by Nick James
They dragged Dubuque down the steps. Just as they got to the landing where the steps made that ninety degree turn he began to put up a half-hearted struggle. Prez grabbed him by the belt and hair and half threw him down the steps. With his hands secured behind his back he landed face first, bounced a couple of times, then skidded down the final four or five wooden steps until his forehead came to rest against the concrete pad at the bottom where he remained very still.
“What the....”
“Oh yeah, I forgot, be careful,” Prez said. “Come on, let’s get him into the back of the car.”
The rear hatch was up and they dragged Dubuque toward the vehicle. He was either dead or completely unconscious. His feet left a trail as they dragged him across the dewy grass. They hoisted him unceremoniously into the rear of the vehicle and then went back upstairs to fetch his brother.
The woman on the chair in the kitchen was still snoring. Mobile remained on the floor in exactly the same position they’d left him in, but a small pool of blood had begun to spread across the floor outlining his skull.
The two women out in the front room sounded like they were arguing.
Bobby gave Prez a look. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“About to deal with it right now. I’ll be back.”
“You’re not going to.…”
“No, relax. Think I’m stupid?”
He walked out to the front room, more excited squeals a moment later and then he was back.
Bobby had a questioning look on his face.
“Just a little party treat, they’ll be going for hours after we leave and won’t be able to remember anything about it. Pick him up and let’s get this finished,” he said.
Chapter Forty-One
Prez drove the brother’s car through an empty downtown, took the Wabasha Bridge across the Mississippi river and headed toward the Lilydale flats. Bobby followed in Prez’s car. They passed two other vehicles on the road, but it was still before sunrise and things were otherwise quiet. They stayed on the deserted Lilydale road, heading upriver for maybe a mile along an undeveloped stretch before Prez pulled off into a small gravel area along the shore. He made a U-turn then stopped and backed up so the rear end of the car was just a couple of feet from the water’s edge. By the time Bobby pulled alongside Prez was already out of the car and had the rear hatch open.
Bobby climbed out from behind the wheel and walked toward Prez. Even in the predawn darkness Mobile looked very dead. He didn’t appear to have moved and Bobby couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Prez took hold of him by the ankles and before Bobby could grab onto the body Prez dragged him out of the rear of the car. Mobile’s head dropped three feet and bounced across the gravel a couple of times as Prez took a couple of steps backwards and then dropped him at the river’s edge. Mobile’s feet splashed and the water flowed over his legs to about mid-calf.
Prez caught Bobby’s look. “Relax, not like it matters. They’re going to … Oh Jesus, damn it,” he said, then slowly reached into the small of his back and pulled out the large pistol with the silencer attached.
“Move out of the way, Bobby,” he said calmly, then chambered a round, raised the weapon and fired.
Bobby turned just in time to see Dubuque stumble forward and collapse on the ground with his legs twitching. Prez calmly walked toward him stuffing the pistol back into the small of his back, all the while shaking his head.
“You dumb shit. You always have to do things the hard way. Okay, suit yourself, but just remember, this wasn’t my idea,” he said, then laughed. He grabbed Dubuque by the ankles and dragged him face down across the gravel to the river’s edge where Mobile’s body lay.
“Bobby, check the back of my car. There should be a towing chain back there, get it for me,” he said.
“A chain?”
“Just get it, will you? Come on, we’re wasting time and this is probably not the best place to be hanging around.” He indicated Dubuque and Mobile with a glance.
Bobby opened the rear hatch of Prez’s car and looked around.
“There’s a chain in back here,” he called.
“That’s it, bring it over.”
Bobby gathered up the chain, galvanized links and lots of them, close to fifteen feet, very long and fairly heavy.
“What are you going to do with this?” Bobby asked.
“Here hold these,” Prez said and handed Bobby his wallet and cell phone.
Bobby dropped the galvanized chain on the river shore and took the items with a questioning look on his face.
“Apparently, you don’t watch enough movies,” Prez replied then began to wrap the chain around the brothers’ ankles. He had arranged them so they were lying back-to-back in the mud along the shore. In the graying light just prior to sunrise they both appeared awfully dead. Once he had finished wrapping the chain around the two of them he stood and flipped open a rather large knife. The blade seemed to sparkle in the dusky predawn and looked very sharp.
“What the hell are…”
“We can’t have them coming to the surface, at least not for a while,” Prez said casually. Then he pulled Dubuque’s T-shirt up like he was going to tickle him. He clenched the knife in his fist and in one fell motion jammed it up beneath Dubuque’s rib cage. He quickly began working a sawing motion across the stomach as the internal organs began spilling out into the river.
“Oh, God,” Bobby said and began to retch.
“Can’t risk someone finding them, least not for a while,” Prez said, then moved to the other side and repeated the same procedure on Mobile’s body. Once he was finished he kicked and half rolled the brothers further out into the water. He slit both their throats standing waste deep in the river before dragging the chained bodies deeper out into the river channel. He continued to wade away from shore, pulling the bodies behind him until eventually the water was up around his shoulders.
Dubuque and Mobile remained somewhere beneath the surface. Prez appeared to slide them past him and then push them further out toward the middle of the channel.
He remained out there with just his head and neck exposed as the current flowed over his shoulders. He continued to scan down river for a few minutes, staring at the circling eddies before he finally waded back onto shore.
“You gonna live?” he asked looking down at Bobby still on all fours. Prez half chuckled and shook his head.
Bobby was still swallowing his stomach back down in between taking deep breaths and trying to erase the vision. “Where do you think they’ll finally end up?”
“Probably no more than fifty feet from here. But if and when someone ever finds them there won’t be enough left to tell a story. The carp, catfish, all the other bottom feeders will nibble away at them till there’s nothing left.”
“What about their car?”
“We’re about to deal with that. You just follow me, then I’ll give you a lift back to your place.”
With that he pulled off his shoes, poured out some water and slipped them back on. “A hundred and twenty bucks a pair and these bastards are already shot,” he said and shook his head.
Bobby followed behind as Prez drove the brothers’ car up along the bluffs of Highway 13, then onto 35E heading back into town. It was a few minutes after sunrise and traffic was just beginning to pick up. It was nowhere near rush hour, but definitely busier than when they’d left the East Side with Dubuque and Mobile piled on top of one another.
Prez pulled onto a quiet side street along the edge of downtown and parked the car. He waited until Bobby pulled alongside of him, then he waved Bobby into the passenger seat and quickly slipped behind the wheel. “Okay, man, let’s roll.”
“You’re just leaving their car? Someone will spot it just sitting there for sure.”
“That’s the whole idea, sooner rather than later, with any luck. It’s unlocked with the keys in it. Best thing that could happen would be some high school kids get hold of it and take it for a spin for the next two or thre
e months. By the time the cops find it, there’ll be so many kids in and out of the thing they won’t have a clue. Believe me, this works much better than burning it, hoping to hide it in some derelict garage or driving it out of state.”
“What if no one takes it?”
“You kidding? We’re two blocks from a McDonald’s, three blocks from a high school and Catholic Charities does their free meals around the corner. We couldn’t find a better spot if we tried. That thing will be gone before nine this morning. Now, I’m wet and I smell like river shit so maybe I can take us to that dump you live in and then I can get my ass home, shower and burn these damn clothes.”
Chapter Forty-Two
He phoned Marci once he put the coffee on.
“Hi Marci, Bobby here. Just calling to…”
“No need for you today. Everything is taken care of.”
It sounded as though there was more than just a hint of pleasure in her being able to tell him he wasn’t needed. Bobby, for one, could not have been happier. He was thinking breakfast and then bed. It had been a long couple of days.
“Any idea about tomorrow? I was thinking…”
“I really won’t know anything until tomorrow. With so many people and everyone here accomplishing things, well, I just never know. Best to phone tomorrow morning and I’ll be able to tell you at that time,” she said sounding contentedly smug.
“Okay, guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you for.…” But she’d already hung up.
He ate another piece of toast slathered with a half-inch of cherry jelly. Then he snuggled down into bed and brought the pillow over his head to hide from the daylight. He drifted off a moment later and began to replay in his mind Prez dragging Dubuque face-down across the gravel. Then he replayed Prez throwing Dubuque down the flight of stairs at the duplex. Next it was Prez crushing Mobile’s skull with a baseball bat, the blood dripping out his ears and pooling on the floor. That morphed into Prez calmly taking the pistol from the small of his back and shooting Dubuque. He drifted through a fitful sleep and heard the sound of the river current washing over Dubuque and Mobile while Prez gutted them like a couple of hogs at slaughter.
He woke in a sweat around two that afternoon, exhausted. He had a late lunch of corn flakes, then coaxed the Geo to life and drove back to the edge of downtown to see if the car was still there. It wasn’t.
Prez had been right, the thing was nowhere to be seen. He drove up and down the street twice just to be sure, but the car was definitely gone. He could only hope someone had stolen it and was driving to Alaska this very minute.
Against his better judgment he took the Wabasha Bridge across the river and drove up along the Lilydale flats. He held his speed at five miles below the posted limit so he wouldn’t have to slow and gawk when he came to the patch of gravel.
He half expected to see the two of them, Dubuque and Mobile washed up on shore and surrounded by detectives in grey suits wearing fedoras and carrying cameras with flash bulbs. But nothing like that happened.
In fact, he drove right past the turn missing it completely. He was tempted to drive back and check but thought better of it and just kept on going until he returned home.
He climbed the steps to his apartment and slipped the key in the lock.
“Door’s open, come on in,” a voice called.
He opened the door and there was Prez. He was sipping from a can of beer, one of four that had been in Bobby’s refrigerator, no doubt. His feet rested on the windowsill and he was tilted back in a chair. He looked completely relaxed.
Bobby stepped into his apartment and closed the door.
“Digging your choice of beer, man.” Prez grinned.
“What are you doing here? After the last two days don’t you think it might make sense if we weren’t seen together?”
“Is that anyway to treat a friend bearing gifts? What are you all of a sudden so worked up about?”
“Look Prez, just in case you’ve forgotten, let me remind you. Our activities over the past forty-eight hours haven’t really been all that legal. We could work backwards, starting with the murder of those two thugs.”
“Look man, ain’t no one’s going to be missing those…”
“To the illegal drugs you provided in vacated premises where you had no right to be in the first place. Don’t forget at least one of those females appeared to be underage.”
Prez took another healthy sip, continued to appear completely disinterested and glanced out the window.
“Oh what? God, don’t tell me you’re in here hiding again,” Bobby said.
“You finished with your downer lecture, man. Just thought you might like to see the little gift I got for you.” He indicated the street with a nod of his head.
“What?” Bobby looked out the window.
“Right there, on the street, just before that tree. See?”
Bobby didn’t know cars very well, but he could tell it was a Mercedes of some sort. He knew that because he could make out the logo on the trunk. The car was white, shiny and had fancy chrome wheel rims.
“Tell me you didn’t go out and buy that thing. Where did it…”
“Buy it? For you? You gotta be kidding me. Spend my hard-earned money and then I get to listen to you lecture about leaving a paper trail and the authorities and shit. I don’t think so. No, I didn’t buy it. It was Arundel’s.” He flashed a big grin.
“Arundel’s?”
“Yeah, I don’t think he’s gonna be using it much, anymore.”
Bobby shook his head. “That’s not going to work. I can’t be associated with anything that was Arundel’s. Not his house, not his car. I thought I’d made that clear. I’ll be under investigation before dinnertime this evening. Absolutely not, so thanks, but no thanks.”
“Are you finished pissing on the parade?”
“Prez, I thought I made myself clear. Have you been listening? I can’t afford to be linked in any way to Arundel or anything else we were recently involved in. Hello.”
“That’s what’s so great about the ride, man. It ain’t linked to Arundel. Least not the way you’re thinking. No paperwork or any of that shit. It’s a service.”
“A service?”
“Look at it, see the plates on the thing? Come on, take a look, see?”
Bobby glanced out the window, the license plates definitely weren’t from Minnesota, but he couldn’t tell much else. “I can’t see from up here.”
“New Mexico, Bobby. Cool, right?”
“Yeah, cool, you’re still not making sense.”
“It’s so simple. A dude down in New Mexico, he owes me a favor. This car comes up here, along with a clean license plate. Cost me a grand and that’s it. You like it, she’s all yours to drive. Come next year, I think it’s April or May actually you pay the grand. See, my gift to you for helping me out, giving me the advice on Arundel’s house and all.”
“But it has to have a license and registration, Prez. I would have to get insurance.”
“It’s got all that shit. The papers are in the glove compartment. See, you’re just borrowing it for a bit. Even comes with a phone number someone can call. The man will answer it down there, New Mexico way. Tell whoever’s calling it’s the mayor’s or some damn thing and he’s letting you use it. It’s cool, man. I’m telling you.”
Bobby had to admit even from this distance and seeing just the rear of the vehicle it was a definite improvement over what he was currently driving. He was lucky he hadn’t been stopped driving around town with the damage to the windshield. He glanced over in the direction of the Geo Metro, alone and wheezing next to the dumpster. Someone had written Fix Me in the dust on the hood.
“I suppose I could take a look at it.”
Prez bolted upright and set his beer down. “First decent thought you’ve had all day, man. Come on, let’s go check it out,” he said and tossed Bobby a set of keys.
They walked downstairs and out the back door. As they passed by Bobby ignored the forl
orn Geo Metro, faded blue and next to the dumpster still sporting the two distinct spider web patterns on the windshield from the errant rounds Dubuque had shot at him.
Bobby saw his reflection in the Mercedes from fifteen feet away. It seemed to glow along the side of the curb.
“Come on, man. Get in, take us for a spin,” Prez laughed.
“You think?”
“I know.”
Bobby clicked the button on the key ring. The lights flashed once and the horn made a discreet little beep at the same time the doors unlocked. He climbed in behind the wheel and felt like he was sinking into a plush leather chair.
“Nice, ain’t it?” Prez was all smiles.
“Yeah, I have to say it’s pretty nice.”
“Pretty nice? Shit this thing is royal, man. It was made for some brainy dude like you, Bobby. Just wait till you see what it does with the ladies.”
“I don’t think so,” Bobby said and glanced over at him.
“Suit yourself, you’ll see soon enough. Come on, take us for a spin, man.”
Bobby sat there staring at the dashboard for a minute. It looked like the cockpit on an airliner.
What’s the problem?” Prez finally asked.
“Where the hell is the ignition on this thing? Where do I put the key in?”
Prez shook his head like he couldn’t believe the question, then pointed to a button. “Push that little thing, there,” he said.
Bobby lightly touched the button labeled Start on the dash and the engine purred. “Little different from the Geo, I have to admit.”
“Shit, that thing even start?”
Bobby checked the mirrors and then cautiously pulled away from the curb. Every time the wheels turned he drifted just a little further from reality. It was a gorgeous, wonderfully smooth ride. There were so many controls and lights on the dash he didn’t know where to begin.
“It’s gonna take me a while to get used to this thing.” he said after a few minutes, then put the blinker on and started to head back to his place.