by Lyle Howard
As soon as Lance saw the rifle, he knew he had to find a telephone. There was one by the clubhouse, but a neighborhood prankster had yanked the receiver off the cord. After it was fixed and then sabotaged for the second and then a third time, Southern Bell had decided that it wasn’t worth replacing.
Lance desperately ran for the nearest trailer. After clawing his way through a cherry hedge, the first home he came to was an older model with aluminum awnings and hanging plants suspended from a lamppost out front. The oil-stained carport was abandoned, but he could hear a radio or a television set blasting inside. He slammed his fist repeatedly against the screen door and screamed for help.
With the speed and agility of a starfish, an old woman wearing an outdated floral smock shuffled inches at a time to answer the door. Stuck to the bottom of her shoe, she dragged a length of toilet paper with her like a tail. She struggled to the screen door, lifting her cane carefully with each step. Pausing a few feet away, she reached into the pocket of her shapeless garment and pulled out a pair of thick, mother-of-pearl glasses.
“You’ve got to call for some help!” Lance pleaded. The old woman strained her eyes as if she was looking down a deep, dark wishing well for change. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Something terrible is about to happen over on the next block,” Lance implored in the most forceful voice a nine-year-old could muster, “you’ve got to call the police!”
The old woman tapped at her ear. “I’ve got to get this hearing aid fixed. I’m sorry, young man, I can’t hear a darned thing!”
With sweat pouring down his face, Lance stared through the screen in dismay. How far was it back to his house? Four, five blocks? He drew in a bottomless breath, turned and ran.
All of his energy shifted to his feet and ears. He sprinted like a gold medalist, hurtling garbage cans and any other obstacles that stood in his path. He raced home as fast as his spindly legs would carry him, all the while listening for a sound he prayed he’d never hear.
Less than one hundred yards from his home, Lance was little more than a blur to Jack Murphy who sat on his front steps under the aluminum canopy of his carport. It was only ten o’clock in the morning and already Murphy was on his third six-pack of Black Label. He was wearing a tattered tank top and a pair of shorts that were only zipped halfway up and unbuttoned. His beer belly hung over the lip of his waistband like two gallons of Jell-O in a one-pound bag. His monthly pension check had just arrived in the mail from the county and he was celebrating. “Where’s the fire?” Murphy slurred as Lance approached.
“You’ve got to help me, Mr. Murphy,” Lance pleaded through gasps of breath. “Something terrible’s about to happen on Waterford Lane. I saw a man with a shotgun!”
Murphy let out a wretched belch that Lance could smell out on the street. “Son, the man’s probably just come back from a huntin’ trip. Why don’t you just calm down and have yourself a slug of brew?” Murphy held out the half-empty bottle in his trembling hand and smiled at Lance through his stained and rotted teeth.
“Jeez, Mr. Murphy, I mean it … I’ve got to get some help. I just know … ” Lance’s words were cut short by the repeated report of the rifle echoing off the aluminum walls of the mobile homes between Murphy’ s trailer and Waterford Lane.
Murphy set his bottle down on the stair next to him. “What the hell?”
Lance’s eyes were filling up with tears. “I told you, Mr. Murphy … I told you!”
Murphy returned the bottle to his lips and took a long slug, finishing the contents in one pull. “Aw, it was probably only a car backfirin’,” he waved his hand halfheartedly. “Don’t you pay no never mind to it.”
But Lance did. He carried the memories … and the guilt … with him to this very day. If he had only trusted his instincts, those three people might still be alive today. After Buck killed his wife and her lover, he turned the rifle on himself and splattered his brains all over the trailer’s living room mirror.
Lance had never felt that claustrophobic sensation again, until now.
They were announcing the first boarding call for Lance’s flight when he spotted them working their way through the crowd. There were two of them, both with haircuts that made them stand out like a pair of porcupines in a balloon factory.
Standing on his chair was a big mistake, but Lance wanted to get himself a better view of the layout of the terminal.
Carpenter was the first to see him. “There he is! In front of gate 4B … there!” he yelled as he pointed to the teenager towering over the rest of the mob. Standing well over six-feet tall himself, with gaunt features that belied his physical strength, Carpenter had no problem seeing the boy. Blake, the shorter of the two, had to take Carpenter’s word for it.
“How do you want to handle this?” Blake asked. “We can’t just drag him out of here in front of all of these people.”
Pulling Blake over to one side, Carpenter opened his coat and pulled out his billfold from the back pocket of his slacks. He opened his wallet to reveal an authentic-looking, but totally invalid, silver badge. “Who says we can’t just pull him out of here? Have you got yours with you?”
Blake flashed a sly grin and withdrew his wallet, too. “I wouldn’t think of not carrying mine with me.”
Carpenter put his hand on his partner’s shoulder to emphasize his instructions. “Now remember, we want the kid alive. Don’t flash the badge unless you have to, because you never know who might recognize it. Just show your badge to the kid, and tell him that we’ll be taking him to his mother. Then we’ll calmly escort him out. Quick and simple, got it?”
Blake nodded his understanding. Over countless heads, and through a wispy fog of malodorous tobacco smoke, Carpenter’s and Lance’s eyes met. Carpenter couldn’t discern the boy’s eyes through his dark glasses, but he could feel the cognitive connection. Holding his opened wallet up above the shifting sea of bodies, he displayed the badge to the teenager. Lance’s keen eyes zoomed in and instantly appraised the tin badge as one that any child could purchase at a neighborhood five-and-dime store. Giving the stranger an obscene gesture with his middle finger, he jumped down off his seat and blended into the crowd.
“Where did he go?” Blake asked, scanning the horde of people pushing and shoving around him.
Carpenter began bouncing up and down as though he was riding a pogo stick. With each straining leap, he tried fruitlessly to find the boy. “I think he’s moving toward the bathrooms. Let’s head over in that direction!”
Blake led the way with Carpenter following close behind. The public address system announced the second boarding call for Air Florida Flight 90 to Tampa. At the gate, the ticket agent was speaking over the local intercom, instructing the passengers who held tickets in rows fifteen through twenty-three, that their seats were ready for loading.
Racing down the concourse, Nancy could hear the boarding announcement for their flight. Like a professional skier making a slalom run, she weaved in and out of passengers and bystanders as she rushed to rescue her son.
Lance could feel that the two men were moving on a parallel course to his. They would all be converging on the bathroom. His only chance was to get there first. It was an eerie, tingling sensation he felt in the nerves on the skin of his face. He likened it to what a dolphin must feel when there’s another fish moving alongside it in the water. The perception came as a wave of pressure. He couldn’t see or hear them, but he could feel their presence driving through the crowd.
Blake thought he saw the boy shoving his way through the crowd, but then he lost him again. Carpenter was tagging so close behind Blake that it would have felt uncomfortable if they weren’t such good friends. “Do you see him?” Carpenter asked.
“I think I did, but I can’t be sure,” Blake grumbled, as he pushed another commuter out of his way. “I think we’re heading in the right direction, though.”
“Then just keep moving,” Carpenter responded curtly. “If we lose him, Dexter w
ill really be pissed off at us.”
A young woman waiting by herself in one of the many lines for her seat assignment, panicked when she felt Blake’s hand errantly brushing past her derriere. With a basic instinct for self-defense … and thanks to fifteen weeks of high-impact karate classes … the woman roundhoused her arm to the side and caught Blake just below his chin with her flying elbow. The jarring blow sent the stocky bull of a man staggering backward into his partner’s outstretched arms.
“Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” the woman cried. Blake was sagging like a fifty-pound sack of oatmeal in Carpenter’s arms.
“Do you want me to call for a doctor or something?” the terrified young woman questioned.
Carpenter bent down, letting his partner slide to the ground until Blake was lying flat on his back. A swarm of snickering onlookers gathered around the fallen man. “Give him some air, for God’s sake,” Carpenter yelled. “Move back!”
Blake’s eyes were rolling around in his sockets. His jaw felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. He was positive that a few of his teeth had rattled loose. He was having one helluva day! First, the Cutter woman bowls through him like a bulldozer, probably bruising a few of his ribs, and now this! “What hit me?” he asked, woozy from seeing everything through a ballet of shooting stars.
The young woman who had hit him knelt down and offered her assistance again. “I’m so sorry, mister! I swear it wasn’t on purpose!”
Blake tried to shake it off, but his head was buzzing like an oven timer. “Where’s the … boy?” he stammered.
Carpenter stood up just in time to see what he knew was the boy running into the bathroom. “I think he’s gone into the john. Now we’ve got him cornered.”
Blake reached up from his prone position and grabbed at his partner’s coattail. “Go after him. I’ll be fine here. We’ll meet out front!”
Carpenter gave an angry look at the karate mistress that was now attending to his groggy partner. “Make sure he gets some medical attention,” he stressed.
The woman nodded in agreement. “Would someone call for a doctor?” she begged to anyone in the crowd.
While Lance had momentarily outfoxed his pursuers, his mother was being delayed halfway down the concourse at the security checkpoint. There was a line of at least fifteen passengers in front of her, and three armed customs officers preventing anyone from proceeding any further without first walking through the metal detector. She tapped impatiently on the shoulder of the man standing in front of her. “Excuse me, but I have to get through in a hurry, could you…”
The man turned up the corner of his mouth. “You’ll have to wait your turn, just like everyone else, lady!” he growled through clenched teeth.
Carpenter patted the lump in the right pocket of his gray tweed overcoat as he ran for the bathroom. Just knowing that the pistol was there made him feel more confident. He didn’t want to have to use it, but if it came down to it, he had his instructions. He had to step over and maneuver around a group of seven men who had decided to make the best of an awful situation by buying a deck of cards and playing a quick game of poker on the floor.
Because they were blocking the most direct path to the bathroom door, Carpenter inadvertently kicked the largest player in the back of the head with his knee as he tried to move by. “Hey, jerkoff,” the man bellowed in a thick New York accent. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?!”
Carpenter didn’t have time for this guy. The gun in his pocket was making him feel cocky. Maybe too cocky. Barely slowing down, Carpenter turned, and with venom in his eyes, gave his parting comment, “Go back to the Bronx, pepperoni breath!”
When Carpenter finally reached the bathroom door, he could feel a pervasive chill cooling the immediate area. “God damn it,” he yelled, as he burst through the swinging door. He was greeted inside by a blizzard of blowing snow, howling in through an opened window on the far wall. There were two men standing by the stainless steel sinks caught in mid-wash as Carpenter frantically checked each of the six graffiti-filled stalls behind them. The stalls were all empty.
“Which way did he go?” Carpenter asked, looking toward the window.
As though they had been practicing the choreography for months, the two men both pointed to the opened escape route in unison. Carpenter ran to the window and, shielding his eyes, peered outside. The snow was blowing too hard, making it impossible for him to see where the window led. His stomping feet echoed on the tiled floor in frustration. This turn of events was not good. Reaching up, he slammed the window shut. The sudden silence in the room almost hurt his ears. Where could the kid go to in this crappy weather? Not very far, he assured himself.
Carpenter was just about to leave the two strangers to finish washing their hands when he found himself standing face to face with a group of unexpected guests. The poker club had come to retaliate for his prior polite well-wishes. All seven of them blocked the door. The big, burly one with absolutely no neck glared at the two tourists busily drying their hands. “You two can leave,” he offered in a rumbling voice low enough to measure on the Richter scale.
The two men, who had never met until this very moment, looked at each other and shrugged excitedly. “We don’t mind,” one said.
“Can we stay and watch?” asked the other, as he straightened his clip-on tie.
Carpenter looked at them both skeptically. What the hell is this world coming to? he wondered to himself.
“I think you’ve got very bad manners, mister!” the big Italian growled as his friends formed a tight semicircle around Carpenter.
The two men at the sink smiled at each other. This was so much better than being outside at the gate, having to watch their kids slop frozen yogurt down the fronts of their shirts. Neither of them had ever owned a ringside seat to a fight, much less a real New York-style rumble.
Carpenter reached into his pocket and withdrew the fake badge and his revolver. “I’m a cop, you guys, you had better let me through, or I’ll have to charge you with obstructing justice.”
“Hey Sal,” the smallest of the seven men laughed, “he’s got a badge!”
Salvatore Pestutti was the big one with no neck. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. Each of his friends did the same. When he flipped his open, he revealed a real gold N.Y.P.D. sergeant’s medallion. “Do you want to compare badges, scumbag?” Pestutti suggested. “All seven of us have ‘em.”
Carpenter took a few steps backward until the rear wall stopped his retreat. He held his pistol up by the grip, showing that he meant no harm. “Now come on, fellahs,” he said jokingly, “we’ve just had a little misunderstanding here.” He could feel his stomach tightening like a knot on an anchor rope. “I didn’t know you were cops. Hell, I’ll apologize, and we’ll just call it a day, how’s that sound?”
No one was smiling as the ring drew tighter, except the two tourists standing at the sinks. “Call for some help, for God’s sake!” Carpenter yelled to them. Pestutti rotated his massive head in the tourist’s direction and the burning glance from beneath his single long eyebrow was enough to glue the tourists to the spot. They both grinned stupidly, holding up their hands in submission. “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” one said apologetically.
Carpenter tried in vain to right the pistol in his palm, but the revenge-minded poker players were on him faster than a mongoose striking a snake. The two tourists were beginning to regret their decision to stay as they winced at each jarring jab and slashing uppercut. The fight reminded them of the old cartoons where all you could see was a cloud of smoke and the occasional arm and leg that came flying out. It was over in less than a minute, but not before the gang left Carpenter bloodied and unconscious, propped up on the toilet in the last stall.
Pestutti and his friends walked calmly over to the line of sinks and began washing their hands. The blood dripping off their chaffed and swollen knuckles discolored the metallic basins. Unruffled, they all joked with each other as t
hough the brawl had been just another everyday occurrence. One of the stunned tourists gulped audibly when Pestutti looked over at him. “Never fuck with a New York cop!” the huge man snarled. Then he turned and spoke to his traveling companions. “Come on boys,” Pestutti said to his friends, “we’ve got a plane to catch!”
Sal Pestutti and his pals left the two tourists standing solemnly by themselves. With the utmost caution, one of them tiptoed over and opened the door to the last stall and peeked inside. “Yep,” he said in a whisper, “he’s gonna be out for a while.”
The second man yanked a paper towel from a nearby dispenser and wiped the sweat that had been beading on his forehead. “Can you believe this place? And my wife said, this town is dull! She’ll never believe me when I tell her this!”
Above their heads came a scratching sound like rats running across the fiberglass ceiling panels. Both men spun around when they heard the curious sound. One of the tattered ceiling panels was being pulled back to reveal a young face staring down at them. “Is the coast clear?” Lance asked.
They both signaled that the coast was indeed clear. “In all the excitement, we forgot all about you, son!” one of the two men admitted.
Lance slipped his legs out through the hole in the ceiling and dropped to the floor with the natural agility of a gymnast. “I really appreciate you guys helping me out like this.”
They both shook their heads. “Hey, don’t thank us, thank those other guys. We just helped you up there and opened the window for you, but they’re the ones that beat the hell out of that guy.”
Lance dusted off his jacket and pushed open the door to the last toilet. He wanted to remember what his stalker looked like, but with the man’s face all swollen and bruised, he could only imagine its former configuration.