by Rio Youers
“Potato,” he said. “Your jokes are about as funny as your face.”
“We need to talk,” she said. “But finish your game first.”
He sneered, went to take his shot, but at the last second adjusted his cue by a few crucial degrees and straight pocketed the eight-ball. The guys jeered again, but Steve-O only looked at Tatum with one eyebrow lofted.
“Thanks for that,” he said.
“Game over, hotshot,” Tatum said. “Let’s go.”
She found a quiet table and I joined her. Steve-O dropped from the rail into his chair and wheeled along behind. He pulled up beside Tatum but swiveled to face me. His gaze felt as blunt as an elbow.
“Who do we have here?”
“This is Harvey,” Tatum said. “Miranda’s boyfriend.”
“Oh,” Steve-O said, and then, when it sunk in, “That ain’t good.”
“Lang found her.” Tatum’s voice was dry enough to kindle in the sun.
The muscles in Steve-O’s forearms tightened and the cords in his neck showed. With her humorless laugh, Tatum had intimated that Steve-O wouldn’t be able to help, perhaps because of his disability, but from what I saw in that moment, there was nothing wrong with his heart.
“We’re going to get her back,” I said. “And we’re going to put an end to Dominic Lang while we’re at it.”
“Well, hallelujah,” Steve-O said, and the light in his eyes was borderline crazy. “Where do I sign up?”
* * *
The music changed from Waylon to a string of Johnny Cash favorites and the bar steadily became rowdier. Steve-O shouted salutations on a semi-regular basis, proving that having no legs hadn’t hindered his popularity. Mostly, he gripped the armrests of his wheelchair and seethed.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked me.
“First off,” I said, pointing to the bottle of Budweiser sitting on the table in front of him. “Go easy on the booze.” I flicked my finger toward Tatum. “You, too. You need to be focused, ready for anything, which means not drowning your coils in alcohol.”
“When are we doing this?” Tatum asked.
“As soon as we can,” I said. “Hopefully tomorrow.”
“Suits me,” Steve-O said, his lip curled. “Rusty’s got some hardware behind the bar. We’ll load up and go get her.”
“Take guns, take weapons, whatever,” I said. “But don’t use them unless you have to. Be smart about it. Gunshots bring cops. Bullets can be traced. You have more effective weapons in your minds.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Tatum said. She took a swig from her bottle, wiped the drizzles from her chin. “I don’t know what you expect of me, honey, but I’m no superhero. A few blasts from the coil”—she brought the bottle to her forehead and tapped twice—“and I’m likely to piss my britches and pop a nosebleed. Maybe pass out, too.”
“Same here,” Steve-O said.
“Which is exactly why you need to stay sharp,” I said. “Listen, we have two objectives: rescue Sally—”
“Who the hell’s Sally?”
“Miranda. Jesus. Rescue Miranda, and get Lang. We do whatever it takes. I’d just prefer we don’t get arrested or killed.”
“That don’t faze me,” Steve-O said, and that crazy light was in his eyes again. “I’ve spent too long thinking of ways I can destroy that son of a whore—everything from slow torture to taking him out with a scoped rifle. I might’ve done it, too, if his goddamn gorillas weren’t watching my every move.”
“They’re not watching anymore,” I said.
“He took my legs away.” Steve-O flapped the knotted bottoms of his jeans. “Worse still, he’s ruined my little girl’s life. I’ll go to my grave a happy man—shit, I’ll boogie into my coffin—if it means I can park a bullet in his wicked ol’ skull.”
“I understand,” I said. “Just be smart about it.”
“You boys need a reality check,” Tatum said. “Psychic powers. Guns. It don’t matter. Unless you can pluck Sylvester Stallone and the rest of the Expendables out of your asses, I say we’ve got a snowball’s chance.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably. But let’s take a deep breath and strip it back. We’re not breaking into Fort Knox. This is an old man in a house with a few fat bodyguards for security, some of whom are either injured or out of commission.”
Seriously stripped back, but technically true; Jackhammer was walking wounded; Brickhead had been next to him when their vehicle flipped during our demo-derby through the farmlands of Mid-Kansas; Sally had zapped another hunt dog at the motel—turned his brain to Jell-O, judging from the blood leaking from his nose and ears; and then there was Jackie Corvino, who’d been removed from the equation some time ago.
“We can do this,” I insisted. “Middle of the night. Element of surprise. We go to wherever he’s keeping her. I’ll be the decoy—lure the hunt dogs away, which should leave Lang mostly unprotected. Find him. Take him out. Then grab Sally and run.”
“You make it sound easy,” Tatum said. “But those ‘hunt dogs’ will be armed. Heavy caliber machinery, I bet. There’ll also likely be real dogs, security cams, and light sensors. You say ‘element of surprise’ but chances are Lang will have one eye open. He’ll see us coming and pick us off like wooden ducks.”
I’d thought of all this, of course, and more: snipers on the roof, thermal imaging scopes and cameras, sensors that trigger the house into lockdown mode. With more time, we could have reconnoitered the property and devised a stronger plan, but every second lost was a second that Lang could burrow deeper into Sally’s brain. We had to act.
“We’ll recon to the best of our ability,” I said. “And without drawing attention. I’ll go in first, create a diversion, then it’s down to you.”
“So you’re basically going to run away and leave us to do the dirty work,” Tatum said.
“I’m going to lure the security away from the target,” I said. “It’s called a strategy.”
“It’s called bullshit.”
“Then it’s a bullshit strategy, but it’s the only one we’ve got, and we don’t have time for—”
“Hit the rewind button, bub,” Steve-O cut in, looking at me from beneath a furrowed brow. “Wherever?”
“Huh?”
“You said, ‘We go to wherever he’s keeping her.’ You mean you don’t know?”
“No,” I replied. “Not yet, but—”
“Well, Christ shit,” Steve-O said. He threw his arms up so forcefully that his wheelchair rolled back six inches. “This bullshit plan just turned into no plan at all.”
“Listen, I have—”
“You know how many houses Lang owns across Tennessee—how much property?” Spittle flew from Steve-O’s lips and a warm little glob caught me just below the eye. “She could be in any one of those places. Or in none of them. What are we going to do? Start knocking on doors?”
I used my shoulder to wipe the spit away, then grabbed my bag from where I’d parked it beside my feet.
“Forget decoys and diversions,” Steve-O continued, managing to keep his voice to where it wouldn’t be heard over the music. “The first thing we’ve got to do is find out where he’s keeping Miranda, and he’s not exactly going to post that on his goddamn Facebook page. Only way of getting that info is to grab one of those—what did you call them?—‘tracker dogs,’ and shake it out of him.”
“Hunt dogs,” I said, unzipping my bag, reaching into it. “It’s Lang’s terminology, not mine.”
“Whatever the fuck. Those sons of bitches can hide as well as they can seek. You ain’t going to find them unless they want to be found.”
“Boy,” Tatum said to me, wiping her chin. “You’re just one step behind stupid.”
“And one step ahead of you.”
I took the wallet from my bag and threw it on the table. It still stank of the corpse it had been buried with.
Twenty-Six
Sally hadn’t been herself for a couple of months. She’d been distr
acted, out of sorts. When I asked her about it, she only shrugged in her secretive way and said it would pass. I asked if she was going to leave me—if the walls in Green Ridge were finally closing in.
“Let’s hope not,” she replied.
On my part, I did everything I could to make it—whatever it was—right; I busted my ass in the kitchen and produced several above-average meals; I administered scalp and foot massages until my fingers ached; I was considerate and giving in the bedroom; I even wrote half a song for her (I struggled with the lyrics, but the melody was pretty).
On the day it happened, we had decided to pay Dad an impromptu visit. He could always be relied upon to shake up the mood, and put your own concerns into perspective. It was a shimmering August afternoon and the inside of the bus felt like a box of sweat. Sally suggested we get off and walk through the woods, join the trail south of Spirit Lake and follow it to the edge of Dad’s property. It was a route we took every now and then, when time and weather allowed.
So Sally pulled the cord and we hopped off the bus. I remember thinking that she looked beautiful. She had a red bandanna in her hair, which brought her eyes to life, and she’d smiled more than once that day—a sign, I hoped, that she was on the flipside of whatever had been getting her down. She even kissed me as the bus pulled away, and whispered that I made her happy.
“I don’t tell you that enough,” she said.
“You don’t need to.”
We crossed Buckhorn Road, letting go of each other’s hands to negotiate a snarl of bushes and weeds. The woods were water-cool and alive with earthy color. The sun pushed through in thick arms of light and insects purred. We linked hands again and started toward Silver Rock Trail.
Neither of us noticed the man stepping into the woods behind us, pistol drawn.
* * *
The man was Jackie Corvino, a former bodyguard and US Marine, and Lang’s number-one hunt dog. He had hastened to New York City after Sally had fried Swan Connor’s brain, responding to a psychic tremor that Lang had felt nearly eight hundred miles away.
In a city so vast and vibrant, Corvino should have been chasing his tail for a very long time. He got lucky, though; after ten weeks of fruitless searching, a YouTube video emerged showing Swan Connor collapsing at the northwest corner of Madison Square Park. The date and timestamp on the video matched the exact moment Lang received the psychic signal.
Coincidence? Maybe, but it was too great for Corvino to ignore. He proceeded under the assumption that Sally was behind the incident, and that she and Connor were acquaintances (she didn’t just attack him, randomly, in the street). Having determined where Swan Connor lived, Corvino armed himself with a tranquilizer pistol and Glock .45, and crossed the Hudson to the Garden State.
Sally never told me how long Corvino was in Green Ridge before making his move—I assume she had that information; she had access to all his memories, after all. She also never told me why he didn’t call for reinforcements. Perhaps he had to act quickly and simply didn’t have time. Or perhaps, after nine years of searching, he wanted all the glory.
Whatever the reason, going it alone was a big mistake.
* * *
We heard him behind us. The forest floor was mostly soft, carpeted with needles, but he was a hefty guy and something—a pine cone or strip of bark—cracked beneath his foot. We turned and saw a dark figure duck behind a tree twenty or so yards away.
“Hey, I think someone’s—”
That was as far as I got. Sally snatched her hand from mine. “Run, Harvey!” she shouted, and was gone. She zigzagged between the trees, pulling the bandanna from her hair to reduce visibility. Within seconds, she’d disappeared.
“What the fuck?” I said, turning again to where the shady figure had ducked from view. He had reemerged into a strip of sunlight and I saw him clearly: fifty-something, with the bland, grapefruit expression I would come to associate with all hunt dogs. I noted the pistol in his right hand and the muscles packed into his shirt. He broke through a tangle of branches and bolted toward me, his thick legs working like pumps. As confused as I was, I made a series of split-second connections, all of them loose, but they felt right: this was Sally’s mysterious past (which I’d always avoided in conversations) catching up to her. The reason she’d been so distracted was because she sensed this was coming.
They had found her. Whoever they were. Whoever she was.
“What the fuck?” I said again.
The guy didn’t even look at me. He would’ve barreled past if I hadn’t made my move, and I’m guessing the reason he didn’t tranquilize me was because it would take critical seconds to load another dart. To put it another way, he underestimated me.
He shouldn’t have.
I lowered my center of gravity like the football player I’d never been and lunged at him, socking my shoulder into his midriff and knocking him off balance. He made exactly the sound I hoped he’d make—“Hoomph!”—and we both spilled to the ground. The tranquilizer pistol popped out of his hand and clattered through the understory.
“Bastard,” he growled, staggering to his feet. He hesitated—caught three ways, I think, between coming for me, finding the tranquilizer pistol, or chasing Sally down. I made the decision for him; I grabbed a fistful of dirt and needles as I rose to one knee and threw it at him. He turned away, shielding his eyes. I sprang to my feet and lunged again.
This second attack was more successful than the first in that we hit the ground again, but this time I came down on top of him. He grabbed my dreads and pulled. I drove my thumbs into his eyes. He called me a dirty whore and shook my head from side to side. I pressed harder with my thumbs, meaning—so help me God—to scoop out his eyes. I’d never experienced such violent intention before. It bubbled quickly from some darkened place inside me, the first proof that I wasn’t the quinoa-eating hippie loverboy I thought I was.
He writhed beneath me, then let go of my hair and rained fists on my arms, my shoulders, my skull. I pulled back and his knuckles grazed my nose, causing blood to spout. It dripped onto his white shirt and into the creases of his throat. He punched me again, caught my chin and I wobbled. The next strike—a looping haymaker that chimed off my left ear—took all of the tension out of my arms. He pushed me backward and I rolled off him. When I tried getting to my feet, he planted the heel of his shoe in my stomach. I collapsed onto my side and gasped.
Corvino pushed himself to one knee, reached behind him, and produced the Glock .45. It was uglier and meaner than the tranq pistol, and guaranteed a more effective level of sleep.
He pointed it at me. Curled his finger around the trigger.
“You’re dead, motherfucker,” he said.
And then Sally attacked.
* * *
The light went out of his eyes. I saw it happen. The simile is cliché, but accurate: like a candle being blown out—a flutter, and then nothing. The gun drooped in his hand and he stumbled three steps sideways. “Krup,” he said. A line of spit hung from his lower lip. “Furpy … sploo.” He laughed at something. My blood on his throat looked too red, too vital.
What the fuck is going on? I thought.
“Sklump!”
I scrambled backward and managed to find my feet, then the branches parted and Sally appeared beside me. She was crying, trembling. I took a step away from her.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said. “I have one of the most powerful psychic minds on the planet. Oh, and these guys are looking for me.”
I don’t know if she was trying for humor, but she failed. There was only bleakness and pain. I wiped the blood from my nose, shook my head. My mouth moved but no sound came out.
“I have to go now,” she said, and the tears spilling down her face were painfully bright. “My life is too dangerous, and there’s only one way to make sure you don’t follow me.”
“Snurgle … burrup.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.”
She was about to zap herself from my mind when Co
rvino parked the gun in his mouth and blew the roof of his skull away.
* * *
The report shook the trees and birds clattered through the branches, squawking. I barked with alarm and Sally screamed. Corvino teetered for one horrible moment. Blood rushed from his nose and mouth. He folded at the knees and hit the ground with his arms spread. Wet stuff trickled from the window in his skull.
“No,” Sally said. “Oh, no.”
I backed away from her, bumped into a tree, stumbled over the roots and fell. Sally stepped toward me with her hands raised. Her eyes were dark with tears.
“Listen to me, Harvey.”
“No,” I said.
“I want to protect you, but you have to do what I say.”
“No.”
“That corpse has got your blood all over it.” She pointed, as if I wasn’t quite sure which corpse she was referring to. “This doesn’t look good for you. We need to bury him. And quickly.”
“Fuck that,” I said.
“Harvey—”
“I’ll go to the police.” I picked myself up but kept some distance from Sally. “I’m innocent. Newirth will believe me.”
“What are you going to tell him?” Sally asked. She was trying to be calm but the anxiety in her voice was tight and telling. “That this guy attacked you and then shot himself?”
I shook my head, clutched my dreads and wrung them. It’s impossible to explain everything I was feeling in that moment. I wanted something to make sense, but nothing did. Even the late afternoon sunlight, angling through the canopy, seemed wrong.
“He’s a bad man who works for a worse man. No one is going to report him missing.” Sally’s wet eyes flicked from me to the corpse. “Bury him, Harvey, and I’ll help you forget it ever happened.”
“I’ll never forget this.”
“You will.”
I swiped more blood from my nose. It’s realness—its redness—made me realize Sally was right; this bad man’s corpse was covered with my DNA. Not just my blood. My sweat and hair, too. I could wipe some of it away but I’d never get all of it. The quickest and easiest solution was to make the body disappear.