by Ralph Zeta
“Water under the bridge, Jesse,” I yelled. “Nothing we can do about your brother. He’s dead. You’re not. You are what matters now. I want you to think about what could happen here. Think of the consequences. You want die in this shit-hole? ’Cause I sure don’t.” When I got no reply, I said, “So what’s it going to be, Jesse?”
“You poked around where you don’t belong, old man,” he said.
I heard faint footsteps below.
“You kilt my brother. Now you die.”
“Did you know you took the wrong woman?” I shouted, shifting the conversation. My thin hope was that maybe, if I found a way to push his buttons, it would affect his calculus. “Did you know she had an identical twin sister?”
No response.
“You didn’t fool anyone, Jesse. You made a huge mistake by not killing me and then you screwed up again by taking the wrong woman. And those weren’t the only mistakes you made. You screwed up from the get-go and kept on screwing up. But you’re too dumb to recognize it. Like the good ol’ dumb jarhead you are, you kept going as if nothing was wrong. Whose idea was that—yours or your little brother’s? The one you sent up here to get killed.”
Silence.
“You know, funny thing happened,” I said. “I had forgotten how much blood spouts out from a man’s severed hand. What an ugly mess. Ruined a perfectly good shirt. That’s a real pisser, you know what I mean?”
“I’m gonna enjoy guttin’ you, old man.”
It was the second time he had called me “old man.” I was starting to rankle.
“Who killed the woman, Jesse?” I asked. “Was it you? The big warrior chief or your little brother, the one bleeding out on the dirt like fresh road kill? Cause that’s what you boys are: mangy junkyard vermin.”
“I kilt her. Me,” he said in a steady voice—a man in control of his emotions. He seemed to have recovered from the shock of watching his brother die. I had to admit I found his remarkably fast recovery a bit unsettling.
“I did her,” he went on. “But first, we had us some fun. Too thin boned, but she did me good. Begging for her life while we took turns with her. All of us. No rest for that one. And when we tired of her whimpering ass, I kilt her. You hear me? Me. I did her. The same way I’m gonna kill you and that skinny-ass cowboy boyfriend you got up there.”
“Was that part of the original plan?” I asked. “Or did Paula change her mind, ask you to kill the woman after you found out you snatched the wrong sister?”
He gave a crackle of laughter. “You dumber’n a church bell, old man,” he said. I could almost see him smiling with delight. “Paula got nothing to do with this.”
“So whose idea was it?” I asked.
No response.
“Keep him talking,” Sammy whispered.
“Was it Norma Klein? Did she hire you, Jesse? To frame her sister?”
Nothing.
“What about Milton?” I asked. “You kill him, too?”
This brought a snicker. “Forget ’bout lard-ass Junior. He ain’t coming back. Hungry gators made sure of that. Same as they’ll do you. Then things will be put right.”
“That’s too bad. You killed a good man. Milton didn’t cut off your mother or send her to jail. His wife, Gabriela, the one you tried to knife yesterday in Miami—she did that. She stopped the payments to Paula, not Milton.”
“Don’t you worry about nothing. The bitch is dead. She just don’t know it.”
“Who’s going to kill her, Jesse?” I asked. “You? I don’t think so. Only two ways this ends for you. In handcuffs or in a body bag. Either way, Gabriela Lowry lives.”
Another snicker. “Don’t you worry, old man. He’ll do her right.”
“Who, Jesse?” I asked. “Your older brother?”
“No more talking, old man.”
“You can’t escape what’s coming to you, Jesse,” I said. “You killed two innocent people. And now your brother and another man are gone. That’s four dead bodies. And for what? Best you can hope for is life in a cage. But you won’t be alone. Your uncle Aguilar will be right next to you. And guess who comes out on top? Not Paula and not your little brother. Gabriela Lowry is who. Nothing changes for her. But for your mother and your handicapped brother, everything changes. I wonder if you ever stopped to think about what happens to him if Paula goes to jail. He can’t look after himself, can he? If he’s lucky, he’ll be sent to some state facility away from everything he’s ever known. Ask yourself, how will he fare? Not well, is my guess. But it doesn’t have to be that way, Jesse. There’s still time. Do the right thing. End this. I’m a lawyer, Jesse. I promise you; I’ll do all I can to keep Paula out of jail if you come clean. Tell the sheriff everything.”
Nothing.
“So, what’s it going to be, Jesse?”
I heard racing footsteps below followed by a series of sounds I couldn’t quite make out.
“What’s he up to, J.J.?” Sammy asked in a low voice.
Before I could reply, a motorcycle engine stuttered to life below. I peered over the edge in time to see a shadow straddle the bike then speed away. The rider worked through the gears, the motorcycle’s wavering headlamp shimmering brightly in the distance.
“Is he making a run for it?” Sammy asked, his gun leveled at the fleeing rider.
I placed my hand on his arm. “Save your ammo.”
Sammy lowered his weapon.
We watched the motorcycle’s bright cone of illumination waver away in the distance.
Twenty-Nine
I watched the bike turn right and disappear around the far end of stacked of containers, only to quickly reappear on the opposite side. The whine of the engine rose in pitch and volume as the bike gained speed. My concern mounted when I noticed the headlamp beam suddenly tilt up at a steep angle.
“Son of a bitch!” Sammy said. “He’s heading for high ground.”
The mound Jesse was fast ascending lay some two hundred yards south of us and high enough to afford Jesse a commanding view of the entire junkyard. With that rifle and his superior sniping skills, the high ground gave him a significant advantage. To escape, we would have to traverse a hundred yards of flat, empty ground that lay between the container rows and the piles of rusting metal.
The motorcycle engine died down. Jesse had reached his objective.
“Let’s move,” I said.
We broke into a run. Our footfalls on the hollow container hulls thundered like kettledrums in the night.
“How far?” Sammy asked, his breathing already labored.
“Close!” I could almost see the dark edge where the container dropped off. The next instant, the floor vanished under me.
“Jump!” I shouted as I fell.
The feeling of weightlessness lasted longer than I anticipated. I hit the metal surface below hard and immediately rolled over my shoulder to spread the impact. I heard a second crash beside me, followed by a muffled moan. Feeling a stab of pain along the cut in my arm, I touched the shirtsleeve right over the bandage. It felt warm and sticky.
“You all right?”
“My gun!” Sammy said, and lunged toward the edge of the container, hands in front of him searching the darkness.
Bad idea.
I immediately grabbed his wide leather belt and yanked back. A bullet whizzed audibly close to my ear and smacked against metal somewhere behind us.
We rolled over and back into cover as the gun report trailed past us.
“I lost the gun.” Sammy said. “We ain’t got a chance without it, J.J.”
“Not much we can do about that now,” I said. “But Jesse doesn’t know that. As long as he thinks we’re armed, he’ll keep his distance.”
“What now?”
Great question. Jesse was determined to carry on to the bitter end. He wasn’t going anywhere. And neither were we. We were trapped.
“We can’t leave cover,” I said. “We’ll be easy pickings if we make a run for it. He’s got us pinned down, but not
beaten. We need to hunker down and wait. Make him come to us.”
“Lucky break, old man,” Jesse’s voice taunted from the distance. “I won’t miss again.”
I heard contempt and defiance in his voice. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t understand how a man got so wrapped up in a war of his own making that he failed to recognize that the war was lost before it began. A decent man, an innocent young woman, Jesse’s own brother, and another man lay dead. And for what?
We wormed our way back inside Jesse’s musty container hideaway. As we entered, I picked up a smell I hadn’t noticed earlier. Mixed in with the bouquet of stale cigarette smoke, sweat, and weed was the unmistakable scent of caged animal. Since it was a fresh scent, it occurred to me that I was smelling us.
On hands and knees, in complete darkness, we did a methodical grid search of the space for anything we could use. Besides butts and empty cans and longneck beer bottles, discarded water bottles, some clothing and musty blankets, two rucksacks, a few hand tools and a short stack of rough one-by-six boards—pieces of a former wooden pallet, maybe—we found little we could use.
Spent and thirsty, we sat in the foul darkness, silent and still, our backs against the hard metal wall. Far away, a dog barked in the night. Except for the crickets and a distant cicada or two, the only sounds were of our own breathing.
“What time is it?” Sammy asked.
I glanced at my watch. “Almost ten.”
“When will he make his move?”
“This yard still in business?”
“It sure is,” Sammy said. “Eighteen full-time employees.”
“Then he’ll have to make his move before the employees start showing up for work. My guess is, he’ll wait till first light.”
“So that’s what?” Sammy asked. “Six, seven hours away?”
“Give or take.”
“We gotta figure something out, J.J.”
“I know.”
“Any ideas?”
“Working on it.”
“Pray tell.”
“This container has two access points: the back door and the hole in the side.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s make sure he can only come at us through the side hole.”
“He’ll have to crawl his way in.” Sammy’s pearly whites shined in the inky darkness.
“Can’t crawl and shoot at the same time, can you?”
We jammed several pieces of wood between the rear door bolts. No man, no matter how strong, could force the doors open. We then used the Bowie knife to split several boards into narrow one-by-two sticks, sharpening one end to a point. We were now armed and maybe even dangerous, after a fashion.
Though I did not expect Jesse to try sneaking up on us before sunrise, I wasn’t willing to risk it. We wrapped a few beer bottles in a wool blanket, then crushed them. Quietly, we blanketed the top of the container surface just beyond the ragged side entrance with the glass shards. In the darkness, the shards were all but invisible. To be sure, the glass shards were a crude but effective alarm system. We then propped a pair of mattresses against the container wall a few feet on either side of the makeshift entrance. The mattresses weren’t thick enough to slow down, let alone stop, a rifle round, but they were better than nothing.
We settled down for the night. Sammy parked himself about four feet left of the entrance, two wooden spears on his lap and two more lay on the floor beside him. I sat on the right and closed my eyes and tried to clear the mind. Like Sammy, I had my back against a foul smelling mattress, the long knife and a spear at my side, ready for what would soon come.
Thirty
I don’t know how long I had been asleep. At some point, a rustling sound outside startled us awake. In the faint light that came in through the narrow gap between the wall and the makeshift blanket curtain, I could make out Sammy, grabbing his wooden spears, getting ready. I hand-signaled him to stay put. I picked up the knife and moved to the edge of the entrance, ready for a fight and waited. All I could hear was my own breath.
I cracked the wool blanket curtain over the side entrance a crack and risked a gander at the predawn gray. Thick, fast-moving clouds aloft promised ugliness ahead. A misty breeze made the blanket quiver; the tattered edge tickled my cheek. I glanced at the blanket of glass shards we had spread on the neighboring container roof during the night. The early morning light rendered them all but useless.
I scanned the morning shadows and saw nothing of concern. The rustle that woke us must have been the blanket luffing in the breeze. I gave Sammy the all clear, then fussed with the blanket to cover the two-inch gap. The less Jesse could see, the better off we were. Just as I finished with the blanket curtain, three quick shots pierced the blanket, barely missing my torso.
The sound was surprisingly loud. Sammy and I hit the deck as six more shots went off.
Fingers of daylight shone in through bullet holes in a zigzag, hunting pattern. The gunfire ended abruptly.
Despite the nagging ringing in my ears, I heard racing footsteps followed by the distinctive crackle of breaking glass.
Jesse.
The assault was startling quick. A dark figure crashed through the entrance, taking the blanket down and landed in a rolling motion between Sammy and me.
Jesse deftly unfurled himself free of the blanket and hefted his weapon: a scoped AK-47 assault rifle. Jesse’s dark eyes scanned the shadows for targets.
I could see Sammy. He was about two yards behind Jesse’s right shoulder, a wooden spear in each hand held high, his angular face contorted into a mask of grim resolve.
I let out a loud moan. It was a distraction intended to draw Jesse’s attention away from Sammy. It worked. Jesse pivoted toward me, fully exposing his back to Sammy. The business end of his rifle came to bear on me with astonishing speed.
I slashed in a diagonal motion. The Bowie knife added another two-feet to my already long reach, but Jesse, quick as a cat, somehow slipped the arc of the blade. The edge of my knife struck unforgiving metal with a thunderous clang. A jolt of pain shot up my arm. I had grossly underestimated Jesse’s youth and superb reflexes. As the momentum brought me around toward Jesse, I came face-to-face with the rifle, its muzzle alarmingly close to my chest, his finger closing in on the trigger.
I raised my gaze at Jesse. His grin said it all: he would enjoy pumping me full of lead. As I imagined the effect of the impact of a dozen bullets thrashing through my thoracic cavity, a blur of movement over Jesse’s shoulder caught my eye.
Sammy. His sharp stakes starting to come down on Jesse’s exposed back. Sammy made a loud shriek that did not sound human as he forced the spears down. I saw a flicker of doubt cross Jesses’ eyes as he realized what was happening.
He had a decision to make: shoot me or save himself.
Jesse chose self-preservation.
He began to twist away from me, toward Sammy, the rifle barrel following his moves. Jesse was surprisingly quick and agile, but it wasn’t enough.
Sammy’s spikes found their mark. The spikes sank into Jesse’s upper back, just inside the shoulder blades. Jesse’s body immediately went rigid, his eyes wide with surprise.
My hands clamped down on the gun. It took all my might to force the aim the muzzle up and away.
The gun went off three times. In the close confines of the steel container the gun blasts were startlingly loud. In the ringing silence that followed, the pain in my ears said I had perhaps lost at least one eardrum, if not both.
Jesse’s knees buckled under him. He began to topple, but Sammy held on to both spikes, determined to drive them deeper into Jesse’s body.
A bloody spear tip pierced through the front of Jesse’s dark shirt. Jesse was done. But the determined warrior in him made him hold on to his rifle with every fiber and nerve he had left. A man determined to fight until his last breath.
Our eyes met for the first time. His face was painted with black stripes; his defiant gaze brimmed with fury and scorn. He flashed a mouthf
ul of crimson teeth. Blood oozed at the corners of his lips. Even in the throes of death, Jesse remained a formidable foe.
“J.J.!” Sammy bellowed.
Jesse somehow managed to force the muzzle lower, perilously close to my neck area. I ducked under it just as another shot went off. A head-splitting pain burst from my ears to the very center of my brain. Doing my best to ignore the pain, I drove my shoulder into Jesse’s body, pushing the wounded man with all my might. We toppled over. The full brunt of my weight slammed into Jessie’s lighter frame, forcing the spikes farther out of his chest. Finally, his grip on the rifle eased.
With the immediate threat of death gone, I felt something: a new pain, somewhere low on my rib cage. Was I shot?
“J.J.!” Sammy yelled somewhere above me. “You all right?”
Wincing, the rifle safely in my hands, I pulled my body away from Jesse and inspected the area of pain. One of the protruding spikes had cut into my side. No big deal.
“I’m okay,” I said. My ears rang so loudly, I could barely hear myself speak.
“You?” I asked Sammy.
Sammy nodded then collapsed exhausted on the floor on the other side of Jesse’s body.
I sat up, and removed the magazine and inspected the remaining ammo. It was about half-full. We were lucky. He could have cut us down easily.
I slapped the magazine back into place and glanced at Jesse. He had begun to convulse. Bright-red froth wheezed out with every feeble gasp for breath. Dark blood poured from his chest wounds and pooled at his sides. His breathing became erratic, each rise and fall of his rib cage accompanied by a short hissing sounds.
I watched him die.
Jesse was lucky. His quick death was far better than he deserved.
Thirty-One
Late that day, Sheriff Powell, accompanied by Deputy Southwood as well as Palm Beach County Sheriff Dwaine Markel and one of his deputies, met Sammy and me on the driveway of Norma Klein’s Boca Raton home. Sheriff Powell had telephoned Mrs. Klein earlier to set up the visit. According to Powell, Norma had demanded to know the reason for his visit. Powell told her it concerned Paula Jumper’s and her sons, and left it at that. Mrs. Klein said she would call her stepson, Henry Klein, to be present. Powell didn’t object.