by Ben Rehder
Then, in a barely audible voice: “Yeah, it’s me. Open the door!”
The voice was faint, but it sounded like Tommy. Who else would it be? She felt silly for letting herself get worked up. Just to be sure, she put her eye to the peephole-and saw nothing but the parking lot. She moved to the window and parted the curtain slightly. Nobody out there. “Tommy! Where’d you go?”
Once again, silence.
Boy, he must really be worried about getting caught. Probably hiding behind a car. She slid the chain off its track, slowly turned the knob, and eased the door open. She poked her head outside and, in a louder voice, said, “Tommy, quit screwing around. Get in here!”
She saw a shadow move. Across the parking lot, behind a tree. She stepped out onto the concrete walkway in front of the room. “Very funny. Would you stop with the bullshit?” She glanced left and right, then took a few steps and stood beside her Volvo. The shadow seemed to have vanished. Or was that someone peeking out at her?
“Tommy?”
Right behind her, a voice said, “Expecting someone?”
Smedley could tell that he was lying on something hard, like a floor, rather than a bed. It felt like there was a wet cloth across his forehead, and his head was throbbing with each heartbeat. He had a hell of a headache. He got those sometimes, from too much sugar. Almost enough to make him cut down on the Twinkies.
He heard voices, far off, maybe in another room. He wanted to speak up, ask somebody where he was, but he didn’t have the energy. He couldn’t open his eyes, either; he seemed to have forgotten how. One of the voices was speculating that “Maybe the guy needs stitches,” with the other saying, “Naw, he’ll be all right.” Smedley wondered who they were talking about. Some poor guy had gotten injured. But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to go back to sleep.
Smedley awoke again, maybe five minutes or five hours later, and this time he seemed to remember a car wreck. Had he been involved in a collision? He tensed for a moment. Had Maria been with him when it happened? He couldn’t remember…. probably not. Where would they have been going? No, most likely he had been alone. He recalled lying in Maria’s bed, then leaving for some reason. What was it? Something to do with Vinnie-having to follow Vinnie.
With a massive effort, he managed to lift his eyelids. He was staring at a pair of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Everything was foggy, but the lights were bright enough to make him squint. He tried to lift a hand to rub his eyes clear, but his arms were immobile.
He drifted again…
He had hit that red truck, that’s what it was. He remembered that now. The wiseguys had tricked him, parking right in the middle of Highway 281. Shit, they had almost killed him. His head was pounding and he figured he must have slammed it against the steering wheel. What the hell had happened with the airbag?
He groaned and opened his eyes. Still a little muddy, but much clearer than before. He tilted his head to the left and saw two desks against a wall, with several filing cabinets between them. To the right he saw a leather sofa. Above the sofa, on the wall, were several plaques and certificates, one of which read, BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU.
Two figures stepped up and loomed over him. The hit men. One was a big guy, maybe six and a half feet tall, built like a nose tackle. Smedley could relate. The other guy was of average height-slim. Both with four or five days’ worth of facial hair, wearing ballcaps with logos on them, work shirts, and blue jeans. Smedley instinctively noted all of this in about two seconds, and he felt reassured that his skills of observation were intact. His vision was blurry, but his thinking was fairly clear.
He tried to lift a hand to probe the injury on his forehead, but his wrists were bound together. He raised both arms and saw that they were lashed with duct tape. He attempted to reach a sitting position, which was futile, because he hadn’t done a sit-up since the elder Bush was president.
“Easy there, pardner,” the slender man said. “You ain’t goin’ nowheres anyhow.”
Smedley eased his head back onto the floor. “Water?” he croaked. His mouth felt like someone had swabbed it dry with cotton.
The smaller man nodded at the big man, who left the room and returned with a small Styrofoam cup. He bent down and helped Smedley take a few small sips at a time. Eventually, the cup was empty.
“Want some more?” the big man asked.
Smedley shook his head slightly, wary of worsening the pain in his skull.
“Okay,” the smaller man said, obviously the leader of the two. “Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get down to business.”
Smedley was surprised by the two men’s accents. He had expected them to sound like typical East Coast thugs, but their drawls were as Southern as his own. Maybe they were Texans. Could be freelancers.
The leader put his hands on his knees and leaned over Smedley. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, here comes the sixty-four-hundred-dollar question: Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Smedley replied, immediately regretting it. Better not to answer so quickly, until he got a feel for the situation.
The man shook his head and flashed a smile. “I just knew you were gonna say that. But see, we’re all prepared for that. My friend here….” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the nose tackle. “… he’s an expert in subtracting information from people.”
This was news to the big guy, judging from the fact that he looked around for whomever the smaller guy was referring to, then gave a Who me? gesture.
“So,” the leader said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. But either way, we’re gonna find out what you did with the corpse.”
Now Smedley was really confused. Had something happened that he was forgetting about? Maybe he had taken a worse blow to the head than he thought. Was he suffering from amnesia?
He didn’t know what else to say, so he said, “What corpse?”
The leader slowly shook his head back and forth. “So that’s how you want to play it, huh?”
But Smedley couldn’t reply. He felt himself losing consciousness once again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Inga gasped as she turned-and found herself staring into Tommy’s smiling face. She threw her arms around him in relief, then chastised him for giving her a scare: “Why didn’t you answer me when I called out your name?”
He gave her a peculiar look. “What are you talking about? I just got here.”
Inga smiled. “Very funny, but I’m not falling for it.”
“I swear, Inga.”
She shook her head. “Whatever. You’ve already freaked me out enough tonight. Now we’d better get inside before someone spots you.”
Tommy shrugged and followed her into the motel room. She closed the door, and neither of them was prepared for what happened next.
A dark figure wearing a ski mask and gloves emerged from the bathroom carrying a baseball bat. “We having a little party here?”
Tommy looked at Inga, who had grasped his arm in alarm.
With amazing quickness, the man stepped forward and slammed Tommy over the head with the bat. Without so much as a whimper, Tommy collapsed to the floor.
Inga screamed, but the sound was choked off as the man sprang on her and wrestled her to the bed. He placed a hand over her mouth, and she could see his dark-brown eyes gleaming inside the mask.
“You got a lot of balls, you know that?” the man grunted on top of her. “You and your friend there. How come you gotta cause so much trouble?”
Inga struggled to break free, but the man held both her wrists with one viselike hand. He squirmed until he had her legs apart. “I’m real good at taking care of bad little girls like you,” the man said.
Horror gripped Inga’s gut as he pressed his crotch against hers and she felt his hardness.
“What we gonna do now, Red?”
They were in the kitchen of the small mobile home on Emmett Slaton’s property, the official headquarters of Slaton Brush Removal, Incorporated. Red had a cle
ar view of their chunky prisoner lying on the floor in the adjoining room. The guy was still sleeping like a coonhound after an all-night hunt.
Red took a sip of coffee. Setting up here had been a good idea. Almost as cozy as home. Except he had forgotten to bring a bottle of booze, maybe some Wild Turkey or something. Other than that, Red had prepared himself for a long night. Tough guys-like hit men and bodyguards-they don’t just talk when you tell ’em to. You gotta put the squeeze on ’em a little. At least, that’s the way they did it on The Sopranos. That was Red’s favorite show, ever since he had run a wire from his unsuspecting neighbor’s satellite dish. “He’ll talk,” he said. “Just give it time.”
Billy Don removed his cap and ran a hand through his matted hair. “I don’t know, he seems pretty out of it.”
“Aw, hell, he just got himself a small percussion when he whacked his head. He’ll come ’round. What choice does he got? We’ll just hold on to him till he spills the beans. Then we’ll turn him over to the cops. Be heroes, that’s what we’ll be. Get a big write-up in the newspaper and all. They might just give us a goddamn parade before it’s all over.”
Billy Don’s eyes lit up. Red knew Billy Don was a sucker for parades, because parades were the adult version of playtime-with beer-drinking to boot.
The prisoner-they had no name for him yet because he hadn’t been carrying an ID-stirred on the floor. Red and Billy Don walked back into the office and stood over the prone figure.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Red said. “Time to tell us all your little secrets.”
The man glared up at Red. “Where am I?”
“That’s not important,” Red said. “What’s important is that you start cooperating. Believe me, it’ll be better for you in the long run.”
The man groaned and his eyes fluttered. Red knew he had to keep talking to keep the man awake. “So, hey,” Red said, “we’ll start with something easy. Like your name.”
The man said something Red couldn’t understand. Sounded like gibberish. “Come again?”
“Smedley Poindexter. That’s my name.”
Red looked at Billy Don, and they both grinned.
“Like the elephant,” Billy Don said with confidence.
Red frowned, puzzled.
“You know. On the Cap’n Crunch cereal boxes-Smedley.”
Red dismissed Billy Don with a wave of his hand and turned back to the prisoner. “But seriously,” he said. “Your real name.”
“That is my real name, you asshole.”
Red fluttered his hands with sarcasm. “Ooh, gettin’ a little feisty, ain’t we? All right, then…Smedley. Tell us what you do for Sal Mameli. What would you say is your basic job description?”
After a pause, the man said, “I don’t work for Sal Mameli. I’m…I’m a United States deputy marshal.”
Red and Billy Don exchanged glances again and Red let out a snort. “Yeah, and I’m ol’…what’s’ername…Reno? The big, tough-looking broad?”
“She used to be my boss, kind of,” the man said. “Er, one of my bosses, anyway.” Red leaned over the man calling himself Smedley and could see that his eyes were clearer now. He was slowly regaining his senses.
Red decided to play along. “Tell me something, Smedley. Did Miss Reno ever cop a feel from you when you was working late one night? Anything like that? Because I always had the feelin’ she swung the other way, if you know what I mean.”
“I never met her directly. She was the attorney general, so she oversaw certain divisions of the U.S. Marshals Service. She worked out of D.C., I worked out of Austin. I never even saw her.”
Red wasn’t sure what to say to that. The guy sounded pretty read-up about how all that political crap worked. Billy Don pulled Red to the side and spoke quietly. “Uh, Red. You know, he sounds pretty damn convincing.”
“Yeah, so?”
Billy Don held his hands in front of him, palms out. “Well, don’t call me stupid or anything, and I know this sounds crazy…but what if he’s tellin’ the truth? Seems like we might could get in a little trouble for all this.”
Red rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Billy Don! Don’t be a dumb-ass. If he’s a gen-yoo-ine U.S. marshal, then where the hell’s his badge?”
They turned and looked at their prisoner for a response. “I… uh…think I left it somewhere. It must have fallen out of my pants.”
Red placed his hands on his knees and leaned over the man. “Well, then, I’ll make you a deal, Smedley. You tell us where your badge is, then we’ll go get it and clear all this mess right up. How’s that sound?”
The man didn’t reply.
Red cupped an ear. “I can’t hear you, Mr. U.S. Marshal, sir. Cat got your tongue?”
“I can’t… tell you where it is. I can’t.”
Red stood up straight again. “That’s what I thought.”
Inga Mueller had always considered herself a tough customer, an independent woman who could handle herself in tight situations. Whenever she heard about a woman being assaulted, she would always visualize how she would respond: with a knee to the groin, a sharp fingernail in the eye, or a good strong bite to any part of his anatomy where she could plant her teeth.
But now she was about to become the victim, and she could feel herself surrendering, mentally withdrawing-as if she could retreat into a quiet place inside herself, away from the horrid violation that was about to take place.
With his free hand, the attacker ripped the front of her T-shirt open and began to paw roughly at her breasts. Inga thrashed and struggled, but it was useless. He was simply too overpowering.
She began to sob, and she hated herself for it.
The man fumbled with her jeans but couldn’t get them unsnapped. Inga knew he would have to use two hands to unclothe her, and when he released her wrists, she might have a chance to fight back. For a moment, Inga clung to that small fragile hope. But then the man produced a knife from one of his pockets-a switchblade-and the sharp steel sprang from the handle. He held it at her throat, pressing firmly. Inga was afraid to even breathe, fearing she would draw her own blood.
“Don’t move a goddamn muscle,” the man said. He rolled to a position next to her on the bed and ordered her to remove her jeans. Inga closed her eyes and ignored his command-but then felt the edge of the blade digging deeper into her throat. “Take off your pants! Now!”
Inga did as she was told, her mind spinning, desperately searching for a way out of this nightmare. She had an impulse to scream, but was afraid it would only anger her attacker-and nobody would hear her anyway. Likewise, there was nothing nearby that could serve as a weapon. She had no options at all.
She slid her jeans down to her ankles and the attacker yanked them the rest of the way off, holding the knife in place. Then he slid the blade up the outside of her right hip and sliced the waistband of her panties. He did the same thing on her left hip and Inga was now totally vulnerable.
The man forced himself between her legs again and kneeled upright before her, the knife just inches from her torso. “Now, unbutton my fly,” he said.
Inga hesitated and the man growled at her: “Unbutton it!”
With trembling fingers, Inga reached and unsnapped the man’s black pants. The man began to slide his pants down his hips, and Inga closed her eyes again.
“Grab it.”
For a millisecond, Inga thought she had misunderstood him. Had he just said, Grab it? That couldn’t be right. He couldn’t possibly be that stupid. Sure, he had a knife, but if she had a hand in the right place, there was no telling what kind of damage she could do.
Using her left hand, her weaker one, she reached up and-with the greatest disgust she had ever felt in her life-grabbed his stiffened penis.
“There now, that’s not so bad, is it?” he whispered.
Inga gave it a small stroke, and the man moaned approvingly. “Okay, good. You’re getting into it now. I thought you’d come along.”
Inga glanced at the knife in his left hand
. He was holding it a little more loosely now, the tip no longer pointing in her direction.
Gritting her teeth, she gave the man another stroke. He moaned again, and his jaw slackened. She looked through the slits in the ski mask and could see that his eyes were closed.
Inga knew it was now or never, that this would be her only chance. If she didn’t take this opportunity, she would never forgive herself.
She moved both hands quickly. She shot her right hand out and clasped his left wrist as tightly as possible, hoping to keep the knife away from her.
Simultaneously, she slipped her left hand around the man’s testicles-and gave them the hardest, most vicious squeeze she was capable of. Not just a firm squeeze, but a milking Uncle Bill’s most stubborn cow back in Minnesota type of squeeze.
The howl that erupted from the man’s belly was amazing.
The knife dropped to the bed beside her, forgotten. Both of his hands circled her left wrist, trying to get her to release his family jewels. But the more he pulled at her arm, the more she tightened her grasp.
His screams of anguish were earsplitting now, bouncing off the walls of the small hotel room.
Then something happened that left Inga momentarily confused. She heard a tremendous crashing sound, and then felt several small stinging sensations on her face and torso. The attacker collapsed on top of her, then rolled off the bed, wailing in agony, arms wrapped around his head.
At the foot of the bed was Tommy. Staggering, but on his feet. Holding the remains of the ceramic lamp he had just smashed over the attacker’s head. A mask of blood coated his face.
The attacker struggled to his feet, pulling up his pants, and the men squared off in the center of the room. Both were hunkered low, exhausted and in pain, like two bone-weary boxers in the final round.
Tommy threw a looping right hand and missed, and the masked man got him in a headlock. But Tommy drove an elbow into the man’s sternum, and Inga could hear the air whoosh out of his lungs.