Derailed

by Siegel, James

  “Look,” Sam said, “I just want to go home. I don’t know what’s going on here, and I don’t care. Really. I just . . . just let me go, okay?”

  Vasquez reached back into his pocket and hit him across the mouth with something black, and Sam went down. That fast. His mouth began to leak blood.

  Another gun.

  I’d done just about everything right. I’d gotten the room key and surprised Vasquez on the staircase. I’d made it into the room. I was going to get my money back. Even if my plan was just a little bit murky on how I was going to get my money back. Maybe by keeping Lucinda at gunpoint until Vasquez came back with it — maybe by all going for the money together. But I’d made one mistake. I’d forgotten that Vasquezes carry guns. I hadn’t searched him or patted him down or made him throw his gun away.

  There were a few seconds when all wasn’t lost. When I still had the advantage. Vasquez had a gun and Sam was down and bleeding, but I was still the only one in the room with his gun actually pointed at someone.

  I could tell that Vasquez was thinking that it was one thing to hold a gun on somebody and an entirely different thing to pull the trigger. He didn’t think I had it in me.

  But he didn’t know something. They say money is the great equalizer, but it’s really, truly, desperation. It had leveled the playing field.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  In the millisecond it took for Vasquez to realize his good fortune, to begin raising his gun hand, I understood why nothing had happened.

  I’d forgotten to click off the safety.

  I launched myself at Vasquez, using the only advantage I had going for me. Surprise.

  My initial charge knocked the gun right out of Vasquez’s hand, and it skittered somewhere under the bed. So now we were more or less even.

  Maybe I even had the edge. Because there was a chance my desperation was even more terrible than Vasquez’s. I had nothing much to lose. Detective Palumbo would be calling back any day now, and even if he didn’t, Barry Lenge would. So I did have desperation on my side. And something was not quite right with Vasquez. He was drunk, or stoned, or something.

  Vasquez had gasped from the initial shock of body contact, then immediately tried to separate himself from my grasp. But he seemed like a punched-out heavyweight in round twelve, sluggish and wobbly kneed. It gave me courage.

  I could see Sam out of the corner of my eye — up on his knees and looking down at his hand, which was bright red because he’d just touched his mouth with it. He looked dazed and confused.

  “Mother . . .fucker . . . ,” Vasquez said, grunting now from the exertion of trying to get me off him but not having much success. I had my arms firmly around him, and I wasn’t letting go.

  Vasquez staggered into the wall. I had him in a bear hug, so he was doing what bears do when they want to get something off their backs. They rub themselves against the nearest tree trunk. Vasquez was using the nearest wall.

  I held fast as I crashed into the plaster wall and dislodged a yellowed reproduction, my sunglasses spinning off onto the floor.

  Then we fell to the floor with a loud crash; I could smell Vasquez now — the stink of garlic and cigarette smoke and fried eggs. The carpet was so thin that it was like rolling around on playground cement. And for the first time, I was absolutely convinced I was going to win. I’d moved my right arm around Vasquez’s neck and was squeezing for all I was worth — and right at this minute I was worth a lot. One hundred and ten thousand dollars, at least.

  Vasquez was sputtering, and I wondered if I was going to kill him. And I thought: If I have to, I will.

  Vasquez gave one last effort at getting me off his back, but one of his arms was pinned between me and the floor, and I had the other one wrapped up tightly, so even though Vasquez gave an awkward lunge forward, he couldn’t dislodge me.

  He collapsed; I felt all the strength go out of him — whatever strength booze or drugs hadn’t sapped from him already.

  I hadn’t killed him, but I’d won.

  I’d won.

  There were a pair of shoes standing just at eye level. At first I thought they belonged to Sam, but Sam was over there on the other side of the room, bleeding into his hands.

  So I peered up.

  “Lookit here,” said Dexter, “it’s Chuck.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Dexter had slipped in during the heat of the battle.

  We’d been rolling around on the floor, and neither one of us had heard the door open. That allowed Dexter to enter the room, pick up my gun, click off the safety, and point the barrel at my head.

  I was leashed and muzzled. My hands were tied behind my back with my own belt. They took off my shoes and socks and stuffed one clammy sock into my mouth.

  They did the same thing to Sam. Sam resisted momentarily, and Vasquez kicked him in the head.

  I could smell Sam’s blood.

  It smelled almost sweet, but since I knew where it was coming from, it was a nauseating sweetness. That was a problem. Because it made me want to throw up, and the thought of throwing up with a sock already stuffed into my mouth made me want to panic.

  Not panicking was easier said than done. I was wondering, for instance, what they were planning to do with us, with Sam and me. I had the strong feeling they didn’t know yet.

  They seemed at loose ends. They kept muttering and whispering to each other — sometimes in Spanish, sometimes not.

  “Nosotros tenemos que hacer algo,” Lucinda was saying now.

  I’d taken just one year of high school Spanish, and the only word I actually remembered was gracias — but I could intuit their confusion anyway.

  I overheard Vasquez whispering something in English to Lucinda.

  “Afterwards . . . we can go . . . Miami and . . .” They were taking off.

  It made sense. After all, Sam was useless to them now, a would-be cash cow that had been irrevocably damaged. All that time and effort put into leading him here and nothing to show for it.

  They were legitimately upset. They were unhappy I’d shown up. I was the reason it hadn’t worked out the way they’d planned. Me. I’d gummed up the works and left them with a problem they hadn’t counted on. Their weapons, after all, were fear and deception, but now I’d made those weapons useless.

  Which left what?

  “You stupid fuck . . . ” Vasquez was sitting on the bed with his hands on his knees. He was talking to me. “I told you not to pull this kind of shit again. I told you to go back to Long Island and stay there, right? You lost money before, motherfucker. Money. You should’ve thanked God. Now what you gonna do, huh?”

  Perhaps pray.

  It wasn’t merely the words that were frightening, that made me think praying was in order—it was the fact that Vasquez himself seemed frightened saying them. Now what you gonna do, huh? As if it were a question they’d asked themselves, then come up with an answer they hadn’t liked. When scary people start sounding scared, that’s when it’s okay to be scared yourself.

  The three of them went into the bathroom together. Someone — I thought it was Dexter — was arguing against doing something. I could hear his raised voice.

  When they came out of the bathroom, Dexter didn’t look very happy. It appeared he’d lost.

  But Vasquez and Dexter were going somewhere now.

  “Ten minutes,” I heard Vasquez whisper to Lucinda, “and then we’ll go down to . . . Little Havana . . . my cousin . . .”

  Vasquez and Dexter left the room.

  Which left the three of us. Sam, Lucinda, and me.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Sam said through the sock in his mouth. The words muffled, but understandable.

  But Lucinda didn’t answer him.

  “I won’t tell,” Sam said. “If you let me go, I won’t say a thing, I promise. Please . . .”

  Still no answer from Lucinda. Maybe she’d been told not to say anything — no fraternizing with the enemy. Maybe
after having had to talk to Sam Griffen for months, it was nice not having to say anything to him now. Or maybe she knew exactly what they were going to do with us and thought it better not to tell.

  “The sock . . . it’s choking me,” Sam said. "Please . . .”

  Lucinda finally responded, but not with words. She got up and walked over to Sam — a short walk of five feet, maybe.

  “Please,” Sam said, “take it out of my mouth . . .please . . . I’m choking . . . ”

  So Lucinda reached down to pull out the sock.

  As soon as her hand reached into his mouth, he bit down on it, and Lucinda screamed.

  Maybe he’d been asking himself the same questions I had and come up with the same answers. So maybe he’d decided he had nothing to lose.

  She kicked out at him — “Motherfucker!”—trying to get her hand out of his mouth, but Sam was holding on like an attack dog, the kind trained to take down robbers and not let go, even if you shoot them dead. Lucinda, screaming and punching at Sam’s head with her free hand, but Sam still not letting go, holding on for dear life.

  I tried to get over there, but I had to worm my way to them, because my hands were tied behind my back. I had to move in sections. I was trying to help Sam. Because something bad was going to happen now. I could see that.

  For one thing, Lucinda had managed to get her hand out of his mouth. Finally. For another, she was raising the gun in her left hand and beginning to bring it down on Sam’s head. Sam’s mouth was bloody, her blood and his seemingly mixed together, as Lucinda brought the gun down on his face again. Then again and again.

  “Please,” Sam said, “please, I’m a father. . . . I have three children, ” as the gun smashed into his cheekbone. As it smashed into his nose. Hoping, I guess, that this might give her pause, might make her stop hitting him. But it only seemed to make her madder. Sam kept pleading, “Three children . . . please . . . a father, ” but Lucinda kept hitting him. Harder and harder—I could hear the sound of metal hitting bone. As if he were saying, Hit me, and she was just going ahead and obliging him.

  I’d managed to get eight inches, ten inches, a foot closer to them, when I finally realized it didn’t matter.

  Not now.

  Sam was dead.

  Vasquez and Dexter walked back into the room.

  Dexter was carrying two garbage bags — the large, industrial-strength kind, big enough for an entire lawn of leaves. Or a couple of bodies.

  Maybe that’s why when they saw Sam was dead, when Vasquez kicked him softly with his shoe and actually confirmed this, no one seemed particularly upset about it.

  “He bit me,” was all Lucinda said, and Vasquez nodded.

  Then Vasquez picked up a pillow and said to me: “Time to go to sleep.”

  Vasquez has a gun, but he can’t take the chance of someone hearing it.

  They were going to suffocate me.

  I’d been doing something while Lucinda killed Sam. While she’d gotten up and gone into the bathroom to wash the blood off her hands. While Sam lay there without breathing. I’d remembered something. Dexter had come in and picked up my gun, and then he’d given the gun to Lucinda when they went out.

  Which still left one other gun.

  Vasquez’s gun. Where was it?

  Under the bed. Where it had come to rest when I’d knocked it out of Vasquez’s hand.

  Maybe five feet away from me. That’s all.

  They were going to suffocate me.

  I’d begun to inch my way over to it.

  Something else. I’d begun to test the quality of the knot that Dexter had tied with my belt. It wasn’t meant to be used as a rope; it wasn’t supple enough to make a good knot. There was some give there.

  They were going to suffocate me.

  By the time Vasquez and Dexter reentered the room, I’d opened a tiny hole in the knot. I’d moved myself to within two feet of Vasquez’s gun.

  Close enough to reach it. If I could get my hands out in time.

  “Bedtime,” Vasquez said.

  Your life does not flash in front of your eyes.

  I would like to tell you that now.

  That’s what they say happens to you when you face your own death, but it’s not true. Not for me — my entire life did not play itself out before my eyes. Just one small part of it.

  When I was seven years old and at the beach.

  I’d been playing in the surf and not paying attention, and a rogue wave had come along and knocked me under. By the time they pulled me from the water, I was purple, cyanotic, and — if not for the ministrations of a first-year lifeguard — dead. From that day on, I was forever scared of drowning. From that day on, when I had dreams about dying, it was always that way. With no air in my lungs.

  That’s the part of my life I saw now.

  Before Vasquez placed the white pillow down over my mouth, I managed to gulp in one deep breath.

  There was a game we used to play as a kid. It was called No Breathing. A game I played with nearly maniacal devotion after that incident at the beach — as if I knew it just might save me one day.

  I used to be able to do three minutes. Maybe even four.

  Go.

  The pillow smelled of sweat and dust. I began to work my hands back and forth against the knot in the belt.

  I pushed outward with both wrists. Then relaxed. Then pushed. Then relaxed.

  It was like a painful isometric. Vasquez had all his weight pressing down on me. It was hard to move my hands.

  I kept my wrists pushing, though. Even though the belt was cutting into my skin like a dull blade.

  It was slow going. I heard someone pacing a few feet from me. The bed squeaked. Lucinda cleared her throat. Someone turned on the radio.

  My hands were going nowhere. I kept pushing and pushing, but it was like pushing against a locked door. Like running in quicksand. I was pushing, but nothing was giving. My chest was starting to ache. My arm sockets felt as if they were being pulled apart. They were screaming at me.

  No, they screeched. Not on your life. Not possible. Forget it. Stop!

  My lungs were on fire now. I couldn’t feel my hands.

  Then the belt began to give.

  Just a little.

  Just loose enough to get a little piece of my hand through.

  I pushed with all my strength. Then again and again.

  My wrists were bleeding. I kept pushing.

  I got my hands halfway through. Both hands were sweating. The sweat and blood was helping them slide through the belt. That was good, that was wonderful. I kept pushing.

  My hands were three-quarters out. I needed to push just a little bit more, just a little bit. It was my knuckles, though.

  They were a problem. Please.

  I gave one last push — one last push for everything. For everything I needed to make it back to. For Anna. For Deanna.

  Now.

  I pushed and pushed and pushed . . .

  One hand came free.

  I’m dying.

  My left hand, the arm closest to the bed.

  It’s black. I can’t see. I’m dying.

  I heard Vasquez say, “Huh.”

  I heard Dexter say, “Watch out.”

  I frantically felt for the gun under the box spring. My lungs were bursting. I slid my hands this way and that way under the bed. Where was it?

  I felt the gun. I got my fingers around it.

  What’s this? What’s happening?

  I brought it out from under the bed.

  And at that very moment, at that very instant in time when I might’ve turned the tide, I died.

  ATTICA

  Fat Tommy was right.

  They’d sent me notification in the mail.

  “Dear Mr. Widdoes: This is to inform you that State budget constraints will no longer allow for an adult education program in State prisons. Classes will end on the first of next month. A formal notice of termination will follow.”

  This meant I had two cla
sses left.

  Just two.

  The COs kept their distance from me now, as if I had a communicable disease. Was it possible state layoffs were contagious? When I slipped into the COs lounge for coffee, they gave me a wide berth — wider even than before, when it was simply my job that had rubbed them the wrong way. Now it was my lack of one.

  I sipped my coffee alone, over in the corner of the room known as the museum.

  The museum had been so dubbed by a long-ago correction officer whose name no one remembered. It was a loosely arranged collection of prison-confiscated weapons. Bangers, shanks, gats, and burners — what the cons call knives. Forged from bedsprings, hollowed-out pens, smuggled-in screwdrivers — whatever the prisoners can get their hands on. But there were also crude guns — ingenious things put together with odds and ends from the machine shop, capable of putting a reasonable facsimile of a bullet into a man at close range.

  It was constantly being added to. After each clear-out there’d be one or two more donations.

  I stared at these crude instruments of death until the silence at my presence there grew intolerable, or until it was time for class.

  Whichever came first.

  The writer had kept it up with monotonous and painful regularity.

  Every class I found another installment sitting there on my desk.

  My own story slowly being fed back to me, chapter by painful chapter. It was a torturously slow indictment of Charles Schine. I was convinced that torture was exactly what the writer had in mind.

  There were other things, too. Another note appeared at the end of chapter 20.

  “Time we got together, don’t you think?”

  Written in brown ink, except it wasn’t brown ink. It was written in blood. It was meant to scare me.

  And I thought, Yes, it is time we got together. Even if I felt my palms grow sweaty and my collar tighten like a noose.

  The writer wasn’t in my classroom. I knew that.

  The delivery boy was.

  A few classes after I received the last note, I dismissed the class and someone stayed behind.

  When I looked up, he was sitting there and smiling at me.

  Malik El Mahid. His Muslim name.

  Twenty-five or so. Black, squat, and tattooed.