Copeland leaned closer, touching Ed’s knee, the rings on his beefy fingers worth more than Ed’s house.
“I hate to have to say this to you. If anybody understands about family, it’s me. But Ed, he fucked me, and I can’t let that slide. Number one, it’s bad for business. And number two, it hurts.” Copeland sighed, a sound of immeasurable weariness. “I got a tattoo on my ass, know what it says?”
“No.”
“Exit only.”
Copeland looked up at the screen now, turning the volume back on, saying, “This is my favorite bit.” On the screen Jackie Chan laid out a couple of bad guys with the splintered halves of a pool cue. “What an athlete.”
Ed tensed as Copeland muted the volume again and shifted his dull gaze back to him. The way it was going, Ed figured he had about a fifty-fifty chance of walking out of here alive.
Copeland said, “Now here’s the situation the way I see it. That little cocksucker’s got my money and he’s got my smack. I’m giving you twenty-four hours to drop them both right back here in my lap. That’ll get your brother’s dick partway out of my ass.”
“I understand, Mister Copeland.”
“The rest, handle it any way you like. Neat. Humane. I don’t give a shit. Because if I’ve got to do it, it’s going to be slow, it’s going to be messy, and I’m going to handle it personally.”
“I’m glad you see it that way, sir,” Ed said, relaxing a little, “because Sanj and Sumit are on their way to him right now.”
“Really?” Copeland said, grimly amused. “You bastard. Those two Punjabs give me the creeps.”
“I apologize for acting on my own here, Mister Copeland, but like you said, it’s family.”
Copeland smiled. “Ed, as always, it’s a pleasure doing business with you. You anticipate my every need. I can’t believe you came out of the same nutsack as that piece of shit brother of yours.”
Then the smile was gone, the volume was back on and Copeland had returned his attention to the film.
On his way out, Ed glanced back startled as Copeland barked laughter at something on the screen. Muscle-shirt met him at the door and followed him to the exit to retrieve his overshoes. Ed didn’t breathe again until he was in his car.
13
The storm front rolled over the laboring Cessna like an avalanche, sheering winds broadsiding the small aircraft, forward visibility dropping to almost zero in the whiteout. Tom angled that last gut wrenching drop into a steep descent, leveling out at five hundred feet, trying to maintain visual contact with the ground. Under normal circumstances his best option would have been to double back, put down at the cabin and wait it out there. But the engine was running rough now, almost stalling as he fought to stabilize the light-weight four-seater. It was time to land.
In his headset, through the unwavering rasp of static, he could hear his wife’s voice—high, fragmented, concerned—and though certain she couldn’t hear him, he spoke to her in calming tones, telling her everything was fine, she was right, he’d put down on a lake and sit this sucker out.
He descended to three hundred feet and banked into a tight turn, deciding the lake he’d just flown over was his best bet. Leveling out, he came in low over the treetops, into the wind, watching for the shoreline through the frosted side window. A gust hammered him as he spotted the demarcation between rock and lake and the Cessna dropped sharply, the crown of a giant pine bumping the fuselage beneath his feet.
Then he was out over a formless plain of white with no visible horizon, barely able to see the whirring prop in front of him. The rocky shore was to his right and he angled toward it, squinting out the side window, trying to keep about three wing spans between himself and the ghostly blur of rock and trees. He was coming in too fast but he was committed now.
The skis touched down hard, snow coming up in twin rooster tails, jarring things loose in the cockpit. Tom throttled back, his ground speed dangerously fast, and the Cessna struck a drift, going airborne again. The plane tilted shoreward as gravity reclaimed it, the starboard ski slamming down first. Then the port ski pounded the ice and Tom’s left temple struck the door frame, the impact dazing him. Through watery eyes he saw the shoreline sweep around in front of him as a narrow peninsula materialized in the windscreen. There was no time to do anything but kill the engine.
The glare ice propelled him to a patch of shoreline cleared of rock, a beachfront, Tom realized, and now he was plowing up the smooth embankment toward a building looming into view, a cottage with a huge picture window, a neat black hole dead ahead in the amorphous swirl of the storm.
He looked at the photo of his wife and son clipped to the visor as the prop shredded the plate glass and the stout window frame sheered off the wings and skis, reducing the aircraft to a screeching torpedo.
He thought of his unborn child and something came through the windscreen and struck him a glancing blow on the forehead, and for a few blessed moments the shattered world went dark around him.
14
The slam of the front door startled Dale, Ronnie’s rant up to that point little more than a distant irritation, a ticking mechanical clock in a room in which sleep seems so inviting. He opened his eyes to red slits, the abrupt noise killing his buzz.
Bitch, he thought, and glanced down at the engagement diamond sending dull sparkles into the deep pool of bathwater that was just beginning to chill. He wanted to feel righteous about it, but all he felt was afraid. How was he going to get out of this? Short of suicide, he could imagine no other way. And until that thought—a grim alternative, but at least one he could control—broke bright and fully formed in his awakening consciousness, the despair he felt was nigh on overwhelming.
He glanced at the gun on the tray next to the tub and thought, Too nasty. No way he could put that sucker in his mouth and squeeze the trigger. Must be like being hit by a semi. It would be the way Copeland’s guys would do him. Or his brother’s. And it occurred to him then that it would probably go down that way, Copeland telling Ed to do it himself or Copeland would handle it personally. Dale had heard some of the stories—the heinous shit Copeland would do to a guy who’d pissed him off before letting him die—and knew that Ed would feel obliged to arrange it himself.
Jesus, his own brother. That was how far over the line he’d crossed.
And that meant those two goons Ed kept around like trained apes would probably already be hunting him. Those guys were eerie, the way they could find a man no matter how deep he buried himself.
He had to think. There was no way out of this frozen hellhole now. Fucking Ronnie, could’ve waited a couple more hours, given him time to sort things out. All he could hope for now was that Ed would expect him to run, send those two psychos on a wild goose chase...
The heroin was trying to reclaim him and as tempted as he was to let it, Dale fought it now, giving his head a violent shake. The action created a moment of clarity and Dale listened into a silence marred only by the steady drip of the faucet...and something else. He thought, Is that a plane? and the thought was gone, his mind flipping back to the problem at hand.
He picked up the gun in one wet hand, surprised by its heft, then set it back down. His gaze fell next on the heroin he’d skimmed from Copeland’s stash. That’d be the way to do it. He’d OD’d a few times already.
Like going to sleep...
The problem was, he didn’t want to die. He was twenty-eight years old with a grade nine education, a secret dream of opening his own pizza joint and a love for his brother as big as a boxcar. And now his brother was going to kill him—had no choice, really—because Dale thought with his dick instead of his brain. “That broad is trouble,” Ed had told him when Dale first hooked up with her. “She’ll take you places you don’t want to go.” He should’ve listened.
It was getting hard to think. The water was cold now, his lean body starting to shiver. Another hit, that was the ticket. Just a small one. Get back to level, then sort this shit out.
And
there it was on the tray, waiting for him in its syringe like a patient lover. He couldn’t even remember cooking it up.
He picked up the syringe with a hand that was steady now, and as he injected the drug in a warm bolus and the shivering stopped, he thought that fucking plane must be flying awfully low—
Then the wall to his right exploded and the prop of Tom Stokes’ Cessna struck the side of the tub with its dying revolutions, snapping off in a hail of sparks, the leading edge of the fuselage missing Dale’s head by bare inches as he slid under water in a reflex action of lightning speed. Above him the belly of the plane scraped across the rims of the tub with a hellish screech, the sound amplified in Dale’s ears by the watery casket he now found himself in. There was a tremendous pain in his left forearm, a spike of shattered 2X4 skewering it, and a precious gulp of air boiled out of his gaping mouth.
Then everything was still and Dale was drowning in his uncle’s bathtub.
* * *
Within seconds of the blow to his head Tom jerked into full consciousness, certain he was still in motion and the killing impact was about to come...but the plane was stationary now, and, incredibly, he was still alive.
He did a quick inventory, moving his arms and legs, probing his chest and abdomen for obvious wounds. There was blood in his eyes from a gash at his hairline, the cut small, maybe a half-inch long, and he could taste blood, his bottom lip split and tender to the touch. Otherwise he believed he was fine, though he knew he could still be at risk from internal injuries or shock.
Gingerly, he attempted to extract himself from the cockpit, slipping his seatbelt off and shifting his weight toward the buckled door...but he was trapped, debris across his thighs pinning him, the effort making his head spin. He gave the sensation a few seconds to pass, then pressed his shoulder to the door, trying to force it open. No luck there, the mechanism jammed.
He shifted again, squinting out the shattered side window through swirls of dust and snow, trying to see where he’d wound up—and felt something bump the floor beneath his feet, two quick thumps, blunt and deliberate.
Then he thought he heard a scream, except it sounded like it was coming from under water.
* * *
Dale opened his eyes to see the white underbelly of a small aircraft—he could actually read the word Cessna, black letters wavering in the slosh of bathwater, bare inches from his face—the buckled metal breaking the surface, making it impossible for him to raise his head and take a breath. Angling his head back, he could see an oblong of light above and behind him, revealing a space big enough to poke his head through—his syringe was up there, bobbing mockingly with the business end aimed straight down at him—but when he tried to push himself upward he realized that whatever had skewered his arm had him pinned like a bug on Bristol board and he needed to breathe. He tried to free his arm with his other hand, but the fucker was locked in tight and now he punched the bottom of the plane, two quick shots. And when he understood that he was drowning, actually drowning in his uncle’s bathtub, he screamed and lost half of his precious air.
He tried pushing next, heaving one handed against the obstruction above him, a pointless effort that cost him a fresh parcel of air, a surge of bubbles that rose wasted to the surface, flattening against the immovable fuselage before skittering off in all directions.
Dale thought, The plug!, and reached for it with his free hand, scrunching down as far as the narrow tub would allow, and the tips of his fingers just...touched it, brushing its cracked rubber edge, but he couldn’t get it, couldn’t reach that vital center ring, and his lungs were on fire now, the urge to suck air more powerful than any he’d ever experienced. Fuck. There wasn’t even a raised lip he could coax out, the fucking plug was firmly seated, and when he tried to lever it up by pressing down on the nearest edge it served only to seat the thing deeper.
Something detonated in Dale’s brain, a galvanizing electrical impulse, bursting glare-white and blinding against his retinas.
His throat clicked open and water leaked in, a cold streamer that triggered a violent coughing fit, the last depleted ounces of gas in his lungs pistoning up to expel the liquid—but another cold rush replaced it and Dale slammed his mouth shut, his eyes bugging out of his head now from the pressure inside him, and he thought of his toes, his fucking toes, and he curled them around that tiny metal ring with the dexterity of a chimp and the plug let go, the water beginning to drain, he could feel the pressure of it against his skin, but it was too fucking late and Dale levered his head upward, pressed his pursed lips to the shell of the plane and prayed...
Then the water peeled away and there was a millimeter of air, blessed air, and Dale sucked it in, a thin slip at first, then great whooping lungfuls as the water level fell, and he coughed and spluttered and the tub drained around him, leaving him shivering and impossibly weak.
When he caught his breath Dale said, “Holy fuck,” and thought he heard a muffled voice—“Is somebody there?”—but he closed his eyes and breathed, still relishing in the sheer glory of drawing air.
The voice came again and Dale felt the winter wind twisting in to find him, spitting icy flakes that stung his skin. He gave his head a shake, the reality of the situation dawning fully on him only now: a fucking plane had just crashed through the wall and landed right on top of him, this deep old claw foot tub the only reason he was still alive, and now there was somebody out there. Dale thought it must be someone who’d seen the crash, a guy on a snow machine maybe, because there was no fucking way it was the pilot. Who could survive a crash like this?
Raising his voice against the howl of the wind, Dale said, “Hang on,” and turned his attention to the wooden stake in his forearm. It was attached at its base to a broken stud that still had a chunk of bathroom wall attached to it, the stud trapped between the edge of the tub and the wreckage of the plane. A thick sliver had splintered partway off and speared his arm, driving it against the inside wall of the tub, blood dripping listlessly from it now to stain the remaining water pink. The sucker was in there pretty good and it wasn’t until Dale got his knee against it that he was able to rip the spike away from the stud. It looked like it should hurt like hell, but his last hit of smack had taken care of that.
With his injured arm free now, Dale slithered first his good arm, then his head and shoulder up through that oblong of space, all he could fit through the jagged hole. He had to squint through gusts of snow and plaster dust, but it was a hell of a scene, the aircraft itself resting maybe a foot in front of him, having plowed through the picture window out there, then through the bathroom wall before coming to rest with its nose crumpled against the tiled wall to his left. The fuselage was mostly intact, but canted away from him so that Dale could just see the bottom edge of the window in the pilot’s door.
Incredibly, the collapsible dinner tray with Daytona Beach, Florida painted on it was still standing next to the tub, its contents undisturbed.
Dale said, “Holy fuck,” and that voice came again, a man’s voice, clearer now: “Is somebody there?” and Dale said, “Yeah,” feeling a dull wonder when he realized the voice was coming from inside the plane. He said, “You’re alive, I can’t believe it,” and the guy said, “That makes two of us,” and told Dale his name.
Dale said, “Pleased to meet you, Mister Stokes,” and blacked out for a while.
15
Mandy sat at her desk with the office phone pressed to her ear, shifting impatiently, wincing at the occasional cramp in her belly. Steve had crept in a few moments earlier and stood mutely behind her now, his pointy birthday hat in his hand, the party still going strong in the other room.
After failing to reestablish contact with Tom, Mandy had called Search and Rescue in Trenton. She’d started to explain the situation to the guy who answered, but the bozo said, “One moment please,” like she was ordering take-out, and put her on hold. That’s where she was now, listening to the drone of an FM station, the minutes since she’d last heard To
m’s voice adding up with excruciating insistence.
Now Steve said, “Mom,” in his tiniest voice and Mandy almost jumped out of her skin. Her reaction startled him and he cried out, and Mandy shifted in her chair to face him, seeing tears standing in the poor kid’s eyes. Doing her best to smile, she told him she was sorry, he was her little Ninja and she hadn’t realized he was there.
Steve tried to return his mother’s thin smile, but the tears got away on him and he crawled up onto her lap, his weight against her pregnant abdomen producing a deep spike of pain. Mandy thought, Please God, not now, and adjusted the boy’s position, shifting him off her belly...and felt his tears spill warm on her arm. She said, “Shh, baby, shh,” and stroked his silky hair. “Your daddy’s going to be just fine.”
Fran came into the room then, the party noise swelling behind her as the door swung all the way open. “Steve?” she said. “It’s piñata time. Birthday boy gets first swing.”
Hiding his face, Steve clutched his mother’s arm and Mandy said, “He’s okay here with me, Fran. Thanks.”
Fran said, “Any news?” and Mandy’s face turned beet red, fear and fury finally breaking loose in her. “God damn Search and Rescue’s got me on hold,” she said, almost shouting the words. “Can you believe it? My husband’s missing and they’ve got me listening to Gino fucking Vanelli.”
Steve started sobbing quietly.
Barely aware of Fran and her son now, Mandy said, “Come on, come on,” into the phone, her free hand clutching the bulge of her abdomen as if to keep it from bursting.
16
Dale heard the guy in the plane say, “Are you still there?” but didn’t reply, his foggy mind needing a few more seconds to register again what had happened here. As it dawned on him he said, “Holy fuck,” and realized he was freezing, the tub completely drained now, winter air finding him through every nook and cranny in the mound of wreckage that surrounded him.
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