by Rio Youers
I could give his morning one hell of a jumpstart.
If I paused, it was only for a second. I crossed the lot at a jog, grabbed the phone, and nestled it between my shoulder and ear. As I inserted my card (no worries about a digital footprint now, given Lang already knew where we were), I heard a car in the distance—its engine cutting through the stillness—but thought nothing of it; I was too fixed on making the call. There was no doubt in my mind I was doing the right thing. I wouldn’t tell Newirth about the shovel, obviously, but this … this …
I tapped in the number. Waited. The car’s engine got louder and now I looked toward the sound—coming from 66—with a frown; the dude was really motoring. The call connected. An automated voice informed me that I had reached the Green Ridge police department, told me to press “1” if it was an emergency, or, if I knew the three-digit extension of the person I was trying to reach, to enter it now.
I did.
Waited.
Come on, come on.
The car made a screeching right turn onto Guadalupe Avenue, headlights expanding as it approached the motel.
Chief Newirth’s phone rang twice and went to voicemail.
“You have reached Chief Brian Newirth. I’m away from my desk at the moment, but please leave a message, stating your name and number clearly, and I will return your call as soon as possible. If this is an emergency, please dial zero for dispatch. Thank you.”
BEEEEEEEP.
“Chief Newirth,” I started, but only half of my attention was on the call. The rest was on those expanding headlights. “This is Harvey Anderson. Don’t ask me how I know, just trust that I do. I have some information about the Green Ridge murders…”
And that was as far as I got. The car—another nondescript silver midsize—roared into the motel’s parking lot, zoomed past me, hit the brakes. All four doors opened simultaneously and the muscle poured out. They flowed toward the stairway leading to our room, except for one—this thug a little slower, noticeably limping, one arm in a sling. I saw his face in the motel lights: dark with bruising, swollen and stitched together.
Jackhammer.
Nineteen
I dropped the phone. It bounced on its cord, clattered against the wall. Chief Newirth, the Green Ridge murders: gone from my mind. Everything was, except this new danger—the fact that I was outnumbered and unarmed. I didn’t let that stop me.
There was maybe eighty feet between me and where the midsize had screeched to a halt, another ten to Jackhammer, who had started slowly up the stairway. I ran at him, bare feet slapping. I wondered briefly how they could have reached us so quickly. They hadn’t arrived by helicopter or parachuted in like the marines, and there was zero fucking chance they just happened to be in the neighborhood when Sally sent out her psychic signal. I didn’t want to admit it—to even think it—but it strongly suggested they’d been following us all along, which meant that the tracking device wasn’t on Dad’s old truck. Maybe it had been stitched into the lining of my backpack, or maybe it was on me—inside me—implanted beneath my skin.
This flashed through my mind, there and gone in a split second, enveloped by panic and rage. I rounded the midsize with my arms pumping and ran at the stairway. Jackhammer was at the top now, his fellow thugs—I recognized one of them: Frankenstein’s Boots—nearly at our door. My long legs took the stairs three at a time. Jackhammer turned toward me with a smiley kind of sneer.
“Harvey,” he said, drawing out the second syllable: veeeeeeey. I balled two fists into one and swung it malletlike at his stitched, seeping face. He dodged, raising his good arm, and my knuckles deflected harmlessly off his solid triceps. As handicapped by injury as he was, it hadn’t hindered his strength or quickness. He grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward him, raising his knee and driving it into the hollow of my stomach. It was like a small stick of dynamite had exploded in my gut. I crumpled to my knees with bulging eyes. Jackhammer planted his boot against my chest and shoved. Down the stairway I went, toppling twice, stopping halfway and sagging there like a discarded jacket.
Two thuds, followed by a splintering sound, a loud crack as they kicked our motel room door open—Frankenstein’s Boots doing the honors, perhaps, with the sledgehammers he wore on his feet. I fought the pain and dragged myself up the stairs, staggering to my feet, then reeling crookedly down the corridor to our room. Jackhammer blocked the way, his back as broad as a road sign. I knew I couldn’t go through him, but thought I might go around him—hoping that, if I could get to our room, and if, in all the confusion, I could free the .38 Special from my backpack, then the odds might swing in my favor. Whether or not I could pull the trigger hummed at the back of my mind, but Dad’s words hummed a little louder: What if your life—Sally’s life—depends on it? The revolver had a five-round cylinder, fully loaded, and at that moment I didn’t think I’d have a problem evacuating every chamber.
Sounds from inside our room: the bathroom door crashing open; two screams, first Sally’s, then a terrible male scream, full of horror, quickly followed by the fzzzt of a tranquilizer gun being fired. I’d reached Jackhammer by this point and tried ducking around him, but he clasped my upper arm, wheeled me one-eighty, and took me by the throat. I thought he was going to throw me over the balcony—game over, Harvey—but he slammed me against the wall so hard that the stucco cracked and flaked. Black spots swarmed my field of vision, busy as moths, and my teeth rattled. I didn’t stop fighting, though; I rained blows on his pulled-together face until blood oozed from between the stitches. He roared and unleashed a blow of his own—one swift, ringing punch: that trademark jackhammer. It met my jaw and I folded.
I looked up at the strip of black sky between the balcony and ceiling, at scattered stars and the red winking light of an aircraft. These distant, dreamlike details were soon blotted out by the sole of Jackhammer’s boot. He brought it down on my face as if stepping on a bug. I felt—heard—my nose crunch, the cartilage rupture, the skin break. He did it again and my lips smashed against my teeth and both split open. Then I heard Sally call my name, her voice pitched differently, horribly slurred: “Uuurrvveeeee…” I flipped onto my stomach, pushed myself to one knee. “Saaahhh—” I reached out, coughing blood from my throat, almost got to my feet, then Jackhammer booted me in the face and the world turned gray.
* * *
I saw this when I opened my eyes: two hunt dogs stepping over me, one supporting the other. He bled from his nose and ears, his eyes pinpricks, his jaw a slack band. Sally, I thought. Sally did that to you, you motherfucker. Any triumph was minor and short-lived; the next thing I saw was Frankenstein’s Boots carrying Sally across his shoulders. She was naked, still wet from the shower, unconscious. The bright pink tailpiece of the tranquilizer dart lodged in her neck was unmistakable.
* * *
They headed to the stairway and I tried to follow, crawling first on my stomach then on my knees. I noticed a few of my neighbors’ lights had flicked on, but not one of them—big and tough bikers, or not—came to help. Also motherfuckers. Maybe they’d call 911, but this would be over before the cops appeared. I was on my own, watching helplessly as the hunt dogs rounded the corridor and disappeared down the stairway. The panic and fear in my chest were too much to take and I tried to scream some of it loose, but then Jackhammer grabbed the back of my T-shirt, dragged me into my motel room, and threw me onto the bed. The clock on the nightstand flashed 5:14. Sally had stepped into the shower only eleven minutes ago. I couldn’t comprehend how this had turned so bad, so quickly.
It got worse: Jackhammer pulled a pistol from his waistband and pointed it at me. His finger curled around the trigger and trembled.
“Harveeeeeeey,” he garbled, his split face bleeding.
“Fuck you,” I snapped, spitting blood of my own. My lips were ribbons. “I’m going to fucking kill you, motherfucker. I’m going to find you and fuck you.”
He laughed. The swollen meat of his face strained the many stitches.
; “Fuck you!”
“Did you really believe a goddamn haircut could keep us from following you?” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “You’re a resilient little cocksucker. I’ll give you that. But you’re also the stupidest cunt I’ve ever known.”
I tried spitting at him but my lips were so torn that I could only spray blood over my T-shirt—my Flaming Lips T-shirt. Oh, the irony!
He lurched toward me, pressed the gun to my forehead. “I want to blow that dumb fucking head right off your fucking shoulders,” he snarled. “You don’t fucking know how bad I want to kill you.”
“I think I do.”
“But I promised you, Harvey, that if you crossed us, we would fuck you up—we’d crush everything you know and love. The reason I’m not going to kill you now is because I want you to know that I’m a man who keeps his promises.”
My stomach turned to a pile of loose rocks as my mind shuddered with implications, echoed with screams.
“When my boss has finished with the girl, she’s ours.” A stitch actually popped as Jackhammer grinned. Blood trickled onto his upper lip and beaded there. “And let me tell you, Harvey, we’re not interested in her mind.”
The tip of his tongue exited his mouth and licked that bead of blood away. I wanted to dismantle him—drive my foot into his chest, roll off the bed, grab the .38, and punch all five rounds into his face. I couldn’t move, though; the rocks in my gut weighed me down.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said. There was a warble to my voice that undermined any threat. I stared him dead in the eye and said it again.
“No, Harvey, what you’re going to do is feel a lot of pain. So much that you’ll wish I had killed you. Knowing that will help me sleep at night.” Jackhammer pulled the gun away, turned it on himself, dragged the muzzle across his wounds. “It’ll make these scars easier to bear.”
Outside, car doors opened and closed, then an engine ripped into life and revved impatiently. Jackhammer took that as his cue. He backed up to the door, limping, bleeding, but still so strong. Motherfucker actually tipped me a wink before ducking out into the corridor.
“Fuck YOU!” I shouted after him, then managed to roll off the bed and crawl—aching, pissing blood all over the carpet—toward my backpack.
Still one trick up my sleeve.
* * *
The hunt dogs would exit the motel, turn south on Guadalupe, east on 66. If I was quick—if the rocks in my stomach loosened sufficiently—I could cut across the abandoned lot behind the motel and meet them, revolver in hand, in the middle of the road. You want to fire it, Dad had said. You aim and pull the trigger. That simple. One shot through the windshield, driver’s side. The midsize would veer off 66 and slam into a doorway or maybe the silver pole marking the bus stop. A second shot through the passenger side window. Two more shots through the rear windows, then I’d drag Sally out of the wreckage and we’d fly.
Yeah, that simple.
I stumbled down the stairway into the parking lot, weaved between two Harleys toward the back of the motel. As I stretched my legs, worked my arms, picked up speed, I heard the midsize shrieking down Guadalupe—saw the red of its taillights between buildings.
It was going to be close.
* * *
I blurred across the abandoned lot, submerged in darkness, guided by the streetlights on 66. Short, tough breaths snapped from my lungs. Trash and dead brush whirled in my wake.
* * *
I both heard and saw the midsize approaching—the growl of its engine, its bright halogens pooling above the low buildings. I pushed harder, until my bare foot came down on something sharp. A jagged stone, perhaps, or a piece of glass. I stumbled and fell. Critical seconds lost.
The midsize was closing in. I staggered to my feet and lunged toward the entrance of the lot, then across the sidewalk and into the road. Headlights dead ahead. Coming on fast. I raised the .38—didn’t have time to aim—and pulled the trigger. Boom! The gun kicked, sent a bolt through my wrist all the way to my shoulder. The car didn’t stop. It didn’t veer into a doorway or into the silver post marking the bus stop. I fired again. Boom! This time I saw a spark kick off the hood but that was all. I had time to think it was all over—that Lang had won and there was nothing I could do to stop him—then the car was upon me, all light and roar.
* * *
I don’t recall moving but I must have because the car missed me by inches. Or maybe it had veered, chicken-style, at the last second—Jackhammer directing from the passenger seat, wanting me to live, to feel whatever pain he’d laid out for me. I felt the gust of it passing, reminding me of standing too close to the edge of the platform when the express train rushes through. It rippled my clothes and sucked the air from my lungs. I reeled sideways, lost balance, dropped to one knee. From that position, I sighted down the revolver’s stocky barrel, aimed at the car’s rear windshield, but couldn’t pull the trigger. I had a brief, graphic vision of the bullet striking the back of Sally’s skull, exiting through her face, spraying the car’s interior with blood and tiny pieces of psychic coil. Given that she’d be delivered to Lang, who’d reclaim everything she’d taken from him, I wondered if that would be the best thing.
The taillights disappeared. The sound of the engine faded. I kneeled in the middle of the road, too many emotions to process, so discarded them all. At least for now.
A coyote yowled in the darkness. Other than that: silence.
I dropped the revolver and lowered my head, shell-empty and hurting.
* * *
Cypress Police came to my motel room fifty minutes later, but not for the reasons I expected.
“Fights, gunshots,” the younger of the two officers said, examining the door that had been kicked in. “Just another night in Cypress. Besides, you’re someone else’s problem.”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed with one of Sally’s sanitary napkins pressed to my nose. I’d done my best to clean myself up, but still looked and felt as if I’d been dragged across the desert by a wild colt. After the manager had colorfully informed me that I was responsible for all damages (he reverted to Spanish when he got excited—I picked out dinero and mucho-mucho, along with chinga tu madre, which I believe has something to do with fucking my mother), I took a moment to consider my next move—had barely got started when the cops showed up. As it turned out, they had my next move planned for me.
“Someone else?” I asked.
“We received a call from Chief Newirth of Green Ridge, New Jersey.” The older cop had the ravaged look of a man who’d beaten cancer three or four times, wire-thin, his neck skin hanging in piscine folds.
“Right,” I said. I’d left the chief on one hell of a cliffhanger. He’d tracked the number of the payphone—it likely showed up on his call display—then made a few calls of his own.
“Get your things together,” the younger cop said. “You’re coming with us.”
* * *
The Cypress Police Department was small: one main room, two desks, three cages against the back wall reserved, no doubt, for the rowdiest of outlaws. The walls were mostly blank and yellowing. I sat at the desk and watched a lizard zip across the tile floor and disappear through a crack in the baseboard.
The young cop—Calhoun, according to his nametag—set about the very important task of brewing coffee, while the older cop—Randall—kicked the air conditioner to get it running. He then joined me at the desk, looked me over.
“Should we ask about this?” He drew a circle around his haggard face, indicating, of course, my broken nose and busted lips.
“I don’t think so,” I said. The sanitary napkin had been replaced by a handkerchief loaded with ice cubes. My head boomed and my eyes were beginning to blacken. “Put it down to girl trouble.”
Randall appeared satisfied with this, as I knew he would be. To be fair, he couldn’t help even if he wanted to (which, clearly, he didn’t). No police could help. I had reflected on this since watching those taillights disappear into t
he distance. Yes, Lang was behind this, and there was a good chance Sally was being transported to his home in Tennessee, but it wasn’t as if I could get a SWAT team to go kick down his door. One reason was that Sally didn’t exist. She was the invisible girl. The police would look for her in the system and draw a spectacular blank. Another reason was that Dominic Lang was a former senator who no doubt brandished residual influence. He would have friends in high places, so there was simply no way the authorities were going to storm his multimillion-dollar mansion—or even knock politely on the door—based on the accusations of some dirtball from New Jersey.
Randall grunted and began sifting through his general desktop clutter. “Cort, where’d you put that number?” His head swung left and right and his neck skin flapped.
“It’s on the computer,” the younger cop said.
“Well, shit.” Randall swiveled his chair and peered at the half dozen or so Post-It Notes gummed to the monitor. He found the one with Newirth’s number written on it and removed it with a flourish. “Four hundred dollars for a godsake computer,” he said, picking up the phone, starting to dial. “Some schmancy Windows thing, and Junior uses it to stick our little notes on.”
I nodded, as if I felt his pain, as if my own were not enough. What I really wanted was to scream and tear rocketlike into the sky, to explode in a ball of fire and shrapnel and rain down upon every motherfucker that had done me wrong. I thought I could do it, too. I really did.
Instead I pressed the makeshift icepack to my lips, watching as Randall reclined in his seat with the phone pressed to his ear. A moment later: “Chief Newirth, this is Officer Eli Randall, Cypress Police in New Mexico. We picked up your boy this morning. He’s here with us now.”
I reached across the desk for the phone. Caught within my emotion—and very much a part of it—were two pressing reasons for talking to Chief Newirth. The first was the Green Ridge murders. I would tell the chief everything I reasonably could and let him uncover the evidence he needed to make an arrest. The second reason—more crucial to me—was Dad. Jackhammer’s promise had set its claws in my mind and wouldn’t let go. I needed to make sure the old man was okay, and that he would remain okay.