“Hey, whatcha got here? Well lookie, lookie.” She checks the slide like a pro and puts the gun to my head. She’s working her lips over her teeth in a weird way and her eyes have the demented look of a kid about to set a cat on fire.
I know she’d love to shoot me, but Herbie says, “Hey, stay cool,” and she backs off. Herbie takes the gun from her and says, “Check it out! A P38-K. Always wanted one of these. Why, thank you, Charlie Miner.” He winks at me. He’s got a three-day beard, a soul-patch, and teeth as bad as his girlfriend’s.
Melinda takes the phones out of my pockets and puts them on the table. She opens a drawer under the table and pulls out a pair of handcuffs. Herbie puts the barrel of the gun up to my right nostril and pushes me toward the ice chest. I stumble backward and land sitting on the floor.
“Get comfy, Charlie. It’s gonna be a long night.” Now he’s got the gun pointed down at the top of my head. Melinda slaps one ring of the cuffs onto my left wrist and attaches the other to the U-bolt. I lean back against the wall, the Ruger safe behind me. I wonder how this is going to play out.
21
Herbie takes the flashlight and steps outside while Melinda disappears through the hallway. I check out of the body and follow Herbie to the trailer. Inside is the meth lab from hell, a jungle of glassware and vats of solvents and reagents, open pizza boxes with half-eaten pizza slices, empty bottles of Jack Daniels, a fire extinguisher, and a Tec-9 semi-auto pistol. Next to the Tec-9 is a manual for conversion to full auto.
Herbie shines his beam on a six-inch glass tube half-full of shiny white crystals. He grabs the tube and heads back to the main house.
“Hey, wake up!” Melinda slaps me in the face just as I re-enter the body. I want to break her wrist, but now’s not the time. My ex-wife was a slapper, my mother had a right hand like a cobra, and I feel a fury in my gut every time I see a slap in a movie.
Herbie comes back in and empties the contents of the plastic cooler—ice and cans of Coke and bottles of beer—into the ice chest. He looks down at me and laughs while he does it. He tosses the cooler aside and goes to the table. There’s a glass pipe and a butane torch there, and Melinda’s pacing around the table and chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“Sit the fuck down, Mel,” Herbie commands, and she does, staring at the pipe like a dog waiting to be fed. Herbie pulls the rubber stopper off the vial and shakes some of the crystal into the bowl of the pipe. He fires up the butane torch and it looks like Melinda’s going to bark like a trained seal.
Somewhere within ten miles of where I’m sitting, my daughter is being held captive by a psychotic untethered from any of the restraints that bind us to the social contract. The only thing on my side is that he’s expecting his father to arrive. I notice that none of the cell phones have rung; for once it’s helpful to be out of service range.
I expect the meth to get Herbie and Melinda even more agitated, but instead it seems to calm them down. Herbie comes over to me and kneels. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “We got a plan for you.” He opens the ice chest next to me and pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels. “So what’s with the gun, matey?”
So now he’s a pirate. Close to the truth seems as good as any story I could make up, so I tell him, “My daughter got kidnapped by her psycho boyfriend. I’m here to get her back. That’s what the gun is for.” Herbie’s face is inches from mine, his breath an unpleasant mix of gum rot, cigarettes, and something metallic. It’s the olfactory equivalent of chewing on tin foil.
“So how are you gonna find her down here?”
“She’s at a mine. It’s called Santa Clarita. Should be right near here.”
“Yep. If we’d kept going instead of turning left we’d ’a wound up there. End of the road, can’t miss it. Place is a fuckin’ dump.”
We’re nose to nose now. I wonder if I could get the gun out and shoot them both, but I’m not feeling it. Instead, I say, “I’ll pay you to let me go. Really. I’m desperate.”
“Well, bum trip, Lone Ranger, your mission’s gonna have to wait.” I’ve seen the look in his eyes before, the glint of madness barely restrained, a hint of delight at the mayhem to come. He gets up and disappears into wherever the dark hallway goes.
When he comes back, he’s got a four-foot rod with a white sheet furled around it. He opens the backpack and pulls out a digital camera. Melinda’s fondling Mo’s gun but puts it down when Herbie hands her the rod with the sheet. She unrolls it and tells me to lean forward, then she hangs it on the wall behind me.
Herbie’s crouching in front of me now, aiming the camera at me. “Okay, smile,” he says, and when I don’t he says, “Okay don’t, whatever,” and clicks away. The flash goes off five times. After each flash he looks at the back of the camera and shakes his head. “You look like shit, dude,” he says, and he gets up and takes the memory card out of the camera before putting it back in the pack.
Now Herbie goes to the workbench and fires up the printer and the laptop. He inserts the memory card into the laptop’s port and uploads the photos. I watch as Photoshop loads and he sizes the images, then saves them and hits Print.
“That Blackberry on the table’s got Global Positioning. The guys I hired to help me are within fifteen miles of here, and pretty soon they’ll find me.” It’s worth a try.
Herbie steps over to where I’m sitting and his boot lashes out between my legs, catching me square in the huevos. I clamp my knees together and trap his foot, then I roll to my side. Herbie goes down and Melinda’s got the gun in my face in a heartbeat.
Herbie gets up and brushes himself off. “You’ll fuckin’ pay for that, that’s a fuckin’ promise. But first you’re gonna make a delivery.” He hobbles over to the workbench and says, “Fuck! I think I got a sprained ankle.”
I look up at Melinda. She wants to shoot me. There’s something in her that wants to take this all the way, commit an irrevocable act, and seal the deal with her demons. Maybe she’s done it before, but I don’t think so; there’s a war going on in Melinda’s head. I tell her, “Hey, I’ve got a delivery to make,” and she backs off and sits at the table. I watch her chew on her cheeks and fidget. The adrenaline must be messing with her high. She tilts the bottle of Jack and drains about a quarter of it and then smacks me in the head with the butt of the gun.
It’s a good excuse to zone out. I play unconscious for a while, but all I hear is the butane torch hissing, the crackling of the meth in the bowl of the pipe, a cough, a long exhalation, and what sounds strangely like a sob.
22
I leave the body and roam over to where Herbie’s working. He has two photos of me, an X-acto blade, a US passport, and a California driver’s license. He’s done this before; his hands are steady and his work is pretty good. I’m beginning to get a sense of his plan for me, but still don’t know how it works. I go back to my body.
“Didn’t need to hit him like that,” Herbie says.
“It won’t show, so what’s your problem?” Melinda’s got her high back. I hear the bottle of Jack thump down on the table.
“I just decided to kill two birds with one stone,” Herbie says. I hear a match flare and smell weed burning.
“How’s that?”
“After delivery, I’m gonna send him to Mario’s. When Mario opens his front door, Ka-Boom! Goodbye fuckin’ deadbeat. He’ll never pay us anyway.”
I discover that I can watch without leaving the body and without opening its eyes. My roaming body can just sit there and observe and listen. Being dead is just full of surprises.
Herbie crosses to stand behind Melinda and takes her hair in his hand. She turns her head and accepts a lungful of smoke; their lips lock in a lingering kiss—tweaker love at its most poignant. Herbie sits down and starts with the pipe and torch again.
I roam through the hallway into the back room. There’s a mattress on the floor and a single lamp next to it on a board supported by two cinderblocks. Next to the lamp is a framed photo of Herbie and Melinda in
better days. They’re standing on the beach by a pier; Herbie in board shorts, tan and muscular, and Melinda looking hot in a skimpy bathing suit. They look happy.
There’s a pile of clothes at the end of the bed, otherwise nothing in the room tells me anything useful. I go back to the body.
Junkies and tweakers are different breeds. They’re looking for opposite effects: one wants to feel less and the other wants to feel more. They both wind up numb to everything except for the desperate need to continue staying numb. And so, they’re different but the same. After all, addiction is addiction.
Herbie starts unwrapping the bandaging on his finger. Melinda says, “Christ, Herbie, you gotta stop that,” but he ignores her. Now he reaches in his backpack and pulls out a magnifying glass on a metal base, the kind hobbyists use for close-up work, and sets it on the table. Next, he finds a scalpel, a needle, a bottle of alcohol, and a small amber vial.
“Herbie, the doctor said there’s no glass in the cut. You gotta let it heal.”
“Fuckin’ beaner doctors don’t know shit.” Herbie uses the torch to sterilize the scalpel and the needle, then puts his hand under the magnifying glass. He pours a drop of Jack Daniels on the injured finger and shakes some powder out of the vial onto the cut.
“At least give me some of that,” Melinda says. She takes the vial and empties half of it onto the top of her fist, then snorts the whole pile. “You’re fuckin’ wasting good coke.”
“Shut up Mel. Just stop fuckin’ ragging on me for five fuckin’ minutes.” Now he positions the flashlight so the beam is on his finger. He bends to the magnifier and goes to work with the needle. “How ’bout you set him up with the cuff.”
“Fuckin’ great.” Melinda digs in the drawer and pulls out a shiny black plastic device. It looks like the lower half of a hinged knee brace, but with some modifications. There’s a pocket inside, and a metal hasp on the outside. Melinda inserts a duct-taped package into the pocket; it’s got an LED peeking out the top and a wire—probably an antenna—wrapped around it. Then she hikes my left pant leg up to my knee and puts the device on my ankle. She closes the hasp and secures it with a small three-ring combination lock. She goes to the table and pulls a transmitter out of the drawer; when she pushes a switch, the LED turns on. She puts the transmitter down and starts with the pipe and butane torch again.
¤ ¤ ¤
It’s getting light outside. Herbie and Melinda have been getting high and arguing about his hand and the glass that is or isn’t still in it. They’ve been talking about politics and their parents and which band is better, Metallica or AC/DC. They’ve been jabbering about getting clean and going to the Big Island. I can’t stand it anymore so I decide to stir, making like I’m groggy and just coming to, which isn’t far from the truth as roaming seems to take more out of me each time I try it.
“Hey, hey, the Lone Ranger’s waking up.” Herbie’s smoking another joint and drinking a can of Coke, probably to keep his blood sugar up enough to fool his body into thinking it’s being fed. “You messed up my ankle, dude, but I forgive you. I shouldn’t have kicked you like that. My bad.” He’s hobbling around the table, circling it over and over, gesticulating with his arms spread wide. Melinda has her elbow on the table and her head propped up, cheek to hand.
“So what’s the plan, Herbie?” He’s squinting against the sunlight filtering through the dusty window.
“Charlie wants to know what the plan is. Melinda, why don’t you lay it on him?”
Melinda’s crashing. She looks at me without moving; her lips are chapped and the first two times she opens her mouth nothing comes out. I notice that the glass tube on the table is empty. She speaks in a monotone: “You’ve got a packet of C-4 explosive locked onto your leg. It’s armed and ready to blow if I hit this button on the transmitter.” Now she picks up the transmitter and shows it to me.
“It’s got a range of two miles. If you get out of range, the loss of contact will detonate the explosive. If you try to take it off, it’ll blow. If you detour from the plan, I hit the button and you’re beef jerky.”
“Okay, I got it. But what’s the plan?” I’m guessing that I’m going to be a drug mule, but I want it spelled out by one of these bozos.
“You’re just gonna get in the car and drive back to the States. As soon as you’re across the border in San Ysidro, you’re pulling into the Denny’s on your right and swapping cars with Herbie. You’ll have one more quick job to do and we’ll disarm the detonator and text you the combination to the lock.” The right corner of her lip edges up in a weird parody of a smile.
“What about my daughter?”
Herbie says, “Not our problem, man. Maybe the team you’re supposed meet up with will save the day.” He laughs as he opens the door and goes outside, putting on sunglasses as he goes.
“He’s actually a really good guy,” says Melinda. “This is our last run and then we’re moving to Kona. We’re gonna get clean and just grow weed.”
“That’s good, Melinda. That’s really good. Maybe I can visit someday.”
She looks almost sad for a moment. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen, Charlie.”
Herbie comes back in with a backpack. He puts it on the table and pulls out three packages. Each one is about the size of a brick and is wrapped securely with duct tape. Where the tape isn’t covering it, I can see a brick of white powder wrapped in clear plastic. Herbie’s been a very busy little cook.
“Okay Charlie, from now until we meet up north, you’re Paul Cleary.” He tosses the passport and driver’s license on the floor in front of me. He turns to Melinda and says, “I’m gonna go into town and gas up the car. Then I’ll take care of the plates and put the product in the doors.”
Melinda doesn’t look happy. She’s got shades on too; she’s fidgety and the Jack Daniels bottle is empty. “Aren’t you gonna leave me a little something?”
She’s whining now and Herbie doesn’t like it. “Stay focused, Mel. When I’m back I’ll fix you up. It’s just fuckin’ town and back, twenty minutes, fuckin’ live with it.”
And he leaves.
¤ ¤ ¤
I watch Melinda deteriorate over the next five minutes. She gets up and paces, sits down and drums her fingers on the table, chews on her cheek, and keeps a separate drum beat with her left knee vibrating the table.
For fun, I say, “Hey, can I get up and go to the bathroom? I’ve been sitting here for hours.”
She jumps up like a startled rabbit and yells, “Shut the fuck up.” She has the transmitter in her hand and thrusts it at me like a knife fighter. She puts it on the table and circles it, staring at the bricks of meth. Finally, she pulls a knife out of the drawer and opens a corner of one of the bricks. She pulls a chunk of the powder out and drops it in the glass pipe and sits down and starts the butane torch.
She’s staring at the bowl of the pipe as the heat hits the powder and it starts turning into a gas when I pull out DeShaun’s Ruger. I shoot her in the left knee. The pipe flies out of her hand and the torch drops to the table, hissing as it spits a thin blue flame. I aim the Ruger at Melinda’s face. “Hands up. Very slowly, I want you to give me the key to the handcuffs.”
Her hands go up. The transmitter is right in front of her.
“I don’t have them. They’re in the other room. I can’t walk.”
I aim at her other knee and say, “Counting, one, two . . .”
She says, “Okay, okay, they’re right here.” She reaches into the drawer. If she pulls out a gun, I’m in trouble since I’ll have to shoot her and start all over again with Herbie. I aim at her face again and repeat, “Slow, Melinda, really slow and careful.”
Her hand comes out with the key. I tell her, “Good. Now, lean toward me and toss the key right here.” I gesture to the floor in front of me. She’s only five feet away, but she’s messed up, and the key could fly like the pipe did.
The key lands on the concrete at my feet.
I keep the gun pointed
right between her eyes. “Hey, Melinda . . .”
“What?” She’s in shock, which is useful because it’s keeping her calm.
“Hands behind your head . . . that’s good. Now, use your right foot, push yourself away from the table . . . good, farther. Okay, stay like that.” She’s far enough from the transmitter that she can’t get to it. I have a feeling there’s enough C-4 on me to blow us both up and she knows it, but she could be crazy enough to take us both out.
I keep the gun on her while I open the cuff on my wrist. I get up and take Melinda by the elbow and help her up.
“What are you doing? I can’t walk.”
I pull on her elbow and she starts to keel over. She’s about five eight but couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. I lower her to a sitting position and drag her to where I had been all night and bang the cuff on her wrist. It goes to its smallest diameter before it’s snug enough to keep her from slipping her hand out.
The butane torch is starting to scorch the table. I turn it off and sit in the chair Melinda was just in. There’s blood on the floor. I scoot over so that I’m right in front of her and say, “Okay, now, stay with me. If you get this right, I’ll bring you the pipe and the torch and a whole damned brick, okay?”
She nods, wild-eyed, starting to shiver. She’s holding her leg with her free hand and rocking back and forth.
“The combination, Mel. I need the combination.”
“Three-eight-six,” She says in a croaking stammer.
I slide the chair back to the table and pick up the transmitter. I lift my pant leg up to expose the device; the red LED is visible. I flick off the “Arm” switch on the transmitter and the LED winks out. The combination is good and the whole thing comes off.
On a hunch, I take it outside and go into the trailer. There’s a ten-gallon drum of benzene on the workbench. I take the C-4 packet and radio detonator out of the ankle cuff and put it behind the drum.
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