When One Man Dies

by Dave White

  Still I could hear Najera rumbling toward me. The key was to be quicker than him. Both times, he had caught me off guard. Now I had him at that edge. Sure my head still ached from his punch, but at this point every little advantage was necessary.

  One minute passed. My stomach tensed. The snapping branches grew louder.

  Another minute. Any second now he’d come into view. I held my breath. The breaking twigs, the clack of feet on rocks were deafening.

  I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. The smell of rain, the patter of the drops soaked my wool cap, then my hair. The rain was harder now, the drops combining to roll off the leaves of the trees. My clothes were heavy. But I was faster than he was. I knew I was.

  He came around the curve, slowly, as if he sensed he was close to me. No more crackling branches. No more swearing. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. Ten feet and he’d be next to my tree. He kept moving. Five feet. Four.

  Three feet. Two.

  One.

  I leapt from the back of the tree onto Najera. We both went down hard. On top of him, I swung three quick rights into the center of his face. I pulled back my hand to land another blow when Najera grabbed both my shoulders and tossed me off him.

  I was on my back, and he was rolling to his feet. Rain washed over us. I tried to stand, but he caught me in the ribs with the toe of his boot. I gasped and tried to inhale, and he caught me in the cheek with a huge open paw. On my knees, I spat. I could see it land on a rock, and then wash away in the rain. My ears rang.

  He hovered over me. “This is it,” he said. “I never should have let you live. Never should have taken you at your word. You screwed Burgess when he paid you. You lied to my wife. You lied to me. You deserve to die.”

  He cocked his right fist, and quicker than I’d imagined possible he crushed my nose. I was on my back and he was over me. His huge paws wrapped around my throat, pressing on my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were empty.

  “You fucking asshole,” he said.

  The world went blurry, a montage of blood and rain and blackness. Still he pressed tighter. My hands flared and I couldn’t think. My mouth dropped open, desperately trying to find air.

  “You’ve ruined my life,” I think he said, but it just mixed with the white noise.

  I flailed my arms, clawed at his hands. My index finger’s nail tore off against his skin. Water pooled in my mouth. I saw Jeanne. I saw Gerry. I pawed at Najera’s face.

  He spat, and liquid from his nose dripped onto me. My fingers felt along his face. My vision was going. The world turned purple, and then completely black. My hands felt something squish under his hairline. I jabbed my thumb at it. Pressed harder. Felt it give under the pressure, felt a warm liquid ooze across my knuckle. Najera screamed. The soft tissue I pressed on popped under my fingers. He released my throat.

  “Goddamn it! Shit!” he screamed. “I’ll fucking kill you, you fucker!”

  I rolled onto my side and massaged my throat, tried to let the air find its way into my lungs. I coughed up liquid. Slowly, like a fade- in on a movie, my vision returned.

  Najera was still screaming. He flopped and rolled on the ground. I still had time to recover. I fought my way to my feet. Soaked, dripping, I realized we were on the edge of the precipice. To my right, water rushed.

  “I’ll fucking kill you,” he said again. It must have taken a huge effort to even stay awake, and he fought his way to his feet. He staggered once, then rushed me like a linebacker. Wrapping me around the waist, he pushed us both over the edge. We tumbled along a steep slope, hitting what had to be every jagged branch and every stone until we both landed in a shallow stream.

  He was on his feet first. Everything ached on my body, and I didn’t think I’d be able to get up ever again. Pieces of his skin, of his eye, hung from his face. His teeth were clenched and blood poured from his face. This wasn’t going to end until one of us was dead.

  I found a rock the size of a softball with my right hand. I hefted it and he tried to rush me again. The water slowed him and he was unable to gain any speed. Getting to my feet, I clocked him with the rock. He went down in a heap. I hit him again.

  And again. And again. And again.

  I screamed as his skull crushed beneath my hand. I kept screaming until I was sure he wasn’t going to get up again. The water rushed around us. I collapsed to the ground, exhausted. I spit blood.

  The rain didn’t stop.

  Chapter 53

  Walking up the incline was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. Everything ached. My windpipe wasn’t crushed, I didn’t think, but it was hard to breathe. The cuts on my fingers had reopened, bled, and ached. I limped and my nose burned. I had to use branches and trees to pull myself up.

  Every inch felt like a mile. At one point my left leg was ankle-deep in mud. It took me a good three minutes of wiggling to get it out. Pushing my way, I reached the trail and looked back down. Throughout the adrenaline-fueled fight and my recent climb, it felt like the incline was huge, fifty feet or more. But looking back I saw it was no more than fifteen to twenty feet.

  I sprawled on the trail, feeling pebbles in my back. I tried to catch my breath.

  Another dead body by my hand.

  I pushed myself to my feet and limped back along the trail to my car. Getting there, I remembered my keys were on the ground, where I’d dropped them after getting hit. But when I went to reach for them, they were gone. After a minute my eye caught them dangling from the lock near my trunk.

  I opened the trunk and found that my rifle was there, but my handgun was gone. I shut the trunk and unlocked the driver’s-side door. My cell phone was blinking in the cup holder.

  Starting the car, I dialed my voice mail.

  Bill Martin’s voice came on. “You are one lucky son of a bitch. But there’s one more thing you need to know. Jeanne didn’t pick you. And if she had lived, you would have found out why.”

  What the hell was he talking about? It didn’t matter now. I had to get back.

  With my nailless finger throbbing with pain, I put the car into gear and pulled out to find the road back to New Brunswick.

  ***

  I picked up the tail within five minutes. I pulled out onto Route 202 to head back to 287 when a Mercury Cougar pulled behind me. In the streetlights I could see clearly that it was the same shape as Burgess’s car. He wasn’t trying to hide. Which meant that either he had been waiting for Najera to come out, or waiting to see who pulled out shooting at them. Either way, he was following me now, and he probably knew I wasn’t Najera.

  My car clock read nearly two-thirty. The streets were empty, and it was difficult for Burgess to hang back, so he tailgated. Good idea.

  I couldn’t go back to New Brunswick yet. I needed allies. I crossed through Morristown and into Madison. Next to a car dealership was an abandoned parking lot. It seemed like as good a place for this as any. I pulled into the lot, took out a business card, and dialed Daniels’s number. Left a message.

  The Cougar slammed into the passenger door. My head cracked the driver’s-side window. My seat belt locked, and I couldn’t undo it. The Cougar backed up and rammed my car again. Glass shattered and metal crunched. I couldn’t get a hold on where I was anymore. All the pain, all my injuries were slowing me down. I couldn’t react. I couldn’t get out of my car.

  The Cougar backed up and rammed me again. My car had to have been totaled. The Cougar, too. Blinded by its headlights, I saw the silhouette of the driver’s door open and Burgess’s thin profile get out. I fought with my seat belt; finally got it unclicked. Then I found the door handle.

  I got out of the car, stumbled out actually. I saw Burgess stumbling as well.

  “I see you ran into Rex,” he said. His words were slurred. His body probably took the brunt of driving into my car.

  “Najera?” I asked, leaning against the fender of my car. My legs didn’t seem to be able to hold me.

  “Yeah. He got you good.”
>
  “Not as good as I got him.”

  “You said that the last time you looked like this.”

  “Yeah, but this time I’m not lying.”

  Burgess looked over my shoulder.

  I nodded. “Listen, it’s over. This whole thing is over.”

  Burgess pulled a long syringe out of his pocket and began to move toward me. “I’ve been waiting for you. Only one of you would come out of the trees alive. I hoped it was you. I wanted to be the one to kill you. Fuck you for all of this. Three of my best men out of commission. My business is a mess.”

  “Jesus is still alive. The police know what you’re doing. They’d love to take down the leading drug dealer in this area. It was stupid, trying to take out your competition.”

  “Do you know what this is?” he hissed, nodding at the needle. “It’s a fucking concentrated form of heroin. I’m going to fucking overdose you.”

  “Jesus I can understand. He’s held on to New Brunswick for years. And he’s in with the cops. You get too close to him, he’d squeal on you and you’d be out of business. Hell, even Diane I can see. She held that school market. Did she ever work for you?”

  Burgess didn’t answer. But the small twitch in his eye was as good as a yes. “Keep talking, you fucker. You’ll be dead before you know it.”

  “And you had Pablo leave her out on the front gate of Drew as what? A message for anyone thinking of messing with you?”

  Another twitch. He stepped closer, and a drop of liquid fell from the needle’s point.

  “But why Gerry? Was he really a threat? He was small-time. As far as I can tell, he was only making crystal meth and selling it to a few college kids. To make rent. Diane you left wide out in the open as a sign for everyone to see. But you had Najera make Gerry look like an accident.”

  He pressed his left arm against my shoulder. I tried to get up, push him off me, but my legs still didn’t work. I felt the point of the needle against my neck.

  “Why Gerry?” I asked again. “I need to know why.”

  The needle hadn’t broken skin yet, and Burgess’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know who Gerry is.”

  His hand stiffened and the syringe penetrated my neck. I tried to push him away, to grab at the syringe, but I kept missing. I waited for the sweet burn of the drugs to take over.

  The sound of sirens made him turn. With one final effort, I reached up and swatted the syringe from his grip. It bounced slightly when it hit pavement. Two marked cars and an unmarked sped around the corner. Daniels had gotten my message.

  “Hands on your head! Both of you!” a loudspeaker announced.

  I did as I was told. So did Burgess. Two uniforms hopped out of the first marked car and grabbed Michael Burgess, handcuffing him and reading him his rights.

  Daniels and Blanchett approached me. I slid off the fender and sat on the cold ground.

  “Put your hands down,” Blanchett said. He pointed at Burgess. “Where’s Pablo Najera? He’s not with this asshole?”

  I just shook my head.

  “What happened to you?” Daniels asked. “I walked into a door.” I tried to smile.

  “Tough door.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “We should get you to a hospital.” I didn’t argue.

  ***

  We waited in the hospital until morning. Apparently my cuts and bruises and broken nose weren’t enough of an emergency to get immediate medical attention. While we sat, Blanchett received word that some cops had found the body of a man matching Najera’s description in a ditch in Jockey Hollow. I didn’t know anything about it.

  The waiting room was just busy enough. A man who had shortness of breath and chest pains. A woman with a bone broken so bad it stuck out of her arm. A kid stabbed in the leg with a nail. Fun stuff.

  The antiseptic walls and bright lights hurt my eyes and occasionally I’d close them to try and get some sleep. Daniels wouldn’t let me, though. She was afraid I had a concussion. She kept asking me questions. Why was Burgess following me? Did I know anything about Najera’s death? Why did they keep getting reports that Jockey Hollow looked like it had been shot up? Was I still willing to testify, even against Burgess if it came to that?

  The only one I answered was the last one. Now that I knew what was going on, I was definitely willing to testify.

  It bothered me, what Burgess had said. Why would he admit to me about everything else, but claim no knowledge of Gerry’s death? Unless he was telling the truth. It bothered me well into my examination.

  It bothered me until they reset my nose. The pain was the only thing I was thinking about.

  Chapter 54

  Over the next few weeks a lot happened and nothing happened at all. I sat around listening to police officers and lawyers talk to me. I thought about what Michael Burgess had said. He didn’t know Gerry. I thought about death and mortality. Never liked what I came up with. Over those few weeks my injuries healed.

  Eventually what it came down to was a plea bargain. They didn’t have any proof that I killed Pablo Najera, and without testing the rifle, they didn’t have any proof that those bullets found around Jockey Hollow were mine. But if I refused to testify, Daniels and Blanchett made it clear they’d follow through a lot harder. I told them I would testify that Michael Burgess hired Pablo Najera as a hit man and was directly responsible for the murder of Diane Peterson and Gerry Figuroa.

  At the same time, Burgess’s men refused to testify about anything, and my own trial was dropped. Lack of evidence.

  Daniels and Blanchett fought to get my license renewed. Martin fought against it. Ultimately I’d been involved in too much violence for it to matter; the state of New Jersey would not allow me to be a private investigator anymore.

  When Daniels broke the news to me, an early-May morning, she tried to apologize.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m going back to school. In fact, I have my admittance exam this Saturday.”

  Daniels wished me luck. It sounded like she was trying not to laugh.

  Tracy and I went to dinner a few times, but things weren’t working. She wanted to talk about the case. I didn’t. She still loved her uncle. I didn’t want to talk about the drug war. I didn’t want to tell her that he wasn’t the kindest man I knew. Or the loving man she was beginning to think he was. On a Thursday afternoon in May, she told me she was going back to Jesus.

  The day she was supposed to leave, I asked her to take a ride in my new preowned Toyota Celica before we went back to Asbury. I had to share something with her. We drove to Anne Backes’s house.

  “Where are we?” Tracy asked, as we waited for the old woman to answer the door.

  “Visiting someone I think you should meet.” The door opened and Anne stared up at us.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked me. “Ms. Backes, you’ve heard about your husband?”

  “I read the papers.”

  The afternoon was warm, a contrast to the rainy, bipolar temperatures of April. The sun beat down and the air was still, constant. The weather that day had the feel of stability.

  As if registering the name for the first time, I heard Tracy whisper to herself. “Backes?”

  “Can we come in?” I asked. “I don’t think so.”

  To my right, I could feel Tracy shaking. She put her hand on my arm as she put the information together.

  “Ms. Backes, let me introduce you to Tracy.” I could have said the last name, but I wanted Anne Backes to figure it out on her own.

  “Tracy?” She squinted.

  “Aunt Anne?” Tracy said. “Oh my God. It’s been so long.”

  Tracy reached in to hug and Anne fell into the embrace. The frail woman shook along with Tracy and they both had tears in their eyes.

  “Come in, girl. Come in,” Anne said.

  We followed Anne in through the house. There were pictures now on all the shelves. Most of them were pictures of Anne in black-and-white. Old pictures. In a few of them I recognized
Gerry. In a few of them, there were two children posing, a boy and a girl.

  Tracy walked around the room looking at the pictures. Sometimes she’d pick one up and stare at it for a while, tracing an outline with her finger. Anne watched her. They’d both smile at times, shed a few tears at others.

  Picking up one of the pictures of the boy and girl playing, Tracy asked, “Is this me and Steven?”

  Anne walked over and looked. She said, “Yes.”

  “Who’s this girl?”

  She hesitated. “One of Steven’s friends.”

  “I don’t remember any of this. I can’t even remember you.”

  “You were young when I left.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  Anne Backes looked at me and seemed to be turning things over in her head. We both knew it was too late to dance again. The truth was out in the papers; there wasn’t anything to hide anymore.

  “Your uncle. He was a bad father. He’d go out, he’d party. He smoked weed, did drugs. Sold drugs. He was never around for Steven. He wasn’t around for me.”

  “So you left the two of them?”

  Anne looked at me again. “I never told anyone I was the smartest woman. I tried to force the issue. The last time I saw Gerry, he came home with a wad of dollars in his hand. Probably a thousand dollars cash from selling drugs. It had been a good week. Steven went to him and asked for a cookie. Gerry barely glanced at the kid. He was drunk. He tossed Steven a twenty and told him to go buy one.”

  Anne wiped at her eyes. “I told Gerry he needed to shape up. To be a good father. I told him I was leaving him alone with Steven. He had to shape up, clean up. Then I’d come back. I promised him I would, but I promised myself it wouldn’t be until we could be a whole family. No more of the drug shit. By the time Gerry cleaned up his act, Steven had grown up. Mostly on his own, I think. Then he got sick and died.”

  Tracy was crying now. “You never got to see your son?”