Hot Plastic

by Peter Craig

  He aimed the muzzle sideways, like a casual movie gangster, pulled the trigger, and with a sudden, violent kick, fired and missed from point-blank range.

  Kevin gave a sharp bark of stunned laughter, then stepped over the balcony railing. The helicopter was drifting closer. Just as Kevin began shimmying downward, the second mark ran into the bedroom firing wildly. A rattle of bullets came from the chopper and the room simultaneously, and Kevin slipped off the railing just as he had swung his momentum inward toward the hotel.

  In the chaos, Kevin first had no idea if he had fallen one floor or ten. Gradually he realized that his trajectory had flung him over the next balcony: he had dropped, struck the railing, and splashed off through a glass table. He was bleeding. The back of his head had struck the baluster. Something was burning in his side; worse than pain, it was like a crippling weight, and he thought it must be glass from the table. He climbed to his feet and, with the world bowed and spinning, he stumbled through the open sliding glass door and threw up a stomach full of coffee onto the floor.

  When he looked up he saw three terrified children sitting on the bed, loud cartoon sounds on the television behind him. He touched his jacket and it was wet; his hand was smeared with blood. To the children he said, “No, no—don’t be scared. I’m not—I’m not—I’m okay. I love you all—I would never hurt you.” He could scarcely tell where his own voice was coming from.

  He was cold, and he took a coat off a hook in the entryway. He struggled ahead, heard someone screaming behind him, and soon he was out of the room and into the hall, moving ahead with such determination that it seemed an entirely new country. Doors peeked open along his path, clicking shut again as they saw him. Yes, he was hit; it was more than glass from the table. His leg wouldn’t bend and every breath was like a stab in the lungs. Had he been hit from the front or the back? Was it the mark or the police? He felt a physical wave of sadness that he might never know who was responsible for killing him.

  As he reached the stairs, an alarm system went off throughout the hotel. He clambered down three flights, throwing up again through the steel mesh, and on the sixth floor he wandered out to find Colette, repeating the room number like a mantra, until it was a meaningless sound.

  She was there in the hall. She grabbed him and led him into the room, whispering, “No, no, no, no—just walk. Just walk. You’re hurt.”

  Inside the dim room, the curtains drawn and glowing with the last captured light, Colette had assembled housekeeping and bellhop uniforms, luggage racks and room service trays. He reacted to the sight as if it were some unexpected trick, and began fighting her, thrashing against her arms. She grabbed him, her palms around his face, and kissed him hard on the mouth. “You’re delirious, Kevin—you have to listen to me. The police are all over the place. But we’re going to get out of here and get you to a hospital.”

  “The laundry room,” said Kevin. “Go to the laundry room.”

  He thought an insect was buzzing rhythmically under his collar, tickling his skin, but he soon realized it was the earpiece, playing the distant indecipherable static of his father’s voice. Colette was guiding him to the service elevator, where she used her copy of the key. Inside, the bodyguard lay in a heap on the steel floor. Colette checked his pulse and said, “He’s alive. At least your father isn’t a murderer yet.”

  The alarm was howling on the basement floor as Colette helped Kevin forward, moving under the fluttering lights. She said that her plan was to go out with the dry cleaning, but Kevin, choking on his words, said, “No—they’ll grab us.” He pointed to a square drainage grate in the floor.

  “I can’t tell how clearly you’re thinking right now,” said Colette.

  He swallowed, tasting blood. For a moment he felt warm and calm with satisfaction. “My plan was better.”

  “Jesus, I can’t believe you’re going to be competitive with me right now. Let’s go then. Let’s get down in the trash where we belong.”

  She patted around his coat and found a road flare and matches, raising her eyebrows at the discovery. She pried up the rusted steel grate, which gave way easily, then spit into the darkness, hearing the faint plink in the water below. “I might need a minute here.”

  Kevin went first. With a deep, keening pain down his side, he lowered himself into the darkness, hanging, slipping, and finally splashing into shin-deep water. Mildew and bleach fumes, chlorine and sewage, the smell was frightening, and when Colette dropped into the stream behind him, she made a horrified gasp.

  She lit the flare, holding it upward like a torch. They were in a narrow drainage tunnel, filtering downhill toward a chewed grate in the distance, the steel walls in a pattern of rust and moss. He saw diluted blood running from the lining of his coat. When he looked down into the murky water, a slick rat swam past his legs. There was a frothy edge to the water, where, caught among shoals of scum, there floated chains of forgotten things: a doll’s head, clots of newspaper pages, patterns of socks and dryer lint. Colette was trudging forward, grimacing. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. We’re right under the cops. Do you know where we can come up?” She paused, reared back from something in the water, then said, “I am so fucking scared right now.”

  There were sweeps of childlike graffiti on the concave walls, lost blankets and cardboard boxes, what looked to Kevin like the desperate washed-out homes of children and fugitives. He was dizzy and numb in his teeth. “Somebody lives here,” he said. Police cars gusted overhead, their sirens echoing below, rumbling in the concrete, giving way finally to the swirling, breathing sounds of the tunnel itself.

  She kept struggling ahead beside him, the flare shedding sparks into the muck at their feet.

  “Don’t touch anything, Kevin. You’ll die from the infection.”

  The shrinking light of the torch crossed over pillows and papers, barricades of milk cartons and grocery bags.

  “Keep going,” he said. “We need to be under the next alley.”

  He felt a sudden shock in his chest, and thought it might be a final seizure—but it was the battery pack and the earpiece, shorting out with dampness. He peeled it off and hurled it to the side, then once again felt the wild throbbing of the bullet in his side. The shock seemed to be wearing off in stages, and he felt the first sobering intensity of terminal pain. Above them now was a cluster of massive pipes, leading toward a recess in the low ceiling. “That’s a ladder,” whispered Colette. “Are we going to come up in the middle of the street?”

  “I’m dying, I think.”

  She grabbed him and helped him forward, and he lay against her, smelling a pocket of her sweet shampoo in the midst of all the rank water. “You must honestly love me,” he said.

  “I must.”

  In another fifty steps, they were ascending a steel ladder with so much moss grown over the rungs that it seemed built of short, bristling hairs. Colette fought against a heavy manhole cover overhead, finally pushing it to the side to reveal a circle of late evening sky. She helped him upward by the arm, the last steps, and they emerged onto a dim alley beside the boulevard.

  A sports car sat beside a lit doorway, from which poured the smells of a restaurant, and Colette drew her gun and waited beside it. Kevin sagged against the car and set off the alarm. When the man rushed outside, Colette pushed the gun against the back of his head, and hissed, “Give me the keys or your fucking brains are all over the pavement.”

  In the growing shadows, the man stood still and quietly dangled his keys from an extended finger. She took them, ordered Kevin into the car. As she turned the ignition and dropped the clutch, they hiccuped forward into rush-hour traffic.

  She was gasping, her mouth open, trying to figure out the manual transmission. “I don’t ever want a gun in my hand again. Real bullets or not,” she said with her voice shaking. “There just wasn’t enough time to be classy about it.”

  For blocks she didn’t look at Kevin, but he knew they were both following the same thought: it was a disaster beyo
nd what anyone had ever dreamed, and Jerry was out there somewhere, oblivious.

  The car phone rang and they waited in silence, while Colette twisted her head to find the helicopters in the sky.

  “And by the way, I’m going to murder your father. I’m going to make it my life’s purpose.”

  She reached across the car and touched his face, “Don’t give up on me, baby.”

  He felt no anger, no bitterness, no anxiety, no regrets, only an intense, searing pain that reduced his life to a flickering of memories and images. It was a slide show passing out his window, darkening with each frame. He looked out the window and for some reason recognized each alley and street corner as if it were his childhood home. He wanted to recount everything decent and real he had ever known along these streets; but instead he could only sputter, “Look where we are. We were kids—”

  “Shhh, honey. Try not to talk.”

  AN OVERNIGHT DRIVE

  In the hospital corridor he moved with a clawing pain in his ribs, finding the package and clipboard, ducking in and out of rooms as he approached the elevators, and leaping inside at the last minute with a group of patients. He was sweating and trembling and an old woman asked him if he was all right.

  “I’m just afraid of hospitals, ma’am. I had a bad experience in one.”

  As the doors opened for the lobby, he stepped out into the crowds, full of faith. He had no idea how any of this would work, but he moved ahead, and didn’t question. He recognized the feeling, distantly, as when he’d first fled with his father and driven off into the night. Winded, he moved through the momentary clutter of a changing shift, then rested against a large semicircular desk lined with black-and-white TV monitors underneath, where the night security guard was just arriving and hastily getting organized.

  The guard was an old man with a scowl that looked permanently etched into his face, and, instead of Kevin’s eyes, he looked at the urgent package.

  “Ah, Jesus Christ,” said the guard. He fumbled around rapidly through papers, then looked back at the clipboard, moving his face very close and lifting off his glasses. “You’re telling me Eddie just signed this and sent you upstairs.”

  “Guess so.”

  “No, no, no. Look at the address here—you got to get over to wing C. Hurry. What the hell is in that thing, anyway?”

  Kevin shrugged.

  “Fastest way is right outside, straight across to that building over there.”

  Kevin pointed, mimicking the guard’s actions.

  “And Jesus, hurry up.”

  When Kevin reached the main door, he was out of breath. He saluted the guard, pushed out backward, and moved into the balmy, breezy night. The skies were pink with captured streetlights and the air was alive with the ambient hum of the nearby boulevard. Kevin walked across the plaza, through saw palmettos, down a grassy slope to the curb. Sirens rose and faded all around the city, just a lonely sound on a warm night.

  In a row of parked cars, a pair of headlights flashed on, shining across him like a searchlight. As the car pulled forward, Kevin saw his father behind the wheel.

  He got quietly into the backseat of the car, and as they sped off with the windows down, he felt the thoughtless pleasure of the wind blowing across him. His father was panicked by his injuries, alternating between vehement apologies, sudden fits of anger about the three hackers, and pleading that Kevin would heal into his former athletic self. Every now and then something sounded too rehearsed, like an uncertain prayer or a nervous eulogy, but he knew that his father didn’t mean to deceive him again. He simply didn’t have words for the truth. Kevin was in pain, but because he believed he would survive, he could tolerate it now.

  Colette sat in the backseat with Kevin, reaching over to touch him and sitting upright again when he seemed more comfortable in his own stream of wind. They grew superstitiously quiet. Across freeway interchanges and under winding tunnels, they moved outward through ringlets of hills, into the San Gabriel Valley, where the air smelled like baked concrete.

  “Your father still has the money,” said Colette. Her hair was trailing wildly around her, and she fought away the loose strands, holding it off her face.

  But, speaking as if under some anesthesia that loosened his tongue, he said, “There’s no fucking money anymore.”

  “Yes, there is, Kev. I promise you. I meant to teach your little wife some humility back there, but I never meant to cut you two out of the deal. It’s all there. My fifty percent and yours.”

  “Oh, fifty percent between the two of us!” said Colette, laughing.

  “Don’t start fucking arguing the numbers on me now, baby—we’ve just brought Kevin back from the dead.”

  “And you’re going to nickel-and-dime us to the bitter end.”

  They arrived at Jerry’s rented house in a dust storm, wind devils forming on the dead lawn, trash cans lying overturned, and plumes of mist rising off the sprinklers from a nearby yard.

  “Are they staking out the house?”

  “Not anymore,” said Jerry. “Last car left after they searched the place and didn’t find anything. But we got to be quick.”

  He led them out to the garage, raising the door to reveal a clutter of shadows in the dark. Everyone was startled by the dark configurations inside, but when Jerry turned on the lights, it was only Melody’s decorations. She had made up the room as if for a party, with streamers that read, “Welcome home,” hanging piñatas, hula skirts, and a mannequin in a Hawaiian shirt. Jerry looked seasick for a moment, then said, “I guess she got over the rats.”

  Nothing else remained but overturned water heaters, cedar boards, and reams of torn-up paper. Jerry took out a screwdriver and a crowbar and began taking apart one of the water heaters, while Colette sat on a foldout chair, wearing a party hat and exhaling into a blowout horn that unraveled and retracted like a frog’s tongue. Paper buckets were filled with candy; balloons were tethered to every exposed electrical conduit. Colette began blowing her horn over and over at Kevin, laughing at his exasperated face.

  “It’s here,” said Jerry.

  Finally he pried his way into the water tank, cursing as he hurt his hand. Out of the water heater spilled hundreds of fortune cookies, the farthest few tumbling and resting at Kevin’s feet.

  Jerry looked back and forth between the cookies and his team, then rose up suddenly, shouting and stomping on them like a swarm of fire ants. “That whore. That back-stabbing lying bitch. I’m going to find her and I’m going to fucking kneecap her.”

  Colette started laughing, so hard and hysterically that her feet ran in place and her cheeks turned red. “You have a gift with women, Jerry.”

  He threw himself into the cedar boards and slumped down, flabbergasted and as limp as a scarecrow. Kevin picked up a shred of paper and read it aloud: “… which may be all you truly deserve …”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Jerry from his slumped position. “She’s an idiot. She thought people would sit around at parties trying to piece together some stupid message in a bunch of cookies.”

  Colette found one and read: “Elizabeth, I’m sorry I couldn’t get to know you …” She sniffled, recovering from laughter, and said, “God, Jerry. It’s a letter to us.”

  So for a solemn half hour the three partners moved on their hands and knees, piecing together a long message on the floor. At times they almost forgot their catastrophe, cooperating like children around a jigsaw puzzle. When the message lay completed, beginning in the middle of the garage and swirling outward in the shape of a whirlpool, they took turns reading it aloud:

  Dear Jerry, Kevin, and Elizabeth, a.k.a. Daniel, Douglas, and Esther:

  Congratulations on gaining and losing a fortune that would make any group of common thieves proud. I had my doubts, but I’m pleased to see that you’ve finally met your potential. It’s particularly touching that you would all reunite for this occasion, so please enjoy my special pecan fudge birthday cake, along with many other consolation prizes. You have m
uch to celebrate. Aside from each other—which may be all that you truly deserve—you have years of fond memories and a wonderful unexplored future. I have relieved you of the money, and in exchange I offer you sole proprietorship of my up-and-coming business venture. May you bring others as much joy and amusement as you’ve brought me. Jerry, you are a masterful teacher; Kevin, you are a spirited young crook. As for you, Elizabeth, I’m sorry I couldn’t get to know you better, but I hope that you will enjoy the macaroons I’ve left on the table. As for your eternal souls, consider this exchange to be your first step toward a great involuntary redemption. Zero is a liberating number. And—for your own salvation—this money will be used for great purposes: feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, or whatever floats your boat. I will see to it that no dollar is wasted. Christ hung on the cross between two thieves, one good and one evil. I have always considered myself that good thief, and I am looking forward to embracing Him with all of my newfound riches.

  Sincerely,

  Melody

  P.S. At dawn I intend to leave an anonymous tip with the police. Now might be a good time to begin your new lives.

  The three thieves stood in a circle, staring down. Colette reached out and held Kevin’s hand, while she patted Jerry on his sunken shoulder.

  “You have to admire her craftsmanship,” she said. “She’s a goddamn Scheherazade.”

  An hour later, Kevin sat in the front seat while Colette drove them beyond the last streetlights, out into the desert where the skies opened and the air smelled rich with dust and creosote. Jerry lay down in the backseat, facing the ceiling, moaning that he had never been so angry and miserable in his entire life. If he lived a thousand years he would never trust another woman. In a passing fit, he raged and kicked the upholstery until finally, like an infant, he exhausted himself and was pacified by the rocking over uneven roads.