by Brian Hodge
A plump wallet lay close to the guy’s leg. Plus half a spilled bottle of Vitamin C powder. Duncan carried the wallet to the dresser lamp, thumbed through the sheaf of hundreds and let out a soft whistle.
“You’d think they could afford a better room. There’s got to be four or five thousand dollars in here.” He checked the driver’s license, what the guy was supposed to look like conscious and healthy. “Blayne Thompkins. Lives in an apartment on Wilshire Boulevard in L.A. How about the name, have you heard that name before?”
Jamey said no, and nothing else of interest turned up in the wallet. Duncan left the American Express card. With somebody in Blayne Thompkins’ position, the smart thing to do was avoid creating ties to him. The cash was a different story, but Duncan left a few hundred dollars behind. If the guy turned up dead, you didn’t want to leave him looking as though he’d been robbed, even if it had been close to post-mortem.
Duncan divided the cash and offered half while tossing the wallet back onto the bed. “Here you go. Compensatory damages for earlier.”
Jamey only looked, didn’t reach. “It’s yours. I don’t want it.”
They searched the room next, and it didn’t appear that Kristophe and Blayne had done much settling in. No clothes on hangers; the drawers held only lint and a Gideon Bible. They’d dropped their bags to the floor and left them where they’d landed. In one spot it appeared as if something’s contents had been dumped loose—maybe to free up the gym bag Kristophe had carried. Duncan rattled a box of nine-millimeter bullets that had been covered by a second ski mask that still had its price tag attached.
“Do you realize how lucky we got tonight?” he asked Jamey, who was down on one knee, rooting around in a squared-off case. “This big bastard on the bed, what do you want to bet he was the real weapons expert?”
A few more items lay atop the dresser. A set of car keys, a cell phone. Another wallet—this one Kristophe’s, not even worth emptying. And a curious sheet of paper, marked up with what looked to be a map of Highway 89A’s first few miles north out of town. Crude and probably not close to scale, just quick attempts at noting curves in the road along with such features as signs and mile markers. The northernmost highlight was an X, circled but unlabeled, just to the west of the road. What, they’d stashed something on their way here?
Jamey grunted, then said, “I think we know what happened to Blayne now. And Kristophe’s eye.”
Duncan set the map aside and saw that Jamey was holding up a camcorder and peering into its viewfinder. “What’s on there?”
Jamey watched a moment longer, then lowered it. “This is a Canon digital camera. A really high-end model, too. It’s got to be Kristophe’s. He thought he was a director.” Jamey reached into the case and lifted out a small, chunky cassette. “It records to these. Mini DV tapes. There’s a bunch of them in here. Most of them are numbered in sequence with little stickers.” Next Jamey held up a spiral-bound notebook. “Full of notes. Like shooting notes—scenes, dates, editing ideas. He was shooting a cheap movie, it looks like.”
“Any good, I wonder?”
“You be the judge.” Jamey put his eye to the viewfinder again, pressed a button for a few moments, then handed the unit over. “I ran it back a little. Hit the play button. This looks like the last thing he filmed.”
Once he’d begun the playback, it was like watching a tiny TV. Even so, it wasn’t much brighter than a darkened screen, shot at night: a driver’s-eye view of a two-lane highway…a few steady moments of that, then a blurry hand flashing in front of the lens before total chaos erupted. Had they left the camera running and played catch with it, the effect would have been the same. Quick glimpses of flailing limbs and one shouting face or another, interspersed with headlights shining on rocks—it made you dizzy just to watch. The frame evened out, although it was clear that they were still on a furiously bumpy ride. During the final moments it held steady on a pine tree getting bigger, bigger, then the frame went pale with the air bag ballooning into the camera and the scene went dead. Followed by a few seconds of aftermath: a lingering shot of Blayne buried up to his shoulders in crumpled windshield.
Duncan handed the camera back. “I cannot wait to hook that up to our TV and watch it with sound. You know the audio’s got to be priceless.”
While Jamey repacked the camera case, Duncan grabbed the map off the dresser again. It made sense now—a diagram so they could find the car again. Meaning the wreck might not be visible from the road. And may not have been spotted by a deputy or state trooper yet.
Meaning if he and Jamey could find it tonight, they would have as good a place as any to get rid of Kristophe’s body.
He quartered the map and slipped it into a pocket, then took their car keys and Kristophe’s wallet from the dresser. In trade, he shrugged off the machine gun, wiped it down, and set it with the piled luggage beside the box of cartridges.
“You’re leaving it?” Jamey said.
“Believe me, you don’t want to get caught with a piece like this. That’s some serious jail time. The best thing we can do is hang it right back on these two geniuses.” He surveyed the room one last time. “Seen enough here, have you?”
Jamey nodded. “Smelled it, too.” Standing now, he looked down at the whey-faced hulk reeking on the bed. Saying softly, with a spark of hope, “Maybe my sister didn’t really have anything to do with tonight. Maybe it was all Kristophe and this guy. Maybe I misunderstood him earlier. Or I didn’t but he was lying…you think?”
To look at him, though, you could tell Jamey had no faith in what he was saying. Standing there as miserable as if he had a knife sticking into his back, hoping someone would lie to him. Nope—just your imagination. There’s no knife there. Your sister didn’t put a price on your head. Your cousin has forgiven you. Everything’s all right.
“That could be it,” Duncan told him. “Maybe she didn’t.”
Now that they were ready to leave, it seemed a shame that there hadn’t been any confrontation, that Blayne Thompkins had slept this entire time. He hadn’t known either one of them, but had come to help kill them just the same. Maybe his skull had gone through a windshield, but had he really known fear? The kind of fear that came from waiting for your execution? No. He hadn’t come close to that.
Duncan took the Sig Sauer from his waistband and used it to swat Blayne on the sole of his big stockinged foot. Watched the foot twitch, then hit him again.
“What are you doing?” Jamey asked. “We’re out of here.”
“Do you realize that if this guy was able to walk around and stay awake, you and I would be dead now? And not just the two of us, either.” Another swat to the foot. “You’ve never been tied up next to Sam and left waiting to see which of you is going to get shot first. I don’t recommend the experience.”
Blayne was groaning now, limbs moving slowly and without purpose, like the legs of a roach that had been stepped on.
“Kristophe…?” he said, in a thick voice that sounded as dry as if he hadn’t had a drink of water in weeks. “Where’d you go…?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I went out for steroids. So I can be just like you,” Duncan told him. “How are you feeling?”
“…my head itches…”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.” Stepping closer now, through the stink, to its source. “It’s probably the rest of the windshield working its way back out.”
Behind him, Jamey was telling him to forget it, saying that he didn’t have the stomach for any more of this business tonight. Duncan ignored him, even though you had to respect his wishes after what he’d done earlier. Just the same, Jamey hadn’t been the helpless one, tied up with scraps of his own shirt.
Duncan listened to Blayne murmur and groan, then pressed the muzzle of the Sig Sauer to the center of his forehead. No intention of pulling the trigger, just wanting him to feel the cold round presence, to know it was there and piss his pants. Wasted motion. What good was it when the guy wasn’t even conscious of enough to
realize he should be afraid?
Only now, though, standing directly above him, did Duncan spot what neither of them had noticed in the dim light. The tiny swarming movement on the back of the pillow and in Blayne’s hair.
“Jesus Christ,” Duncan said, backing away.
“What—what is it?”
“Ants. He’s got ants.”
Jamey had to peek for himself, coming away with a queasy look on his face. Wearing it all the way to the door, where he bent at the waist with both hands on his knees while taking a few moments just to breathe.
“What do we do about this?” he asked.
“Do?” Duncan staring over at him by the door. “The only future this guy has is as a picture in a forensics textbook. What is there to do?”
“Call an ambulance? We’ll be gone before it gets here.” And when Jamey got no response to that, “His head’s infected, and ants are carrying it down into the baseboard one crumb at a time…if his brain’s not damaged already, the infection will get to it before long…and you want to leave him like that?”
“How was he going to leave you, Jamey?”
“That’s a little beyond him now, don’t you think?”
“But would it stay that way forever? Say he does get nursed back to health. Say he dodges the gun charge, puts it on Kristophe. You don’t think someday he might get the urge to finish what Kristophe tried?” Duncan gave this a second to sink in. “Picture you and Sam home one night. He comes in. Pissed about his dead friend. Insane about the scars all over his head. He’s finally got his chance to take it all out on you. And her. So if that night comes, what would you give to put yourself back in the position you’re in right now?”
Jamey closed his eyes, then let out a long, deflating breath.
He picked up the camera case and stood ready at the door.
“This one’s on both of us,” he said. “This one we split down the middle.”
Duncan nodded. “Just like his head was already. Before we ever got here.”
He wiped the room key on a bedspread to clear it of any prints he might have left when he’d recovered it from Kristophe’s pocket. Then set it atop the dresser, as if it had been there all along.
On their way out the door he flicked off the lamp and gave the room back to the darkness. He grabbed the plastic sign hanging on the inside knob, and once the door was shut, hung it on the outside:
Do Not Disturb.
33
JORDY had been looking down at the top of the whore’s head in his lap for only half a minute before it was over and done with. Quickest twenty dollars she’d ever earned. She was alive and warm, and not much else mattered your first night out of prison.
After two exchanges of stolen cars since this afternoon, he and Cro-Mag were deep in the heart of Phoenix. With every badge in the state on the lookout for him, he’d figured the best thing to do tonight was get lost in the crowd. It wouldn’t be just locals after him, either. By now, the U.S. Marshals and the FBI’s Fugitive Task Force were likely beating down doors anyplace he’d ever called home.
Coming down here to Van Buren seemed the simplest way of taking care of two needs at once—laying low, with the odds that the street girls wouldn’t be up on events just a few hours old. All this one appeared interested in was sliding out of the backseat of the car, clunking her platform heels out of the alley and back to the street, and moving on to that next stiff cock.
“What’s your hurry?” Jordy asked, hand on her arm as she grabbed the tiny purse she carried.
“One bill, one load—that’s the usual deal.” She snatched her arm back out of his grasp. “And it seems to me like you were the one in a hurry.”
“Maybe so, but that’s not my usual speed. Today I just finished up…well, let’s call it an extended period of serious deprivation.”
“What, you just got of prison or something?”
That she’d come out with it so quickly took him by surprise. It couldn’t be a cue from his clothes—Cro-Mag had brought him a change, so the yellow jumpsuit had been ditched miles back and hours ago. “Does it show?”
She shrugged. Bored by it, really. “You’ve got a look. And a smell, too.”
Jordy took no offense. Live in the penal environment twenty-four/seven, it had to creep into your pores. “Say I’d’ve been good for all of five minutes. How about you spot me the other four-and-a-half and just sit here with me.”
She weighed it, time off the clock versus wear and tear on her mouth, then lit a cigarette. “Just ’til the end of this song on the radio. Only because my feet hurt.”
Jordy didn’t know why it should matter to him, but it did. Even by the standards of Van Buren, where you were never going to find beauty queens, she wasn’t much to look at. A thin little thing, and he appreciated that—never had much liking for a chunky woman—but above the neck it was a sad story getting sadder. One eyebrow split by a thin scar, and a mouth that had been swollen too many times. Blonde hair fried brittle with bleach, and you could only imagine how many nasty habits she had. For all that, he’d picked her. Something in the way she’d carried herself, something else in the way she looked so close to falling.
“So,” she said. “What’d you do to go to prison?”
“Nothing that would make you feel any better if you heard about it.”
“What are you gonna do now you’re out? Besides make up for lost time.”
“Nothing that’d make you feel any better if you heard about that, either.”
“You’re concerned all to hell and back with my feelings, aren’t you?” She snickered through her smoke. “So you think you’ll be going back, then? To prison?”
“What is it, I got another smell that says I am?”
“Baby, I don’t know what your plans are, and I don’t care, but from the way you made ’em sound just now…” She stared at the floorboard while taking another drag off her cigarette. “It’s hard to change direction sometimes, is all.”
Jordy nodded. “I never had much steering wheel to start with, I don’t think. Just locked in one direction.” He started to laugh. “When I first went in, there was this guy name of Capshaw, made his parole after a stretch for armed robbery. While he was inside, he was one of those guys…well, you understand the way it happens. They’re not fags, they just don’t know how to go very long without sticking their cocks into something, and if all that’s left is some other guy’s ass, they’ll settle for it. Then maybe develop a taste for it. And that’s how come three months after Capshaw makes his parole and goes home to his wife, he’s back in again doing twenty-odd more years.”
“For butt-fucking—how’d that work?”
“Capshaw takes his wife out one Saturday night, here in Phoenix, and doesn’t realize he’s spent all their money until they get in a cab to go home. He’s broke. But he’s carrying a gun. So he gives the driver another address a few blocks away from home, and when they get there Capshaw shows the guy the gun and has him pull into an alley and stop. About like where we’re at right now…dark, can’t anybody see them from the street. He robs the guy, takes the whole night’s worth of fares, and his wife’s going apeshit on him—‘You asshole, what are you doing?’ He doesn’t plan to hurt the driver, but he doesn’t want to leave the guy standing there loose, either, while him and his wife have to walk the rest of the way home. So he has the driver get out of the cab, and makes him stand outside by the door and stick his head inside, so Capshaw can roll the window up on his neck and trap him there while the two of them walk away like nothing happened.
“Then they get back to their apartment,” Jordy went on, “and Capshaw’s wife’s still giving him hell, so he’s not happy about that, ’cause he knows he won’t be getting any action off her for the night. Plus he can’t get his mind off the thought of this taxi driver bent over with his head trapped in his window.”
“Oh shit,” said the whore. “I can see it coming…”
“Yeah. He slipped out of the house and went back to
fuck the guy. Patrol car came through and caught him right in the middle of it.”
“Wow. And on top of everything else, I bet the bitch divorced him.”
“You think Capshaw would’ve changed directions if he’d known?” Jordy answered himself with a shrug. “I doubt he would’ve had it in him even if he’d noticed a cop car following him the whole way. But you’re wrong about one thing. Next time they lay hands on me, it won’t be to take me back to prison.”
She said nothing, understanding exactly what he meant—knew it as surely as he knew that she would never leave these streets. That someday she would be found curled up in this alley, or another just like it, or with her legs dangling over the edge of a dumpster. Or on some sticky floor with a needle in her arm or a pipe in her hand.
It would happen. The only variable was time.
“Now look what you made me do.” She pointed toward the front seat, the radio. “You made me miss the end of the song and now it’s another one on.” She looked at the smoked-down butt of her cigarette and flipped it out the window, and that was it—he could tell by the way she drew herself together. Tiny little whore’s purse over her shoulder and her hand on the door.
“If you see my friend anywhere,” Jordy said, “tell him I said we need to get moving. You’ll know him when you spot him. He’ll be the only bald guy out there trying to get a blowjob with a dent in his head and carrying a cat.”
She didn’t say whether she would or wouldn’t, and left the car, shut the door behind her. Then she leaned back down for a moment, head framed by the window.
“A big bad guy like you, am I gonna hear about you in the news before long?” she asked. “Be able to tell the other girls, ‘Hey, I did that guy the other night’?”
“Guaranteed,” Jordy said. Then zipped his pants and told the skank to get lost.
****
Over the years, whenever he had daydreamed about days to come, Jamey had dreamed of typical things: a wife and three children, a house high in the Hollywood Hills or on a Malibu beachfront, of seeing his name near the title on movie posters, which he would frame and hang on walls.