Dirty Power

by Ashley Bartlett

  The car ride was oppressively silent. We didn’t go to Alexis’s house like I expected. We ended up somewhere downtown. It was Thursday night. Warm enough and close enough to the weekend to be busy. People were out. Going to dinner. Hitting the clubs. I remembered being one of those people. Simple, in a way. Unencumbered. I didn’t want the weight I now carried. Like some sort of grotesque interpretation of adulthood.

  Instead, I was here. With Vito. Wearing two wires and praying that this time, this conversation, would be enough to put him away, would be enough to keep the twins and me safe.

  Vito pulled into a parking garage and drove to the top floor. It was empty. Except for two cars filled with Alexis and Vito’s guys. Bad sign.

  “Uhh, Vito, what the hell is going on? Why are Lorenzo, T, and Georgie here? And why did Bobby and Sal and Alexis meet us? Why didn’t they all just go to the safe house?”

  I didn’t need to list off all their names. And I had a decent idea of why we were there. I wasn’t going to live through this night. Unless the Feds were listening to my list and following my GPS. They needed to haul ass, because no one else was coming to save me.

  Vito didn’t answer me. Instead, he carefully pulled the car in next to the others so they formed a loose triangle. They thought I was going to run. They were right. I tried to open the door before Vito stopped, but the locks were engaged. We stopped. Bobby waited until Vito popped the lock and opened my door. He hauled me out with an iron grip on my arm.

  “What the fuck, man? Let me go,” I shouted. Where the fuck were the Feds?

  Bobby put his hand over my mouth and held tight. Georgie yanked my jacket down my arm. Bobby pulled me back against his chest so I couldn’t get away while Georgie worked the jacket off my other arm. I squirmed and twisted and kicked, but Bobby was bigger than me. Way bigger. Alexis sauntered over and patted down my pockets. She took out my cell phone and handed it to Georgie. He walked to the edge of the building and tossed the jacket and phone over the chest high cement wall. Bobby let me go.

  “What the fuck?” I shoved Alexis out of the way and ran to the edge. I planted my hands and hauled myself up to look over. The wires were gone. Five useless stories below me. “God fucking damn it. Why the fuck did you do that?” I shouted. There were people down there. Maybe they could help me. “Help. Please I’m being—” I was going to say kidnapped. It felt dramatic, but it was true. I didn’t get to finish though because Bobby and Georgie grabbed me and pulled me from the ledge. Bobby clapped his hand back over my mouth. They carried me back to cars and set me down.

  “You walked into my house with a wire,” Vito said.

  “What the fuck did you expect me to do?” I asked.

  Vito punched me. In the stomach. I doubled over. Shit. I’d been here before. It wasn’t pretty. But maybe if I took the beating, it would give the Feds time to show up and arrest their asses.

  “You stupid bitch.” Alexis.

  The second I straightened, she punched me in the face. Right below my eye. My cheek got warm. It was going to swell. Or was it? Would they execute me before I had a chance to show the evidence of this beating?

  “We need to move this,” Vito said.

  Alexis nodded. She and Sal climbed into one car. Bobby picked me up and shoved me in Vito’s trunk. I started screaming. He closed the trunk. It was dark. I heard car doors slam and engines start up. I stopped screaming.

  I was going to die tonight. I felt around the trunk, but there was nothing in there. No weapons. Not a damn thing. Vito probably had experience transporting people in the trunk of his car. He probably knew to empty it when he was planning on putting in a body. Or at least the live ones.

  So I did the logical thing. I started screaming again and kicking, punching, beating on the top of the trunk. Maybe someone would hear me. Maybe they wouldn’t.

  After what felt like a really long time, but was probably only ten minutes, I stopped yelling. My throat was raw. My hands hurt. More bruises that would never come to fruition. I started to cry. This was not what I wanted. I’d never really had a plan for my life, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to live it.

  I remembered that last summer before Reese and Ryan and I left home. I wanted ten more of those summers. No, forty more. I wanted camping trips. And beer and darts. I wanted that feeling back where I looked at Reese and my stomach dropped. I wanted to return to the airport in Sacramento and tell Reese to get back on that plane and graduate from Yale. I wanted nights of six-hour movie marathons with Ryan. I wanted to dance with Austin and have him mock me. I wanted to be Derek’s wingman. I wanted to play football with Carson. I wanted all of the meaningless things we did to fill time. All of the silly entertainments that make a community. Our group was small and it was arbitrary, a collection of kids who didn’t quite fit in with the other first graders, but it was ours.

  I missed my mommy and daddy. I still kind of wanted to slap my little sister, but I also wanted to hug her. Hold her tight and tell her that this wasn’t her fault. I was going to die tonight, and she would carry that forever. Are there support groups for that? Sending your sister to the grave. Would Mom and Dad forgive her? Would they forgive themselves? My grandparents were going to have to attend my funeral. No grandparent should bury their grandchild.

  More than anything, I wanted to tell Reese I was sorry. I wanted to give her a lifetime. And all I’d offered was a year and a half. I should have told her in second grade that I was madly in love with her. I should have told her in twelfth grade that I wanted to grow old with her. I should have given her a decent proposal. Had I showed her that I loved her? I’d tried to show her. I had never told her. I’d told Ryan I loved him. I’d told Ryan I loved Reese. But I’d never actually told her that I loved her. I wanted to so bad and now I never would.

  I wanted it all back and it was gone.

  The tears ran down my face and collected in my ears. Snot ran down the back of my throat. I coughed and choked.

  Was this how I would die? Sobbing over my own demise? Shot in the back of the head by a thug? Reese would have to identify that body. That faceless sack of meat.

  No. Fuck that. I wasn’t done yet. I was going to get out of this. And if I couldn’t, I would die trying. I wouldn’t die waiting and dreading a bullet.

  I turned onto my side to do a second survey of the trunk’s interior. A pressure eased from the center of my back. That was when I remembered the spare tire. In most trunks they were under the mat. I felt along where I’d been laying. There was a small ring. I scooted back as far as I could and pulled up. The mat was attached to a piece of board. From where I was, I couldn’t reach around it to get to the juicy insides. So I kicked the board. It jerked out of my hands. I pulled it back up and tried again. After about twelve kicks, it started to bend. With some effort, I managed to get it folded down a bit. Just enough to reach over it. There was a spare tire. I could feel a toolbox of sorts beneath it. I had to get to that toolbox. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t lift out the tire. Not from this angle. I just didn’t have the leverage.

  The road we were driving on got bumpy. Like it hadn’t been paved in a while. It probably wasn’t noticeable while driving, but from the trunk, it was very apparent. I gave the tire one last-ditch effort and failed. The car stopped and the engine turned off.

  There was a series of car doors slamming before the trunk was opened. I heard Vito’s rumbling voice, but couldn’t understand what he was saying. I couldn’t see him because I was barricaded behind the now bent floorboard. The board was jerked down. Two hands reached in to grab me. I kicked out and connected with an arm.

  “Fucking bitch,” Bobby yelled.

  He reached in again and I kicked again. My kick pinned his hand against the edge of the trunk. He screamed and yanked it out. The third time he tried someone else was ready. When I kicked at Bobby, two hands grabbed my leg and pulled. It was Georgie. Lorenzo reached in and grabbed my other leg. Then Bobby took my arms and pulled me out. Bobby threw me on t
he ground and kicked me in the side. I started to retch, but held it in. They waited for me to get up. I got onto my hands and knees, spit a little, and looked around.

  It was some sort of industrial area. There were a couple abandoned looking buildings. Two close by and a mass of others in the distance. We were in a parking lot with shitty lights that cast everything in shadow. Bobby was standing to my right. He was cradling the hand I had kicked. I hoped it was broken. Vito was behind him. Lorenzo and T were on my left. Sal was in front of me with his arms crossed over his chest. He was grinning like this was fun. Alexis was behind Sal. She looked so damn happy that I wanted to knock the bitch out.

  Vito pulled out his gun. This was happening. He nodded over me at T. T came forward and kicked me again. Really, wasn’t the kick from Bobby enough?

  “Get up, Cooper,” Vito said. He was the only one who didn’t look gleeful. He seemed sad. And really pissed.

  “I can’t.” I coughed and focused on breathing like I’d had the wind knocked out of me.

  “Get her up,” Alexis said.

  Sal stepped forward. Good. He was the one I wanted to take on. I took off like a runner from blocks and hit Sal full force. As we connected, I kneed him as hard as I could in the junk. He made a high-pitched noise and dropped. Alexis moved to stop me, but I elbowed her in the face. There was a loud crack and she stepped back. A broken nose for my broken nose. I didn’t stop to see the blood pouring from her face. It would have been satisfying, but it wasn’t worth dying for.

  I’d killed two of Vito’s men. Helped kill a third. But I wasn’t going to let my life balance the score.

  I ran as fast as I could for a couple yards, then started weaving. I left the dull glow of the streetlight. I just had to get far enough away to make it hard to shoot me.

  A crack, an explosion of sorts, rang out. The bullet hit my back and I stumbled. On the right side, down low. In the squishy good parts. I needed those parts. I knew that I had been shot, but somehow didn’t quite process that fact. I didn’t let myself process it. I just kept sprinting.

  The second shot hit the back of my thigh. That one took me down. I wasn’t going to let them win though. I couldn’t. I forced myself to stand up. Fire burned up my leg. The kind of searing pain that can’t be ignored. I took two more steps before my leg collapsed. I wouldn’t be walking anywhere.

  I could feel the warm, wet rush of blood soaking my shirt. The bullet must have gone straight through my stomach because the entire bottom half of my shirt was sodden. I clasped my hand ineffectually over the wound. More out of a sense of duty than to stop the bleeding. I knew that I was going to bleed out. If they didn’t kill me first.

  I tried to push with my elbows and good leg. A sort of backward crawl. I got about an inch before I heard the crunch and rasp of loafers on the crumbling pavement. As I collapsed onto my back, Vito stepped into my sightline. He stood over me, a look of pity on his face. Then he pointed his gun at my head. A shot rang out. The world went dark.

  Chapter Twenty

  If this was hell then they’d done a damn good job. But this wasn’t hell because I didn’t believe in that shit. Or heaven. Or God. Just me. I believed in me. And I was in pain. And darkness. That was the part of hell they’d done a good job on.

  I couldn’t think straight. Or not straight. I couldn’t think at all really. But I could hear. Footsteps. Voices. Maybe this was purgatory. I didn’t know anything about that except that it was somewhere between heaven and hell. Which would make sense. I could hear my mom. That was heavenly. Not a far off voice either like she’d been for two years. But close and real. Except I knew she wasn’t real.

  Maybe the hell part was that I could hear her and I knew she wasn’t real. As if this parade of voices of people I loved was there to torture me. Seemingly real, but so sad that I knew they weren’t. My mommy had never sounded so sad. And I’d never heard my daddy cry. Or ask me the things he was asking me. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t life. They weren’t here.

  Reese and Ryan and my parents. Austin and Carson and Derek. For a moment, I even thought I heard Christopher and Breno. Which was insane because I didn’t know where I was, but I knew they couldn’t be there.

  I’d done things to survive. I’d committed other sins out of pure rage. And there were things I had watched when I should have stopped them. Stopped them or walked away. Esau’s executions were on my hands. I knew that. I knew that when someone had witnessed as many murders as I had, that they couldn’t be clean. So whatever dirty place this was, I knew I was alone. My family didn’t belong here.

  Was this all that death offered? A vague sense of regret that couldn’t be articulated, but couldn’t be escaped either?

  No. Because this wasn’t death. Because I didn’t believe in an afterlife. Did that mean that this was real?

  *

  I woke up two days after I’d been shot. I didn’t know that it was two days later. I just knew it was a long, long darkness later. When I woke, I was alone. My dreams had been playing cruel tricks on me. There was no family here. Only a woman in scrubs that I didn’t know. She went off to bring back someone else in scrubs. They asked me questions. I answered them. I had questions, but I didn’t ask them. I was pretty sure no one could answer them.

  But then Derek walked into the room. And I was so surprised that I thought I was dreaming again.

  “Well fuck me. Vivian Cooper, you dumb bitch.”

  That was when I knew it was real.

  “Derek?”

  “Yes, it’s me. You asshole.” He sat next to my bed and grinned at me. “When you get out of here, I’m going to punch you so hard, you’ll have to come right back to the hospital.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. I don’t know why I smiled. It felt wrong. Also right.

  “Fuck. I better go get everyone. They’ll kill me otherwise.”

  “Is everyone here?” Those three words were really hard to say. Like pushing shards of glass into an emotional void.

  “Everyone and their mom.” Derek stood. “Stay here, okay? It’s really hard to track your ass down.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “Wait. Are they mad?” I asked.

  “I know I am.” But he didn’t look mad.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be. We waited fifteen fucking years for you and Reese to hook up. And then you run off so we can’t even congratulate you. Low blow, dude.”

  I grinned and it felt real that time. “My bad.”

  “You don’t even know. Carson and I stashed a bottle of celebratory champagne when we were seventeen. It’s been gathering dust for five years. Now we can’t even enjoy it ’cause it’s gone to shit.” I laughed at him. “All right. I’ll be right back.”

  I’d almost dozed off when my mom and Reese walked in a minute later. They were arm in arm and smiling. But Reese also looked pissed and my mom looked sad.

  “You’re awake,” Mom said.

  “Trying to be.” For real. Staying awake was hard.

  Mom should have laughed at my weak joke. Two years ago, she would have. But the silence that followed couldn’t be filled with the easy familiarity of mother and child. I’d grown up. In an entirely different direction from the path she had put me on.

  “I told you they were going to kill you,” Reese said.

  “Yeah, well, they didn’t.”

  “Fuck, I’m glad they didn’t.” Reese leaned down and kissed me. “You reek like a hospital.”

  “Better than a morgue.”

  My mom watched this exchange with slowly growing horror.

  “Any chance you guys know what happened?” I was pretty sure I was going to crash any minute, but I needed to know what the hell was going on.

  “Excuse me.” My mom swallowed hard like she was trying not to cry. Then she bolted.

  “So the reunion is going well,” I said.

  “She’s upset.” Reese shrugged.

  “Can’t blame her.”

  “Nope. Christopher has been t
rying, but I think she’s more mad at him than anyone else.”

  “Christopher is here?” I felt my eyes close as I asked the question, but I fought and opened them again.

  “Breno too. Long story. It’ll wait though. Go back to sleep.”

  “Mmm, ’kay.” I closed my eyes. “Wait.” I forced them open again.

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “Stay. Okay?” That was hard to ask. Not because of what I was asking. Not anymore. It was hard because words were hard.

  “I will.”

  “Promise?”

  “Always.”

  I believed her. So I went to sleep.

  *

  The next time I woke up, it was to Breno. I was hoping for Ryan. But his father would have to do.

  “Why the fuck aren’t you in Brazil?” I asked.

  Breno turned away from the window he was staring out of.

  “You’re awake.”

  Why did people keep asking that? Obviously, I was awake. I’d never been one for talking in my sleep. Well, except for that dream where I would yell. But I hadn’t had that in a year.

  “Sort of.”

  Breno sat next to me and smiled in that sad way everyone seemed to have suddenly mastered. “Ryan ducked away from his handlers to e-mail us. He made it clear that we needed to come back and give the Feds everything we had on the DiGiovannis.”

  “Why? They’ll probably arrest your asses.”

  “He was hoping that we would have enough information for a few arrests. That way the Feds would pull you. If Christopher and I need to do time, then it is well worth your life.”

  I laughed. “How’d that work out?”

  “Not very well.”

  “No shit.”

  “No, I mean that we didn’t land in the States until after you had been shot.” Tentatively, he put his hand over mine. It was awkward, but I didn’t care because it was also nice. And I was too sleepy to give a fuck.

  “Did you at least give them something good?”

  “I suppose.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Cooper.”