Lake Charles

by Ed Lynskey

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Herzog, I don’t give a flying fuck if you do or not.” Mr. Kuzawa prodded the shotgun’s muzzle under Herzog’s chin whiskers. “I gave you an order, and I expect it carried out. Or else you face grave consequences. Got it?”

  Herzog nodded that he did get it.

  “Stellar.”

  An isolated convenience store is always ripe for robbery, but I figured our lads had hatched theirs on the fly. For starters, they’d missed seeing us in the deeper shadows. Then they sauntered into the store, hollering and taking their time. We advanced on the balls of our feet and watched them through the plate glass front. The oldest no more than 25, they hadn’t yet graduated to the more lucrative heists like armored trucks and bank vaults. They set their sights on this soft target.

  Fear petrified the old lady cashier on the bread aisle. All four showboated, two flourishing their sawed-off shotguns and two with handguns. Some joke I’d have loved to hear left them laughing in stitches. Acne Scars, popping bubblegum, rubbed his sawed-off’s muzzle over her pointy breasts and sliding it down there. He whipped up his free wrist and deflected her retaliatory face slap. They demanded the money, but the night’s receipts sat in a drop safe she couldn’t get into. No longer guffawing, they were finding that out, and it spoiled their fun.

  Mr. Kuzawa growled. “They’re stuccoed, and she’s their hostage.”

  Standing just short of the glass door’s rectangular outspill of light, we could see them but not vice versa.

  “They’ll just tie her up and be off.”

  “Not these shitbirds. I’m going in, and I’m greasing them.”

  His simple blood vow sent a bolt of cold horror through me. “Can’t we send them packing?”

  “Sure, I’ll send them packing to meet their Maker.”

  “Listen, I can’t do this.”

  “You can and you will, Brendan.” I felt his hard eyes on me. “We can’t let this kind of shit slide. Just follow my lead.”

  Acne Scar groping her this time with his hand got Mr. Kuzawa’s motor running. Our shuffle went up the concrete steps, and he cracked the door, and I whisked inside it, him behind me. Acne Scars’ peripheral vision detected us moving and ducking behind the wire rack displaying the 8-track tapes out for sale.

  His New Yorker accent was jerky. “Yo, who was dat?”

  “Holmes, you’re so stoned. Empty the register.” Mohawk pointed his sawed-off behind her.

  Acne Scar snapped his bubblegum. “I mean who slid into the bodega?”

  “Gimme your cash,” Mohawk ordered her. Then I heard the metallic click from his actioning in a live round. “Now. Or I’ll blast your old granny cunt all over the bread.” Adversarial and strung out, he’d kill her at the least provocation like more arguing over the money in the drop safe. My sphincter retracted in dread.

  “A couple fives and silver are in the register,” she said. “Take it and be gone.”

  Mohawk snorted. “There’s more. Gimme your purse, granny.”

  Then Mohawk gestured his chin at Acne Scars. “Grab the fives. We need the gas money. Then do her. No eyewitness.”

  Acne Gum popped the bubblegum. “Fuck it. Your idea. You do her.”

  “I’m sick of killing. Take your turn at it.”

  I paced my short breaths. The adrenaline streamed into my senses, and the moment streamed into its fierce clarity.

  “Dial open the fucking drop safe,” said Mohawk. “We need the money.”

  “I already told you only the manager has the combination,” she said. “I’m just the night clerk. They don’t tell me jack.”

  “You lying cunt.” Mohawk spat. “Gimme your purse. Or I’ll kill you.”

  “Show time, Brendan,” Mr. Kuzawa sidemouthed to me. “Give some me some covering fire. Ready, go.”

  Jacking upright, he first ejected the ineffective birdshot load from his chamber. I also stood, my 12-gauge frozen in my grip. For me, the events had slowed down. Mr. Kuzawa butted the gunstock into his shoulder pit, cheeked the 12-gauge, and notched the red bead on the would-be lady killer Mohawk. The salvo of lead pellets chopped off Mohawk’s hand. His sawed-off slipped and clacked hitting the tile floor.

  “Jesus fucking Christ . . .” His stubby amputation appalled him. Each pulse squirted the red spurts of blood. My colon turned queasy. Mr. Kuzawa, cursing his lousy aim, shunted in a new 00-buckshot load. For the space of a breath, Mohawk eyed the 12-gauge muzzle’s dark O. “Adios, motherfucker.” Mr. Kuzawa’s fired volley peeled off Mohawk’s skullcap as if opening a can of cat food. The red tufts of bone, blood, and brains spattered everywhere.

  Squirming, she wrenched free of Acne Scars’ grasp and dove behind the counter. Grunting, Mr. Kuzawa leveled his red dot sight on Acne Scars who jerked a split second before Mr. Kuzawa cut loose and missed again.

  “Well, fuck a duck.” His eye still riveted on his target, Mr. Kuzawa racked in another shell.

  Acne Scars scrabbled by the deep freezers, lunged through the doorway to plow into the back room, and sprinted out the rear door into the night. The last two thugs brandished their handguns.

  Their shots flamed wide of us, dashed out the panels of plate glass, and a tsunami of glass shards peppered down on us. The 8-tracks splintered into bits, and their shiny ribbons of tape unspooled like party streamers around us.

  Somebody hollered. I heard the Cadillac outside crackle to life. Undeterred and cranking the pump slide, Mr. Kuzawa cycled in new ammo and lined his muzzle on the nearest thug. He didn’t cut for cover but as a fool bulled ahead, his gun hand screwed sideways, popping off slugs as in a made-for-TV gangster movie. His aim was poor.

  My survival instincts jarred me to take action. Snapping my wrists, I heaved my 12-gauge in the manner of a javelin. Its heavy butt stock clunked the thug in the chest and thrust him back. I pivoted. Mr. Kuzawa’s next shot skimmed over the thug scrambling behind the deep freezers.

  “Fuck, I need to get me some glasses,” he said.

  The thug shrieked out to us. “Hey, man! I give up! You hear me? Enough already.”

  “Deal me in, too,” said the last thug now also tucked behind the deep freezers.

  “Toss out your weapons,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  A chintzy handgun cast from zinc and two sawed-off shotguns scraped over the floor tiles. My boot stopped their slide. By my next hard breath and struggling to cap my own adrenaline gusher, I startled to realize how it all had flared by us in a few seconds.

  “Okay now, out, you both. But make it slow-w-w,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  Their hands reaching for the ceiling, the two thugs’ horror-crazed faces rode up over the top of the deep freezers. They looked my age or a little older and scared shitless.

  Mr. Kuzawa motioned his 12-gauge for them to go stand by the counter. “You just be cool over there.” He crouched down and collected their discarded weaponry.

  The blur of violence, leaving one thug damn near beheaded and sprawled dead at our feet, had a numbing banality on me. It wasn’t real.

  “Kill the bastards. Do it. Go ahead.”

  Giddy enough to peal out in hysterical laughter, I glanced over at the old lady cashier. Her eyes, a pair of hot lasers, burned in their vengeful hostility.

  Mr. Kuzawa dropped his 12-gauge. “Cover ’em,” he said to me with my .44 out. He turned to her. “Ma’am, that’s radical, don’t you agree? They got it bad coming to them. Now. This is what I saw happen. They slinked in and tried to heist you. But you took out this hidden equalizer.” He used his handkerchief to wipe down his 12-gauge and handed it to her. Her gnarled fingers wrapped around its barrel and stock. “That’s when all hell busted loose. That one was shot, one escaped, and these two surrendered. Holding them at gunpoint, you took their guns and reported it to your sheriff.”

  “That’s exactly how I saw it,” she said, training the 12-gauge on the two thugs.

  “Careful with that thing,” Mr. Kuzawa told her. “It’s loaded.”

&nb
sp; “Shit happens.”

  “Just don’t end up in the jug with them.”

  “I owe you two thanks.”

  “We’re only too happy to be of help, ma’am.”

  Edgy and shaken, I retrieved my thrown 12-gauge from the floor. The pump action was still operable. We stuck around until she finished phoning the sheriff’s night desk. Then I tailed Mr. Kuzawa out the door and treaded over the gravel. With the raw carnage boiling in my brain, I doubled up by the cab truck’s tailpipe and upchucked. Scraping the strings of saliva and puke away from my lips, I overheard Herzog’s high-pitched yammer.

  “The Cadillac screeched off, and I then heard shooting in the store. Did anybody get hurt?”

  “One casualty.” Mr. Kuzawa ignited the truck engine to thunder through its dual exhausts. “The old lady cashier iced him,” he lied.

  “Good Lord,” said Herzog.

  I boarded the cab truck and wiped my bitter lips on my sleeve. Mr. Kuzawa floored the accelerator, and we lurched out to the state road, abandoning the war zone at the convenience store for the sheriff’s deputies to sort out.

  “The cover story you fed her sounds cockeyed,” I said.

  “Her nametag said Mrs. Simmons. It’s her word against the New York punks. Whose tale will rate the most credible?”

  “Mrs. Simmons’ story will be accepted as gospel,” said Herzog. “That’s a no brainer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Herzog’s shoulders sagged. “Can we grab some sleep, guys?”

  “Not unless you can convince me that Sizemore has settled in for the night,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  “He can’t be a machine that never rests.”

  “Take your No Doze pills.”

  “The store had sold out of them.”

  “Shit, you mean after all that.”

  “Face it: we’re stumped.” Herzog yawned. “Sizemore was our last best lead, and he slipped through our fingers. Give it a break until the morning. There’s little hope to chase him down tonight.”

  “He must have other holes to crawl down,” I said.

  Nodding, Mr. Kuzawa worked the gearshift. “We keep riding and smoke him out.”

  My head nodded and nestled against the rear window as I rested my eyes for a moment. The hypnotic thrum to the truck tires eating up the hardtop enticed me into the realm of dreams, an all too familiar terrain.

  “P-s-s-t. Brendan, wake up.” Ashleigh’s plea startled me to consciousness. “You went out like a light on me. Did you enjoy sweet dreams?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said, feeling the party van’s tires under us thrumming on the alpine switchback. “How late is it? Did you bust your curfew?”

  She giggled at the idea. “What curfew? Dad is cool, especially since Mom died.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know she did. How?”

  Ashleigh’s voice croaked a little. “Last Christmas Eve she cracked up in a paraglider accident out in godforsaken Utah.”

  “So now you call the shots at home?”

  “You’d freak if I told you by how much. Let’s discuss something else. Hey, ain’t J.D.’s van da’ bomb? Can you suspend your disbelief and pretend we’re Jason and the Argonauts sliding past Aeaea, the island where the enchantress Circe and her pet swine lived?”

  “Yeah boy, get a load of the whiffs from the dead lobsters and pig shit. Did you like the show at the armory?”

  “It didn’t really blow up my skirt. Hey, roll us a jay. Getting straight is a howling bummer. I told J.D. to drop us off at my house. The night is still young, and my Jaguar has a full tank of gas.”

  “You own a Jag? Hoo boy, I’m in hog heaven tonight. Where are we going?”

  “To romp through the mountains and then on to the Chewink Motel. Do you know it? Dad is the owner.”

  “No, but your dad owns a motel?” Booty call, I thrilled.

  “Yeah, ain’t that a rip? Wait. Did you bring the right protection?”

  “Ribbed for the extra friction.” With a magician’s hand flourish, I produced the specialty condom.

  “Cool. The next stop is ours, and then we’re guests at the Chewink. By the way, I’m curious. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “One sister.”

  “Oh—is Edna Fishback your sister? I never made the connection until now. Guess I’m really stoned not to see it. Awesome.”

  “H’m. Do you know Edna?”

  “We’ve chatted a little, sure. Girlie stuff mostly.”

  “But Edna is a homebody. She’s never gone to Yellow Snake.”

  Her smile impish, Ashleigh tilted her eyebrows and bangs at my earnest face. “You’d flip out to know where your twin sister has gone and done.”

  “Bullshit. She’s my twin sister, so I ought to know better than you do.”

  “You’re the one who’s full of it. I know for a fact Edna has been to the Chewink Motel. Their guest register doesn’t lie.”

  “Why does she go to your dad’s motel?”

  Ashleigh giggled at my naiveté. “For the same reason her twin brother goes, I imagine.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The shimmery neon tube letters, including the duds, at the Chewink Motel’s entrance spelled out “OFFI’E, VA’AN’IES.” My latest communiqué with Ashleigh revealing Edna had used the motel urged me to suggest we return here. After nosing into the gravel lot, Mr. Kuzawa doused the cab truck’s headlights as I located the two dark windows to Room 7 where I’d yawned awake next to Ashleigh’s corpse. At the office door, Mr. Kuzawa pounded his fist, and the overhead light flaring on blinded us.

  “Who is that out there?” asked a querulous Mrs. Cornwell through the shut door.

  “Jerry Kuzawa. We came by earlier with questions. Can you spare us a minute?”

  “You again? More questions, I suppose. Nope, you better just buzz off.”

  “We came to search in your rooms.”

  “You better haul it on down the road, mister.”

  “Please don’t be that way,” I said. “A key opens a room door easier than a shoulder does. A key also leaves no costly damage.”

  “Is that a threat? My sheriff lives fifteen minutes away.”

  “Always your call, ma’am, but we’re fast at bashing in doors and ransacking rooms,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  “All right, all right. Just don’t go nuts on me. I’ll be out directly.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll be happy to wait.”

  I stowed the 12-gauges below the cab truck seat, and the office doorknob soon rattled open. Tying off the fuzzy robe, she waddled out to us. The five-and-dime store glasses hung from a bead chain at her neck, and she let out the boiled cabbage odor from her dinner.

  “What are you after now?” she asked.

  “We’re not sure, but we’ll know it when we see it,” replied Mr. Kuzawa.

  She stuck her palm out at Mr. Kuzawa for greasing.

  “Show us around again and we’ll see.”

  Her ponderous sighs got us to the nearest unit. She bent at the waist and inserted the door key. The open door allowed for entry. Mr. Kuzawa, his .44 drawn, prowled inside and ran a hasty look-see. No villains hid behind a shower curtain or under the bed.

  After our futile search in all thirteen units, Mr. Kuzawa looked at her, his tone gangster sinister. “Did Ralph Sizemore come here tonight?”

  “Of course not.” She wagged her no-chin head at us. “I can’t imagine why he would.”

  “Doesn’t he own the motel?” I asked.

  “Own this place?” Her gales of braying laughter echoed over the courtyard. After her derision trailed off to snorts, she responded. “Sizemore isn’t the proprietor of this dive.”

  “Then Ashleigh lied to me,” I said. “Her father doesn’t own this motel, and Edna isn’t here.”

  “It’s just been me for the past twelve-and-a-half years,” said Mrs. Cornwell. “No guest named Edna that I know of has ever registered for a room.”

  Swaying on his feet, Herzog let out a yawn.
“So it’s yet another dead end.”

  “Sorry to drag you out of bed,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “Just to negate any ill will, why not rent us three rooms?”

  Mrs. Cornwell’s crabby mood lifted. “That’d do a lot to iron out this misunderstanding.”

  “I thought as much. Which room, Brendan?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.

  “I’m a sentimental softy. Put me in Room 7.”

  “Ma’am, will Sizemore come crashing in on us?” asked Mr. Kuzawa. “Will you be tipping him off?”

  She wrested her robe’s flaps tighter. “You’re the paying customers, and your dust up with Sizemore isn’t my business. Period.”

  “That’s the answer I wanted to hear,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  I paid for our room tab from the dwindling wad of twenties, and we left to bunk in our respective berths. Flipping the clean towels and washrag to the bureau top, I postponed a shower and, still dressed, crashed on the mattress. The new ceiling mirror captured my frown. Room 7 at the Chewink Motel in Yellow Snake, Tennessee, sat primed to accommodate cheap rendezvouses and cheaper murders. But I bore Mrs. Cornwell no ill will. She’d her creditors to pay the same as I did.

  I rolled over with the recent gunfire still rattling my ears. I squelched the image of the handless, headless thug. Enough ghosts harangued me. A sketchy memory came of the wine-colored sedan staked outside my door that May night. The driver’s face remained fuzzy. But then I couldn’t sketch in my dad’s facial details either. I believed he carried a distinctive crescent scar an inch above his right eye. Did he still weld the seam joints on the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline? The crews had completed it two years before—in 1977—but a lost son had to kick off the quest to find his missing father somewhere.

  For me, Valdez marked that spot. The stay behinds might recall Angus Fishback, and I’d learn where his wanderlust had sent him next. He may’ve rambled on to a logger gig. I smiled at me the lumberjack. I felt I was savvy enough to become a logger. Mr. Kuzawa had taught me to speak their lingo and ape their swagger.

  I’d lost a little swagger after Salem Rojos and I parted ways. It still smarted. I sighed. Ah, first love so broke our tender hearts. That night we’d relaxed in the lawn chairs. Their portable TV sat on the rear porch step. What did we tune in? Tony Beretta drove screaming after the villains in his gray muscle car. The citronella candles were a joke because I swatted an army of mosquitoes attacking me. Pete and his wife had gone to bed, and Salem and I sat alone. Squirming in her lawn chair, she parked her bright eyes on me.