Charlie’s boots crunched glass as he surveyed the scene. The shooter was lying on the truck’s crumpled hood, his head a foot away from the bus grille. Flames from an engine fire licked the man’s clothes. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel.
The bus driver tried to back away from the burning truck, but the vehicles were locked together. Its engine straining, the bus dragged the smaller vehicle twenty feet before the truck’s bumper tore off with a screech and clang. A horn blared as a taxi peeled away in reverse. The driver—who somehow escaped injury—stopped the bus. After her passengers had exited the vehicle, she stepped off and yelled, “People, get away from the fire!”
As the flames rose higher, passengers poured out the bus’s back door. Braving the inferno and spitting blood, Charlie dragged his assailant off the truck hood. “Who are you?” he demanded.
The man didn’t respond. His bloody head flopped like a fish when Charlie put his arms under the man’s armpits and dragged him away. The victim laid his shooter down on the pavement by the bus’s rear tires. A moment later, the truck’s gas tank exploded with a roar, spewing burning gas all over the street and vehicles parked on the curb. Charlie, protected from the blast by the bus, watched the pickup become its driver’s funeral pyre.
Charlie turned back to the shooter, and with his left hand, pulled off his would-be assassin’s ski mask. A white guy. A stranger. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. Meanwhile, bus riders and bystanders scurried north toward downtown. Charlie spit out more blood and bits of broken tooth. As he backed away from the body, a black BMW buzzed by and nearly clipped him, its horn blaring as it raced away. “Athhole!” Charlie shouted.
The bus driver, a matronly black woman wearing sunglasses, approached him. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “So sorry.” Charlie stared at her in dull amazement. He thought he recognized her. Then again, maybe all female bus drivers looked alike. “Police be here soon,” she added.
Taking that as a warning, he backed toward the garage, leaving a bloody trail. He paused when he reached the sidewalk and peered through the bakery’s broken window at the pandemonium inside. An employee was using a fire extinguisher on a burning bundt in the broken display case. Fortunately, the shotgun blast had angled upward, over people’s heads, only to destroy the wall clock and knock holes in ceiling tiles.
“What the hell is going on?” someone shouted at Charlie.
Amy Weller, stooping to coax a customer out from underneath a table, looked up at him in alarm. “Were they shooting at you?”
“I think tho,” Charlie lisped. “Ith anyone hurt?”
“Besides you? I don’t think so. You need an ambulance. Just hang on. We called 911.”
The pain in his jaw was screaming. No cops was one thing. No paramedics was another. Charlie retreated to the garage like a wounded beast into its cave, unsure whether he should run, hide, or seek treatment—which would mean turning himself in, most likely. He slumped against a concrete wall near the elevator and slid to the oil-spotted floor. “Thith day ith completely fucked,” he observed, lolling his head around and closing his eyes.
“Hell-o?”
Charlie looked up to see Dana Colescu standing over him, wearing a red leather jacket and black jeans. She stared at him in horror. “Ohmygawd! Writer Guy! Vot happened?”
Blood dribbled down his chin. “I got thot.”
She took a step back. “Who did this? Vere are they?” She whipped out a formidable black automatic pistol from her purse. Damn. He pointed a bloody, trembling finger toward the garage door as smoke wafted in. “Is it safe?” she hissed.
He shook his head. “They’re dead.”
She clomped up to the garage entrance with the pistol behind her back and looked around, then returned to Charlie’s side. “I’m impressed,” she said, tucking the gun away. “You do good vork. And you kept your shades on.”
“The buth hit the truck. I gotta get out of here before the polith come.”
“Vy? Are you in trouble with the law?”
“Not ovuh thith.” He struggled to get up. “But they have ithues.”
“Issues?” She put a hand on his shoulder and tried to push him down. “Maybe you should vait—”
“No copth,” he said, fighting to stand.
She watched with a worried expression as he staggered toward his car.
“OK, I’ll help you. Just calm down. You’re bleeding all over the place.”
He looked down. It was true. He was dripping on the floor.
“I’ll take you somewhere. In your car.”
He dug keys out of his coat pocket with his left thumb and forefinger and gave them to her. “Old Volvo.”
“Vait. Don’t get in yet.”
Weak from pain, he watched her get a brown blanket from the trunk of her powder-blue Mercedes. She unlocked the Volvo, then used it to cover the back seat. She looked at him and said, “You’ll live. I’ve seen vorse. But you are a bloody mess.”
He crawled in and laid down on his right side as the rest of his teeth hummed in sympathy with their fallen comrade. He lifted his head to peek out the window. Dana drove out of the garage and slipped through a narrow gap between gawkers and a silver car. “Move, bitches!” she shouted as she wove through the growing crowd, barely avoiding a fire truck as it angled to block off the street. Seconds later, an Atlanta police car sped by, its siren screaming. “Vo,” said Dana, her face a mask of concentration. “That vas close.”
It hurt too much to talk; Charlie rested his head against the door. He closed his mouth and swallowed a bit of himself. He gagged but held it down. Dana checked the mirror, then hit the gas and dodged a pothole. She pulled a cellphone from her purse as they approached Marietta Street. Overhead, Newschopper Six thumped by on its way toward the burning wreckage.
“Vot hurts vurst?”
“My toof.”
“I know vere to go, then.”
Charlie expected to go to Grady Memorial, where gunshot wounds were part of the ER’s daily routine—but Dana embraced his No Cops rule. And so, as Atlanta police searched local emergency rooms for a big white dude with half his face shot off, Charlie sat in a chair in a Midtown dentist’s examination room. Dana stood in the door, arguing in a foreign language with a silver-haired man she called Victor, who wore a blue tunic. Victor ended the debate by touching his finger to his lips and stroking Dana’s cheek. Then he left the room.
“I used to vork with Victor years ago,” she said. “He is a teddy bear.”
“You were a nurth?” Charlie asked.
She shook her head. “No. Something else, back then.”
Victor returned with a medical bag. “I am Dr. Blaga,” he told Charlie. “Only Dana knows I vas army surgeon in previous life. Now I’m oral surgeon. I fix you all up. One price for all.” He thought this was tremendously funny and laughed until he coughed.
Blaga produced a syringe and injected Charlie with a painkiller. Charlie wouldn’t remember much about the office visit after that—a mercy, since he got more shots in his jaw, root canal surgery, and a temporary cap to replace his shot-out tooth, in addition to a total of thirty-two stitches on his hand, arm, cheek, and thigh. Plus a bandage on his ear, a gauze patch on his shoulder, and a sympathetic tsk. “Nothing more to do for those,” Blaga said. “But they vill heal.”
Before Charlie knew it, Dana and Blaga were hauling him back to the underground garage. When they reached the Volvo, Blaga handed Charlie two bottles. “Take every four hours. One for pain, one for infection.” The doctor pushed him into the front passenger seat of the car and kissed Dana on the cheek.
“Thankth,” Charlie mumbled, now slurring and lisping.
“You vill come back for permanent crown in three veeks,” Blaga said as he backed toward the elevator.
Dana snapped Charlie’s seat belt with ruthless efficiency.
“I’m thorry I took your day away,” Charlie said.
“That’s all right,” she said, checking t
he mirror. “The gallery’s closed today, anyvay.”
Talking was difficult, so Charlie shut up. He just wanted to lie down in Satalin’s wonderful bed and not be shot at for a while. He dug out the last of his cash to pay the parking fee.
Dana listened to electronic dance music as she drove. After a few blocks, she said, “The police vill be vaiting for you at Castlegate, you know. And whoever sent those people, too, maybe. Tell me: How vorried should I be for you? And me, for that matter. And vy did this happen?”
He owed her at least some of the truth. “I think ith about a book I wrote that ithn’t out yet. About a lynthing theventy yearth ago.”
“A what?”
“Lynthing. When a mob killth a man.”
“Seventy years ago?”
“The victimth land wath tholen, and now ith worth a lot. A lot.” He held his arms wide.
“Enough to send people after you?”
He nodded. “Thith ithn’t the futh time. Theeth people will kill you for fifty dollah.”
She blanched. “You veren’t kidding ven you told me you ver hiding out. Vot vent wrong?”
“With the hiding out? Got me.” He knew he’d made a mistake that gave away his position; he just didn’t know what it was.
“Vot about the other time they tried to kill you? Vot happened then? Vas it just vunce?”
He shuddered. “No comment.”
“They came close this time. You’re lucky that bus came along.”
“I have great faith in public tranthpotathan.”
“You should go to the police.”
“No copth. They have a warrant out on me.”
“Vot is the vorrant for?”
“Nothing.” He waved his wounded hand. “Minor.”
“I don’t see—”
“Look,” Charlie said, becoming agitated. “I can’t ethplain. There are other fotheth at work. Powerful fotheth.”
“Vot-ever. I don’t understand, but I accept. I have deals like that, too. So how do ve sneak you back into your place vithout the cops seeing you? I guarantee it vill be crawling vith them. And people saw your car. It vas the last one out before the police came.”
He thought. She thought. Then Charlie came up with the Man-in-the-Trunk Plan, even though it hadn’t worked the last time he’d seen it attempted. But at least it was something. Dana parked a couple of blocks away and walked to the lofts to retrieve her Mercedes. When she returned, he climbed into the trunk, making her, like Susan, a man-stasher. Charlie felt like he was trapped in a coffin—like he had been in one of his 4:00 a.m. dreams—and could barely tolerate being inside during the time it took for Dana to drive to the lofts, flirt with the cop who stopped her at the garage entrance, and park the car.
When she popped the trunk open, she hissed, “Hurry! The officer is on the radio.”
Charlie saw a black patrolman standing in the garage entrance with his back to them. As he and Dana scurried toward the elevator, Charlie saw that the bus and truck were gone. Two satellite news trucks were parked across from the bakery, and another cop sat in a squad car. Looking from the garage through the bakery’s rear glass door, Charlie saw workmen placing plywood sheets over the broken window. He crouched behind Dana as they entered the elevator vestibule door.
They reached his loft undetected. “How’s that for a first date?” she joked as he stepped inside.
He smiled wearily. “Thank you for thaving me.”
“You owe me one.” She handed him a business card with her cellphone number on it and received his number in turn, then kissed him on his undamaged cheek before leaving. He lingered in the door before closing it, watching her walk to the elevator.
Charlie knew that discovery was inevitable, but he hoped for a few hours’ rest before the world found him. A glimpse in the full-length mirror revealed one messed-up individual with torn, bloody clothes, a bandaged right hand, and a spot of blood coming through the gauze pad on his cheek. He rummaged around in the bathroom cabinet and found a jumbo Band-aid. There. Now he looked like the victim of a cat fight, not a shootout. His right hand hurt more than anything else. Could he write? Not that he had any desire to—he just wanted to crawl deeper into his cave. He took two of the pills Blaga had given him, laid down on the couch, shifted his keys in his pocket, and let the world quiet down.
* * *
The cellphone’s buzz woke Charlie. He answered it before thinking maybe he shouldn’t. Fortunately, it was Dana: “I bring you soup, if you can eat.”
“I can eat. Thanks. You are so good to me,” he said, his lisp receding.
“You have no idea how good I can be.”
He was groggy and wounded, but he wasn’t dead. “I’d like to find out.”
He hung up and slipped on a clean set of work clothes. Day had turned to night. A MARTA train clacked by. Moments later, there was a knock on the door. He jumped up and opened it, smiling expectantly—
Whoops.
—at four uniformed Forsyth County deputies in the hall, two with guns drawn. Of various shapes, sizes, and ages, but of one color, they seemed whiter than most people and reminded Charlie of toughass Pillsbury Doughboys. “Charles Sherman?”
They pushed in and before he knew it, Charlie’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Pappy’s warrants were being served. After his rights were read, one of the deputies asked Charlie how he’d been injured.
“Right to remain silent, and all that,” he replied, sure that they already knew, since the world conspired against him.
Two deputies perp-walked him down the hall toward the elevator. Its doors opened. Dana, holding a brown paper bag, took one look at Charlie and his escorts, froze in mid-step, then lunged sideways inside the elevator and disappeared. Seconds later the doors closed in the lead deputy’s face. “We’ll take the stairs,” he said.
Charlie and the lawmen stepped outside into the cold night air. Two deputies stuffed the suspect into the back of the second of two patrol cars double-parked on Castlegate. Then came a high-speed blue-light trip north on Georgia 400. Apparently he was a high-value target, given the manpower devoted to his arrest. Even so, Charlie hoped he could post bond that night and go home, though the taxi fare would be huge. Oops. His wallet was still on the kitchen counter. As were his meds and cellphone. At least he had his keys. They would come in useful if he ever made it back.
Who to call? The one person he should be able to count on was most likely part of the conspiracy. Even if she wasn’t, it had been months since he’d spoken to Susan. And he recalled that she’d already stated she wouldn’t bail him out of jail.
Although the Novocain had worn off and he could speak normally, Charlie continued to take advantage of his right to remain silent. He assumed someone had given the sheriff his address after the hit job failed, but the lawmen seemed to know nothing about him, except that he’d pissed off Ike Cutchins, which apparently put him in good company. He learned that the two deputies he rode with had, over the years, served three criminal trespass warrants on the old man’s behalf—two on hunters who had merely stepped over the wrong fence.
The squad cars pulled into the parking lot of the Forsyth County Jail, a low-slung building across the street from the courthouse in Cumming. A metal garage door rattled up and the car pulled in. The door rattled down on chains behind him, and Charlie realized this was the real deal, dungeon-wise. At the booking desk, Sheriff’s Captain Morgan told Charlie, “We have you as a flight risk. You’ll need a bond hearing.”
“What does that mean?” Charlie asked.
“Means you’re staying here tonight.”
“How long can you hold me?”
“Seventy-two hours. You’ll be out in the morning, most likely.”
Charlie was taken to a cluttered room, fingerprinted, and photographed. When Morgan asked what had happened to him, Charlie stood mute. “Note his existing injuries,” Morgan told the booking deputy. “We don’t want to get blamed for someone else’s doing.”
Afterward,
the young deputy gently pushed Charlie into a room with a phone, closed the door, and stood outside. Forsyth’s newest inmate picked up the receiver and felt a burst of butterflies in his empty stomach. Who does a hermit call at a time like this? He didn’t know anyone he could impose upon, even to save his ass. He couldn’t ask Dana for help after all he’d put her through that day. Besides, her number was in his wallet.
He had to call someone. “Don’t be a pussy,” he said as tears of self-pity welled up. “So you don’t have friends. You must have at least one ally. Think, think, think.”
Charlie snapped his fingers, even though it hurt. Angela. Ironic, eh? He hoped he remembered her number, though he was by no means sure she’d help him. He guessed correctly and got her answering machine. He made an impassioned, rapid-fire plea: “Angela, I’m in the Forsyth County Jail. They’re holding me without bond on bullshit charges that are part of a vendetta against me because there are certain people who don’t want the truth to get out. I need to hire Sandra. If you could get a message to her, I’d appreciate it. This is my one phone call, so if Sandra can’t represent me, could you get in touch with an attorney? Please help. Of all the jails in the world, this is the one I do not want to be in. I repeat: I do not want to be here, so please—”
Beep. “Thank you for your message.”
After that, Charlie exchanged street clothes for an orange jumpsuit. He hated that color. It reminded him of Tennessee’s football team. He was placed in a large gray and white holding cell, joining two DUIs and a wife beater, all Caucasian. Charlie lay awake on his green mat, staring at the bars. Over the next few hours, a dozen more prisoners shuffled in. As his medication wore off, the pain sharpened. To keep his mind off his misery, Charlie tried writing a prison novel in his head, tentatively titled Nobody’s Bitch. After a couple of hours, his brain grew tired of the literary effort. Shortly after he dozed off, four noisy drunks were thrown into the cell, now full to the max. So much for moving to Forsyth County to escape crime.
Brambleman Page 35