The Man Who Cheated Death (Vincent Hardare)

by James Swain

  “About two. I heard him come in, and we talked for a little while. He said he doesn’t really have a choice.”

  “Are ticket sales that bad?”

  “Yeah. He said we could go bust if they don’t improve. He already contacted a local TV station, and they agreed to televise it on Friday night.”

  “Wait a minute. Your father has already lined this up? Which escape is he planning to do?”

  “It’s something new.”

  “Did he tell you? Come on, Crys, don’t keep secrets from me.”

  Her stepdaughter glanced out the window.

  “Hey, that guy across the street is staring at us.”

  “Stop avoiding the question,” Jan said.

  “I’m not avoiding the question. Come on, you’re supposed to be protecting me, aren’t you?”

  Jan had a look. The driver in question had double-parked his van in the street, his face buried in some papers.

  “He’s not staring anymore. Tell me what your father’s planning to do. I have a right to know.”

  “The roller-coaster escape.”

  “Oh, my God. You can’t be serious.”

  “Dad says it’s a winner, and will get a lot of publicity.”

  “Didn’t a performer down in Mexico get killed trying that stunt? What on earth is your father thinking?”

  Crystal shook her head. “He’s made up his mind, Jan.”

  Jan knew what that meant. When Vince decided he was going to do something, there was no turning back. She angrily got out of the cab, and slammed the door behind her.

  Jan stood in line and waited for her dry-cleaning. She felt betrayed. Her husband was confiding in his daughter, but not in her. Had it been over something small, she could have excused it, but this was anything but trivial.

  She paid for her order. Walking outside, she came around the corner to where their cab was double-parked, and saw broken glass in the street. She shivered at the sight of where a bullet had frosted the driver’s window.

  The dry cleaning slipped through her fingers. She ran around the vehicle, and pulled open the driver’s door. Their affable cabby was slumped behind the wheel, a bloody, half dollar sized bullet hole above his left ear.

  “Crys…? Crys!”

  The backseat was empty. A wave of absolute dread swept over her. Crystal hadn’t been imagining things. The guy in the van had been stalking them.

  Jan opened the driver’s door and rolled the corpse onto the pavement. Jumping in, she threw the running engine into drive and the cab leapt forward like an uncaged animal. She ran the next traffic light, stopping in the middle of the intersection to look both ways. The van had vanished. In desperation she grabbed the microphone to the cab radio.

  “This is an emergency. I need help. Does anyone hear me?”

  “Who the hell is this?” barked a radio dispatcher.

  “My name is Jan Hardare.” She glanced at the operator’s license on the dash. “I’m driving the cab of Fami El Hassad.”

  “Where’s Hassad?”

  “He’s dead. The man who killed him has abducted my stepdaughter. I’m driving west on Pico Boulevard just past La Cienga in pursuit of a white van. Please call 911.”

  “I’m dialing right now,” the dispatcher said. “Hey lady, please don’t do anything crazy with the cab.”

  The screech of brakes drowned him out. She ran a red light and swerved out of the path of an oncoming Mercedes, the passengers cries making her skin crawl. At the next intersection she hit the brakes again, and looked both ways. The van could be hiding in an alley, or parked behind a larger truck, there was no way to know.

  “Hey lady,” the radio dispatcher said.

  “Yes…” she said, grabbing the microphone.

  “The police are coming. I put an emergency call out to my fleet. One of my men just spotted a van on the corner of Fairfax and 18th Street, heading west. He said the driver was really hauling.”

  “I don’t know where that is,” she shouted, horns blaring around her as she dangerously weaved through traffic. “I’m heading south on Spaulding. Can you get me there?”

  “Sure. Make a right and go to Fairfax. Hang a left, and that takes you to 18th Street.”

  Jan followed the dispatcher’s while flooring the gas. A block ahead, she saw the spotted the van jockeying between cars.

  “I see him! He’s still on Fairfax. I’m going after him.”

  “Lady, let the police handle this. Lady… lady!”

  Chapter 18

  Monkey Toes

  It had all happened so quickly.

  “Do you have a map?” the driver of the van had asked the cabbie. He wore a gray uniform, a hat, and black wraparound shades. “I’m lost.”

  “Oh, yes. I have a wonderful map!” the Iranian cabby said enthusiastically, slipping the driver a spiral-bound street guide through a crack in his window.

  “Thanks. I’ll give it right back.”

  “Take your time,” the cabby said.

  Lifting the front of his shirt, the driver had drawn a gun and stuck its barrel to the window. There had been a loud Pop! and the cabby had lurched forward on the wheel.

  Crystal had lost it. Only moments before the cabby had told her about a cereal commercial his six year old daughter was starring in. He wanted her to be on TV, then the movies. The United States was a great country, he proclaimed.

  The driver pulled her out of the car at gunpoint. It was the same crazy killer who’d attacked them in the desert.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” Crystal begged.

  Death dragged her across the street. Opening a sliding door on the side of his van, he shoved her into the darkened interior, where she landed face-first onto an enormous pile of sheets that smelled like paint. Straddling her, he snapped a handcuff around her wrist. He was talking under his breath, whispering obscene things about her breasts and the sweet curvature of her ass, and Crystal thought Please God, Help me.

  Death pulled her up and handcuffed her wrists around the top shelf of a metal rack that was bolted to the ceiling. Forced to stand on her tip-toes, Crystal got a good look at him: he was her father’s height, a flat nose, and had the strangest skin she’d ever see on a man, his face smooth and creamy white. He produced a nylon stocking from his pocket and gagged her.

  He climbed up to the front and got behind the wheel. Turning the radio on, he burned rubber down the street. At each traffic light, he glanced in his rear view mirror, watching her.

  “Having fun, little girl?”

  Crystal waited until he was watching the road before she gave the handcuffs pinching her wrists a look. They were standard issue Smith and Wesson, nothing a bobby pin wouldn’t open. Except her pins were in her purse on the floor. When he wasn’t looking, she slipped off both her shoes.

  Thank God she rarely wore socks. Working in unison, her two big toes unzipped her purse, then nimbly picked through her stockpile of gum, mints and hair clips. Houdini had taught himself how to untie complicated knots in pieces of rope using his toes. Her father had refined the technique so he could hold lock picks between his toes and open doors. Crystal wasn’t that adept, but she could use her feet as well as most people used their hands.

  “Hey — what are you doing!

  Death ripped off his shades, his eyes popping wildly in the rear view mirror.

  “I’m talking to you, sweetmeat!”

  He did not sound like the same person. Like he had a demonic amplifier in his chest.

  “Go… hell,” Crystal mumbled through her gag.

  With her toes she lifted her open purse a foot off the floor and shook it. A dozen pennies and a single bobby pin tumbled out. Pressing down with her big toe, she made the bobby pin stand on end, clenching it before it fell to the floor.

  They were coming to a red light. Crystal saw Death shift in his seat as he slowed the van down. She jammed her right heel against the edge of the sliding metal door that separated them.

  Death hit the brakes hard. Throw
ing the van into park, he jumped out of his seat and came for her. Crystal viciously kicked the sliding door, trying to catch him with it.

  The door flew by his face, missing it by a fraction and shutting with a resounding bang! Crystal heard him laughing heinously on the other side and shrieked through her gag.

  “I’m going to mutilate you!”

  Death tried to open the door. When it did not slide free, he kicked it. Suddenly he was pounding his fists against it, and Crystal realized the door had locked itself.

  “Rock and roll!” she screamed through her gag.

  Lifting her foot up to her face, her right fingers plucked the bobby pin from her toes.She twisted it into proper lock-picking shape while trying to brush away the grime it had attracted in her purse. If the pick wasn’t clean she could jam the lock and permanently screw herself.

  Her shoulders were going numb, and she stuck the pin into the keyhole and wiggled it around the ratchets and steel pins. Finding the sweet spot, she pressed as hard as she could in such an awkward position.

  The cuff sprung open, freeing her.

  Death’s fist had turned purple from striking the door.

  THE KEY! his dark mind screamed, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE KEY!

  He turned around, seeing first the green traffic light, then the ring of keys in the ignition. What an idiot he was! He turned the engine off just as traffic started to flow around him.

  Immediately he heard horns, and when he did not move the van, some choice profanity from the car behind him. He caught the driver’s face in his side mirror; a big bullet-headed black driving a beat-up Lincoln.

  “Nigger,” he shouted without thinking, having suppressed the word for so long in the mental hospital where he’d been part of a white minority that it was now part of his everyday language.

  The Lincoln’s driver got out of his car. The man was huge, and looked ready to kill him. Death jumped behind the wheel and threw the van into drive, vaulting ahead.

  He could no longer think clearly. Downtown L.A. had turned a muted gray, and he drove as if lost in a fog, his breathing labored and painful.

  Death bit down on his lip, tasting blood. The pain brought instant relief and slowly — as the grayness surrounding the van lifted — clarity. He leaned his head out his window, listening for sirens. Hearing none, he told himself everything was fine. A few blocks later, he pulled down a side street, and backed the van into the alley where he’d parked the Firebird.

  Jan drove while listening to the thumping of her wildly beating heart. She raced down 18th Street, each passing second forcing her to imagine life without Crystal, and the shattering effect her loss would have on all of their lives.

  The van had turned, but where? On a chance she pulled down a deserted side street, and inched down the block. A white van was parked at the end of an alley next to a Mexican restaurant. Was that the right vehicle? Her instincts told her that it was. She jumped out of the cab, and ran down the alley.

  The van was empty. Coming around the driver’s side, she heard a muffled scream. Crystal lay on the pavement with a man straddling her, his hands working feverishly to tie her wrists with a piece of twine. Taking a stutter step, she threw a roundhouse kick at the man’s head.

  His hat flew off, revealing a bald, misshapen skull. Falling off Crystal, he rolled out of harm’s way and jumped to his feet, a dark stream of blood flowing from his nostrils into his mouth. His eyes bulged out of his head, making him look like a freak.

  So this was Death, she thought.

  Pulling Crystal off the ground, Jan shoved her forward.

  “Run!”

  Her stepdaughter hesitated. “But Jan…”

  “Damn it! I said run!”

  Crystal took off for the street. Death lunged at her, unconcerned by Jan’s presence. Jan sent her foot into his solar plexus, and he dropped helplessly to the pavement.

  “And keep running,” Jan yelled after her.

  Hearing a distant siren, Jan glanced toward the street. In the split-second it took to look away, the beast within Death swelled up, and his strength returned. Jumping off the ground, he threw his body into her, and slammed Jan against the van.

  “Bitch!”

  Jan shouted, expelling air as she drove her knee straight into his groin. It was a blow that could break bricks, and he staggered backward, moaning in pain.

  “You… hurt me.”

  Jan touched her side, felt a cracked rib. The gentle teachings of the master at the dojo where she trained in Vegas had taken their toll. She had gotten careless; sloppy. No more.

  She moved toward him, ready for the kill.

  “Leave me alone,” he said.

  “I’m not done with you.”

  “But I’m sick. I have problems.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  He backed himself into a corner, cowering in fear. It was pathetic how quickly killers turned into spineless pieces of jelly when captured. Garbage was strewn across the ground. Picking up an empty bottle, he threw it at her head.

  “Go away,” he screamed.

  “Stand against that wall. Do as I say.”

  “No. Leave me alone.”

  She decided to take him down, and threw a vicious roundhouse kick at his head. She heard the rustle of the newspaper she’d inadvertently stepped upon, and felt her legs shoot out from under her. Her head snapped as she hit the ground. Black curtains came down around her, and she lost consciousness.

  Chapter 19

  Bad Seeds

  Hardare could not make himself cry, yet knew he should. Holed up in his hotel bedroom, his sedated daughter in the next room, he knew this was the right time and place to break down, and accept the fact that he might never see Jan alive again.

  But he fought the urge, the ungodly image of Barbara and Jan sitting on a cloud having a chat too much to bear. His first wife’s death had nearly destroyed him, and he felt the old wounds starting to resurface, the aching loss ripping out his insides. He hadn’t thought he would ever get over Barbara until he’d fallen in love with Jan, and he was going to cling onto even the tiniest thread of hope that she might still be alive.

  Is alive! he corrected himself angrily. Knowing her, probably alive and kicking. He pushed himself up from the bed and raked his fingers across the venetian blinds, catching glimpses of the mid-afternoon sun peeking through the haze of L.A. smog. It was not even bright enough to squint at.

  Why hadn’t he seen this coming? Why hadn’t the deadly encounter in the desert convinced him that he had too much to lose playing games with a madman? To compound his misery, he had been forced to cancel his two weeks at the Wilshire Ebell; by contract he was now liable for all costs incurred, including the non-refundable deposit on the theatre. In one fell swoop he had destroyed every single thing that was important to him. He heard a light tapping on the door and cracked it open. It was Rittenbaugh.

  “You have a visitor,” the detective said.

  Hardare peered into the suite. Kenny Kitchen was standing in the suite, talking with Wondero.

  “Death called him,” Rittenbaugh said.

  Hardare burst into the suite and grabbed the DJ by the arm.

  “Tell me what he said to you,” the magician said.

  “There was a commercial running when he called,” Kitchen explained. “My producer thought he recognized his voice, so he patched him through. I picked up, and it was him. He wanted me to tell you that he wasn’t going to kill Jan. He said that wasn’t why he’d kidnapped her.”

  Hardare’s heart skipped a beat. Is alive!

  “I told him that I wanted to speak to her,” Kitchen said. “I figured if he was lying, it was best to find out right away.”

  Hardare tried to swallow the rising lump in his throat. “Did you… speak to her… or not?”

  The DJ nodded stiffly. “I spoke to a woman who sounded very groggy. She told me to tell you she loves you. Then Death cut her off. He said he wants to do a trade: you for her. He said he would call me to
morrow during my show with the details. Then he said that if you screwed up and double-crossed him, he would beat your wife to death with a baseball bat. He told me that normally, he killed his victims with a knife, but that your wife deserved to be punished. Then he hung up.”

  Hardare’s lips formed a faint smile. Knowing Jan, she must have gotten a few licks in to elicit that kind of threat. He put his hand on Kitchen’s shoulder and said, “Thank you for coming and telling me this in person.”