Squatting, her hands on her knees, Maureen spat whatever she could gather from her mouth, sucking in deep, noisy pants of cold air through her nose. Get it together. Stop shivering. Stop sweating. Get it together right now. She couldn’t stand it, the stink of her own fear. When her pulse finally backed down out of her ears, she stood, looking back at the hotel room. Fuck the consequences. Shoot that bastard.
Maureen watched the hotel room door, in case someone had heard her moving around, but no one appeared. They could be in there for hours, she thought, or they could be done any minute. She couldn’t get caught hanging around the parking lot when the party broke up. But she wasn’t leaving. That shit inside would not continue. Get Sebastian outside alone, she thought. That was the trick. Call him and tell him she was there. Blow his brains out the second he walked out the door. He’d never suspect her capable of such a thing. Never. In the panic after the shot, she’d get away.
Maureen spat at her feet one more time. The world went blurry around the edges. Her hand reached into her pocket, her fingers wrapped around the gun, her index finger tapping the trigger. Her legs started walking back toward the motel. Her eyes scanned the dark doorways for a hiding spot. Do it like that, out of the dark like a monster.
Call him. Kill him. Run.
Simple.
She pulled her cell from her pocket. It rang. Really fucking loud.
The screen lit up and the phone rang again, impossibly loud in the quiet parking lot. Maureen dropped it like it had bit her hand. The phone clattered on the pavement, sounding in her ears like a car crash. No. No way. It rang again. She looked up at the motel room. No way that motherfucker inside is reading my mind.
She dropped into a crouch and grabbed the phone, scuttling back to the car, falling on her ass at the front tire. The phone rang again. She flipped it open and pressed it to her ear, panting into the mouthpiece and staring at the hotel room door.
“Maureen? Where are you? What are you doing?”
Shit. Waters. “Where am I? I—uh, I’m in Jersey. Why?”
Jersey. Fuck. She’d just told Waters too much, blown her chance. No way she could do Sebastian now.
“Why are you not here?” Waters demanded. “With your mother, like you said you’d be.”
Maureen’s belly tightened and turned cold. Not with fear but with disappointment. She couldn’t believe it, the crushing weight of it. This was what she’d been reduced to. This was the arc of her life. She’d gone from a little girl crying for her daddy to come home to a small woman weeping at a lost chance to commit murder.
“Maureen.” Gentler this time.
She felt worse, a thousand times worse, than when that prick professor had left her hanging on the edge of an orgasm. Like that, but worse. At least back then she could sneak into the bathroom and finish the job. Not the same, not satisfaction, but a relief nonetheless. Tonight, there’d be no relief. Just more running, more hiding. Just more faking it.
“Maureen,” Waters said, “tell me you’re okay.”
Maureen couldn’t do anything but sputter into the phone, her brain blanking on any reasonable lie. She had no motivation to tell one. She didn’t feel like faking it tonight. She supposed, though, she should say something.
“I found him. I’m looking at his motel room right now. What he’s doing, it’s fucking awful.”
“Listen to me,” Waters said. “You gotta get out of there. Immediately. I know about the gun, about your mom’s car. I can figure out the rest.”
“Detective, huh?” Maureen asked. “Then how come I found out what Sebastian’s been doing before you did? How come I know where he is and you don’t?”
A long pause. “If you do this, I cannot protect you. It’ll be impossible.”
“I’m out here alone. Doing your fucking job.”
“I can’t protect you from the consequences,” Waters said. “You or your mother. You think she wants to see you through Plexiglas for the rest of her life? ’Cause that’s where you’ll be. It’s murder this way. Think, Maureen. Of her, at least.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s the truth,” Waters said. “Fair’s got nothin’ to do with it. Do you still have the car?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Get in it,” Waters said. “And come home now.”
“Why don’t you come get him? I’m at Sunnydale Suites, on Route Thirty-Five. He’s got girls here, doing things for him. And guys. Doing sick things. Why don’t you come and stop him? You can’t let him get away again.”
A long pause. “You saw these things?”
“Yes. Sex, torture, drugs. I saw the whole thing. It’s a nightmare.”
“I’ll send someone,” Waters said. “I’ll get the state police on it. But promise me you’ll leave right now. I can’t say when they’ll get there.”
“Don’t you need me here? I can be a witness.”
“You can be a witness,” Waters said, “from someplace a lot safer than where you are now.”
“I got a gun. I got a blade. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“And Sebastian has how many guys with him?” Waters asked. “All of them with guns. Count on it. And they are definitely better shots than you. For chrissakes, Maureen, have you ever fired a gun in your life? Never mind at someone.”
Maureen let her phone hand drop into her lap. She tapped her head on the car fender. Waters made sense. She’d done her job. She had Sebastian nailed. She was the wounded soldier in the foxhole, calling in air support. Nothing cowardly in that. It didn’t matter who called the cops, as long as they came. She looked at the phone. The longer she dicked around, the longer it would be before help arrived. Waters wouldn’t make that call until Maureen promised to come home. She put the phone back to her ear.
“Okay.” She got up, pulled open the car door, and climbed in. “I’m in the car.” She started the engine. “I’m on my way back now.”
“Good,” Waters said. “I’m gonna hang up and call the Jersey State Police. You did the right thing. We’ll be here when you get back.”
Maureen tossed the phone on the passenger seat and swung the car toward the road. From the parking lot exit, in her rearview, she saw Sebastian step from the hotel room. He looked her way, frowned at her taillights, and then bent his head over his lighter.
“Good riddance, motherfucker,” Maureen said. “One day you’ll know it was me that got you.” She turned out onto 35 and drove away from the motel.
Sitting at the U-turn, waiting for the light to change, Maureen considered pulling onto the shoulder and waiting for the blue lights of the state police to come ripping through the night. How many cars would they bring, five? Six? It’d be something to see. She was sad to miss it. She could read about it in the papers, maybe watch it on the news—if she could get herself a new TV in time. Maybe she could watch it over at Molly’s. They could drink champagne toasts, to the people they’d saved from Sebastian and to the people that they hadn’t. Maureen felt her eyelids drooping. God, this was a long light. Should she run the red?
The bright headlights of a car coming up behind her bounced off the rearview and stung her eyes. She blinked up at the traffic light, half blinded, and saw it change from red to green. White light flooded her car. That prick behind her was coming on way too hard. He’d never stop in time; he’d have to swerve hard to cut around her. Unless he didn’t. Maureen stomped on the gas, cutting the wheel. The K-car’s tires screeched and spun in place. The car gained some forward momentum. Then she got hit. The impact was like a thunderclap.
Maureen shot forward, her chest and forehead slamming against the steering wheel. She bounced off the hard plastic, thrown back against the seat, the air punched out of her body. She’d gone blind in one eye. The other eye saw four traffic lights hanging above. Shouting voices in the street behind her. Male voices. The crash, the adrenaline surge, left her badly nauseated. She raised her hand to her cheek, felt the warm blood on her fingertips. A gash on her head, pouring blood
into her eye. Out, she thought. Out of the car. The car door flew open when she leaned into it, and she tumbled into the street, the asphalt biting into her hands and knees. She could breathe, but every inhalation felt like being stabbed. Two hands grabbed her coat and pulled her to her feet.
Against her will, Maureen’s head rolled back and her good eye saw nothing but black sky. More hands. In her coat pockets. She could feel her feet on the ground but couldn’t feel her legs. Her head came forward and she focused on the blurry faces, the face in front of her: silver hair, gray eyes, the spark of a flash of smile. Sebastian.
Her scream came out as a gurgle.
She found her legs, kicked out. Sebastian laughed and threw Maureen hard against the car. She collapsed in a heap against it.
“This is what she had,” the other man, Sebastian’s boy from the parking lot, said.
He held out the gun. Maureen pawed the blood from her eye.
“Don’t need it,” Sebastian said. “And neither does she.” He leaned over her. “Sorry about your mom’s car.”
Mom’s car, Maureen thought. Fuck me. He’d seen her as she pulled out of the motel parking lot, and then he’d run her down. The other man tossed the gun into the weeds of the divider. Maureen bent her knees, drawing her feet underneath her. The blade, she thought. They haven’t found it, haven’t even looked for it.
“Put her in the fucking trunk, Rico,” Sebastian said.
Rico had his hands on her before she could reach the knife. When he yanked her upright, Maureen’s hand came away from her boot empty. She slapped his face. He punched her in the mouth. She blacked out, came back in an instant. The boy threw her over his shoulder. Maureen screamed and kicked and punched. The boy dumped her in the trunk of the Crown Vic. Maureen spat the blood from her mouth in his face. He backed away, wiping at the spit and swearing. When Maureen tried to sit up, Sebastian pressed a gun to her forehead, pushed her onto her back in the trunk. He said nothing, leaning into the gun until Maureen went still.
“You ever have one fight you like this?” the boy asked.
“Not for twenty years,” Sebastian said. “That’s what makes this one special. The fight in her.”
He slammed the trunk closed.
26
Panic. Panic is the enemy here. That’s what Maureen told herself as she bumped along in the trunk of the car. She needed to breathe as best she could despite the dampness that surrounded her, seemed to coat her lungs with mold. She needed to focus on where they were taking her and what she was going to do when she got there. Thoughts of her possible fate—of being thrown off a bridge or being burned alive along with the car, of being gang-raped by masked men—she forced away, out into the dark where they could swirl around her like ghosts but couldn’t touch her. Pay attention, she thought. Stay here. Stay with now. When that trunk opens, you have to be ready. You can’t lie there big-eyed and twitching like a fish in a bucket when the time comes.
After only a few moments in the trunk, Maureen realized they’d been traveling too long to be headed back to the motel. When the car picked up speed, moving in a straight line, she knew they’d left the local routes for the highway, though she couldn’t tell in what direction they were headed. At one point, her heart jumped and she reached for the knife as the car slowed to a stop, but then it was moving again. She kept the knife in her fist. One by one, Maureen put the sounds around her together. The stop had been a tollbooth. A metallic hum underneath the wheels confirmed her hunch: a bridge, the Outerbridge Crossing, probably. The trip hadn’t lasted long enough to reach another bridge. So Sebastian was taking her back to Staten Island. To the Narrows? To the tracks where Dennis had died? Maybe some abandoned pier, the same one where they had set Tanya afloat. Stop, Maureen thought. Pay attention. When you get out of this trunk, you need to know which direction to run.
Not long after crossing onto the island, they left the highway, the car slowing and stopping for signs and lights. No sense, Maureen thought, in attracting attention to the car. Not with a live girl in the trunk. Because they had left the highway so soon, Maureen knew they were staying on the South Shore, the quieter, less populated end of the island. The roads got longer, the stops less frequent. The sounds of other cars disappeared. As the Crown Vic bounced through one pothole after another, Maureen cradled her head as best she could in her arm.
They were headed to the industrial end of the island, not far from the Outerbridge, where paint and concrete and tile got made, where dump trucks and cement mixers pounded the roads to hell and the buses hardly ran, where the corpses of old tugboats and abandoned ferries tilted half sunk in the waters of the Arthur Kill, rotting for decades on end and forgotten. Sebastian and his boy were taking her to the part of the island where practically nobody lived or hung around at night after the whistle sounded and the workday ended. A part of the island where the cops hardly ever ventured—a forgotten corner of a forgotten borough. They would leave her there and forget her if she let them, dead and half sunk in the cattail marsh that ran the edge of the Arthur Kill. Food for sand-worms and crabs and whatever else made its home in that dirty water.
Then it hit her: the Black Garter. The real Sebastian’s real headquarters. That’s where they were taking her. Which probably meant they wanted to keep her alive.
Just don’t think, she told herself, about why.
The car turned a corner, leaving even the battered asphalt behind. Maureen listened to the crunch of gravel under the slowly turning tires. It wouldn’t be long now. She did her best to get her cramped legs underneath her, to brace herself on one arm. She rolled her wrists and ankles, trying to work the feeling back into her limbs. With the way her heart was beating, how could any part of her be short on blood?
She flicked open the switchblade, put it in her teeth for a moment to wipe the blood and sweat off her palm. Panic is the enemy, she thought, not only for her but for her captors, too. All she needed was a moment of confusion. Enough time to get her feet on the ground. Once she got moving, no one would catch her.
The car slowed. It came to a stop. The first one reaching into the trunk would get the knife. In the eye, the hand, the belly, anywhere she could reach. Maureen heard the slam of one door, then the other. Neither man spoke. She heard their shoes on the gravel road as they came around the back of the car. Maureen took a deep breath, squeezed the knife as hard as she could in her fist. The key was in the lock.
The trunk lid opened and Maureen launched herself at the figure leaning in, stabbing straight ahead. Her hand split the arms reaching toward her. She didn’t know who she’d hit, blood splashing her eyes before she could make out the face. But this time it wasn’t her blood. She heard a gasp and a gurgle and saw her knuckles pressed hard against an Adam’s apple. She saw her white fist wrapped tight around the black handle of the knife, buried to the hilt in a pale throat. She twisted the blade a quarter turn. The mouth at the top of the throat spat blood. She pushed against the weight of the man falling in her direction: not Sebastian, but the boy who had put her in the trunk. As he collapsed, he reached for his throat. Maureen pulled away the knife.
She tumbled out, landing flat on her back on top of the twitching boy, blood in her hair. Her eyes searched the sky for Sebastian. A dull fluorescent glow emanated from somewhere and provided enough light to ruin her vision after the time in the dark. Sebastian appeared, looming over her like a giant, reaching his long arms and his huge hands down for her. Maureen knew she’d never reach his throat or his heart before he grabbed her; she was too small.
She feinted for his face with the knife, then cut her stroke and plunged the blade into his leg, hoping for the knee, a tendon, an artery. Anything to cut him down to where she could finish him off. There’d be no second-guessing this time, no hesitation. Again, the blade penetrated to the hilt. But Sebastian didn’t go down. He roared and ripped his leg away, the knife going with it as he staggered from the road to the edge of the cattails.
Maureen rolled off the boy and on
to her hands and knees, stones scraping her palms. Dust flooded her nose and mouth, stung her eyes. Maybe another weapon lay in the trunk of the car. Forget that and get going, she thought. The time for hand-to-hand combat was over. She rose up into a track start and launched her right foot, then her left. Sebastian caught her by the hair.
He yanked her to him, grabbed her head in both hands, and threw her down in the road. Halfway to standing, Maureen’s knees gave out and she went facedown in the rocks and dust. Blood thickened in one nostril, clogging it. She gagged, short of breath. Not now, she thought, not here. Don’t give out now. She turned to see Sebastian lumbering toward her, one leg all but dead, her knife sticking out of its calf. With his good leg, he threw a kick into her gut. His bad leg wouldn’t hold him and Sebastian collapsed.
Dry-heaving, her middle spasming with pain, Maureen tried crawling for the reeds. She could smell the brackish Arthur Kill in the distance: sea salt and rust and gasoline leaked from the tanks across the water. There had to be half an acre of marsh between her and the deeper water. If she could reach it, filthy or not, she could get lost in that half-acre. If she had to, she could hide all night in the weeds. But before she made the cattails, she crawled on top of Sebastian’s shoes.
Maureen rolled over onto her back, panting, staring into his upside-down face.
“You are a piece of work,” Sebastian said, heaving for breath. “I gotta be honest. I’ve about had it with you.”
Maureen flipped onto her knees, lunging for Sebastian’s calf. She got fistfuls of his torn pants. The knife was gone. Sebastian reached down and gripped Maureen’s skull in both hands. He lifted her by her head and gathered her to him. Maureen could feel his ragged breath in her hair.
Sebastian held her tight, pinning her arms to her sides. He dragged her alongside him, the two of them limping down the road toward the lightless Black Garter Saloon. The old bar showed no signs of life. Maureen forced herself not to think about what might be waiting for her inside. She thought about fighting but knew she lacked the strength to do anything but collapse if she did manage to escape Sebastian’s embrace. Maybe now, for these few moments, she had time to rest, to find whatever shreds of strength she had left. Maybe he’d have to let go of her at some point. Maybe to unlock the Garter’s front door.
The Devil She Knows Page 31