Ruthless

by John Rector

  “There’s twenty grand in here.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Who’s the young lady in the photo?”

  “No idea,” I said. “There’s an address on the back, but no name.”

  “Why didn’t you call it in?”

  “I started to, but then he showed up, so I left.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “Who showed up?”

  “The guy the blonde was there to meet,” I said. “And that’s the problem.”

  Charlie listened as I went over everything that’d happened, and to his credit he didn’t insult me once.

  I think that worried me more than anything.

  By the time I finished, it was dark outside. Another storm had moved in, and the soft rattle of rain against the side of the house made me think of Kara and better days.

  “Mickey was right. You shouldn’t go home.”

  “I’ll have to eventually.”

  “Not tonight,” he said. “Stay here. We’ll figure out something else in the morning.”

  “Do you still have friends down at the station?” I asked. “I want to know more about that girl.”

  “Why?”

  “To warn her,” I said. “I want to help her if I can.”

  Charlie looked at me with a strange mix of humor and pity. “What do you think you’re going to do, sweep in and save her, like she’s some princess trapped in a tower?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Charlie shook his head. “How this shit happens to you, I’ll never be able to figure. I swear, Nick, you are a magnet for trouble.”

  “Is there someone down there who can help or not?”

  “I’ve got a few guys who owe me favors,” he said. “But this is dangerous territory. You should’ve turned this over to them the second you figured out what was going on.”

  “I told you, I—”

  “Yeah, I know.” Charlie raised a hand, stopping me. “I get it. You tried. Your intentions were good, but something went wrong. Sorry if I’ve heard it before.”

  I inhaled deeply, held it, counted, said, “It’s not too late. I can still tell the police. Let them handle it.”

  “That won’t solve your problem,” he said. “If this guy knows where you live, telling the police isn’t going to help you.”

  “Isn’t that their job description?” I asked. “You helped people.”

  “Things have changed since I was a cop.” He leaned forward and pushed himself up to his feet. “These days the job is more about punishing than protecting.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  “I believe what I see.” He dropped the envelope on my lap. “You hand that over to them now and all they’ll do is take it away and send you home. They won’t get involved unless there’s a body. You know how it works.”

  He was right, I did.

  “Okay, so no cops.”

  “Not unless you want to give them the money and hope the guy it was meant for doesn’t come looking for it.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  I watched him consider his answer, and for a moment I was struck by how different he looked than the man I knew when I was a kid. Back then he’d been a giant, and his shadow fell over every part of my life. Now he was smaller, his arms thinner, his back bent. The disease had changed nearly everything about him—everything except his eyes.

  His eyes were exactly the same.

  There were a few more lines around the edges, but the color was still solid and so dark that it was hard to see where the iris ended and the pupil began.

  When I was a kid, he told me his eyes looked that way because he was part shark. I believed him, too.

  It explained a lot.

  “I think I’m going to sleep on it.” Charlie grabbed the handle of his oxygen tank and rolled it toward the hallway leading back to his bedroom. “I’ve never trusted my first instinct.”

  “But you have an opinion.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then tell me.”

  He stopped in the doorway. “You won’t like it.”

  “I don’t like any of this.”

  Charlie raised a hand to his mouth and coughed. “I think you should leave town. Get out of here for a while. Wait for all of this to blow over, then come back.”

  “And go where?”

  “Wherever you want.” He pointed to the envelope. “You’ve got the money. Pick a place.”

  “And what about the girl?” I held up the envelope. “She should know what’s going on.”

  “How will that help her?”

  I stared at him, silent.

  “You’re not seeing this situation clearly, Nick.”

  “It seems clear enough to me.”

  A deep line formed between my father’s eyebrows. For a moment I thought he was going to argue, but instead he turned away and started down the hall toward his bedroom.

  “Stay here tonight,” he said. “We’ll talk again in the morning.”

  “It’ll be the same conversation.”

  “We’ll see.” He didn’t look back. “You’ll have to clear the boxes off your bed. Go ahead and stack them on the floor. Clean sheets are in the closet.”

  I watched him drift down the hall until he faded into the shadows, then reached for my drink and finished what was left in the glass. I flipped the envelope over on my lap, took out the photo of the girl in the yellow dress, and stared at it for a long time. I studied her face and the slow curve of her dress and tried to imagine what she could’ve done to make someone want her dead.

  Outside, the rain fell soft against the window.

  I closed my eyes and listened.

  5

  The next morning I woke to the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of coughing. I pushed the sheets back and sat on the edge of my old twin bed and tried to shake the morning haze out of my head. When I felt ready, I pushed myself up, got dressed, and walked out into the kitchen.

  Charlie was sitting at the breakfast table. There was an old TV on the counter, but the sound was turned down, and he wasn’t watching. He had a cup of black coffee and an open newspaper in front of him, and an unfiltered cigarette burning between his fingers.

  “Penny would kill you if she saw you smoking.”

  “I doubt it.” He flipped the paper over, refolded it. “She’s got a thing for lost causes.”

  “Lucky for you.” I took a coffee cup from the cabinet, filled it, and then sat across from him. “Do you want some breakfast?”

  He shook his head and pushed the section of the paper he’d already read across the table to me. I unfolded it and sipped my coffee as we fell back into a forgotten routine.

  When I finished my part of the paper, I dropped it on the table and leaned back in my chair and said, “Did you have an epiphany overnight?”

  Charlie took a long drag off his cigarette, then crushed it in a glass ashtray on the table. When he spoke, he didn’t look up from his paper.

  “Do you remember my friend Lonny down in Tucson?”

  “What about him?”

  “I talked to him this morning,” he said. “About you.”

  “Why?”

  “He owes me a favor, and I thought he could help out with your situation.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing specific.” He grabbed his cup and drank the last of his coffee, then got up and walked to the counter for a refill. “He’s got a fishing cabin down in Mexico. I told him you needed to get out of town for a while, and he said you could stay there if you don’t mind doing a few repairs on the place.”

  “Mexico?”

  “You’ll have to meet him in Arizona to get the keys, but after that—”

  “I’m not going to Mexico, Pop.”

  Charli
e leaned back against the counter, holding his coffee cup with both hands. “It’s not forever.”

  “My life is here. I can’t just leave.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “And just run away?”

  “No one is telling you to run, only to be smart.” He motioned toward the kitchen window. “This guy out there, do you know who he is or what he’s capable of doing? Do you know anything about him at all?”

  “I don’t even know that he’s looking for me,” I said. “Their deal was a bust. He’s probably long gone by now.”

  Charlie stared at me without saying a word. He didn’t have to. I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “You think I’m being naive.”

  “I think someone is out twenty grand,” he said. “They know you took it, and they know where you live. It’s stupid to think they’re going to walk away and let you keep it.”

  I lifted my cup and swallowed the last of my coffee. “Maybe, but I can’t leave.”

  “Because of Kara?”

  “Because of Kara. Because of you.” I paused. “Because of the girl in the photo—all of it.”

  “A girl you’ve never met and who you know nothing about.”

  “Does that matter?” I asked. “Someone wants to kill her. I have to try and help her.”

  “How do you plan on doing that?” Charlie walked around the table to his chair and sat. “Do you think you can just go up to her, introduce yourself, and then casually mention that someone hired you to kill her? How do you think that’s going to go over?”

  “I’ll deal with that when I have to,” I said. “But it would be easier if I knew something about her first.”

  “And what about Kara?”

  “What about her?”

  “Take her with you.”

  “To Mexico?” I laughed. “That’ll never happen.”

  “You don’t know until you ask,” he said. “Talk to her, apologize for being you, and then tell her you want to take her on a long trip. Call it a new beginning.”

  “Like it’s that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  I shook my head, looked away.

  On TV the news was on, showing the weather report for the rest of the week.

  There was only rain.

  “Do you know what your problem is, Nick?”

  “Here we go.”

  “You’ve seen too many goddamn movies. And it’s not just you. Everyone today thinks love has to be something magical and unique that sets them apart from the billions of other people in the world.”

  “That’s not what I’m—”

  “Love is the simplest thing in the world. You find someone who thinks like you and then make a commitment.” He tapped a finger in the air between us. “Whatever problems you two have, Kara thinks like you.”

  “Not about everything.”

  “She does about most things.” He braced his arms on the table and leaned closer. “Do you want to know the secret to making a marriage last?”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer.

  “You don’t get divorced.”

  “That’s it?”

  “There’s no other way to do it, and anyone who tries to tell you differently is full of shit.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple, Pop.”

  Charlie sat back and sipped his coffee. “That’s because you’ve seen too many movies.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say, and we both sat there, quiet. I thought about Mexico and the possibility of taking Kara with me. After a while, it didn’t seem all that impossible, at least not from my side.

  “Kara won’t go to Mexico,” I said. “She doesn’t trust me.”

  “She might if you tell her the truth.”

  The idea of telling Kara what’d happened at Mickey’s made my chest ache. It’d taken a while just to get her to talk to me again, and we still had a long way to go before things were back to the way they were. I didn’t want to take a step back, not over this.

  “You’re not going to say anything to her, are you?”

  “Not if I don’t have to.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Jesus, Nick. You never learn.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “You’ll be here alone.”

  “Me?” Charlie laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough. When it passed, he smiled, said, “I’ll be fine without you. The girl comes every few days.”

  “The girl’s name is Penny.”

  He waved the name away, pointed at me. “If you’re using me as an excuse to stay and get killed, stop that shit right now. I’ll still be here when you get back.”

  “I never said you wouldn’t be.”

  “Yeah, but the thought crossed your mind.”

  He was right, it had.

  The emphysema was in the early stages. He could still get around and only had to use his oxygen when it got bad. Unless something else happened, he’d be here in a year when I came home. And he was right about Penny. She was a good nurse, and she took good care of him. More importantly, she could handle his moods. If he gave her a hard time, she’d take it with a smile and then give it right back.

  “Mexico is a long way to go,” I said. “Especially if this turns out to be nothing.”

  “And what if it’s not nothing?” he asked. “I’ve seen normal, everyday people do batshit crazy things for a lot less money than what’s in that envelope.”

  I let that sink in, and for a while neither of us spoke. As much as I hated the idea of leaving, part of me couldn’t help but see the logic in it.

  And then there was Kara.

  Thinking about taking her along had touched something inside of me that I thought I’d buried a long time ago. I even let myself imagine what it would be like, the two of us together again, sitting side by side on a sun-soaked beach, staring out across white sands toward an endless crystal-blue sea.

  It was a tough image to shake.

  “What about the girl in the photo?” I asked.

  Charlie studied me for a moment, frowned. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll see what I can find out about her for you, but then you head south.”

  “After I tell her what’s going on.”

  “If that’s what you want,” he said. “Do we have a deal?”

  “We have a deal.”

  Charlie smiled, then pushed away from the table and crossed the room to the counter. He opened the top drawer and took out a familiar black key chain. He set it on the table in front of me before sitting back down.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’re going to take the car,” he said. “I’ve got it running nice. It’ll get you to Mexico and back, no problem.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The car—my father’s car—was a black-on-black 1966 Chevelle SS396. He’d picked it up at auction several years ago and had been restoring it ever since. The car was his obsession.

  “I’m not taking your car.”

  “You’d rather ride the bus to Mexico?” He paused, smiled. “Look, Nick, I’ll help you find out about this girl, but I need to know you’re safe. I’d feel better knowing you had a decent car.”

  I looked down at the keys on the table, then reached out and picked them up. What he said made sense, but I’d never heard him talk like this before, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

  In the end, I just nodded and said, “Thanks, Pop.”

  He grinned at me.

  “What?”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s take a look at her.”

  I smiled and got up from the table. As I turned away, something in the paper caught my eye. I stopped and picked up the page.

  The photograph was of a man and a woman standing together behind a glass podium, surrounded by the press. The man had his hand on the woman’s back, while
she held a large pair of gold scissors over a long red ribbon. There was a banner behind them, strung between two cement posts.

  It read: “Holloway Industries.”

  I stared at the photo for a long time.

  Charlie waited. “You coming?”

  “That’s her,” I said. “Right there.”

  He stepped closer. “Who?”

  I studied the photo for a moment longer, wanting to be absolutely sure. Then I handed him the page and tapped my finger against the photograph.

  “That’s the woman who gave me the envelope.”

  6

  We walked out the back and down a stone path lined with dead rosebushes toward the detached garage. Charlie opened the side door and we went inside. There were two windows on either wall, both coated with years of grease and dust, and the light shining through was warm and easy, the color of new pennies.

  The car was covered by a stained canvas tarp.

  Charlie took one corner and said, “Help me with this.”

  I took the opposite corner and pulled.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  I hadn’t seen the car since he dragged it home from the auction. At the time it wasn’t much more than a rusted shell. I knew he’d put a lot of work into it after he’d retired, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The car was sleek and spotless and polished to an angry black shine. I reached out and touched the fender. The metal felt warm under my fingertips, and for the first time in my life I thought I understood his obsession.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked.

  Charlie put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed, then pulled away just as fast. “As long as you bring it home safe.”

  I nodded, didn’t say anything.

  Charlie moved to the front of the garage and opened the overhead door while I went around to the driver’s side and slid in behind the wheel. The leather seat moaned under me as I turned the key in the ignition and felt the engine rumble to life. The sound was low and heavy, and it vibrated through to the center of my chest. I sat back, adjusted the mirror, and then put it in gear and backed out into the alley.

  Charlie came around to the driver’s side and leaned in. “Give me a call this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll let you know what I find out about the girl.”