Breaking Cover (Tony Wolf/Tim Buckthorn)

by J. D. Rhoades

  “What are you going to do,” she said, “take a bath?”

  He grimaced. “I wish.” He rubbed his hand over his beard. “This has got to go,” he said. “Your pal back there may have been bullshitting me about erasing my picture. And in any case, there are quite a few people who can give a description of me, and some of those are cops. But”—he rubbed his beard again—“they all know me with this. And it doesn’t match the picture on my new IDs.”

  Gabriella took the bucket and went outside. The sun was going down, and there was the first hint of fall chill in the air. She found the water spigot, on top of a rusty iron pipe sticking up out of the ground, and began filling the bucket. She seriously contemplated just taking off, running as far and as fast as she could to get away, but she had no idea where she was. He could probably catch her, and while he seemed calm enough, she decidedly did not want to see him angry. Besides, there was still a story here, if she could get it out of him. The bucket sloshed a bit as she hauled it back to the storage unit, but she managed to keep from getting any on her shoes.

  When she got back to the unit, he was standing by the workbench, a small mirror propped up in front of him. A towel, an electric razor, and a plastic basin sat on the bench as well. He was cutting chunks out of his beard with a pair of scissors. “Thanks,” he said. “Just put it down over there.”

  “Look,” she said, “can I make a phone call?”

  He stopped for a moment, then resumed cutting. “To who?”

  “I just want to let people know I’m all right.”

  “No,” he said. “They’ve gotten better at tracking cell phones.” “Who’s this they you’re so afraid of? The government?”

  “Part of it.”

  “Jesus, you’re paranoid.”

  “Just because you’re paranoid,” he said, “doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you.”

  “But I mean, this . . .” She gestured around the unit. “The armory, the stash of money, the fake ID—you’ve been planning this for a while.” She stopped. “My God . . . you’re not some kind of terrorist, are you? You’re not planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge or something?”

  He snorted. “Not hardly. If I was, you’d be lying in a ditch right now with a bullet in your head.”

  “You want me to thank you?”

  “No, but I would like it if you’d shut up for a minute and let me think.” He put down the scissors and picked up the shaver but didn’t turn it on right away. After a moment looking in the mirror, he sighed. “Okay. When I’m done, you can call your friend. The camera guy. You’ll have thirty seconds to tell him you’re all right. But then we ditch the cell phone.”

  “That phone cost me almost two hundred dollars,” she protested. “I’m not going to—”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, “but then you don’t get to make the call.” He turned the shaver on and started shearing off the remains of the beard.

  She stood there fuming for a moment, then spun and headed back to the car. She was reaching for the door when she felt the pistol at the back of her neck. She hadn’t heard him coming.

  “What are you doing?” he said, his voice deadly calm. She froze, unable to answer. He answered for her. “You were trying to get your cell phone. You were trying to show me I couldn’t order you around, couldn’t tell you what to do. But see, the thing is, I can. Because I’ve got the gun.”

  “You won’t shoot me,” Gaby said. “I don’t think you’re the kind of man who’d shoot an unarmed woman.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Torrijos,” he said. “It’s not something I want to do. It’s something I’ll try to avoid. But I’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive. And by the way, if you have anything in your hand that could lead people to me, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s worse than if you have a gun.”

  She turned. He still had the electric shaver in one hand, the gun in the other still pointed at her. There were still patches of beard on one side of his face.

  “Who are you so afraid of?” she whispered.

  He smiled sadly. “Pretty much everybody.” He lowered the gun. “Get the phone.”

  She was shaking as she opened the car door and fumbled the cell phone out of her purse.

  “Come on back inside.” He stepped aside and let her precede him back into the storage unit. He set the shaver back on the bench.

  “Give the phone to me.” She handed it to him.

  “Sit in the truck.” She complied. He flipped the phone open. “Your friend’s name is Howard, right?” He used his thumb on the phone’s scroll buttons.

  “Yes,” Gabriella said.

  Wolf held the phone up to her face. “This him on the speed dial?” She nodded. He hit the send button. She reached for the phone, but he shook his head and held it up to her ear. “Hands down,” he said. “I’ll tell you when the call’s over.” She put her hands back in her lap. She could hear the phone ringing. She heard someone pick up.

  “Where you at, girl?” Howard’s voice said. The relief washed over her like a cool breeze. She hadn’t really thought Wolf was lying to her, but there was still that uncertain feeling that maybe something had gone wrong.

  “I’m not sure, Howard,” she said. “But I’m all right.” There was a pause. “He holding a gun on you?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Not right . . . okay. Okay. You just stay calm, Gabriella. The FBI’s on it. That boy’s face is gonna be all over the news after tonight. I got a real good shot of him. CNN’s even picking it up. By 7:00 p.m., more people’re gonna recognize him than the president.”

  She looked at Wolf. The loss of the beard had completely changed his looks. It would be hard, she thought, to give a description of him. The man she saw now looked completely unremarkable. “I don’t know about that.” A thought occurred to her. “Who’s got the story?”

  “Brian.” “Shit.”

  “Yeah, I know. And he’s following the idea that your buddy there was the kidnapper’s accomplice.”

  “That’s moronic.”

  “That’s the Beav . . . wait. What do you think he’s going to do if he finds out that’s what’s going out on the news?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A pause. “Put him on.”

  “What?”

  “Put the boy on the phone.”

  She looked up. Wolf ’s face was impassive. “Howard wants to talk to you,” she said.

  The expression didn’t change. Wolf put the phone to his ear. “Yeah?” He listened for a moment, then closed the phone.

  “What’d he say?” Gaby asked.

  Wolf shrugged. “It started off with ‘Listen, asshole, if you hurt one hair on her head . . . ; I could figure out the rest.” He stuck the phone in his pocket. “He’s kind of old for you, isn’t he?”

  “What? Oh. No. He’s a friend. He looks out for me.”

  “Whatever. We need to move.”

  “Where are we going?” “Someplace safe to drop you off.”

  “What about my story?”

  “What about it?” He turned away and picked up the shaver. “Look, there’s something you need to know. The story’s going out that you and the kidnapper were in it together. That you killed him because you had a falling-out. Maybe jealousy over one of those little boys.”

  Wolf turned back toward her. The look in his eyes made her recoil. There was nothing nondescript or unremarkable about him now. “What?”

  “The reporter who’s got the story now has that theory. I don’t know if the FBI gave it to him or what, but that’s how they’re going to play it. And considering that you did kidnap me—”

  “Damn it!” He slammed the shaver down on the workbench. “There’s one way to fix this, Mr. Wolf,” Gaby said, “and that’s to tell me the truth. All of it. Who you are. Why you’re running. Who you’re afraid of.”

  He didn’t say anything. He picked the shaver back up and turned it on. It only took a few moments to eradicate the last few patch
es of beard. He turned back to the workbench and splashed some water from the bucket on his face. She watched him, barely daring to breathe while he made up his mind. Finally he spoke.

  “Okay,” he said. “But it’s going to take some time. And I’m not going to do it here. Help me finish loading the truck.”

  THE COFFEE table was piled high wit h stacks of cash, mostly fifties and hundreds. Clay finished the count and nodded with satisfaction. “Not a bad week,” he said. He picked a loosely rolled joint up off the table and lit it. “We can do better,” Johnny Trent said.

  “Man,” Clay said, his voice strained from holding in the smoke, “why’re you so wired up? You act like you’re some corporate suit, always thinkin’ about gettin’ more.”

  Johnny took the joint, gave it a long pull. “So?” he said.

  “You never used to be like this, dude. You used to know how to let your hair down. Kick back. Have some fun.”

  Johnny didn’t answer. He passed the joint back and picked up the TV remote. He flicked a button and the fifty-five-inch plasma TV across the room came alive.

  “Hey, I got The Hills Have Eyes on DVD,” Clay said. “Unrated version. It’s supposed to be kick-ass.”

  “Whatever,” Johnny said.

  “Now see, this is what I was talking about,” Clay said. “We’re talking major cranial damage in fuckin’ wide-screen with surround fuckin’ sound and you can’t work up more than a—”

  “Shut up,” Johnny said. The phone was ringing. “Hey,” Clay whined, “What the—”

  “I said shut. The fuck. Up.” Clay subsided back into his seat, looking sulky. He took a long hit off the joint as Johnny picked up the phone. “Yeah.” There was a pause. “Long time no see.” Another pause. “What? Why?” Still holding the receiver to his ear, he picked up the remote and pressed a button. “Holy shit,” he said.

  Clay looked up from where he was rolling another joint. “What?”

  “That guy,” Johnny said. “On the screen.” Clay squinted. “Who? Where?”

  “There, goddammit!” Johnny yelled. He pointed at the image frozen on the screen as the reporter’s voice described the man who had helped kidnap two boys, killed his partner, then shot it out with the cops before kidnapping a reporter and making his getaway.

  Clay’s brow wrinkled. “What about him?”

  Johnny was speaking into the phone. “That’s him, isn’t it?” “Who?” Clay said.

  “Will you pipe the fuck down?” Johnny snapped. He spoke into the phone again. “Yeah. So where is this place? Uh-huh. Okay. Thanks. We’ll remember you. The usual.” He snapped the phone shut.

  “Mind telling me what’s going on?” Clay said.

  Johnny turned to him. His eyes were bright with excitement. A spot of color stood out high on each cheek. “Call the boys,” he said. “Get three . . . no, five of your best soldiers. We’re taking a trip.”

  “What? Where? Why?”

  “That was a friend of ours,” Johnny said. “A pretty highly placed friend. We found Axel.”

  “Axel? Wait . . . Axel McCabe? The guy who shot you?” “Yeah. Or at least we know where he was earlier today.”

  “Whoa,” Clay said. “You sure?”

  “Didn’t you see that guy?”

  “The guy on TV? What about him?”

  Johnny closed his eyes and counted to five. “That was Axel McCabe, dumb-ass.”

  “What? That guy? He didn’t look like—”

  “Trust me. It was. I have it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Whoa,” Clay said again.

  “Clay,” Johnny said, his patience near the snapping point. “We need to get moving.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “North Carolina,” Johnny said. “A little dipshit town called Pine Lake.”

  THEY had rented a room in a Motel 6 off the interstate. Earlier, they’d stopped by a Wal-Mart. Gaby had gone in and used some of the wad of cash Wolf had given her to buy a cheap cassette recorder and half a dozen tapes. She was surprised to find him still there when she came out. She had been convinced he’d run.

  He sat across from her now, looking at the closed curtain as if he could stare through it and into the parking lot beyond the window if he just kept his gaze steady enough. He didn’t speak as she set up the recorder. Finally, she looked up. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said softly. He looked at her and nodded. She hit the record and play buttons.

  “My name is Anthony Wolf,” he began.

  BLOOD LOOKS dark in the wash of neon. It looked like chocolate syrup on Khandi’s lips as she sagged against the cinder-block wall, under the sign that advertised the Leopard Lounge to the horny soldiers and lonely businessmen passing by on the main drag.

  Khandi wasn’t her real name. It took me a moment to recall that it was actually Amber. Amber’s a perfectly good stripper name, but the club already had an Ambyr, so Nathan Trent, the club’s owner, had casually decided that she would be Khandi. Before long, her real name was nearly forgotten.

  She was young, but more important, she looked young. Some girls went for the classic stripper look: absurdly large, clearly enhanced breasts over a flat belly and slender hips. No woman born of Nature really looked like that, but reality wasn’t the business we were in. Amber/Khandi, on the other hand, had the slim body of a preteen and a face to match, and she was either smart enough or afraid enough of the plastic surgeon’s knife to play the hand she had been dealt. And it worked. There was a certain audience out there who I couldn’t help but think of as guys who’d be pedophiles if they’d only had the nerve. They were there most nights when Khandi was working, looking up as she gyrated on the runway, jaws slack, dollar bills clutched in their hands. She was a good earner. When she cashed out her “stage fee” to the club, she wasn’t always the top, but often enough so Trent noticed. She wasn’t going to keep earning long, though, if her boyfriend kept smashing her against the wall like that.

  His given name was Frank, but only Amber called him that. Everybody else, including his fellows in the Brotherhood, called him Furry. I’d always thought it was for the fur-trimmed denim vest he wore everywhere, but then I saw him at a club-sponsored “luau” at a local lake, where the Trents showed their appreciation to “loyal customers” by charging them a hundred dollars a pop to drink keg beer and “hang out” with “the ladies of the Leopard.” The “ladies” bitched and moaned, because they’d be getting the same old ogling and lame attempts at conversation without getting the bills stuffed in their lingerie, but Clay Trent had let it be known that attendance was mandatory, and none of the girls wanted to cross Clay. Clay also hadn’t wanted the girls’ boyfriends there, but Furry was too big and too dangerous to challenge for small stakes, so Clay had let that one slide. Until Furry had gotten shitfaced and stripped off his denim vest, T-shirt, and pants in order to jump into the lake. “Jesus,” one girl had remarked, “Winnie the goddamn Pooh wasn’t that furry.”

  Winnie the goddamn Pooh also probably wouldn’t have his girlfriend jacked up against the wall, pinned with one ham-sized hand around her throat with her feet dangling in the air. Her hands looked tiny as they clawed at his tree-trunk wrist. Her eyes were locked on his face. From my angle, I couldn’t see his expression, but her despairing look didn’t indicate that I’d find much room for compromise there.

  I sighed. I’d just worked a double shift, 11:00 a.m. till three in the morning, including cleanup and cashing out the bar. I was tired and definitely not in the mood to be fucking around with a drunk asshole like Furry. On the other hand, some things you just don’t walk away from. I walked toward them. As I got closer, I could hear Furry’s low growl. If grizzlies could talk, they’d sound like Furry.

  “Goddamn cunt,” he rumbled. “Think I’m payin’ for this rest o’ my goddamn life?” He smacked her against the wall again, then let go. She crumpled to a heap in the gravel.

  She looked up at him, a pleading look in her eyes. “Please, Frank,” she croaked, “don
’t’ . . .” She crossed her arms over her belly, trying to curl and protect herself.

  “Move your hands, bitch,” Furry snarled down at her. She shook her head desperately. “Move your goddamn hands!” he shouted down at her.

  “No. Frank. No. Please. It’s your baby, Frank, I swear it . . .” “Not for goddamn long it ain’t. Now I can kick that little shit out of you, or”—he reached into his vest and flicked open a butterfly knife—“I can cut it out. Your choice, bitch.”

  “Please!” she screamed, even as she slowly drew her arms away from her abdomen. It was as if she had to drag them away.

  I had noticed a little thickening around her midriff. I had thought maybe she’d been putting on a little weight. Now I knew. Amber/Khandi was pregnant, and Furry was displeased enough to try an impromptu abortion. I could feel blood pounding in my own temples. I felt my breathing quicken. I thought back to a summer day on a barren sandy field in North Carolina, where a grinning black man in desert camo was methodically kicking the shit out of me.

  “Mad now, boy?” he taunted, each time I crashed to the ground. “That’s why you gonna lose. That’s why you always lose. You get mad, you lose. Get icy, boy. Get icy.” Then he swept my legs out from under me, cutting off my mad-bull charge, my own weight smashing me to the ground again.

  I took a deep breath and shoved the anger back down. Ice, I thought. Think of ice. I thought of glaciers. I thought of mountainsides covered in snow.

  “Hey,” I said as calmly as I could. “Cut it out.”

  He turned, a look of dumb shock on his face. The shock turned to purple rage when he saw it was me. “Get lost, punk,” he spat as he turned back to his work. He drew back one huge booted foot to smash Amber/Khandi in the belly and destroy whatever it was she carried inside her.

  Ice, I thought. I reached out with my right foot and hooked it against his drawn-back ankle. Ice, I whispered to myself as I pulled my leg back and up, throwing him off balance. Ice, I thought as he fell to the ground.