Lovelady

by Wynne, Marcus

  I killed him, later, in a dark alley in Sachenhausen, the red light district frequented by American soldiers, while he was running a target reconnaissance. To him I was just another civilian bundled against the cold, my hands buried in my pockets, and when I bumped into him, his throat was exposed for just an instant. That’s all I needed. That’s all I ever need. I used a one piece surgical scalpel, the one and a half inch blade honed to an edge so keen he probably didn’t feel anything but a sting when I sliced into his neck and through his carotid artery. I pushed him away as he stumbled, his hand going to his neck, and I watched as the arterial spray arced across a brick wall festooned with peeling posters. I remember the look of complete and utter surprise on his face. I didn’t stay to watch him die. He had only a few moments before he bled out, and he was alone in the alley. His death warranted only a short notice in the newspaper the next day. The police had no clues, and chalked it up to a sex or drug deal gone bad. I read it in the Frankfurt paper on the plane home the next day, but all I could think of was the strange out of body experience and the sudden intimacy I’d had with the target I’d so carefully distanced in my mind.

  I dreamed about that fugue sometimes. I never dream about my killings, not even the ones that went poorly. But I often thought of hovering over that man and hearing his thoughts in my head.

  Like I thought of following Luella Pound, wherever the trail took me. This was something to do for myself and the small circle of my friends.

  It was time to act.

  ii.

  I had coffee and a light breakfast of toast and eggs at the Linden Hills Diner. Then I drove to the Kinko’s copy shop on France Avenue. I taped my business card to a sheet of paper, below Luella Pound’s photograph, and ran off two hundred copies, a ten dollar investment against an intangible payoff. I stood outside the copy shop and blinked in the early afternoon sun. I needed some exercise. Back at the house, I suited up in shorts and a ragged T-shirt and went for a long, easy run. Zyprexa can make you sluggish and put on weight if you don’t fight it. Regular exercise was the best thing. I ran around both Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet, a little over six miles in around forty five minutes, which was pretty good for a middle-aged man. I cooled down by walking from the lake to my house, then finished off by working the heavy bag in my garage.

  I hit the worn leather bag with a series of straight punches, then stood off and struck with my fingers locked out in an eye jab. I followed the eye jab with a series of elbows, alternating hands as though I had one hand pinning the head of my opponent in place. It was a good technique: a fast eye jab to move the head back, then pin the head with my lead hand and follow up with an elbow smash to the temple. Done properly, it was like hitting the other guy with a two by four. I’d hit a terrorist’s bodyguard with that combo on a snatch job in Damascus, a difficult kidnapping of a financier in the Al-Bashir terrorist organization. We’d bypassed his alarms, stealthed into his house, but he had one more bodyguard than we’d expected. I was handling the target, but I was closest to the bodyguard, and it was quicker to hand to hand him than to shoot him. When I hit him with the elbow, his eyes crossed and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

  I like to keep tuned up, just for things like that. But why was I working so hard today?

  To work off steam; to be tuned up for the job I was on, inconsequential as it might be; to exercise the discipline that gave structure to my days.

  All those were good reasons.

  After my work out, I took a long hot shower, resting against the wall while the hot water streamed over my shoulders. Then I toweled off and lay naked on my bed with the window open, a cool breeze drying the sweat beaded on my skin.

  Then it was time to call Marcos.

  iii.

  Marcos slouched in the passenger seat of my Camry and ate a foil wrapped and steaming oversized burrito. “So where do you want to start? Too early for the prime candidates to be out.”

  I adjusted my mirrors and settled my sunglasses firmly in place. “We’ll go back to the bus station and put up some posters. Talk to the people on duty and see if anybody remembers her.”

  “Cool.”

  “What do you think for after?”

  He chewed and nodded, then sipped from a bottle of beer wrapped in a small brown paper bag. “There’s a halfway house for teens down by Powderhorn Park. Sees a lot of runaways and the kids there, they know everybody the same age out on the street. We can swing by there.”

  “You know the people?”

  “I know a woman there. She runs the place. She’d know, if anybody would.”

  “How come you didn’t mention that the other night?”

  He shrugged. “Fact is, I forgot. Then I remembered today.”

  “Where do you know her from?”

  “Women’s self defense class down at the Kali Group. She took Diana’s class and really stood out. I was the guy in the padded suit they all get to kick the shit out of.”

  “Model Mugging?

  “Like that, but better. Diana, she’s studied psychology and shit like that, works it into her class.”

  “She’s that little blond that works with Rick?

  “That’s Diana.”

  “Good to know people like that,” I said. “We find this girl, we might need to turn to people like your friends.”

  “Nice things about friends, mano. They’re always standing by.” He polished off the burrito and washed it down with a long swallow from his beer. “Ah, the dark lady. You like Negra Modelo beer, Frank?”

  “When I eat Mexican.”

  He belched. “Especially good with Mexican. So andele, hombre. Bus station, half way house, work a few corners before it gets dark and wild, hit the places the kids like to duck into for smokes and coffee. Speaking of which, let’s stop by Peet’s and get a couple to go.”

  We got a Macchiato for him and a large latte for me and drove down to the Greyhound station. It was hard to find a place to park, so we settled for a thirty minute meter two blocks away across the street from Gigi’s.

  “That was a lot of fun, the other night,” Marcos said. He was dressed in a sleeveless sweatshirt that showed off his heavily muscled arms and the same cropped 3/4 length camouflage BDU pants he’d worn the night before. He’d traded his cycling shoes for worn black Teva sandals, and his calloused toes gripped the black rubber like a tiger’s claws grip the ground right before it springs. “That Gigi, she’s a class act.”

  I leaned on the car and arched my back to ease a kink lingering from my run. “She surely is.”

  “You and her ever hook up?”

  I laughed. “Nope. Not for lack of trying.”

  He punched me lightly on the shoulder. “So keep trying, hermano.”

  “Here,” I said, handing a stack of flyers. “Earn your lunch.”

  “That was an early supper, man.”

  “Whatever.”

  We walked back to the station. The big buses were lined up behind the station, idling, the heavy scent of diesel in the air, and passengers came and went from the main terminal.

  “Let’s hang,” I said. “Watch things, look for the rhythm.”

  We sat down together on a bench against the wall inside the terminal and watched the ebb and flow of people, looking for the currents beneath the surface. There was plenty to see. A teenage boy and girl holding hands, frightened but hiding it, sitting beside two battered backpacks. A tall cadaverously thin black man in a purple track suit, gold chains heavy around his neck, watching them from the corner of his eye while he talked with another man in a cheap suit who tapped his feet in a rapid tempo. A plump blond girl, maybe sixteen, stood by the two men, her eyes downcast, nervously working a mouth full of chewing gum. Purple track suit waved her over, pushed her at the other man, and watched them leave together. Then he stood by the door, back to the wall, and did just what we were doing – taking it all in.

  Predator, for sure.

  “You make Mr. Purple?” Marcos said.

 
“Good eyes, Marcos.”

  “You’re not the only one with trigger time, Franko. Got to see the threat in order to assess the threat in order to deal with the threat.”

  “Trigger time?”

  “You wear it like a badge, Frank. Like you got a CIB stapled to your forehead.”

  A massively muscled man, not squat like most body builders, but tall and graceful on his feet like a gymnast, came through the door. He was dressed in fashionably faded Levis and a T-shirt under an orange long sleeved shirt worn open. His pectorals were the size of dinner plates. Black mirror wrap around sunglasses hid his eyes beneath a closely cropped head of blond hair. He looked like Schwarzenegger in the Terminator movies. Purple Jump Suit sprang to attention and walked over to the Terminator look alike, every step oozing deference. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was obvious from their body language that the muscle man was giving orders and Purple Track Suit was taking them, his head bobbing as eagerly as a lap dog’s.

  The big man took off his sunglasses. His bright blue eyes were startling. He took a long, unhurried look around the terminal, nodded at the two frightened looking teenagers, continued to scan near and far till his look fell on Marcos and I. He was some kind of operator. You could see it in his look, how he carefully disguised his interest in us while he continued to look over the crowd as though looking for someone else. But he wasn’t a cop, no kind of undercover. He looked as though he might have waded in the cesspools of the night more than once. He’d spent some time there. But he was from the other side of the table.

  “Mr. Blue Eyes was checking us out,” Marcos said.

  “He was, wasn’t he?” I said. “Let’s see what they do.”

  “They smell cop,” Marcos said. “It’s that look of yours.”

  Both men turned to stare at us. Purple Track Suit favored us with a harsh grin. Then the big man put on his sunglasses and the two went outside.

  “That was interesting,” I said.

  “Those kids are meat on the table,” Marcos said, nodding at the two teenagers huddled behind their backpacks.

  “No, they’re not,” I said.

  I went over to the two teens, who looked at me with trepidation.

  “What do you want?” the boy said.

  So I wasn’t the first person to approach them.

  “Are you stranded here?” I said.

  “That’s none of your business,” the boy said.

  “Take it easy,” I said. I handed him a flyer. “Maybe you’d help me out. Ever seen this girl?”

  The two of them bowed their heads over the flyer. Then the boy said in a more relaxed tone, “No sir, sorry. We haven’t seen her.”

  “Where you two from?”

  He hesitated. “Fargo. North Dakota.”

  “What brings you to the Cities?”

  They studied my face, then said, “Just looking for work.”

  “Work.”

  “That’s right,” the boy said. “Work. We can work.”

  “You got a place to stay?”

  They were silent.

  “This is a bad place,” I said. “Lot of people who’d take advantage of you. I don’t know what it’s like in Fargo, but it can be dangerous here.”

  “We can take care of ourselves,” the boy said.

  Marcos came up behind me. “Nobody saying you can’t. You need a place to stay, you should check out the youth hostel.”

  “What’s a youth hostel?” the girl said.

  Marcos looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, yeah. You two can take care of yourselves. A youth hostel is a cheap hotel. Cost you $14 a night for a bed. It’s just for young travelers. They don’t ask your age, so you don’t have to worry about being underage.”

  “Where is it?” the boy said.

  Marcos pointed out the door to a bus stop across the street. “You take the city bus from right there. Tell the driver you want to get off at the youth hostel near River Place.”

  “How much is the bus?” the girl said.

  I reached in my wallet and pulled out five twenties. “You got any small bills?” I asked Marcos. He handed me eight dollars in ones. I held the cash out. “Here.”

  “We’re not taking your money,” the boy said.

  I handed him a stack of flyers. He took those. “It’s not for free. I want you to show these around at the hostel, see if anybody’s seen this girl. If you get any leads, call me at that number.”

  He looked at the cash in my other hand. “That’s too much…”

  “You said you wanted to work. This is work. Won’t last forever, but it’s a start.”

  The boy took the cash, weighed it in his hand, studied my face. “This is all you want?”

  “I need somebody your age to ask around for me.”

  The boy stood up and held out his hand. He was taller than I’d thought, hunched with a teenager’s fierce self consciousness. “Okay. My name is Ryan Cleary. This is my girlfriend Sarah Vaughn.”

  His hand was callused and his grip was firm. “Hello, Ryan. I’m Frank, this is Marcos. Hello, Sarah.”

  She had a shy smile. “Hello.”

  “We can give you a lift to the hostel,” Marcos said. “We’re going to hand out some flyers, be a few minutes. That cool with you?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ryan said.

  “Don’t sir me,” Marcos said. “I work for a living. Just like you.”

  Marcos took me by the elbow and steered me toward the main ticket windows. When the teenagers were out of earshot, he said, “Frank Lovelady. Adopter of strays, noble rescuer of the young and defenseless.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I won’t tell anybody, Frank. You just keep playing the tough guy.”

  At the counter, I showed a flyer to the agent, a tired looking gray haired man.

  “I haven’t seen her,” he said. “But I see a lot of kids come through. Can’t remember them all. You can put your poster up there on the billboard. We take them down every couple of weeks.”

  “You ever see men leaving here with these kids?” I said.

  The ticket agent’s eyes were yellowed around the rims. He’d seen a lot in his years. “I’m not a policeman. Where are their parents? We can’t stop and call the cops for every suspicious thing we see. This is a bus station. We’ve got a business to run. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but we can’t jump in and rescue every kid who comes through here – even if they wanted us to.”

  “What about those guys that were just in here, the Arnold Schwarzenegger look alike and his buddy in the track suit?” I said.

  “I don’t remember them. We get a lot of people in and out, as you can see for yourself.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for your time. I’ll put these up.”

  “Just one,” he said. “On the billboard. Any place else, the company has us take them down. Sorry.”

  “Right.”

  I followed Marcos to the billboard. He took down a few outdated concert posters and tacked a flyer in a central spot.

  “Look here,” he said. There were other flyers on the board, edges turned up with age. More missing children, pictures of eager young faces, and the scrawled telephone numbers of desperate parents.

  “This is beginning to depress the shit out of me,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We went back and collected Ryan and Sarah.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  We went out the big swinging doors. The two teens trailed behind me, Marcos behind them. Outside, beside a bus that had just pulled in, were the Terminator and his sidekick. They watched us, the big blond man expressionless beneath his sunglasses, the black man with open surprise. I felt their gaze follow our little party all the way out into the street. We walked half a block in silence. Then I said to Ryan, “Did you see those two looking at you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ryan said.

  “They scared us,” Sarah said.

  “They say something to you?” Marcos said.

  “No,” Sarah
said softly. “It’s just…the way the looked at us.”

  “Remember that,” I said. “What you felt. That’s the beginning of your education in the big city. There’s people out here who see you as fresh meat. If you look like food, you’ll get eaten.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ryan said.

  At the car, I stowed their backpacks in the trunk. “You two hungry?”

  They looked at each other, then Ryan said, “We could eat something.”

  “There’s a deli by the hostel,” Marcos said. “They make a good Philly beef sandwich.”

  “What’s a Philly beef sandwich?” Sarah said.

  “Jesus,” Marcos said. “They don’t got food where you come from?”

  The teenagers got in back, and then we pulled away from the curb and eased into the traffic on Hennepin and headed towards the river. A dark olive green Hummer loomed in my rear view mirror. The Terminator look alike was at the wheel.

  “Check six,” I said.

  Marcos turned in his seat. The two teens craned their necks to look out the rear window.

  “Why is he following us?” Ryan said.

  I turned right at the next light, then right again to go around the block. When we came back out on Hennepin, the Hummer was gone.

  “Not much of a tail,” Marcos said.

  “Maybe he wasn’t trying,” I said. “Let’s get these guys fed.”

  iv.

  Ryan and Sarah ate as though they were starved. They each plowed through a foot-long sandwich, a bag of chips and a handful of cookies. After the meal, we drove them to the hostel and dropped them off in front.