Wrecked

by Joe Ide

  It never occurred to her that Walczak would stage a home invasion. She knew it was him the moment he came through the door. Chuck went for one of his guns and Walczak shot him in the back. During the commotion, Sarah grabbed Grace and fled. Afterward, she realized she’d just witnessed a murder and she was the only person who could link Walczak to the crime. If both she and Chuck were dead, the cloud accounts would lapse all by themselves. When Sarah left Bakersfield, she was fleeing Walczak as well as the police.

  Sarah told all this to Arthur in a sobbing confession. He didn’t judge, saying she’d had no idea what the affair would lead to and that Walczak had killed Chuck, not her. She loved him for that. But now, in their cramped room at the Travel Inn in Burbank, she was frustrated with him. He’d been humoring her about helping extort Walczak, hoping she’d back out on her own as the deadline drew closer.

  “Don’t do this, Sarah,” Arthur said. “It’s either a death sentence or a jail sentence. It simply won’t work.”

  “It won’t work if you keep saying it won’t,” Sarah said sharply.

  “You don’t seem to know what you’re up against. Walczak’s people are ex-CIA and -FBI. They’re professionals. They’ve dealt with this kind of situation dozens of times with drug cartels and terrorists, and they have the technology, all the latest. They’ll see us coming from a mile away. Ten miles away!” He softened, pleading. “Forget this, Sarah. For God’s sake, let’s just go on with our lives.”

  She glared at him, fierce. “He made me live like an animal and you want me to go on with my life? He murdered my husband! He murdered Grace’s father!” She put her face in her hands and wept. Arthur breathed a deep sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it can’t be done. That’s all there is to it.” Sarah left. Arthur brooded. She stayed away for hours and returned with a bottle of wine and a kiss. They hugged and held each other for a long time. Wearily, lovingly, and in true Arthur fashion he said: “Okay, if that’s what you really want, I’ll help you.”

  When they were writing the demand note, Arthur said to give Walczak until Friday. It would give them time to plan the money drop.

  “The idea is to keep them scrambling,” Arthur said. “To sow confusion and never let them rest.” After he wrote down a few things, he and Sarah studied maps and spent a couple of days driving around the area, scouting routes and locations and figuring out the timing. They went shopping at a prop store, bought a few throwaway phones and a junker from an old man at a wrecking yard.

  Afterward, they ate bad sushi and drank good sake. They were somber and hardly spoke. It felt like the day before the invasion.

  “Do you think it will work, Arthur?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said unconvincingly. “Yes I do.”

  Hawkins, Jimenez, Richter, and Walczak went to see their Jerrys but none was the one they wanted. Wrong height, age, build, hair, or facially just not the same. Owens had gotten pulled over for DUI and was stuck in Santa Fe. The money drop was today, and the team was waiting in Walczak’s study. Walczak was still in pain and so was Hawkins. Richter looked ridiculous in the neck brace. Like kids had buried him in the sand with his head sticking out. The call came in at three in the afternoon.

  “It’s me, you shit,” Sarah said. “I should forget about all this and turn you in.”

  “But you won’t because you want the money,” Walczak said. He’d drawn a million dollars in brand-new one-hundred-dollar bills from his personal accounts and it really pissed him off. “I want some reassurances here. How do I know you won’t keep a copy of the pictures?”

  “I will keep a copy. What you’re paying for is my promise that I won’t release the pictures publicly. I’m going to give you instructions now, are you listening?”

  Oh my God, he wanted to jump through the phone and strangle this cunt. “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “Buy a Samsonite suitcase,” she said. “Are you writing this down? A Samsonite Omni PC Hard Spinner in Caribbean blue. Nothing else, do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “You have ninety minutes to get the suitcase and drive downtown.”

  “Where downtown?”

  “I’ll call you in ninety minutes.” She ended the call.

  “Two cars,” Jimenez said. “Walczak and Richter will pick up the suitcase.”

  “Why?” Walczak said.

  “Because. You’re too fucked up to do anything except drive and Richter has done this kind of shit before.” Another smirkfest.

  Walczak pretended not to notice. “My techs will handle the drones from the office. They’ll know what we’re doing but not why. As soon as we’ve got Sarah cornered they’ll return to base.”

  “What’s all the bullshit about a suitcase?” Hawkins said.

  “They’ll try and switch it,” Richter said.

  “You mean they’re going to take our suitcase, give us theirs, and we’re not supposed to know about it. That’s stupid.”

  “Don’t forget, they’re amateurs. One way or another they’ll fuck this up.”

  “You got one of those GPS things for the suitcase?” Owens said.

  “No, I don’t,” Richter answered. “I’m an idiot.”

  Ninety minutes later, Walczak was sitting in his car, talking on the phone with Sarah. “We have the suitcase and we’re downtown,” he said.

  “Is it the right one, the Samsonite?” Sarah said.

  “Yes, it’s the right one.”

  “Go to the seven hundred block of Main. The Windward Mall. Take the suitcase and wait in the rotunda.”

  Main was a one-way street. Walczak pulled into the passenger drop-off. “See you later,” Richter said.

  He got out of the car with the suitcase. Walczak stayed put. There was no place to park here or on the other side of the mall so Hawkins and Jimenez went into the parking garage. Hawkins would stay with the car, Jimenez would enter the mall on the second floor. He’d stay out of sight and see if he could pick out Sarah or Jerry. Walczak’s techs were given photos of the two of them. Drones would be circling overhead. Six of them.

  Richter sat down in the rotunda and put the suitcase beside him. He heard Jimenez through his earbud. “Touch your chin if you can hear me.” Richter touched his chin. “I’m on the floor above you. I can see the whole place from here.”

  Richter waited. It was a weekday, nothing special going on. Shoppers with shopping bags, people in the food court eating bad Chinese food. More amateur bullshit. They should have done this on a weekend when the crowds were bigger and it was easier to get lost.

  “You’re not going to fucking believe this,” Jimenez said. “At your two o’clock, a Mexican guy just came in, he’s got the exact same suitcase. These people are clowns.”

  Richter almost laughed. He saw the guy, small and brown, wearing an Angels baseball cap. He didn’t seem especially nervous, more uncertain than anything else, like he wasn’t sure he was in the right place. He sat down not thirty feet away. Richter’s phone buzzed. “Yeah?”

  “Leave the rotunda,” Sarah said. “Take the suitcase with you. The exit is to your right. Go now. I’m staying on the line.” Richter glanced up at Jimenez and shrugged with his palms up. He went out the exit.

  “He’s leaving,” Jimenez said. “East exit. The Broadway side.”

  “Who’s the Mexican guy?” Walczak said.

  “A decoy,” Jimenez replied. “We just got suckered.”

  “FUCK!” Walczak shouted. “Did you hear that, Richter? It was a fucking decoy!”

  As soon as Richter got outside, Sarah said, “There’s a cab stand in front of you. Take the first cab and tell the driver to go straight up Broadway.”

  “How far?” Richter said.

  “Until I tell you to stop.” She ended the call.

  “I’m in a cab, heading south,” Richter said.

  Walczak shouted, “SHIT!” Jimenez was caught flat-footed, stuck in the mall, and Richter had gotten into a cab on the street behind hi
m. Walczak was going to make a U-turn but the goddamn street was one-way. He drove fast up the block to the next intersection. If he turned left he’d be driving parallel to the cab but that street was one-way too. “FUCKERS!” he shouted. He’d have to turn right and circle the entire mall to catch up with the cab. “Where are you, Hawkins?”

  “I’m just leaving the garage,” Hawkins said. It was rush hour. The traffic was almost at a standstill. They’d have to play catch-up. Jimenez was catching a cab and would be even farther behind.

  “Tell me you’ve got them,” Walczak said to the tech.

  “We’re all over them, sir,” the tech said. “The drones are flying in a hexagram formation at different altitudes. There’s no chance they can get away and the GPS signal is strong. Oh, sir? The cab is cutting across a parking lot and it’s turning into an alley. I think it’s a planned route. They’re bypassing some of the traffic.”

  “Dammit, DAMMIT!” Walczak screamed. He honked his horn uselessly at the line of cars in front of him. Walczak, Hawkins, and Jimenez had made up some ground but were still a ways back.

  “Sir?” the tech said. “The cab has stopped in front of a parking garage on the twenty-one-hundred block of Nelson Avenue. It’s a hospital.”

  “I’m getting out of the cab and heading into the parking garage,” Richter said. “She told me to walk up the ramp so I’m walking up the ramp. Where are you?”

  “Too far away to help,” Walczak said. “Fuck this up and you’re fired.”

  Sarah waited in the old clunker. She had parked it on the second floor in a row of other cars. The car barely ran but Arthur said all it had to do was start up one more time. She was hunched down in the front seat, turned around so she could peek beneath the headrest. Walczak’s man would walk right past her. She had told him to hurry, but obviously he wasn’t. He was waiting for Walczak and the others to catch up. She and Arthur had taken a test drive from the mall to the hospital at the same time of day. It took them seventeen minutes. Walczak should be six minutes away. “Hurry up,” she whispered. She was barely breathing and she’d never heard her heart thump so loudly or felt it so insistently. Suddenly, there he was, the man with the porkpie hat walking neither fast nor slow, carrying the Caribbean-blue Samsonite, his eyes sweeping back and forth, sometimes glancing behind him. “Oh my,” she whispered. He looked silly with the neck brace, like he was resting his chin on the edge of a pool. He went past her, and when he turned the corner to the next ramp she started the car.

  Richter walked up the ramp on high alert, figuring Sarah and Jerry would be in a car and had some slick way of getting out of the garage. But they didn’t know about the drones. He heard tires squealing. “Yup, just like I thought,” he said. “She’s here.”

  Sarah pulled up next to him in a Buick Skylark, white with a rattling engine and a temporary spare tire. Stupid, Richter thought. They should have gone with something more anonymous. Sarah’s window was closed and the door locks were down so he couldn’t reach in and grab her by the throat. “Hello, Sarah,” he said, stalling for time. “How are you?” He heard the trunk latch clunk.

  “In the trunk,” she said.

  “Walczak never said you were hot. Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Do it now or I’m leaving!”

  Richter walked slowly around to the back and put the suitcase in the trunk. He hadn’t even closed it when the car took off with a lurch and drove away, the trunk lid bobbing up and down.

  “She’s got the case and she drove up the ramp,” Richter said. “She’s in a white Buick Skylark, old one, license plate Abel Baker seven one five one.”

  “Got it,” the tech said.

  “Where are you, Walczak?”

  “Three minutes away.”

  Sarah drove up two floors and there was Arthur, standing next to the brown Volvo. “We did it,” she said as she got out.

  “Not yet,” he said. He took the suitcase out of the Buick’s trunk. “Hurry up and get ready.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got three minutes.”

  Richter ran up the ramp, the bolster-size burrito he’d had for lunch slowing him down. He was holding his sides and gulping air when he found the Buick, the empty suitcase on the ground beside it. The GPS tracker was useless now. “They’re gone and they left the suitcase,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here,” Walczak said. “Jimenez and Hawkins too.”

  “The drones are all over it, sir,” the tech said. “It doesn’t matter where they come out. We’ll see them.”

  “I think they switched cars,” Richter said.

  It was twenty after five. There was only one way in or out of the garage. Lots of people were getting off work, a line of cars stacked up at the kiosk. Sarah and Jerry hadn’t planned for that, Walczak thought, as he walked up the line, eyeballing the drivers and peering into the backseats. Richter was coming down the other way. Arthur would be behind the wheel, thinking he was Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 12, not knowing they knew what he looked like. Sarah would be hiding in the trunk, dreaming about how she’d spend the money.

  Walczak wondered how long he’d have to waterboard her before she gave up the photos. Ten, fifteen seconds tops but he’d keep it going another fifteen minutes or so just for the pleasure of seeing that bitch drown.

  Jimenez was sitting in the Denny’s across the street from the hospital’s main entrance. Hawkins was watching the second entrance. The drones were up there, circling at low altitude, people pointing at them and giving them the finger.

  The techs were told to watch for baseball caps and sunglasses. The movie star disguise that never worked. Sarah was thin, blond, and fair. Jerry had a beard and a belly on him, impossible to hide. Even though the money was in hundred-dollar bills, it would have to be in something large, a different suitcase or a duffel bag.

  “Where are you, Sarah?” Walczak said as he continued along the line of cars. “Where arrre youuu?”

  “I think we’ve got them, sir!” the tech exclaimed. “We’ve got visuals on both. They’re wearing caps and sunglasses.”

  Walczak laughed. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Sarah’s got a carry-on suitcase, the black guy’s wearing a backpack. I think they’re going to take separate buses.”

  “Jimenez? Come pick me up,” Walczak said.

  “On my way,” he said.

  “That stupid bitch,” Walczak went on. “I can’t wait to beat that cunt to death and spit on her grave.”

  “Hold it, sir,” the tech said. “I’m sorry but it’s not them, false alarm.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s definitely not them.”

  “FUCK!”

  At 6:05 there were only a half dozen cars in line at the kiosk. Walczak and Richter went up and down the ramp and checked the cars that were still parked. Nothing.

  “Anything, Jimenez?” Walczak said.

  “Nothing.”

  “I got nothing here,” Hawkins said.

  “Sorry, sir,” the tech said.

  By 6:30 there were hardly any cars left and people were coming out of the hospital in ones and twos. “They couldn’t have gotten away,” Walczak said. “It’s not possible.”

  “They could be waiting us out,” Jimenez said. Before Walczak could give his okay, Jimenez brought everybody in.

  “I’ll give the orders, Jimenez,” Walczak said.

  “Well, you’re too fucking slow. And I’ll do what I want.”

  They checked the cafeteria, hallways, bathrooms, common areas, and waiting rooms. Nothing. The drones were running out of battery and had to return to base.

  They regrouped at Denny’s, people looking at the four pissed-off men who weren’t eating or sitting down.

  Walczak could see Patty’s brilliant smile as she came in the door and Noah running into his arms, happy to see his dad. “We’re not done,” he said to the crew. “I’m not letting that bitch hold those pictures over my head forever. We have to track her down.”<
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  “Count me out,” Jimenez said. “It’ll never end.”

  “You should have paid her the million in the first place and we could have skipped all this mess,” Hawkins said.

  “What if Sarah comes back for more?” Walczak argued.

  “She won’t,” Jimenez said. “Nobody would go through all this bullshit again.”

  “We can’t let her get away with this,” Walczak insisted. “She’s a danger to all of us.”

  “No, she’s not,” Jimenez said. “I’m going.”

  “Richter?” Walczak said, asking for support.

  “She’s one and done,” Richter said.

  Walczak shot cruise missiles out of his eyes. “I don’t accept this. I don’t accept this at all. We have to do this!”

  “Why?” Hawkins said. “Because you tell us to?”

  Walczak thought a moment. “No. Because if we catch her, you can have the million dollars.”

  That shut everybody up, looks being exchanged, Hawkins rubbing his chin. “You might have something there.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Walczak said.

  “Do I get a cut?” Richter said.

  “You mean for fucking everything up? No. And you’re an employee. You’re on salary and lucky to get that.” Walczak headed for the door. “I still can’t believe they got away.”

  When Arthur and Sarah were discussing plans for the money drop, Arthur took a long look at the Abu Ghraib photos.

  “How can you stand to do that, Arthur?” Sarah said. “They’re hideous.”