Wrecked

by Joe Ide

  “Who is?” Dodson said.

  “They’ll kidnap me—and you too.”

  “Me? The fuck did I do?”

  “Run!” She gave Dodson a shove and he took off. TK shot her a glance.

  “Go on, girl. You know what to do.”

  Grace ran into the warehouse, made a quick stop in TK’s office, and ran out the back entrance. She zigzagged through the piles of fenders, transmissions, and engine blocks and circled around the mountain of tires. She arrived at the perimeter fence but she’d forgotten about the double helix of razor wire coiled across the top. “Ah shit!” she said. She dialed 911 and got nothing but a howling noise. She heard the men coming.

  A gravel road was the main thoroughfare through the yard. Dodson sprinted about sixty yards and had to stop. His lungs were failing, he had a stitch in his side. The van was speeding after him. Dodson turned into a narrow aisle between the tall stacks of cars. Stumbling and panting, he made his way along. He heard the van’s doors slam open and running footsteps. He heard a man with a Mexican accent say, “Well, go after him. I’m too big to get in there.” Dodson kept going, looking for a place to hide. You’d think it’d be easy, but the cars were crumpled, their roofs caved in, broken glass like sharks’ teeth, doors bent in half, their side mirrors hanging by wires. He squeezed and sidled deeper into the aisle, cobwebs clinging to his sweaty face, his lungs sucking in rust and dust.

  A woman said, “I see him! He’s moving!” Dodson tried to sidle faster but the aisle was getting smaller. And smaller.

  TK was lying on the ground. He tried to block them from chasing Grace and one of them hit him as they went past. His head hurt but it would take more than that to keep Thomas Marion Kahill from getting up again. He took a quick glance at the man who’d stayed behind. He was milling around, restless, jingling the change in his pockets. Had to be a cop, his gun in a shoulder holster, cheap suit, pleats in the pants. Tired of waiting, the cop got back in his car and turned on the radio. A Dodgers game. The cop could still see him but he’d have to chance it. If Grace and Dodson couldn’t get over the fence, they’d have to come back here to the front gate. TK started to crawl.

  Grace ran through the German section, looking for a hiding place. She was sweating, exhausted, her pursuers not far away. She could hear them yelling at each other to check this and go that way. One of them was Walczak. She saw the battered Passat where she’d met Isaiah. Thinking it might be good luck, she got inside. The backseats were missing and she crawled into the trunk. The lid didn’t fit anymore, light around the edges, a jagged hole the size of a cop’s badge where the metal had rusted through. The first things she saw were two shadows on the weedy ground, long and thin, aliens or giant grasshoppers, getting closer, fuller, shape-shifting into men who wanted to kidnap her and kill her mom. Walczak came into view. He paused and took a careful look around, his gaze moving and stopping, moving and stopping, moving—and stopping on the Passat, or was it something else? Could he see through the hole? She scooched back. The trunk was stifling and stank of rotting upholstery and gasoline, the sweat like a coating of grease. She’d picked up Mr. Brown in TK’s office. It was as heavy as an anvil and hard to maneuver in the enclosed space.

  Walczak came right toward her, gravel crunching under his feet. The hole went dark. He was a foot away. She heard him take a deep breath, like he was either weary or had at last found his prey. She barely had room for the gun barrel. She aimed it at the hole. Was she really going to shoot him? Blow him apart with a shotgun? She put her finger on the trigger and waited for the trunk to open. Fight for yourself, sweet pea.

  “Anything?” Walczak said loudly.

  “Nope,” the other man said even louder. “But she couldn’t have gotten far. We were right on her ass.”

  “She could have gone into the stacks.”

  “That’s where I’d go.”

  They moved off. Grace waited—and waited. She heard nothing but sparrows chirping. She wanted to stay hidden, but it was so hot she thought she would faint. Ever so carefully, she crawled out of the trunk, trying not to clank the gun on something. She gradually raised her head so she could see over the side windowsill. Walczak had only moved to the perimeter of the section. The loud talking was meant to bring her out of hiding. The black man was creeping from car to car, looking inside and going on to the next. In a minute, he’d be at the Passat. She crawled out on her elbows, the gun held in front of her, keeping the car between her and her pursuers until she couldn’t go any farther without being seen. She got up and ran into the stacks.

  “There!” Walczak shouted.

  The aisle had ended. Dodson was stuck. He looked back through the tangle of wrecks and saw the woman. “I see him!” she yelled. She raised her gun and fired off a couple of shots, but she didn’t have the angle, the bullets ricocheting and punching holes in the cars. This ain’t no kidnapping, Dodson thought, this bitch is trying to kill me! Where to now? Up to this point, he’d been moving between the stacks, the cars piled like scrap metal pancakes on either side. There was nowhere to go now except between the cars themselves, lined up front to rear. He had to go back toward the woman before he found a crevasse wide enough. He edged himself in and inched along sideways, shimmying and squeezing past bent bumpers, open tailgates, dangling chrome strips, and tangles of wires, the crevasse getting narrower or wider depending upon the position of the cars. The woman reached the crevasse and shot at him again but there was too much in the way.

  A man’s voice shouted, “What’s happening?”

  “I almost got him!”

  Dodson kept going, dead thirsty, cutting his hands on metal edges and broken glass, his pants and shirt ripped open, blinded by sweat, the smell of rust and gasoline making him sick. The crevasse ended. He had nowhere to go. The woman was getting closer. She saw him and kept coming. She’d have the angle soon. Dodson’s path was blocked in all directions. There was nothing else to do but wait for her to kill him.

  Grace ran into a long aisle between the stacks. She could see that it ended in open space. All the hiding places were obvious. Walczak was coming. There was an aisle that branched off the main one. It went about forty feet and dead-ended. She took a position at the back and waited. Walczak and the other man would run right past her from left to right. They’d be going fast, sprinting, and they might or might not be close together. She made sure there was a shell in Mr. Brown’s chamber and the safety was off. The eight rounds were loaded with birdshot but at this range the spread might not cover both of them. Two shots then. Boom-boom. Something she hadn’t practiced with TK. She tried to remember what he’d said. “You been shootin’ too early, when the target ain’t nothin’ but a blur…you want to shoot when it comes into hard focus.…You point the barrel about halfway between the launcher and the focus point.” She’d hit three clay targets in a row but that didn’t mean she was good. It meant was she lucky. She racked the slide. “Turn your shoulders, not the gun.…Let your eyes follow the target.”

  She was afraid but eager. If Walczak wanted this mysterious thing so badly he’d hunt down two women, then he’d wanted it that badly when she was fifteen years old. Walczak was the home invader. Walczak had killed her father. “Come on, motherfucker,” she whispered. “Come on.” She heard the men breathing harshly and their pounding footsteps, they were going all out. She brought the stock up to her cheek and raised her elbow. They were almost in view. Focus, Grace. Two shots. Boom-boom. Just like that.

  The black man ran past. BOOM! She shot behind him. He was partially hit. He screamed, his forward motion carrying him out of view. Walczak was trailing him. He tried to stop but stumbled into the open. Grace swiveled and fired. BOOM! Too slow. He’d already scrambled back to safety. “Ah shit!” she said. She could hear the black guy moaning.

  “I’m gonna fuck you up, bitch.”

  “Come and get me, asshole.”

  “Grace?” Walczak said. “Put the gun down and we’ll talk.”

  “Is that wh
at you told the detainees?”

  “Tell me where Sarah is.”

  “Fuck you, you prick.” She was glad she was here, in this moment, wreathed in blue smoke, a shotgun in her hands. Tears of rage pooled in her eyes. She wanted to kill this fucking bastard so bad it felt like a desperate hunger or unbearable pain. “I know you killed my dad. I know it was you, you worthless piece of shit.” She fired a round in his direction. BOOM! Metal whanged, glass shattered. Her face ran with tears and mucus. “YOU TOOK MY DAD AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed. She fired again. BOOM! Her voice came down, guttural, a growl. From a wolf. From a demon. “I’m gonna to kill you, Walczak. I’m gonna shoot you until there’s nothing left but a puddle of shit.” It wasn’t a promise or even a threat. It was a fact, like death itself.

  “I’m calling in the others now,” he said. “We outman you, outgun you, and you’ll be surrounded. Do yourself a favor and give us what we want.”

  “Never.” There was no chance of killing him now and she was trapped in a cul-de-sac with twenty-foot stacks of cars fencing her in. She thought about being tortured and never seeing her mom again. She thought about Isaiah. She had to escape but the cars were too jumbled and overlapping to get through. Now what, Grace?

  Dodson waited. The dust and sweat had turned to mud, blinding him, plugging his nose. He could see the woman through the labyrinth but she still couldn’t get a shot.

  “Oh, I got you now, you goddamn coon,” she said.

  He hadn’t heard that in a while. What a fucked-up way to die. Shot by a racist in a wrecking yard. And why? For some girl who couldn’t paint for shit and was paying them with one of her shitty paintings. He thought about Cherise and how she’d react when the police told her they’d found her husband dead in a pile of junk. He thought about leaving Micah fatherless. He thought about their grief. He thought about his own. Panic rose in him and spilled over the top. He made a wild sound of pure anguish and terror. “I’ve got to get out! I’VE GOT TO GET OUT!”

  The redneck bitch laughed. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, boy.”

  A man shouted, “Walczak’s got her cornered. Let’s go!” Dodson saw the woman going back the way she came. He heard the van’s doors open and close, tires kicking up gravel as it sped away, leaving Dodson’s resurrection in its wake. He was cleansed with relief and began to move. He had to get home. Home to his loving wife and his beautiful baby boy.

  Grace was climbing a twenty-foot stack of cars, finding one meager foothold and then another like she was rock climbing. She was trying to keep quiet but metal creaked and bits of glass tinkled as they fell. She’d stashed Mr. Brown in one of the cars. There was no way to carry a shotgun and climb at the same time. The others had arrived and she heard them talking with Walczak, making plans: how to surround her, how to close in. She was halfway up the stack. Careful, careful, don’t hurry, be quiet, be quiet. She was slick with sweat, her shirt drenched, her tongue was stuck to her palate. She’d cut her hand on a shard of glass, the blood running down her arm. She could see the top of the stack, only four cars to go—and then her foot slipped and she nearly fell. She grabbed on to a side mirror that came off and she nearly fell again.

  “She’s moving,” Walczak said. “Cut her off!”

  She regained her footing and heard Walczak bounding across the cul-de-sac and leaping onto the stack beneath her. She got to the top and hopped from roof to roof until she reached the edge. The path below was clear. She clambered down and ran.

  Walczak landed moments after her. He caught up easily and tackled her. She tried to scramble away but he stood her up and backhanded her viciously. “You fucking bitch!” It infuriated him, how much trouble she’d caused. “Where’s Sarah? Where is she?”

  “Fuck you!” She windmilled girl punches. He slapped her again. “Coward! Coward!” she screamed, blood and spit flying out of her mouth, her hatred so intense it surprised him.

  “Tell me where she is!” he shouted. He got her in a wrist lock, bent it back to the breaking point, and put her on her knees, but she kept screaming Coward and Fuck you. “Tell me, goddammit, or I’ll break it off! Where’s your mother? Where’s Sarah? TELL ME RIGHT NOW YOU STUPID CUNT!”

  Grace screamed and screamed but wouldn’t give up. Walczak didn’t actually see the dog until it was leaping through the air with its jaws open and its lips pulled back over its fangs. He hadn’t been hit that hard since he was on the practice squad at USC and got run over by a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound defensive end. He couldn’t reach his gun because he was curled up with his hands beneath him so the dog wouldn’t bite them off. “Get him off me! GET HIM OFF ME!” he screamed. But she didn’t. She let the dog maul him while she kicked him again and again. She stopped, panting, glowering down at him.

  “Who’s the cunt now?” she said. She gave him one last kick and then ran off with the dog.

  Walczak moaned and wailed. His Italian tennis sweater had been reduced to strands of bloody cashmere. He’d lost a shoe, his wallet was ripped in half, the credit cards riddled with teeth marks. He’d been bitten multiple times, his wounds pulsing. He tried to find his collar mike but the dog had ripped it off. “Help,” he said to a Subaru with no doors. “Somebody help me.”

  “Eighth inning, two men on, Uribe’s up,” Vin Scully said in the voice of summer and happier times. Fucking Uribe, Richter thought. Fifteen seasons in the majors and hitting over .300. You’d never know it by looking at him. He weighed as much as Richter did and looked like he should be pushing a hot dog cart. How does that happen anyway? One guy grows up in a shack somewhere in Hasta Luego or East Peru, hits baseballs for a living and ends up making fourteen million a year. Another guy works on the shithole side of LA, takes killers and drug dealers off the street, makes fifty-two grand a year and gets booted off the force for an accident. What the fuck was that all about?

  “A swing and a miss and Uribe strikes out for the second time today,” Vin Scully said. Richter knew they were going to kill the girl and her mother and for what? To save Walczak and those other assholes from what they fucking deserved? Richter also realized he was putting himself in harm’s way. If this thing went bust and the law got involved, he could be sent to prison with a bunch of motherfuckers he’d either jailed, beaten, robbed, or all of the above. The only reason to hang in was to rip Walczak off. And fuck the rest of them. He owed them nothing. He had always wanted to go to Switzerland. The streets were clean and it was cool and crisp and there were lots of trees and mountains and no gangbangers, earthquakes, or smog. He could get lost there. He could learn to ski.

  “Will you look at that?” he said. Grace was running directly toward him, a dog galloping alongside her. She didn’t see him because of the reflection off the windshield. “Oh, this is too good,” he chuckled. That prick Walczak was out there running around like an idiot and the wily old veteran ends up with the girl. That asshole would never hear the end of it. Richter decided he’d wait until she was real close, then get out and give her a whack. The dog? Put a bullet in its head and that was that. He drew his gun. She was forty yards away, thirty, twenty-five—he heard the clattering growl of a diesel engine. It took a moment for it to register because he was focused on the girl. At first, he couldn’t tell where it was coming from, the sound bouncing off all the cars. The engine noise got louder, metal on metal screeching, a chain clanking. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the old man in the cab of a backhoe. Richter didn’t react immediately because the girl was getting closer and the backhoe was moving so slowly. What an idiot, he thought. Did Gramps really think he could sneak up on him in a rig like that? Richter was reluctant to move the car, it might spook the girl. He decided to chance it, the backhoe was inching along and the girl was ten yards away. Five. He started to get out of the car, but in the same instant, his gun was yanked upward, out of his hand, and something slammed down on the roof so hard it jolted the whole car. “What the fuck?” he shouted. He couldn’t believe it. The goddamn car was levitating, and that’s when h
e realized the rig wasn’t a backhoe, it was a goddamn crane with a goddamn magnet! The boom was up so high he hadn’t seen it. He opened the door, but the car was already fifteen feet off the ground and rising. He tried to pull his gun off the roof but the boom swung the car around wildly and dropped it on the ground, the impact so hard the windows shattered and the airbags went off. Richter was bounced out of his seat, banging his head on the roof, something crunching in his neck. Even with his face smushed into the airbag he could hear the old man and girl woo-hooing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Train Wreck

  Walczak, Hawkins, and Richter went to the emergency room. Owens and the fucking Mexican didn’t have a scratch on them. Richter had damaged his fourth and fifth vertebrae and had to wear a neck brace. Hawkins’s right side was pincushioned with birdshot. Walczak felt like he’d fallen into a tree shredder. He was lying facedown on a gurney. The nurse who was dressing his wounds was a black guy with tats and dreadlocks and he was almost as big as Hawkins. Whatever happened to those nice, white, female nurses? The ones named Betty or Dot who treated you with prim efficiency and tried to make you comfy? Who wants to be looked after by a guy who looks like Bob Marley’s bodyguard?

  “How you doing, sah?” the guy said. “I nevva seen nuttin’ like dis, mon. Dis dog g’wan mess you up good, ya?”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Watcha do ta dis dog make him bite ya like dis?”