by John L. Monk
Rachael’s body was wrapped in a blanket in the trunk.
Andre was a hitman, but he had a code. No women or children. He wouldn’t be able to account for his whereabouts, but perhaps that famous code of his would help when he inevitably went to trial for the murder of Rachael Anderson. Maybe it would lend him that extra smidgeon of credibility needed to convince a jury of his innocence. Soon it would be out of my hands. Ultimately, I cared more about Rachael’s family knowing her fate than I did about his freedom.
After paying, I found a shady spot in the lot and enjoyed my food. I thought about Rose and tried to separate my feelings for her from the attractive body she’d inhabited. She was right: I was a sucker for a pretty face. But did I really care for her, the person?
I did when we were skinny-dipping. The way she’d laugh… And those times we’d gone walking and her hand slipped into mine. That was real. I smiled at the memory of us under the peach trees, sitting there holding each other. That was real, too. I felt sure of it. But was it love or ordinary loneliness that held us together? And while I was asking interpersonal questions, was it even possible for me to fall for someone who’d lured a poor defenseless dog to its death?
“She was just a kid,” I said, feeling like a jerk for judging her. She’d read my story, knew what I’d done in my girlfriend’s dorm room. She hadn’t mentioned a word of it to me. Hadn’t asked any questions about my past, in fact. As if the mistakes I’d made no longer mattered.
Though my original plan was to travel to New York and shoot Lenny with Andre’s gun—as payback for the dead maid and Rachael—I was fresh out of kicks and no longer had time. Four hours later, shortly after dark, I parked in an empty lot a few blocks from the Jersey City Police Department. Across the street were residential houses. Lots of witnesses.
New Jersey, in addition to its prohibition of the death penalty, also banned all fireworks. Even snakes and sparklers.
Carefully, I arranged the fireworks I’d bought at South of the Border just behind the car so my activities couldn’t be seen from the road or the houses. There were a lot of great fireworks, each decorated with supernovas or nuclear explosions or starbursts in every color—artillery shells, 12-shots-in-a-box that cost seventy dollars each, missile batteries, roman candles, and screamers the sales clerk said were loud enough to “wake the dead.” A fitting sendoff for Rachael.
Despite the absurdity, I left the trunk open so she could see the show.
“Okay, here goes,” I said, grinning from ear to ear at how pissed Mom would be if she saw me.
My initial impulse was to light the 12-shots, but forced myself to keep it for the grand finale. I started with the fountains, which I lit at the same time with the barbecue lighter I’d retrieved at the sinkhole. What a show! Very bright, with lots of crackling sounds at the end that snapped with little sparks of silver. The screamers were next, and boy were they loud. If the fountains hadn’t gotten me enough attention, every window and door across the street was now open with people watching me. A few even came outside.
Next up were the mortars, which I could load again and again in their reusable, yet perfectly safe, cardboard tubes. They shot flaming balls of sizzling fun into the air, each exploding with a different color. What a blast!
Despite having put on a pyrotechnic show for the last fifteen minutes, I became aware of a profound and heartening realization: the New Jerseyites hadn’t called the cops. A moment later, I realized why. In addition to the illegality of fireworks, this was the state where you couldn’t even pump your own gas. The poor citizens were so starved for dangerous entertainment they’d neglected to call the police.
That wouldn’t do at all.
I put the 12-shots-in-a-box on the hood of the car, but didn’t light it. Instead, I fired Andre’s pistol into the air—bang bang bang! It was a big gun, a .40 caliber, and the shots wouldn’t be confused with firecrackers. Afterward, I placed the gun safely on the hood of the car.
The people outside watching ran for cover, and those in the windows ducked back out of sight. I felt a bit guilty about that. Here they were having fun and I’d gone and ruined it.
The cops arrived five minutes later. They pulled up to the lot entrance and parked in a way that blocked me from exiting. With guns drawn, aiming my way, they shouted at me to get on the ground.
Ignoring that, I lit the grand finale.
One after another, the rockets flew into the air, screaming all the way, before exploding in a dazzling starburst that turned nighttime into day. This was what I’d missed my whole life, and I couldn’t stop grinning. Even the cops looked up and stared, witnessing the wondrous spectacle in person for the first time. The tales they’d tell their grandchildren…
When the final rocket exploded and the radiance faded, I raised my hands in the air. Then I came around the car, dropped to my knees, and lay down. I remember the cops coming forward, shouting for me to place my hands behind my head.
A minute after they clamped the cuffs on me, I was finally kicked out.
* * *
The next few rides were pretty standard: victims, bad guys, television, fast food, two full confessions to the police about this or that, and a suicide for a serial killer who liked to keep locks of hair from his victims. He’d had a thick photo album full of the things, the sick bastard.
I could have called that 800 number to test the landlord’s promise of a place to stay, but didn’t. I guess the offer struck me as creepy. According to Rose, he knew who she was, what she was. And Rose said she’d told him about me. On the phone, he’d said: “Any friend of Rose is a friend of mine.” If he didn’t know I was like Rose, why extend the offer at all?
Another reason I didn’t call was Rose’s warning: Don’t trust him. He uses people.
While on an east coast ride, I considered going to Georgia again to see if Rose was back in her house, but held off. Honestly, I needed time to think—to see how I really felt about her. Maybe she needed time, too. Also, what would happen if I stepped through the door and yelled, “Honey, I’m home,” and out stumped Rose on a wooden leg, smiling a toothless ninety-year-old grin? I’d have to reassess the bitter truth that beauty is only skin deep, and I hate bitter truths.
I planned to look her up again, the same way I planned to drop in on Lenny one day, to pay him back for Ricky. Just not right away.
Chapter Fifteen
Newly arrived from the Great Wherever, the first thing I noticed was a terrible pain in my head. The second thing I noticed was far more disturbing: there was someone underneath me, and my hands were around his throat. I pulled them away and clambered to my feet. The man was about twenty years old, dressed in a suit jacket with a name tag, black pants, black shoes, and a simple striped tie.
I was in an alley with dumpsters running the length of a long strip mall. Quickly, before a delivery truck showed up, I pulled the man behind the nearest dumpster. I felt dizzy, my head hurt, and my stomach felt ready to heave at any moment. Closing my eyes, I waited for the feeling to pass. Upon opening them, I noticed something out in the lane. A bicycle, and another one a short ways off lying next to a second man. Blood pooled from his head and around one arm. There was a brick on the ground a few feet away from him.
I pulled him over to the first man, then retrieved both bikes and hid them behind the dumpster.
The one I’d been strangling coughed and groaned in pain. Both were dressed the same and were barely adults at all. If I had to guess, I’d say they were about nineteen or twenty.
“Mormons,” I said after reading the name tags clipped to their pockets.
Elder Kimball was still alive. Elder Oaks, sadly, was not.
There was nothing I could do for either of them, so I ran. After a while, the pain in my lungs competed with the one in my head, slowing my pace to a crawl. My ride definitely wasn’t a runner, but he wasn’t critically unhealthy, either.
A few minutes later, I arrived at a crowded corner in a built-up section of a city.
“
Shit,” I said and touched my throbbing head, which pulsed painfully with every beat of my heart.
“Hey, buddy, watch your mouth,” a man said. He had two teens with him, both girls. They watched me the way you’d regard a snapping dog, and a space opened up around me.
“What year is it?” I said to the man with the kids.
“Don’t talk to me,” he said, standing between the girls and me. “Get going.”
A taxi rounded the corner, and I checked the license plate. Washington State. A look at the sign on the corner confirmed the city: Seattle.
Just when the man seemed like he might say something else, the light changed.
Nobody followed for a few seconds, giving me as much space as they could. I kept going on the other side and entered an area with trendy apartments on one side of the street and shops on the other. A minute later, I leaned over the windshield of a newish car and had a look at the safety inspection sticker. It was dated 2014 with a hole punched through May. The temperature was about forty degrees, so unless the owner was way behind on getting his or her inspection, it was either late 2013 or early 2014. Probably the latter.
I kept walking. In time, I noticed something strange: people flinched when they saw me closer than a few feet away. And those that noticed me from farther up took pains to circle widely. I hadn’t looked myself over yet, so I stepped out of the main flow of pedestrian traffic and made for a nearby coffee shop. The window reflected back a twenty-something man in sweat pants and a ripped jacket. He also had a big beard and a face streaked with dark, drying blood. Automatically, I touched the wound on my scalp, then looked down at my hands: pretty dirty, with grime caked under the long nails.
Patting myself down, I found a wallet with a state-issued ID—and a fortune in Monopoly money in $500 denominations. The funny money had the $500 amounts scratched out with a black pen, and $1000 amounts written beneath them in red ink. In place of credit cards were a few high-end properties and a number of yellow cards reading, “THIS CARD MAY BE KEPT UNTIL NEEDED OR SOLD.” Below that were the words, “GET OUT OF JAIL FREE.”
My guess was Trevor Ellis, from Nevada, suffered from a chemical imbalance of some kind.
Years ago, if someone had talked to me before my suicide, they would have wondered why I never quite met their gaze. If they’d said something interesting, it would have rolled right over me or gone unremarked upon. Back then, I only thought about one thing: my ex-girlfriend. A thing, not a person. The part of me that distinguished people from objects had been severely stunted at some point in my life. Like Trevor, it probably had something to do with my brain as well as my soul, and I’ve often wondered how much one influenced the other. After my death, it felt as if a heavy weight had been removed. Other people and the rest of reality suddenly mattered again.
Another look at my ride’s ID showed him smiling and clean-cut in his picture. Obviously before he’d stopped taking his medication. As usual with such rides, I didn’t feel the effects of his mental illness. I felt like me, Dan Jenkins.
“What happened to this guy?” I muttered, probing my cut. I needed to wash it out or risk infection.
The coffee shop bathroom was locked. I knocked on the door and listened, but nobody answered.
“Excuse me,” I said to a young woman working the espresso machine. “May I use your bathroom?”
“Bathrooms are for paying customers,” she said, not quite meeting my eyes. She also said it loudly, and a second later an older male worker arrived, watching me with a guarded expression.
“I just want to wash my face.”
“No can do, man,” the guy said. “Health codes.”
I looked around to see if anyone was listening who might stick up for me, but the closest person—a young guy in a T-shirt with different colored cartoon people holding hands—was busily examining the finer points of coffee shop architecture. It was no use. I left and continued on to the next block.
“Excuse me, miss, can you spare a few dollars?” I said to a woman who smiled hesitantly when she saw me. After the last word left my mouth, she looked straight ahead and quickened her pace.
“Hypocrite,” I called after her, and resumed my search for a charitable soul in Seattle. With a little water, I could clean up and … well, I didn’t know what. One thing at a time.
The hypocrites were out in force that day. After a half hour of humiliation, I crossed the street and headed back the way I’d come.
At the end of the block, two officers were talking to the first woman I’d asked for money. She pointed my way and they looked at me. Quickly, I slipped down the nearest street and took off running. Another block and I turned a corner, then skipped dangerously through traffic to widen my lead.
When I felt safe, I leaned down by a gutter with a pool of water in it. I scooped it up to wash the blood off my face—freezing cold—then checked in a parked car’s rearview mirror to make sure I got it all.
“Hey, Trev, what you doing?” someone called out. “Yo, Trev!”
A man stood about ten feet away, smiling at me. He was black, bearded, and maybe sixty years old. He wore a military jacket and a red woolen cap.
“What you doing in that puddle for?” he said. “You gonna get wet. Come on out of there.”
I stood up, wiped my face with my hands and sleeves, and went to him.
“Hi,” I said.
“You look all messed up,” he said, scratching his neck. “It was Chancy, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. Tell them what they expect, first rule of hopping.
“I told you to stay away from him. He crazier than you. He hit you with that hammer?”
I nodded. “On my head.”
“I see that,” he said, laughing. “Come on then, let’s go. You look hungry.”
“Where we going?”
“Where else?” he said and started walking way. After a few steps he glanced back. “Come on.”
Where else turned into five blocks with no end in sight, but I didn’t mind. It felt nice to let someone else take the reins for once.
“What’s your name again?” I said.
He laughed.
“You’re a poor messed up white boy,” he said. “I’m Max, remember? Only known you a year, now, for Jesus…”
“Thanks, Max. What month is it?”
“Same January as yesterday,” he said.
“January, twenty fourteen. Elementary.”
Max smiled sadly, shook his head, and kept going.
With nothing better to do, and hopeful of quitting the cold, I followed him. After maybe twenty minutes, we arrived at a church. Homeless people milled around out front, coming and going at will.
“Come on, Trev,” he said when we stepped inside, and made his way past about fifteen big circular tables with homeless people grouped around them eating, talking, and seeming very much at home. A couple of them waved at Max, but nobody greeted me.
I followed Max to a row of foldout tables staffed by men and women in plastic smocks and rubber gloves.
“Cutting it close this time,” one young woman said to Max, and handed him a styrofoam tray.
“Well, you know, I like to live dangerous,” he said, laughing.
The woman scooped mashed potatoes onto a square-shaped section of his tray. She gave me a tray and scooped some for me, too.
Max moved through the line chatting with everyone there, receiving food the whole way. “Hey there, Tom, how you doing?” and “Bless you too, Larry” and “I’m doin’ all right” when someone asked if he was doing all right. My new friend Max knew everyone there, and it was clear they liked him.
The food looked good, and they were generous with it, though I did see a sign admonishing, “No Second Helpings.” I figured their mission was to feed as many as they could, so it made sense.
Max sat down at a table with just three other people, all of them women. I sat next to him.
“Take a look at Trev here,” Max told them. “Chancy did that, you believe it? He
gonna get picked up, crazy mother…”
He looked sheepishly around the church.
“Young man, your head is bleeding,” a woman wearing two jackets said. She had an aluminum cane next to her, leaning against the table.
I felt my head again, and again it came away wet with blood.
Max said, “Look, Trev, you can’t go around bleeding like that. You need to see the doctor ’fore you upset people.”
I didn’t feel like walking another five blocks, but the older man came around and lifted me by the arm in a surprisingly strong grip. More surprising: he took me deeper into the church, and not toward the doors and the cold winter air. There was a privacy screen in one of the corners where a doctor was waiting on patients. When the way-too-young doctor saw me, he came over with gauze, had me hold it to my head, and told me to sit while he finished with someone else. Minutes later, he sat me behind the screen.
“I’m Doctor Cline,” he said in a calm, soothing tone.
“Trevor,” I said, and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Let’s see about that cut of yours, okay?”
“Chancy hit him with a hammer,” Max said helpfully, standing just behind Doctor Cline, who started in surprise.
“A hammer? That’s not a very nice thing to do, is it, Trevor?”
“I didn’t think so.”
I felt bad for this Chancy person, but if he carried around a hammer and Max thought he had hit me with it, maybe someone needed to lock him up.
Max said, “I suspect that hammer may have fixed his head, doc. Trev ain’t talking crazy no more. He’s usually pretty crazy.”
Doctor Cline said, “I’ve got it from here, Max, thank you.”
“Sure, doc, sure. You take care, Trev.” He winked at me. “I gotta go see my new girlfriend.”
Max left. Then it was just me and the doctor, who’d started cleaning my wound with peroxide.
“So how is it you’re working here?” I said.
“Just a little volunteering,” he said with a half smile.
“That’s pretty brave of you.”