely unafraid and completely angry. He glanced down the hallway from where he’d come, then back at me. His expression slowly changed. The snarl morphed into an arrogant, evil grin exposing yellow teeth. He shook his head. “Dude, you walked into the wrong house.”

  Not the wrong house, but maybe the wrong time. “Did I?”

  He laughed, as if I didn’t realize how stupid I actually was. “Yeah, you did. Wanna tell me why you’re here?”

  “Not really.”

  He shook his head again. “I’m not asking, dude. Why you here?”

  He looked meaner than me, a veteran of fights that he’d probably instigated. But he was younger, which meant he wasn’t wiser.

  I followed his lead and stepped toward him. “Tell you what. Before I kick your ass and call the cops, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

  His eyes flared and he stepped forward, a right hook coming at my head. I stepped inside of it and jammed the heel of my hand into his jaw. He fell backward against the wall of the dining room and slumped to the floor.

  I stood over him for a
moment. He refocused his eyes and brought his hand to his mouth, a thick stream of blood now coming out onto his chin.

  “You done talking back now?” I asked him.

  He looked at the blood on his hand, then at me. The slow, ugly grin came back, his teeth now red rather than yellow. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He looked past me and lifted his chin. “Mo’s gonna take over.”

  I turned around and after getting a look at the guy, I just assumed Mo was short for Mountain.

  He was about six-foot-seven and a minimum of three hundred pounds of muscle. His nose was so crooked, it had to have been broken half a dozen times in half a dozen places. His gray eyes were empty, just staring at me. He wore a thick silver hoop in each ear. The dirty white tank top on his body exposed arms that were covered completely in tattoos. Women, birds, and swords, from what I could make out. His black jeans were torn in multiple places and the toes of his construction boots were caked in blood.

  His head was also shaved and the phrase WHITE IS RIGHT was tattooed just above his forehead in simple black letters.

  He looked around me at his partner. “You alright, Lonnie?”

  “I’m fine,” Lonnie said from behind me.

  “Want me to hurt him?” Mo asked, much in the same way one would ask if you needed a ride somewhere.

  “Yep.”

  I didn’t like the way my future was being discussed without my involvement. I wasn’t scared of Lonnie, but Mo looked less than human and I didn’t see a way out of this.

  “He see anything?” Mo asked, still looking around me.

  “Don’t think so. Make sure it stays that way.”

  Mo gave a quick nod and moved at me faster than I expected. His right hand grasped my forearm and he pulled me forward. His left fist crashed into my stomach like a battering ram. Every ounce of air exploded from my body. The battering ram reloaded and slammed into my temple, an ugly rainbow of colors exploding in the backs of my eyes. I felt my knees buckle, but his hold on my forearm kept me up.

  Lonnie walked around behind Mo, showing me another bloody grin. “Now you wanna tell me what you’re here for?”

  A wave of nausea swept through my body as Mo held me up like rag doll. I knew I was in trouble, but there was no way I was giving in to some racist punk.

  “Fuck you,” I managed, trying to ready myself for what I knew was coming.

  “You a friend of Pete’s?” Lonnie asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “How about his little brother, the missing Linc?” he asked, grinning at me.

  I looked away from him and tried to catch my breath.

  Lonnie’s smile changed to a frown. “You came here for a reason. What was it?”

  I turned back to him. “Fuck you some more.”

  Lonnie backed up, then kicked me in the stomach and the air rushed out of me again. Mo held me up.

  “You don’t wanna talk now?” Lonnie said, moving toward me. “That’s cool. I’m gonna have my man Mo work you over a little bit. Not kill you. Just make you wish he had. But I need to know why you showed up here today, man. So when you wake up…if you wake up…think about me. Because I’ll be around. And the next time you see me?” He leaned closer. “You’ll be too scared to tell me to fuck off. And that’s when you’ll tell me what you were here for. And that’s when I’ll kill you, asshole.” He looked at Mo. “Have at him, dude.”

  Mo spun me around and stared at me with the same empty look. His fist crashed into my temple again and my legs gave way completely. He tossed me to the ground, my face smashing into the carpet.

  Lonnie leaned down over me, his breath warm and foul. “Don’t fuck with us, dude. Not ever. You can’t win.” I could feel him right next to my ear. “And remember. Next time, you talk and then you die.”

  I groaned and rolled over on my back. Lonnie stepped away and Mo took his place, blocking out everything behind him. He knelt down beside me and pulled back his fist, ready to drop the battering ram once again on my face.

  I turned away, as if doing so might protect me, and my eyes locked on something at the end of the hallway from where Lonnie had first emerged.

  As Mo prepared to put me to sleep, I hoped that I would live to remember seeing what appeared to be Peter Pluto’s body at the end of the hallway.

  Seven

  Warm dirt pressed against my face. Blood pooled in my mouth. My body throbbed. I felt tired, like I hadn’t slept in days. I slowly forced one eye open.

  Sunlight glared against the brush.

  Everything was sideways.

  Where was I?

  I coughed, spasms of pain ricocheting through my stomach and back, and spit out a mouthful of blood. I lifted my head, needing to see where I was. My neck shivered as it tried to support the weight.

  Tumbleweeds. Dirt. Gravel. The desert?

  I laid my head down again, the ground hot and rough against my cheek. The warmth of the ground made me want to close my eyes and go back to sleep.

  I lifted my head again and twisted in the other direction.

  More dried brush, more tumbleweeds, a body.

  I twisted my torso in that direction.

  I heard someone scream, the noise echoing in the distance, and realized it was me.

  I got my elbows beneath me and pushed up and felt myself start to slide backward.

  I was on a slope.

  Slopes in the desert didn’t make any sense to me. Nothing made sense.

  I stabbed my toes into the ground to stop the sliding.

  Focusing on the body, I crawled toward it on my elbows, up the slope. My legs were stiff and heavy and I couldn’t get them to bend.

  The body was only about ten feet away, but it felt like a hundred. My elbows ached. And bled. Nausea worked its way through my body like a current.

  I laid my head down again, listening to my gasps for air. Everything was spinning slowly.

  I forced my head up again.

  Peter Pluto looked back at me, his eyes empty and his face devoid of any life.

  I dropped my head down on the earth again and wondered if I was about to join him.

  Eight

  I tried to raise my eyelids, but they felt like they were sealed shut with concrete. My head pounded. I was on my back and I could feel my arms and legs, but they felt four times heavier than they should have.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then forced them to open slightly.

  The bright lights of the hospital room shocked me and I shut my eyes again.

  At least the son of a bitch hadn’t killed me.

  I heard movement to my left and I rotated my head in that direction, the muscles in my neck feeling like taut rubber bands. I got my eyes half open.

  Liz was sitting in a chair, looking at me.

  “You awake?” she asked.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I swallowed hard and wondered who placed the invisible boulder on my chest.

  I tried again. “Yeah.” My voice sounded distant and old.

  “You don’t sound like it.”

  I turned my head back to stare at the ceiling. “Awake. Not alive.”

  “You’re in the hospital,” she said. “Mission Bay.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’ve been here about twelve hours.”

  That surprised me, because it felt like just minutes before that Mo had been planting his fists into my body and I’d been lying somewhere with Peter Pluto.

  I looked back at Liz. She wore her black running tights, a blue sweatshirt, and Nike running shoes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  “You find me?” I asked, my voice coming back closer to my head now. I fumbled with the glass of water I’d noticed next to my bed and took a long drink.

  She shook her head. “No. Couple of kids stumbled across you in a canyon in Clairemont.”

  Not the desert. A canyon. That explained the slope.

  My head felt puffy. I set the glass back on the table and looked at my arms. No tubes or wires hooked into me
.

  “They just beat the crap out of you,” she said. “No broken bones, no real bleeding. They knew what they were doing.”

  I had learned that the hard way.

  She leaned back in the chair. “What happened, Noah?”

  I stared at the ceiling again, trying to gain some focus. Lonnie’s words were ringing in my ears. He wanted me to wake up. He wanted me to hurt. And he wanted me to feel afraid.

  He won.

  I closed my eyes.

  “I’ve sat here for six hours,” Liz said. “Call came in to Wellton, he called me. Not because I was on duty, but because he thought I’d want to know. I hate that he was right, but he was.” She paused and folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve sat here, looking at you, worrying about you, trying to figure out why. I haven’t figured it out yet. And I don’t know if I’m going to. Ever. But there’s no way you’re going to lie there and not talk to me.” She bit her bottom lip for a moment. “So tell me what happened, Noah, because if you don’t, I am done wasting another second of my life thinking about you.”

  “Christ, Liz,” I said, my tongue feeling lost in my mouth. “I’m trying to clear my head. Give me a second.”

  I opened my eyes and kept them on the white ceiling, feeling the pangs in my chest each time I exhaled. I remembered her looking away from me at the apartment building.

  “I thought you already were done with me anyway,” I said, looking at her.

  She shifted in her chair, then glanced over me to the window. “I’m not here to talk about us. Now’s not the time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if we try that, I’d probably end up kicking your ass and I think you’ve had all you can handle for now.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was what had happened to me or if it was just being near her again, but the ice had been broken on the freeze-out between us and I wanted it to continue to melt away.

  “When’s the time gonna come, then?” I asked. “For us?”

  She moved her gaze from the window to me. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it will.”

  I stared at her for a moment, then went back to concentrating on the ceiling.