No Accident

by Dan Webb

  After hearing so much about Crash, Alex couldn’t wait to meet him—especially because Alex suspected that Crash and Luke were in cahoots with the man with the birthmark on his hand. Alex thought about Beto’s trembling fear of Crash and about Sheila’s description of him. Violent, decisive, yet faultlessly polite and almost deferential to the company executives—it was hard to imagine everything he had heard applying to a single person.

  A man in a business suit entered the room and everyone else ambled to their seats. He was a young, thin man with dark hair. His stiff manner and serious expression poorly masked his nervousness. Alex whispered to the man sitting next to him, “Is that the famous Crash Bailey?”

  “Hell, no,” the man whispered. “Crash has been AWOL for the last two days.”

  The boss called out Alex’s alias in a tremulous voice. “Is Al Franks here?”

  “Here,” Alex said, and he raised his hand.

  The man nodded and began reciting Al Franks’ duties for the day. The other men drifted into conversations among themselves, until one of them called out, “Dude, someone’s trying to steal that truck.”

  Alex rushed with the men to the windows, where he saw a man inside the cabin of a pickup truck—his uncle Hugh’s truck. The man’s hands were beneath the dashboard, but his shoulders and elbows were a whirl of motion above it.

  “I can’t believe it,” Alex said.

  “I saw him jimmy the door open,” one of the men said.

  “He’s stealing my truck!” Alex said. His new coworkers looked at him in disbelief. Then Alex heard the ignition engage, trying to turn the engine over. The thief sitting inside his uncle Hugh’s truck pumped a fist with delight. The security crew around Alex groaned. He couldn’t let himself be the second Fogarty brother to have a truck stolen out from under him.

  “You just lost your truck,” one of them said.

  Another said, “Just give me your tag number and we’ll call it in.”

  Alex imagined them making that call, and then imagined having to explain to his coworkers why the truck that he claimed to own was registered to someone named Hugh Fogarty rather than Al Franks.

  “The hell I’ve lost it,” Alex said. He took the heavy wooden frame of the window in both hands and heaved it upward. A coat of paint that held it down let go with a sharp crack. To the cheers and hollers of his new coworkers, he sprinted across the parking lot.

  Alex reached his truck just as the thief had got the engine running and put the transmission into reverse. Alex managed to grasp the driver’s side door handle. Chasing the truck backward, he hurried his feet as if he had been dropped onto a treadmill. The truck backed out of the parking space and then stopped suddenly—and Alex’s momentum threw him to the ground. From there he looked up helplessly at the truck’s tailpipe.

  Alex instantly scrambled onto his hands and feet and grabbed hold of the truck’s rear bumper—it was a rash gesture and should have brought him injury. But the thief struggled to put the truck into drive, and Alex had time to clamber over the tailgate and into the pickup bed. There he rose into a low wrestler’s crouch. The truck lurched forward. Alex’s feet went out from under him and he found himself hanging over the tailgate and staring once again at the tailpipe.

  Working against the momentum of the accelerating truck, Alex crept forward again. It was like trying to run in a swimming pool. When he finally reached the cabin, he gathered his weight and slammed his elbow into the rear window—his left elbow. Alex wanted to save his right arm to beat the thief senseless.

  The window didn’t break. The thief, startled, hit the brakes. That launched Alex into a cartwheel over the roof of the truck—a sky with puffy white clouds wheeled across his field of vision. He landed on the hood with a belly flop that knocked the wind out of him. Alex felt himself begin to slide forward, his legs dangled alarmingly over the grille, and he flung his arms toward the windshield in desperation.

  Almost by accident his left hand touched one of the windshield wipers, and Alex held on tight. The thief steered the truck erratically down one row of parked cars, then another. All the while Alex gripped the wiper rod, while his right arm waved free, jerking spasmodically with the truck’s movement the way a flag snaps in the wind. Alex now faced the windshield and saw the thief’s face for the first time—he was a white guy, probably a teenager, and looked as scared as Alex felt. How would their tango end? Alex figured the kid wouldn’t have the sense to slow gently to a stop and flee on foot.

  Alex was right. The thief turned on the wipers, and the motion flung Alex across the hood—now his feet dangled over the front left headlight. How fast were they going? Alex couldn’t tell. But even at twenty miles an hour, falling off could be deadly, and Alex knew they were going faster than that.

  The truck tumbled over a speed bump—hard—and the wiper rod snapped off in Alex’s hand. The force of the bump launched Alex over the side of the hood. His heels hit the asphalt off to the side of the truck, and he backpedaled furiously to keep his balance until he fell sprawling onto the hood of a parked car. There he lay, stunned and motionless, like a frog on a dissecting table.

  From that vantage point Alex watched the truck squeal to a stop in front of two Liberty security cars that blocked its passage. Alex rolled out of the dent he had made and, waving the windshield wiper overhead like a lasso, ran yelping toward the action. There a knot of his coworkers surrounded the thief. They shouted conflicting commands and tossed him to and fro like a medicine ball.

  With another agenda in mind, Alex ran past them and jumped into the cabin of his truck. He swiftly grabbed anything with his name or his uncle’s out of the glove compartment and threw it under the seat.

  * * *

  When the cops finally came and took the kid, he looked relieved to be out of the custody of the Liberty security team. The whole team was pumped all day, and they took Alex to their favorite bar after work, where Alex felt compelled to buy them a round. His new friends then reciprocated with rounds of ever more exotic and vile liquors, and by the time Alex returned to Sheila’s apartment he was in bad shape. She wanted to know all about Alex’s first day at Liberty, but Alex couldn’t string two sentences together. She stormed off to her bedroom, offended that Alex had gotten so drunk. Alex followed to try to explain that he had to drink in order to ingratiate himself with the rest of the security team, but in his liquored state he couldn’t say “ingratiate.” At that, Sheila rolled on the bed in laughter, and Alex knew she was all right. The last thing he remembered was kissing her neck, which tickled her and made her laugh even more. He woke up still wearing his clothes. Over coffee and eggs, he told her all that had happened the first day. She thought it was a good start. Alex did, too.

  At the office, the nervous fill-in supervisor pulled Alex aside before roll call.

  “The chief wants to see you.”

  Alex’s heart leapt. “You mean Crash?”

  “No,” the supervisor said. “Mr. Hubbard.”

  * * *

  The windows of Luke Hubbard’s personal office were framed by heavy ballroom curtains that were drawn almost fully closed. The shadows and dark wood made Alex feel like he had stepped out of a bustling office and into an old fashioned social club.

  Alex had no inkling why he had been summoned. He hoped that it wasn’t because someone at Liberty had figured out that Al Franks was a fake identity.

  Alex stepped stiffly into the office, keeping his weight off an ankle he’d twisted a little when falling off the truck. Luke asked if his ankle was hurting him. Without booze, it hurt like hell, but Alex said he was managing fine and, to Luke’s evident surprise, Alex immediately accepted Luke’s invitation to prop his ailing limb on a coffee table. The tabletop was fashioned from a single cut of teak.

  “I heard about your adventure yesterday and I wanted to meet you,” Luke said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hubbard.”

  Luke told Alex to call him by his first name. It felt more like an instruction than an inv
itation. Luke sat down across from Alex and asked him a little about his background. Alex told the truth, just with the names changed. Alex found Luke simultaneously charming and aloof. Luke struck Alex as a stereotypical businessman—focused, practical, social, not given to uncompelled self-reflection. But would planning the murder of the employees in the van have been possible at all without some reflection during the process? Alex wondered how this man with perfect hair and manicured nails would have rationalized that bloody business to himself.

  As they spoke, Alex got the sense that Luke was sizing him up, too. “About yesterday,” Luke said after a while. “Is it true what I hear, that you’re not going to press charges against that boy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But—just put aside the theft—the way he drove, I hear you could have been killed.”

  Alex shrugged. He obviously wouldn’t be revealing to Luke why he needed to prevent discovery of whose name the truck was registered in. “Sure, I could’ve been killed,” Alex said. “But I wasn’t, and chasing after him was my choice anyway, and not a particularly rational one.”

  Luke chuckled. Alex could see that Luke was responding well to his understated approach.

  “Anyway,” Alex said, “he’s just a kid, and I know the whole thing got him scared shitless—excuse my language—no need to ruin his life over it.”

  “You’re surprisingly philosophical for a security guard,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, the guys are ribbing me about it, but I don’t care.”

  Luke nodded sagely. “Al,” he said, “I called you up here because I had a feeling you might be the right man for a special project and, after speaking with you, I now believe that you are.”

  Alex waited for him to continue, and he did.

  “What do you know about Alvin Bailey?” Luke said.

  “Crash? I’ve only heard of him. Seems like sort of a legend around here.”

  “He is, and deservedly so. The energy business is very competitive. The need for security is great. And Crash has always protected Liberty from its enemies, both external and internal.”

  Enemies. Alex thought that was a revealing choice of words, and Luke’s voice had now taken on a more formal tone as he extolled Crash—a tone of admiration and almost of reverence. Alex felt like he wouldn’t want to become one of Luke and Crash’s enemies. “People around here seem a little scared of Crash, to tell you the truth,” Alex said.

  Luke raised an eyebrow. “If so, that’s fine with me—a reputation can be just as effective as reality. But in reality Crash has a gentle heart.”

  Alex nodded, but he had trouble squaring that assessment with some of the stories he had heard. At the bar last night, Alex’s coworkers had given him a lot more stories.

  Luke continued. “I know this about Crash because I know him better than anyone else. I suppose his size and build can intimidate people—he got his nickname playing football. But he’s a complex man . . . loyal, scrupulously principled, by his own lights, at least. But at the same time he’s clever and practical, very grounded.”

  Luke’s gaze drifted past Alex, and his mind seemed to have drifted as well. Alex wondered where Luke was going with this.

  “Crash is in some trouble.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Alex thought.

  “The police suspect he’s killed someone, a woman I loved very much.”

  Petra P, Alex thought, remembering the stories in the paper.

  “And you want me to help clear his name?” Alex said.

  “No,” Luke said. “Between you and me, I’m quite sure he did it. I want you to find Crash before the police do.”

  Luke’s tone suggested he believed Alex’s obedience would be immediate and unquestioning. Alex slid his ankle off the table and started to stand up. “I’m not a hit man,” he said flatly.

  Luke shook his head and motioned for Alex to sit.

  “I don’t want you to kill him,” Luke said. “Just the opposite, I want you to bring him to me so that I can get him legal counsel and negotiate his surrender to the police.”

  That was an answer Alex didn’t expect. “Luke, I don’t know you, but I’ve got to ask—you said you loved this woman?”

  “I loved her very much,” Luke said. He spoke in a monotone, as if reciting a mantra. “I love her son, too, like he’s my own. Little Dmitri is with me now.”

  “I don’t get it. Why not let the cops handle this? Getting involved will only make them suspect you.”

  Alex threw in the bit about the cops to see if it rattled him—he wondered if Luke had a hand in Petra’s death—but Luke didn’t look offended or surprised by the suggestion.

  “I’ve been through that,” Luke said. “My fear is that if the police get to Crash first they’ll hurt him or kill him—or the other way around—and I don’t want that.”

  “Now you’re the one being philosophical,” Alex said. “If I were you, I’d want revenge, friend or no friend.”

  “Mm. The urge for revenge is natural. But reverse the roles, and I know Crash would be thinking about how to protect me. He’s always put my interests above his own.”

  “You make him sound like sort of a sucker.” Alex thought Luke must take Al Franks for a sucker. To Alex, the most likely explanation was that Luke had Crash kill Petra—for whatever reason—and now wanted Alex to find Crash so that Luke could stop Crash from snitching—permanently. And at that point, of course, Luke would need to stop Alex from snitching. This game was getting complicated fast.

  “Crash is definitely not a sucker. More like . . . a son. You see, he didn’t have a real family, was mostly in foster homes as a kid. Took out all his rage on the football field, and managed to get recruited to ’SC. That was about ten years after I graduated. Anyway, his junior year he finally wins the starting fullback spot, wreaks all kinds of havoc on the field, until one day he blows his knee out. Football was all he had. Next, he’s flunking out of school—and he’s no dumb jock, by the way—and then late one night he beats a convenience store clerk into a coma because the guy couldn’t make change right.” Luke shook his head at the memory. “Football players get away with a lot at ’SC, but this was off campus. Coach wanted to help but didn’t know how, so he called me.” Luke gave a little shrug as if that explained the rest of the story.

  “And?” Alex said.

  “The clerk came out of his coma, and I got some boosters to throw a little money his way not to press charges. I had Crash come work for me, first as a personal assistant, later as part of the security team, and pretty quickly after that as head of security. I took him under my wing, and I think sort of took over for Coach as a father figure. And as a result he’s been unfailingly loyal—”

  “Killing your mistress is loyal?”

  “My fiancée,” he corrected. “What I suspect is that Crash, somehow, did think he was serving me by . . . hurting her. Maybe he got a little confused. I’ve seen more of that lately . . . maybe concussions from his football days . . . but we are where we are. Don’t the Christians say ‘turn the other cheek’?”

  Alex was too stunned to say anything. Luke seemed not to notice.

  “So you’ll help me?”

  Alex wanted to decline, to get away from Luke as fast as he could and forget the name Al Franks. Either Luke was deluded or else this was a trap—and either way was dangerous. But Alex knew that this stroke of good luck was his best chance, probably his only chance, to get close to Luke and Crash and get the information that he needed—assuming he could then get away before he found himself in Luke’s crosshairs.

  “You just want me to find him?”

  Luke nodded. “And bring him to me.”

  “I guess I can do that.”

  Luke’s face opened up in delight, relaxing for the first time in their conversation. “I knew you would, once you understood things. The baboons who took you drinking last night—no offense, but that’s what they are—are capable of thinking only with their biceps. This job requires a
philosophical perspective.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Luke smiled and pressed his hands together. “Now then, let’s discuss logistics. Do you own a gun?”

  37

  The pistol Luke gave Alex was for self-defense. That’s what Luke told Alex and what Alex told himself. Self-defense against Crash? Against the police who pursued him? Alex sure as hell wasn’t going to draw a gun on a cop. He acknowledged he probably couldn’t draw a gun on anyone. Luke didn’t elaborate on the dangers he was sending Alex to face, and Alex didn’t ask him to. As far as Alex was concerned, he was on his own errand, not on Luke’s.

  And the target of Alex’s errand was Luke. Alex discussed it with Sheila after he left Luke’s office, and he intended to do just enough work to win Luke’s confidence and then get information on the accident. All the same, if Alex was going to be looking for Crash, he felt better having the pistol holstered under his jacket.

  But it felt downright weird to have the gun with him now, driving around town to check in on his investment properties. He pulled his truck into the driveway of one of his houses—the vacant house that Del had left to go stay in—and saw right away that the doorway was too dark. When Alex exited the truck, he confirmed that the reason was the front door was open.

  He silently cursed Del. How could his brother be so irresponsible as to not close the front door?

  As Alex got closer, he wondered whether he’d had a break-in. He’d had break-ins before—one time, by some teenagers who left some empty beer bottles and wrote the word ‘weed’ in feces on the living room wall; another time, by some drug addicts who left behind used needles but no written record of what the needles contained. It was likely that his dark doorway meant uninvited guests.

  The gun felt all right now. Alex put a hand under his jacket, so that he could reach the pistol if he needed to, and with the side of his foot eased the front door all the way open. Nothing jumped out at him from the living room, or the kitchen. When he entered the bedroom, he recoiled. A man lay curled up on the floor, bleeding onto the carpet. His face was bruised and one eye was swollen shut. He was groaning. Alex kneeled down by him.