Ugly As Sin

by James Newman

  “Jesus.”

  “Why are we talking about that dumbass, anyway? What does Leon have to do with any of this?”

  “Turns out he was my ‘number one fan’ back in the day. But he got nervous as hell when I brought up Eddie’s murder. He saw something that night, I was sure of it. So I put the pressure on him, got him talking.”

  “And?”

  “Melissa, do you think Eddie might have had ties to organized crime?”

  “You’re talking about the mob? This is Midnight. Stuff like that doesn’t go on here.”

  “Fourteen-year-old girls aren’t supposed to disappear either,” said Nick.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “How about the people he associated with? Any idea where he got his drugs?”

  “He never told me. I never asked. I must have seen some of the same faces drop by the house now and then. I remember this one black guy who always seemed to make Eddie nervous. But I never knew their names. I didn’t want to know them.”

  “Think you would recognize any of those people if you saw them again?”

  “Maybe. Probably not. Usually he just met them out at the curb. He never invited them inside. Why?”

  “Leon was hiding in the woods the night Eddie was killed. He saw four men come out of the house. They had Sophie.”

  “I knew it!” She started sobbing. “Oh, my baby...”

  “Melissa, it’s gonna be okay. I promise.” But even as he said it, Nick wondered: Where do I get off promising her anything? For all I know, her kid is already dead, buried in a shallow grave somewhere off I-26...

  Neither of them said anything for the next few seconds. He heard her draw deeply on her cigarette several times, then exhale slowly. Trying to calm herself.

  “I spoke with the sheriff,” Nick said. “He’s looking into Leon’s story.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “He said Sophie called you, two days after she went missing. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to be dishonest with you. I just...I left that part out ’cause I didn’t want you thinking the same thing the cops have been thinking all this time. Somebody forced her to make that call. I could hear it in my baby’s voice. It sounded like she was reading off a piece of paper, like a script. They told her what to say. I know they did!”

  “After talking to Leon, I think you’re right,” Nick said. “The men who took her, they knew Eddie, figured it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for the cops to believe he would molest a little girl. But listen to me, Melissa. If I’m gonna try to help you find her, you can’t be keeping things from me.”

  “It won’t happen again,” she said.

  “I don’t like surprises. Another thing...you should trust the sheriff to do what he gets paid to do. He seems like a good man. He’s just in over his head with all of this.”

  “It’s only ’cause of Sheriff Mackey that I never ended up in some kind of juvie hall when I was a teenager,” Melissa said. “He used to feel sorry for Mom, I think. I got picked up for shoplifting and underage drinking more times than I can count, but every time he’d just lecture me and take me back home. A few days after Sophie disappeared, I made a huge scene at the diner, in front of half the town. Accused him of not doing his job. I threw my Coca-Cola at him. He just sat there and took it. I know he’s doing his best to find Sophie. But it’s hard, Daddy. It’s so damn hard.”

  He heard her blow her nose on the other end of the line.

  When that was done, she said, “Eddie hated Sheriff Mackey. Of course. He was a drug dealer. It’s the natural order of things, right?”

  “Did Mackey ever arrest him?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah. The last time was earlier this year. That one was a close call, ’cause of the ‘three strikes’ law. He already had two strikes against him, from a few years before we met. It was during a routine traffic stop. But he had just come back from a big sell that day, so all they found in his truck was a little weed and some paraphernalia. Misdemeanor possession. Eddie said the Man Upstairs must have been watching out for him.”

  Nick felt a hot rush of aggravation. Not only toward her late boyfriend, but a little toward Melissa as well. He didn’t stop to consider her feelings before he said what he said next.

  “If they’d thrown his ass in prison, he would still be alive. Your daughter would be sitting there beside you. If the Man Upstairs had anything to do with it, I’m afraid He didn’t think things through.”

  †

  It had been a long, strange day. An afternoon of dark discoveries and bizarre revelations. Now that it was over Nick planned to sit for a while, take the quiet time to sort it all out.

  “I’m a grandfather.”

  The words didn’t sound right on his lips. As if he spoke some foreign phrase with which he was vaguely familiar but its meaning alluded him.

  “Grampa. Grandaddy. Pappaw...”

  He chuckled, shook his head as he sprawled out on his lumpy motel bed.

  A minute or two later, his chainsaw snore filled the room.

  †

  Nick Bullman dreamed.

  He dreamed of friendly cops talking with their mouths full...of chain-smoking daughters with wet, swollen eyes...he dreamed of bony meth-heads...of adolescents abducted by shadowmen in fancy suits...and he dreamed of no-good boyfriends dealing drugs and playing pimp, before their heads disappeared in explosions of blood and brain and bits of shattered white skull.

  In his dreams, as in reality, Nick felt so useless. He was a passive observer cuffed with cold steel to something immovable while blurry figures removed his flesh with a blade the size of a Buick.

  He awoke about the time Lance K. McDougal III appeared in his dream. Vengeance burned in the billionaire’s eyes as he hefted a shotgun, pointed it at Nick’s face...

  He ratcheted the weapon.

  It was the loudest sound Nick had ever heard.

  Loud enough to startle him from sleep.

  And once he was awake he realized the sound had not come from his dream at all.

  †

  The room was dark. Too dark...

  A shape stood between Nick and the glow of the parking lot lights outside his motel room window. A human shape.

  As his vision came into focus, he realized he was staring down the eye of a gun barrel.

  Nick heaved his bulk to the left.

  The gun barked out a sharp POP!, and a hole appeared in the pillow where his head had lain a second before. Bits of stuffing floated up into the air like heavy snowflakes.

  He rolled off of the bed, onto the floor, came down hard on his bad knee as the gunman pulled the trigger twice more: POP! POP!

  Nick spat out a four-letter word or twelve. A nerve twitched in the crook of his neck as he crawled forward, risking a glance around the corner of the bed.

  Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He could see now that the shooter was a short, stocky man in his late forties. He wore a dark suit with a western-style bolo tie. Salt-and-pepper mutton-chop sideburns framed a hint of a double chin. The gun in his hand was fitted with a silencer.

  From where Nick lay, he could smell the guy’s cologne. A hint of liquor, too. The fragrance was something expensive. The hooch was not.

  When the hitman spoke to Nick, his voice was almost kind. As if he wasn’t proud of what he had come here to do but he had no choice.

  “This has to happen, big fella. Nothing you can do to stop it.”

  Nick clung to the floor, his heart thudding in his chest.

  “If it’s any consolation, the kid don’t want for nothing. But she belongs to Daddy now. And he is very protective of his property.”

  “What the fuck?” Nick whispered to himself.

  He watched the hitman’s fancy shoes round the bed.

  “Now, how about you make this easier for both of us? Lie still, I’ll put one in the back of your head, and you won’t ever see it coming.”

  Nick sa
id, “Oh. Well. Since you put it that way—”

  He rose, leapt over the bed.

  The gunman had stopped to take a swig from a small metal flask. He dropped his drink, let out a startled yelp as three hundred pounds of ex-wrestler landed on top of him. His pistol fired off another shot, grazing Nick’s left shoulder. Glass shattered as the bullet struck a piece of cheap motel art on the wall.

  “Where is she?” Nick roared.

  He showed the fucker his best right hook.

  Blood streamed from the hitman’s nose, down his chin. Nick pinned his gun hand to the floor, hit him again.

  “Tell me who sent you!”

  In the room next door, someone pounded on the wall. A deep voice threatened to call the fuckin’ popo.

  The hitman kneed Nick in the balls.

  Nick groaned, clutched himself through his sweatpants. Rolled off of his assailant.

  The man in the suit stood. One hand went to his broken nose. The other trembled as it aimed the gun at Nick again.

  Nick tasted puke rising in his gorge. Get up, get up NOW unless you want to DIE! But the boulder of agony that had planted itself in his abdomen allowed him to rise only as far as his hands and knees.

  The assassin thumbed back the hammer on his gun.

  And then the two men heard a knock. So soft it was nearly inaudible.

  The door to Nick’s room creaked open.

  The giant and his would-be killer watched a shaft of bluish light sneak in through the doorway.

  A rasping voice entered with it, a voice that obviously belonged to an elderly person: “What in the name of sweet Mother Mary is going on in here?”

  The gunman pressed the hot tip of his pistol against Nick’s forehead. He said nothing, but the message was clear: Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.

  The geezer flicked on the light switch, and his ancient, dried-apple features went slack at the scene before him.

  Nick blinked. So did the man standing over him.

  Somewhere out on the interstate, an eighteen-wheeler’s air-horn farted.

  “Process server, my ass,” the old man grumbled.

  The hitman looked confused, like he was trying to decide what to do next.

  He brought his gun up, pointed it at the motel manager.

  Nick saw his only chance. Later, he would wonder if his next move might have been overkill. Probably. He outweighed his foe by at least a hundred pounds. But that knee in the balls had put him down for the count. Hard to think straight when it felt like someone had kicked your scrotum up into your throat.

  When he had first checked in, he had dropped his wallet and keys on a table by the window. That stuff lay just a couple of feet away from him now, at eye level.

  Nick snatched the key to his room off of the table. Thrust upward, with every ounce of strength left in him...

  ...and stabbed the key into his assailant’s Adam’s apple.

  The guy staggered back. Dropped his gun. It fired one last shot when it hit the floor. The bullet whizzed past the manager, so close it lifted a tuft of his longish white hair as it thunked into the door.

  The old man squealed, ducked, covered his head.

  The hitman crashed into the television, clawing at his punctured windpipe as if everything would be okay if he could only figure out how to put it back together. He twirled, collided with a brass floor lamp, then fell into an overstuffed chair in the corner of the room. The noises coming out of him reminded Nick of the sounds the hogs used to make on his father’s farm when he was a kid. The sounds they made when they were being slaughtered.

  He rolled against the edge of the bed, laid there watching the man die.

  It seemed to take forever.

  Finally, he heard—and smelled—the shooter’s bodily functions let go.

  The guy looked nothing like a hired killer now. Just some middle-aged family man in his Sunday best, kicked back after a rough day at work. Only the bright red blood soaked into the front of his suit belied such a mundane image. His dead blue eyes stared up at the ceiling as if he were contemplating why he had come here at all.

  He twitched once more—somehow the key had remained buried in his trachea throughout his dance of death, but with this final spasm it slid out of him as if retracted by an invisible hand, before tumbling into his lap—and then the hitman lay still.

  “Call the sheriff,” Nick said to the motel manager. “Now.”

  He went back to holding his balls, but only after using a boot to slide the dead man’s flask across the carpet till it was close enough to grab.

  There was still some liquor left inside. Nick helped himself to a long pull.

  The manager clutched at his chest with one liver-spotted hand as he shambled out of the room, and Nick could hear him babbling something about a “shooting spree” all the way across the parking lot.

  †

  At just past one o’clock in the morning, the Sunrise Motor Lodge was a maelstrom of activity, an island of bright lights and noise in the center of a town that otherwise slept peacefully beneath the sea of a starless night sky.

  Across the parking lot from where Nick stood next to his Bronco with Sheriff Mackey, two paramedics carried a body bag out of Room 118 and loaded it into a waiting ambulance. A dozen or so motel tenants lingered beyond the roped-off perimeter of the crime scene, their curious faces painted alternating shades of red and blue by the lights of the patrol cars on the property. Every few minutes, one of them—a bushy-haired man in pajama pants with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in his hand—hollered a question the investigators’ way. The smell of another guest’s cigar permeated the night air, along with the squawk of police radios. The shadows of everyone present stretched across the lot like bloodstains on the pavement.

  The night was hot, sticky. The wound on Nick’s left shoulder burned where the bullet had grazed him. The EMTs had dressed it for him earlier, and both of the young men had recommended stitches. But Nick assured them that he had lived through much worse. He pulled up his sleeve to check on it now, saw crimson blossoming through the bandage.

  “No I.D. on our shooter,” Sheriff Mackey said, as they watched the paramedics slam the double doors at the rear of the ambulance. His uniform was rumpled as if he had slept in it. “We’ll run his prints through AFIS, the national database. We’ve matched every vehicle in the lot against the guest register. I’m assuming an accomplice dropped him off, planned to circle around and pick him up after the deed was done.”

  They watched the ambulance depart. No lights, no siren. Neither was necessary, considering where the van’s passenger was headed.

  “He had a pin-and-tumbler set in his jacket. Illegal to possess in the state of North Carolina without a locksmith license. We’ll look into that, but I don’t expect anything to come of it. Black market, most likely.”

  “He was an amateur,” Nick said. “Carried the right tools, but this wasn’t his thing.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Once he’s inside the room, he has me right where he wants me. He fires off multiple shots at pointblank range, and misses every time?”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” the sheriff agreed.

  “I think the booze was liquid courage. He hesitated. That’s the only reason I’m standing here talking to you.”

  The sheriff looked off toward the crime scene, jingled some change in his pockets.

  “From what I’ve heard about Eddie Whiteside’s murder,” said Nick, “it was sloppy too. Only difference is, shotgun makes a big boom. Whoever offed Eddie wasn’t too worried about being heard out in the boonies. It was supposed to be quick, easy. Things didn’t go as planned.”

  Nick sighed, ran one hand over the prickly gray hairs atop his skull. He watched a woman in a green business suit and tortoise-shell glasses walk out of his room carrying a clear plastic bag marked EVIDENCE. Even from where he stood, he could see what was inside the bag: the key to Room 118, coated in half-congealed blood.

  Overhead, the bi
g Sunrise Motor Lodge sign (CLEAN ROOMs + Hb0 = $34.95/NITE) made a ticking sound, then abruptly went dark. As if the manager had decided he couldn’t handle any more business that might come rolling in tonight. Not after everything he’d been through. Nick glanced over toward the office, saw the old man speaking to a tall black cop; he was waving his hands about, looking distraught, while the deputy scribbled his statement in a notebook.

  Nick thought about the bizarre things the hitman had said just before their fight. He debated whether or not he should tell the sheriff. Although he didn’t really know why, he decided he would wait. Sit on it, and try to make sense of it himself before he shared it with anyone.

  “Ask you a question, Sheriff?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Who knows I’m here?”

  “At the motel?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Far as I know, there’s just your daughter, myself, and your pal Leon Purdy. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve been in Midnight—ten, twelve hours? Already, someone’s tried to take me out of the picture. I’d like to know how this asshole knew where to find me. Exactly where to find me.”

  Mackey said, “You’re a hard fellow to miss, Mr. Bullman. I knew you were in town ten minutes after you walked into Annie’s Country Diner.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t think I appreciate whatever it is you’re insinuating.”

  “I’m not insinuating anything, Sheriff. Just thinking out loud.”

  Nick yawned. He didn’t know why he had chosen to take the antagonistic route. But he couldn’t help it. Waking up with a gun in your face tends to darken one’s mood.

  The sheriff turned, mumbled something into his walkie-talkie. An officer trotted over a minute later with two Styrofoam cups of coffee. He still had on his latex gloves. Sheriff Mackey took a cup. Nick declined, and not just because he saw flakes of dried blood on the guy’s gloves.

  The sheriff sipped at his coffee, made a satisfied sound in the back of his throat.