The Man Who Cheated Death (Vincent Hardare)

by James Swain

  “This escape is dangerous, but will remain in my repertoire. There are times in an escape artist’s life that the ability to conserve air can mean the difference between life and death.”

  Hardare shifted on the rocks. Going under had worked for Houdini, and it might just work for him.

  Shutting his eyes, he forced himself to relax.

  His mind became an empty screen. Soon the laundry room became filled with flickering yellow stars that reminded him of a planetarium, and he watched them grow brighter and expand.

  A gray, menacing fog carried him into space. Soon the fog dispersed, and he saw infinite space both above and below him. He looked at his hands and saw they were shining brightly, his skin as luminous as a full moon.

  Suddenly he began to fall. Slowly at first, then faster, his body plunging at a speed so great that a child-like terror overcame him. His heart raced furiously as he dropped through the dark abyss, and fought off the overwhelming desire to fill his lungs with precious air.

  His fall ended unexpectedly, his terror mercifully abated, and he found himself standing on solid ground, again immersed in gray fog. He heard cries, and women’s tortured voices. They seemed to come at him from everywhere at once. It grew unbearable, and he covered his ears with his hands.

  The fog dissipated, and he saw dozens of women standing around him. There were women of every age, shape, and physical description, even hardened women from the street. They were miserable creatures, their faces racked by suffering. They formed a circle around him, and he spun around on his heels, looking for a single familiar face among them.

  A tall black woman touched his arm. Her face was the one of the most frightening things he’d ever seen, her mouth twisted grotesquely as if by a wire. She put her hand beneath his chin and brought his head up, making him look. Ashamed, he stared into her face without flinching.

  “Help us,” she whispered.

  She had been normal once, he could see that behind the distortion. Normal, maybe even attractive. But who was she?

  He felt another hand, then another. From the second and third row of the circle the women reached out to lay a hand someplace upon his body, some kneeling to touch his legs, their hands touching everywhere. He watched as women in the front gave up their spots so others could take their place and touch him.

  A teenage girl who could have been his daughter’s twin came forward. Strawberry blond hair, aqua blue eyes, cute dimples. He had seen her before, and struggled to remember from where. Then it hit him. Her name was Lori Appleby, and her photo had been in the log of Death’s victims which Wondero had shown him.

  Appleby edged closer. Several women moved aside, allowing her to stand next to him. She placed her hand on his sleeve. Then her eyes found his face.

  “You’ve got to stop him,” she said. “We can’t leave if you don’t.”

  It took a moment for her words to sink in. When they did, he felt tears run down his face and he began to cry, his chest heaving with the knowledge that each and every one of these women had been real, just like himself. His heart ached for Appleby and all the women here: for their club of lost souls.

  Hardare gasped for air. He began to weaken and felt Appleby and the others tighten their hold on him, and lift him cleanly over their shoulders. In the dark infinity above him, he saw a tiny sliver of light. With both arms he reached toward it, praying it was his salvation.

  Chapter 28

  The Lead

  Wondero and his partner were there when the excavation team pulled Hardare out of the rubble. Still alive, the magician gave a thumbs-up to the detectives as an oxygen mask was fitted on his face, and he was placed on a stretcher and put into the back of an ambulance. His wife and daughter, standing nearby, cheered like they were at a football game.

  The ambulance pulled away, its siren blaring. Jan and Crystal Hardare hopped into a car and quickly followed, leaving the detectives staring at a giant hole in the ground.

  “How long was he down there?” Rittenbaugh asked.

  “Over an hour,” Wondero replied.

  “Mind telling me how he stayed alive? Was it a trick?”

  “You think I know?”

  “Sure. You’re the one with the brains.”

  Wondero shook his head; he didn’t have a clue. Hardare seemed capable of doing things that weren’t humanly possible. On top of that, he seemed to be incredibly lucky. The operator of the clunky earth-moving machine had simply picked a spot amid the gigantic pile of rubble and started digging, unaware that he was directly above the laundry room where Hardare was prisoner.

  They went to their car. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk to watch. They parted as the detectives passed.

  It was Rittenbaugh’s turn to drive. As Wondero waited for him to unlock the doors, he spotted a willowy figure standing on the corner a hundred feet away, wavering like a match flame. His eyes weren’t what they used to be, and he squinted in frustration. The figure was a tall, well dressed black male with a pearly white smile who appeared to be motioning to him.

  “I’ll be right back,” Wondero said.

  Rittenbaugh had seen the figure as well. “You want back up?”

  “That’s not a bad idea. Follow me in the car.”

  “Got it.”

  Wondero headed down the sidewalk. It was in Watts that the term “a drive-by” had been coined, with drug dealers driving by their competition on street corners and blowing them away with automatic weapons. In an area this dangerous, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  He came to the corner and halted. The figure was leaning against a gleaming BMW 750 parked illegally at the curb. Wondero didn’t know him, but he knew his kind. A ghetto drug-dealer, sporting a cream-colored Italian suit and shoes that looked like slippers, his white silk shirt open at half mast, his chest ablaze in glittering gold medallions and thick gold chains. The impulse to spare some ghetto kid the misery of becoming a crack addict was powerful enough to make Wondero’s right hand twitch.

  “What do you want?” Wondero snarled.

  “My name is Rasheed,” the drug dealer said.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Chill out, brother.”

  “Get lost.”

  “Listen,” Rasheed said, jabbing his finger in Wondero’s direction. “If people around here see me talking with you, know what happens?” He took the same finger, placed it against his temple. “I’m taking a big risk, okay?”

  “So, what do you want?”

  From behind his ear Rasheed produced a small square of paper. “This is for you.”

  Wondero stared suspiciously at his outstretched hand. If someone snapped a photo with a cell phone, it would look like he was taking a bribe.

  “What is it?”

  “Information,” Rasheed said.

  “About what?”

  “There’s been a crazy man in the neighborhood, scaring the shit out of people. One of my runners saw him get into his car right as the apartment house was coming down. He was driving a blue Buick Skylark, real beat-up.”

  Wondero took the paper and unfolded it. Scrawled on it was a California license tag. BCL -149H. His hands started to tremble. “Did your boy happen to see anything else?” Wondero asked.

  “My what?” Rasheed said indignantly.

  “Your runner, your track star, whatever the hell you call him, did he see anything else?”

  “Come to mention it, he did.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “The crazy man was limping, must have fallen down when he was running away. His leg was bleeding, too.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s all I know.”

  “Thanks for sharing. Now, get the hell out of here.”

  “I helped you, man. Show a little respect.”

  Wondero been chasing Death for four years. Until now, not a single person had stepped forward, and offered up a solid lead. He should have been thankful, only Rasheed was a pusher, and would probably end up killing just as many
people in his life.

  “Get the hell out of here before I arrest you.”

  “What—?”

  “You heard me. Beat it.”

  Rasheed’s eyes simmered with hatred. Moments later the BWM pulled away with a rubbery squeal.

  Rittenbaugh sat at the corner, the car idling. Wondero hopped in and punched the license into the computer on the dash. “What did he give you?” his partner asked.

  “Hope,” Wondero said.

  Ten minutes later, the detectives were on the Hollywood freeway driving south in the restricted right lane, doing over eighty. The license belonged to a 1998 blue Buick Skylark that was registered to Warren K. Kozlowski. His address, 2234 Cicera, Apt. 2-B, was in a seedy section of West Hollywood, a few blocks from Paramount studios.

  On a hunch, Wondero had called a police dispatcher to see if the Skylark had been recently stolen, and not yet entered on the LAPD computer.

  He’d been wrong. The car was clean. That had gotten his attention fast: Death had driven stolen cars around L.A. from the beginning, boldly ditching them in prominent, well-traveled spots, including the driveway of the ex-mayor. But he still had to drive his own car once in a while. In this city, there was no other way to be mobile.

  Rittenbaugh took the Fountain Avenue exit west to Wilton, and drove south past historic Hollywood Cemetery and the Paramount lot until he found Cicera. He took a hard right and the two detectives started reading addresses. The street was lined with three and four-story apartment houses that had been neglected beyond repair. They came to a traffic light, and Rittenbaugh jammed on the brakes.

  “The address is in the next block,” Rittenbaugh said. “Do you think we should call for backup?”

  Wondero considered it. With any luck, the Skylark would be parked on the curb, and Osbourne would be home. If they called for backup, there was always the chance that Osbourne would slip away, and their chance to end his murderous spree would disappear.

  “Let’s get him,” Wondero said.

  The light changed and Rittenbaugh let the car drift down the street. Finding the address, he double-parked, and the two detectives hopped out.

  Wondero’s first steps were quick and sure. Going up the path, he halted, hitting an invisible wall. #2234 Cicera was an old gutted house, its sagging three-story frame a blackened, picked-clean carcass on a grassless plot of land.

  The detectives both cursed.

  Back in the car, Wondero gave the dashboard an angry punch before issuing a city-wide alert on the Skylark.

  Chapter 29

  Eugene’s room

  L.A. had its share of prejudice, but if any group got abused and no one heard about it, it was the elderly, especially on the roads.

  Myrtle Jones had found out the hard way, her last car totaled at an intersection by a teenager without insurance. She had received no restitution, no triumphant day in court; the boy had gotten a fine, then driven away from the courthouse, while she had been forced to take a bus.

  So she stayed away from cars. Only on rare occasions did she drive Mr. Kozlowski’s old Skylark, and that was because he nagged her to take it out for a spin every once and a while. The car was still registered to Mr. Kozlowski’s old address, and she was fearful of getting in another accident, and being fined for driving without correct papers.

  But Mr. Kozlowski had continued to nag her. WHY LET IT FALL APART? he’d written on his tiny computer.

  “Do you really want your car driven?” she’d asked him.

  YES!!! he’d replied.

  “How about if I let our neighbor Eugene drive it?” she said. “He asked me about the car the other day.”

  GOOD IDEA

  So she’d given Eugene the keys to Mr. Kozlowski’s car. Let him drive it, she thought, and I’ll stick to the sidewalks and mass transportation. A great idea, until the car had appeared in her driveway caked in dirt and something that looked like blood on the upholstery, and Mr. Kozlowski had thrown a fit.

  Myrtle Jones banged on the front door of Osbourne’s home, then noticed the curtains pulled down in each window.

  “Eugene? It’s Myrtle — are you in there?”

  From within she heard a mournful groan.

  “Eugene? Are you hurt?”

  The groans grew more pronounced. She tried the door, and finding it unlocked, hesitated, knowing she should call the police. But they were always so slow, and so careless with people’s emotions. Ignoring her caution, she hurried inside.

  The cries led her to the kitchen in the rear of the house. Unlike the other rooms, it was brightly lit, the sunlight streaming in from a pair of double windows over the sink. With a blanket draped over his body, Eugene lay across the kitchen floor, an empty bottle of pain killers beside him. He was shivering, his face and shoulders glistening with sweat.

  “Eugene… can you hear me?” Slowly he opened his eyes, then tried to sit, the blanket falling off his naked body.

  “Oh my lord,” Myrtle Jones exclaimed.

  His left ankle was swollen and had turned a sickening blue. A festering wound lay in the calf of his left leg, the skin crudely sewn together with a needle and thread. Thinking she might be sick, she placed her hand against the refrigerator for support.

  “Eugene — what on earth happened?”

  “I went out running, and fell down.”

  “Why didn’t you go to an emergency room?”

  “I hate hospitals. Please help me, Myrtle. Please.”

  He said her name like a little boy. Regaining her composure, she picked the blanket up off the floor, and draped it over him.

  “You need to see a doctor.”

  “No doctor.”

  “But I insist. Your ankle looks broken, and that cut might be infected. I used to be a nurse, Eugene. I know what I’m talking about. Now, where’s your phone?”

  His hands grasped her thin arms, pulled her close to him. He was amazingly strong, even in his weakened stage. “Go upstairs, and get my medicine from the bathroom. I have morphine.”

  “But — ”

  He began to sob, his fingers squeezing the strength out of her arms. “Please say yes… please, Myrtle. Say you will.”

  “Only if you’ll promise me that you’ll let me take you to the hospital.”

  “All right. I promise.”

  “Good. Sit tight, and I’ll be right back.”

  Myrtle climbed the rickety stairs to the second floor. Down a short hallway she walked to a tiny bathroom. The appliances were old — it had been ages since she’d seen a claw-footed tub. She rifled through the medicine cabinet and read the labels. Eugene had enough pills in his medicine cabinet to open a pharmacy.

  She found the morphine and headed for the stairs. In the hallway sat an old dresser with a glass bowl sitting on top. Normally, Myrtle minded her own business, but something about the bowl struck her as odd, and she stopped to have a look.

  The bowl was filled with women’s jewelry. Necklaces, ear rings, and a number of thin lady’s watches. It was not the kind of collection she would have expected to find in a single man’s house. From down below, she heard Eugene moan.

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  “Did you find the morphine?”

  She glanced at the bottle in her hand. “Not yet.”

  “It’s in the medicine cabinet.”

  “Be right there.”

  “Hurry.”

  Her curiosity had been peaked, and she pulled open the top drawer of the dresser. It was filled with women’s undergarments. She noticed they were all different brands and sizes.

  This was not right. These things did not belong in this man’s house. She played back everything she knew about Eugene, and a sickening wave of nausea overcame her.

  She went for the stairs. Her eyes fell upon a cracked door at the hallway’s end. She could not help herself, and stuck her head in to have a look.

  She gagged. A naked light bulb dangled from the cracked plaster ceiling. In one long, slow motion sweep, her eyes sa
w everything that Eugene did not want her or anyone else to see: The sea of 8 x 10 black and white glossies of the dead and dying women that went up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the opposite wall, the bed with handcuffs decorating the headboard, the video camera on a tripod.

  She spun around and went to the stairwell. Eugene was at the bottom, dragging his leg as he climbed the stairs.