Save Me from Dangerous Men--A Novel

by S. A. Lelchuk

  “Who hired you?” I asked again.

  It turned out he had a few words left. That was okay. I could wait.

  “Who told you to kill Karen Li? Who told you to come after me?”

  He glared up. “I don’t know. Joseph handles all that.”

  “You must know something. Try to meet me halfway.”

  “Lots of people use us. We do lots of jobs. Joseph handles the bookings.”

  I held the H&K up so he could see it, and smiled brightly down at him. “I bet right now you wish you’d brought some dinky little .22 with you, right? Instead of this cannon?”

  He stared furiously at me. I didn’t feel he was getting my point.

  “How’d you get my gun?” he demanded. “Where’s Joseph? Where’s Theo?”

  “Joseph left,” I answered. “He was in a hurry. Theo, I believe, is still here.”

  “I want to talk to them.”

  “Who hired you, Victor?”

  “Go to hell, bitch,” he said. “I’m not scared of you.”

  “Victor. Please. A little common sense. Are you sure you want to talk like that to someone pointing a .45 your way?”

  “Go to hell,” he repeated. He added a few words that made “bitch” sound mild.

  I shot him in the left foot.

  Right through what must have been a size twelve or thirteen black leather wingtip. Bits of leather and flesh flecked out against the sides of the white tub along with the blood. There wasn’t all that much water in the tub. It turned red pretty quick.

  Victor was tough. He got the initial screaming under control after a long minute, and with some effort stopped moaning entirely soon after. The cursing probably would have continued indefinitely except I held the gun up a second time, this time pointed at his right foot. What remained of the left foot bled red into the bathwater. The .45 was a big gun.

  “You were saying.”

  “You goddamn shot me. You shot me.”

  “One foot left, Victor. If you care.”

  “Okay! Wait!” He took a breath and grimaced. “I’m telling you, Joseph handles the bookings. I don’t know who he talked to except that it was someone at the same company that hired you. Care4. We knew you were following Karen Li up to Mendocino because we were, too. That’s all I know.”

  “Why didn’t you wait for me that night? At the cabin?”

  The pain seemed to be increasing. He worked his jaw muscles and breathed with effort. “We didn’t know you’d actually go into the cabin. We thought you were following at a distance. That’s what we had been told. At that point, our instructions were to deal with her. No one had told us to go after you yet. That came later.”

  “Have you worked for Care4 before this?”

  “No.”

  “Has Joseph?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No!”

  I turned the faucet back on and watched Victor’s face as water began again rising up around his head. “You’re sure you don’t remember who actually hired you?”

  “I told you! Joseph handles that. I just do the jobs.”

  “Okay, Victor. Good enough.” Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe not. Either way he didn’t have anything more to offer. A shame Joseph wasn’t here as well. He’d know more. I stuck a new piece of duct tape over Victor’s mouth. It was harder with all his flailing, but I managed. When I stood, I was soaking wet from splashed bathwater.

  “These last few minutes are yours,” I told him. “I can’t tell you what to think about. But I hope you realize that Karen Li didn’t deserve what you did to her.”

  Ignoring the increasingly frantic pleas issuing from under the tape, I walked out of the bathroom and shut the door. I heard plenty of thuds and splashing for the first few minutes. Victor was a strong and hardy man. He didn’t have any wish to go along with what was happening to him. But sometimes there really wasn’t any choice.

  Eventually the noises lessened. Soon after, the bathroom became quiet.

  I tasted blood. The inside of my mouth was cut from Victor’s slaps, my lips already swelling up. I found some tissues and stuck them in the side of my mouth to absorb the blood. An old boxing trick that a cutman had taught me once. Then I sat still. Waiting.

  Soon there was a knock.

  I opened the door, gun in hand.

  Buster wore black jeans and a black leather jacket. His black hair was tied into a ponytail. He looked like a giant, sinister cowboy. Most people, opening the front door to find Buster facing them, would have had nightmares for weeks. I felt so much relief I wanted to give him a hug. He walked in and looked around the room and whistled. “You don’t get to make fun of the mess in my office anymore.” He was staring at me, taking in my face, my ripped and soaked clothing. “You look like you got kicked by a damn horse.”

  “You should see the other guys.”

  He looked around. Taking in the two bodies on the floor. Eric, and the Chronicle guy, bloody newspaper still folded across his lap. “You mean these other guys?”

  I found two cans of beer in the refrigerator, handed one to Buster, and cracked the other. “How big is your trunk?”

  He smiled wolfishly. “Big enough for two.”

  “Three,” I corrected. “Needs to be big enough for three.”

  He looked around again. “Never been one for math, but I always figured I could count all the way up to two.”

  I nodded toward the closed bathroom door.

  Buster followed my glance. Drank off half his can of beer and shrugged. “It’ll be a tight fit, but they won’t complain.”

  Less than half an hour later, we were out of the apartment.

  “Need a lift anywhere?” he offered.

  “That would be nice. They sort of kidnapped me.”

  He patted my shoulder with a big hand. “And I’m sure they’re very sorry they did.”

  WEEK FOUR

  36

  “Nikki, your face—were you in a car accident?”

  “We can call it that.”

  “Do you need help? Have you gone to the police?”

  “The police can’t help me.”

  “I always thought that’s exactly what the police were for.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “May I bring something up, Nikki? Something that might upset you?”

  “It’s been an upsetting week. This will fit right in.”

  “I took the liberty of doing some research. Nothing fancy, just some basic internet searches with your name. Articles came up, archived stories from twenty years ago.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Your parents—I’m very sorry. May I ask what happened to you in the aftermath?”

  “I don’t talk about that.”

  “You’ve made that very clear, but why not tell me a little? Stop if you like.”

  “Other people told me that, too. Afterward. ‘Just talk, tell us just a little, we’re here to help you.’ It was too late for them to help, though. Too late for talking to fix things.”

  “I assume you mean other therapists? After it happened? Maybe this is different, now.”

  “Different? How? I didn’t have a choice about seeing them. Same as I don’t have a choice about seeing you.”

  “Five minutes, Nikki. Talk to me for five minutes, and then leave. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Five minutes? And then I can go?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Sure. Five minutes. Why not? I was twelve when it happened. My brother was three years younger. No relatives on my dad’s side; my mom had an estranged sister somewhere up in Oregon. So at first we were wards of the state, until they found different families to adopt us. Like puppies, I guess. Easier to find room for one than for two.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I was in Stockton for a few years with one family. Things started badly and ended worse. Then I landed in Davis, with new foster parents. They were different. I lived with them unti
l college, and when I got into Berkeley, they helped me with tuition. I owe them a lot.”

  “And your brother?”

  “Brandon ended up in Fresno, in a strict, religious household. Eat-your-peas-or-go-to-bed types. With what happened, it was the worst place for him to be.”

  “Is your brother better now?”

  “He’s had a hard life. Drugs. Addiction. We each got some money when we turned twenty-one. From the estate, which was mostly just the sale of the house. My parents didn’t have a lot of savings. The house was sold before prices really shot up in Bolinas, but it was something. I bought a building, started a business. My brother didn’t do those things.”

  “How about you, Nikki, right now? Are you safe?”

  “I got dragged into something. Now I have to drag myself out. I have a week to do it.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope you figure it out.”

  “Me, too. If I do, you’ll see me next week.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Then, probably, you won’t.”

  37

  I ate a salad at a popular new place in downtown Berkeley and thought about faces. I had looked at the In Retentis photographs so many times I had started to memorize them. Like the photos of suspected terrorists that the U.S. military had printed onto playing cards and given to the troops after the Iraq invasion. I wondered if any of the faces I was looking at had been on those cards. Doubtful. That had been almost fifteen years ago, and terrorists weren’t known for their long lifespans. Surely those men were gone, replaced by others equally willing to give up their lives to murder others. November 1. The days ticking by. Less than a week. What had Karen Li been trying to tell me? What was I missing?

  I pushed my plate away. Faces. Who were they?

  “Nikki?”

  I looked up and saw Ethan. He had come in with a group of friends. I stood to greet him, and then with a rush of guilt remembered the Vietnamese place. With everything that had happened that night it had been the last thing on my mind. “I didn’t mean to stand you up the other night. I’m sorry.”

  “Sure. No problem.” His voice indicated the opposite. “Anyway, I’m with friends. I just saw you and wanted to say hi.” He started to move off toward the counter. “See you around.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be a Pamela Flitton, honest,” I called after him. He was the first guy I’d ever dated who I thought might get an Anthony Powell reference.

  He turned, half smiling in spite of himself. “Don’t worry, she broke many men’s hearts. You only crushed mine. You have a long way to go.” He took a closer look at me and the smile was gone. “Nikki, what happened to your face? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. The last thing I wanted to talk about was my face, bruised and puffy after my recent encounter with Victor. “I mean it,” I went on. “I’m sorry. I have a really good excuse.” The men with guns walking up the bookstore stairs. Victor on top of me, his weight suffocating. Fingers tracing nauseatingly against my skin.

  “Does your excuse have something to do with those bruises?”

  “Let’s not talk about that.” The noise of the zipper. The recoil of the gun in my hand. Victor’s face glaring up from the red bathwater.

  Ethan motioned for his friends to go ahead. “Did someone else try to mug you?”

  “Hey! Not fair.” Joseph standing over my brother with the needle. The exhausting thumps of heavy bodies being dragged down endless flights of stairs.

  He nodded. “Sorry. You’re right. That wasn’t fair.” He wasn’t done. “Look, I like you, Nikki, a lot. But if there’s always going to be something that gets in the way, then maybe we should just admit that now, no hard feelings, before we get too far.”

  I hated the validity of his words. My voice was tight as I answered. “It’s not like that. We’ll spend so much normal time together you’ll be bored sick. The closest we’ll get to excitement is overtime in Boggle.” Bleaching blood off floors, picking bullets out of walls.

  He didn’t laugh. “I don’t think that exists. Are you in trouble?”

  “I can handle a little trouble.” The smell in the tub. The big toe left stuck in the bath drain after the last of the red water had swirled away.

  The nonchalance of my reply, rather than defusing the tension, seemed to make things worse. He was trying to talk quietly but his words tumbled out in frustration. “I guess I just don’t get it. I mean, you know so much about books, food, everything; you’re beautiful and funny and charming; we have this great connection; but you have this other side—this darker side. A scary side. The violence, these situations you keep getting into that I don’t even know about—I honestly don’t feel like I know who you actually are. And if I feel like that, if I’m always going to wonder, how can this work? How can we work?”

  I stepped closer to him and took his hand. “I want it to work. What do you want to know? I’ll tell you.”

  He didn’t move away, but his hand stayed limp in mine. “I want to know you, Nikki. I don’t mean all at once, I don’t mean everything, I’m not asking for your e-mail passwords or to share bank accounts, but for this to work I need to feel like I understand you. And right now, I don’t feel like I do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If you want, I’ll tell you about myself.”

  He glanced over at his friends again and I added, “But not here. Come with me.”

  * * *

  We sat on the grass near the campus library, the sweeping pillared steps behind us, the four-sided clock tower of the white stone campanile lancing the sky. A group of students threw a Frisbee. Others clustered on the grass with books and blankets. His hand rested on my leg and he waited for me to talk.

  “I guess it starts on a Saturday, when I was in sixth grade,” I finally began. “This was in Bolinas, where we lived.” I felt the giddy thrill of releasing a secret. Like standing on a high building preparing to leap. “I’d been down on the beach playing with friends, and eventually we all headed home for lunch, except on my way back I decided I wanted an ice cream so I stopped at a place in town. I remember I ordered chocolate, two scoops in a waffle cone, and I filled a bag of jelly beans for my brother because they were his favorite.”

  I went on after a moment. “That ice cream saved my life.”

  His hand was holding mine. “Saved your life?”

  I didn’t answer directly. Just kept telling the story. “My parents were having a bunch of friends over for dinner—my mom loved to cook, loved to entertain. When I got home I remember smelling seafood and saffron, hearing a pot boiling. But everything was so quiet.” A strange smell under the saffron. An alien, metallic smell. “Then I looked down and saw the floor.” A red pool spread across the linoleum. A silver wedge, partly covered by the spreading pool.

  “What was on the floor?” Ethan asked quietly.

  I didn’t say anything and after a moment he asked again. “What was it?”

  “A butcher knife.”

  Sight scored by clicking sounds. Jelly beans skittering on the floor. Colorful ovals rolling, slowing as they reached the red puddle’s viscosity. I continued. Jaw muscles tight, eyes fastened on the clock tower. “My mother was in the kitchen. Behind the counter. My father was in the living room. I read the police report years later. He must have heard my mom’s screams, come running downstairs. They stabbed him immediately but he was able to crawl into the living room.” Clips of memory stitched back together, unevenly. Hard to know what went where. The severed cord to the kitchen phone. Kneeling. Touching. Crying. Then that accidental glance over into the living room. More shock. Seeing the pair of eyes staring out at me. “My brother was in the living room, too. Under the couch. He had been there the whole time, hiding.” Later, grown-ups would try to explain to me that he was silent not because he was angry at me but because what he’d seen had left him unable to speak. “He started talking again after a month. And I’d been out eating chocolate i
ce cream while it happened. I’ve never been able to eat it since.”

  When my family had needed me most. I had failed them.

  Abandoned them and left them to die.

  Ethan hugged me as he asked, “Who did it?”

  I moved away. I didn’t feel like being held or touched. Not by anyone. Not just then. “Two men from a little East Bay city, Hercules. Jordan Stone and Carson Peters.”

  “Why?” he wondered. “What would make them do that?”

  It was too much. “That’s enough,” I said. “We can talk more another time. Not now. But that’s part of who I am. Like it or not.”

  “I had no idea, Nikki,” he was saying. His words seemed to float in from a distance.

  “How could you have? I don’t talk about it. But, like you said, you had a right to know. And I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t want this to work.”

  I was standing.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Ethan said, getting up quickly.

  I forced myself to smile. “No! Not at all. But right now, I think I should be alone.”

  * * *

  I walked the two miles back home from the Berkeley campus, still wrapped up in my thoughts. That was the problem with memories. They could be disobedient. Once allowed out they didn’t always retreat on command. At the time of the killings, Jordan Stone had been only seventeen, a high school senior. Peters was a few years older, a dropout with a string of arrests. Their plan had been a series of home robberies and then Mexico. As though they could go door to door robbing homes and end up with enough to retire. They’d broken into two homes before ours. The occupants had been lucky. They hadn’t been home. Our house had been third. My mom had answered the door. They told her their car was broken down. She probably would have offered them fresh-baked cookies while they waited for the tow truck. According to Jordan Stone’s testimony, it was Peters who insisted there be no witnesses. The cops got them two days later, down in Salinas, trying to hold up a gas station with a baseball bat and a meat cleaver. The entire spree had netted them a stolen car, some jewelry and cash, and a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos that Jordan Stone had taken from the gas station.