Where Night Stops

by Douglas Light

  Still driving, the cabbie wheeled his head around to glare at him. A shouting match erupted between the two, spit flying with each word.

  His eyes off the road, the cabbie rear-ended a black Mercedes trying to park.

  The Mercedes’ driver got out of his car, his hand chopping the air like a maestro’s while he screamed.

  Perfect, I thought, sweating in the back seat. More problems.

  Our cabbie stayed put, hurtling curses at him from the safety of the car, then let loose a wild scream that silenced his rival. The man stood stunned a moment, looking a bit lost, then turned back to his car. The incident was over, I thought, then I saw the man pull a pistol from under the driver’s seat, calmly stroll back toward us. Seeing it too, my contact laughed. “Politics at its best,” he said.

  Our driver joined in, laughing as he revved the engine to take off.

  His laugh was cut short by a sharp boomthumt from the gun. A bullet kissed the cabbie in the temple, opening his head in a spray of brains and bone that splattered the passenger side window. His body jolted, his foot jamming the gas pedal, and we rammed the Mercedes onto the sidewalk as the cab launched down the length of the street. We careened violently off one parked car then another, finally slamming to a stop when we hit the corner of a building at the intersection.

  I found myself on the floor, wedged hard into some perverse contortion against the back of the driver’s seat. “Holy fuck,” I said, fighting to untangle myself. Extracting myself, I climbed from the cab and examined the situation. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  The cabbie was dead, his shattered head poking through windshield. My contact sat upright in the backseat, no longer dapper. His face was a veil of blood. A flap of his forehead hung off of him like a cold cut.

  I reached in to feel his pulse, but then jerked my hand back. I didn’t want to touch him. I listened for a breath. No breath.

  I turned to leave then stopped. The documents, the cards.

  Fighting down a mouthful of vomit, I rifled his jacket pockets, retrieved the items, and then ran as fast as I could.

  Twenty minutes later, I was on the A9 racing north toward Lake Como in a stolen Fiat, my nerves frayed and my leg, somehow cut, throbbing with pain.

  Pulling the car to the side of the road, I dialed Higgles. It kicked directly into voice mail.

  I texted him. 911. Call me now.

  He called. “This best be good.”

  “Actually,” I said, “it’s bad.” I cranked the car’s AC, fighting to stay cool. “We’ve hit a snag.”

  “You mean you’ve hit a snag,” he said. “What happened?”

  I explained.

  “And you fled the scene?”

  “Of course I fled the scene. What else was I to do?”

  “Wait for the police. Give a statement. Get medical attention like any other normal, innocent person would,” he said. “I don’t appreciate the position you’ve put me in.”

  “You? What about me? What about the position I’m in?”

  “You put yourself there.” He sighed, then coughed. “Fuck, cousin. I’m going to have to do something I know I’ll regret.” He gave me a PO Box address in Haven, Florida. “FedEx the documents and the cards there.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then forget the address, forget I ever mentioned Florida,” he said, “and somehow find your way home.”

  Chapter 48

  Shattered glass, car wreck, dead bodies. Milan sparked a memory I’d fought to forget.

  Driving back from my graduation dinner, my parents kept at each other until my father abruptly pulled to a hard stop at the intersection of Kelper Street and Jacoby Avenue and turned off the engine. “That is a real stop sign,” he said, pointing to it. “And this is a real stop.”

  Off to the left, a single light drilled toward the intersection, heading our direction. A motorcycle.

  Clement.

  “You’ve made your point,” my mother said. “You can go now.”

  Silent, my father glared straight ahead.

  From behind, a truck’s headlights beamed. The driver tapped his horn, waiting for my father to move.

  Still staring ahead, his jaw tight, my father lowered his window and signaled the truck to go around.

  The truck pulled past us, lumbering through the intersection.

  I shifted in the back seat. “Can we please go?”

  “Not until your mother apologizes.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Now can we go? I’ve got to use the toilet.”

  My father turned to her. “Never, ever tell me how to drive again.” He started the car again and dropped the car in gear.

  Clement was approaching the intersection full speed.

  “Watch—” I never finished my sentence.

  My father punched the accelerator, yanked the steering wheel left to make a turn.

  A screech of tires, a strobe of light slicing through the windshield, then a spectacular explosion of motion and noise.

  I remember my mother’s scream, Clement launching through the windshield, a spray of glass hitting my face. I remember our car shuddering as it careened forward into a telephone pole, and then into the ditch.

  ◉ ◉ ◉

  Memories are scars created by loss, not love.

  Chapter 49

  Bribes, favors, and jetting across the country on a lead. Higgles finally tracked the man down. Payback, he thought, watching him stroll across the parking lot.

  He thought about the situation, thought about all that had led to this moment. I’ll hand it to him. Laughter welled in his throat, choking him. “Hand it to him,” he said aloud. “I’ll hand it to him.”

  Chapter 50

  After Milan came Athens. My contact shouldn’t have threatened me with blackmail. What exactly he had on me, I couldn’t say. I could barely understand his English, though his threat was clear.

  I gave him a firm answer in the form of a small marble statue to his head. But the fucker wouldn’t go down. He lurched about the place like he was determined to get blood on every inch of every wall.

  New body, new nightmares.

  Higgles had me ship the package to the Florida PO Box. Again, he told me to forget the address. Forget he’d even mentioned Haven, Florida.

  Back in New Orleans, a package arrived. Cash. The Athens job paid in full, with an extra thousand. Also, a new phone.

  A text from Higgles. Austin, Texas. A simple job.

  Unlike the other jobs.

  I was to be there by Wednesday morning, wait for instructions. Fuck that, I thought. Being Higgles’ surrogate, doing the dangerous work while he stayed safe and hidden, was bad for my health. Time I started doing a bit of Tom Sawyering myself, getting paid while someone else painted the fence.

  “So how are you figuring this works?” the assistant manager of ReadiXpress, an Austin messenger service, asked skeptically.

  My hopes bottomed out. The three other places I’d called required things I didn’t want to provide, like my personal information and a credit card number. If I farmed this out, then I wanted to leave as small a footprint as possible. No records trailing back to me if something went wrong. “I’ll overnight seventy-five dollars in cash to ReadiXpress,” I explained, trying to sound everyday casual, two chums chatting. “Tomorrow, I’ll call with the details. You guys make the pick-up, express the package to an address I’ll give you. That’s it.” In the background, a phone rang. Someone laughed like a carnival clown, high and sharp. “A simple job,” I said, Higgles’ own words escaping my mouth.

  “Yeah, well, here’s the thing.” His voice rattled with phlegm. “ReadiXpress is real prickly about no-record shit like this. They got in some trouble with some Mexican Viagra last year.”

  Austin, here I come. I already tasted the sweltering air, and felt the bites from vic
ious Texas mosquitoes.

  “But I’m thinking…” He paused, grumbled his throat clear. “Tomorrow’s my day off.”

  By the time we settled, he’d hemmed and hawed me up to two hundred dollars to do the job himself. “Personalized service,” he said. I overnighted the cash.

  Higgles texted me first thing the next morning with the details. The meet was to take place out front of the Sterling Hackfield bank in downtown Pflugerville. Ten a.m. sharp.

  “Shit, Pflugerville?” my guy said, his voice sticky with sleep. The call had woken him. “That’s like a forty-minute drive.”

  “Then you best get going.”

  “What I best do is nothing. Not until that money arrives.”

  “It’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

  “And if it ain’t?”

  “Then keep whatever’s in the package you pick up.”

  The next three hours dragged on like a church fundraiser, each minute inching slowly into the next. Finally, my guy called. “Fucking traffic was crazy.”

  “You got the package?”

  I pulled the phone from my ear as he hacked up a lung full of mucus. “What’s with your boy?” he asked after spitting.

  “Who?”

  “The guy with the package. What’s with his face? Looked like a bad asphalt job, all pitted and bumpy.”

  My kidneys throbbed. Pockmark. He was talking about Pockmark, from the shelter. What was his connection to Higgles, to all this? “But you got the package, right?” I forced the fear from my voice. Maybe it was just some other guy with a bad skin.

  “Yeah, the money’s here. Just like you said.”

  “I mean the package from Pockmark.”

  “Pockmark?”

  “The guy in Pflugerville.”

  “Right.” He grouches up more slime. “Got it. Thing is, that package I picked up doesn’t weigh the same as the one you sent.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I think we need to balance them out.” He wanted another hundred for his efforts.

  I gave him a PO Box number, said to overnight the package there.

  “And the extra something-something?”

  “I get the package,” I said, “you get the money.”

  “What, I’m supposed to just trust you?”

  I hung up.

  The next morning, two packages were waiting for me, both with Austin return addresses. The first had a partially completed mortgage application, a stick of Juicy Fruit, and a flash drive clipped to a red lanyard, the kind conference attendees wear. Except this one had blue cartoon horses dancing the length, each with a letter or number on their belly. KTU9J7L it read. Or L7J9UTK, depending on which way it was read. A ship registration, a license plate number, or a fuck-up at the manufacturer, I didn’t know.

  The second package held a phone book with half the pages torn out. I flipped through it. Every few pages, a business name would be circled.

  My Austin guy was fucking with me. He’d said he picked up a package. Singular. What this second package was, I didn’t know. And which one was real?

  Higgles had been blowing up my phone with texts, demanding an update. We’re clover, I finally wrote. Austin packages in hand.

  Packages? More than 1?

  Fat fingers, I replied. Package. 1.

  Day late, Higgles replied, and instructed me to FedEx the package to the Florida PO Box.

  I studied the items, knowing I was overlooking something obvious, a clue that pieced it all together and made everything make sense. I even hit the Internet café to see what was on the flash drive. One document. A thirty-two page PowerPoint of chicken recipes, clip art included. I couldn’t figure it out.

  And what if I did? What then?

  I deleted five of the recipes, swapped the Juicy Fruit with a pack of Big Red, tore some more pages from the phonebook, filled out the rest of the mortgage application with bullshit information, and added a partially complete Sudoku puzzle. I packed it up in a single box then texted Higgles that the package was off.

  It wasn’t. I stopped short of sending it and instead tucked the package under my bathroom sink. Dependability is only appreciated when it’s missing. Higgles needed a reminder of how valuable I was to him. He needed to realize that as long as I had what he wanted, I had the upper hand.

  There’d be blowback, for sure, but I’d handle it—somehow.

  My Austin guy’s game of sending a second package pissed me off. I called him three times. He didn’t pick up. I called ReadiXpress. MIA. He hadn’t shown for work that morning.

  Let it go.

  I mailed him a coupon for a McDonald’s small coffee and a one-dollar bill with We’re even written on it instead of the hundred dollars he was expecting.

  I opened a beer, tried to do a crossword puzzle, but worry dug into my bowels like a porcelain shard. Pockmark in Austin? Higgles and him in cahoots? Who needs real conspiracies or enemies when your mind churns them out? I retrieved the package from the bathroom, deciding to send it to Higgles. No good could come from having it. Then I put it back. Hold firm, I told myself. Higgles would get the package once he showed me some respect. Gratitude.

  By evening, my worries weakened. After my third beer, they collapsed all together.

  I locked the doors and headed to bed feeling fairly secure about everything.

  But then I woke Friday morning with what felt like a table leg jammed hard to my throat.

  My eyes opened on a man dressed completely in green—ski mask, long sleeve shirt, and gloves. Had I seen him walk into a grocery store or church, I might have laughed. He looked like a frog. But standing over my bed pressing something knotty and hard into my neck, he wasn’t so funny.

  I smacked at whatever he was ramming me with, and rolled from bed onto the floor.

  He wasn’t holding a table leg. It was his hand. Or the stub where his hand used to be. He caught my head with it in three rapid whacks. I clambered to my feet and charged at the frogman, landing a punch to his face. He cried sharply and stumbled back, punching a hole through the cheap bedroom door.

  I went at him, swinging wildly, blindly, and connecting more often than I expected. Frogman retreated down the hall. He whipped his stub back and forth, whapped me once on my left ear then followed it up with a homerun to my temple. I crashed hard to the floor.

  Frogman bolted, making his escape out the open front door.

  What the fuck? I struggled to my feet. If the guy was a burglar, he had picked the wrong place. I didn’t have much to steal. The hidden Austin package, my Higgles books, some clothing. But no TV, no stereo, no computer. Locking the front door, I headed to the kitchen for water, my ear ringing and throat throbbing like my Adam’s apple had been cracked.

  I choked down some water, and tried to think. Blood trickled down my cheek. Who was frogman? What was he after?

  A pounding on my front door kicked my heart into my mouth. I held to the wall, edged my way to the door. The banging sounded again, followed by a jiggling of doorknob. “Open up,” a voice called. “It’s me.”

  Fucking Higgles.

  I let him in.

  His hair was greasy and matted and he was covered in sweat. He wore a dingy white T-shirt and jeans. The right side of his face was red and swollen.

  He took one look at me, said, “Shit, tell me I’m not too late.”

  “To save me? Yeah, too late.” I felt like I’d swallowed gravel. I rubbed my throat, fighting off the urge to cry. “Looks like frogman paid you a visit, too.”

  “I meant the package,” he said, heading straight to the bathroom. He retrieved the package from under the sink.

  “How’d you know?”

  “How’d I know what?” The package was securely under his arm. “Frogman? What are you talking about?”

  I let it go, felt a sense
of relief that he was actually there. I touched his face. He jerked back like I’d jabbed him with a branding iron. “Yeah, I got hit, too. Three guys. Hispanic and pissed off. But no frogman, whatever that is.” He tapped the box he was holding. “So you shipped the package off safely, huh?”

  “Yesterday, yeah,” I said, in no mood for his bullshit games. “Safe and sound. You should have it by now.”

  He held the box up. “Well lookie here. I do have it.” He grazed me with a look of contempt. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”

  “Who did this?” I said, needing to know what was happening, why we’d been attacked. He didn’t answer. “Higgles?”

  “Shit, no. That idiot? He didn’t do this,” he said, his voice spiking.

  I was confused. “Who didn’t?”

  “Higgles,” he said.

  “I sure as fuck hope you didn’t. And why are you calling yourself by your own name? What are you, royalty?”

  Higgles forced a cough. “Right, right. You Ray-Ray, me Higgles.” He rapped the top of his skull with is fist. “Higgles, Higgles, you idiot. Higgles’ head is a bit messed up today. Higgles needs a vacation.” He pointed to me. “Now get dressed.”

  Higgles had lost it and was freaking me out.

  Once dressed, I cautiously followed him out to a dirty blue Prius.

  He forced the keys into my hand. “Drive.”

  I took the driver’s seat, buckled up. I always buckle.

  He settled into the passenger’s seat, calling out “Shotgun!” then tossed the package in the back. Laughing at his own bad joke, he pulled out a Gauloise and sparked the tobacco, inhaling like he’d surfaced from someplace deep.

  I kicked over the ignition, turned to Higgles, waiting for instructions on where to go.

  “Higgles says, ‘Forward,’” he said, blowing a cloud of smoke at me. I’d never seen him smoke, but then I’d never seen him do a lot of things.

  Questions pinged through my mind. What the fuck was Higgles doing at my place? How did he know I hadn’t sent the package? And how did he know exactly where to find it? Instead, I asked, “Was it Pockmark who attacked me? What did this guy want?”