by David Putnam
I drove out to Waterman Avenue and headed north. In the trunk, Jonas was quiet, no kicking or yelling. Waterman went straight up into the foothills, and farther up into the mountains. I drove up into the mountains to a wide dirt turnout that led to a fire road blocked with a locked, metal-arm barricade. Others had gone around in four-wheel drive vehicles and knocked down a semi-path. I took Mack’s Thunderbird around. The undercarriage banged and bumped. Still, not a whimper from the trunk. I would have liked it better if he had complained.
The dirt road had developed rain-eroded trenches that grew deeper the farther I ascended. I came to a point where the risk of getting stuck overruled any further travel. We’d gone far enough, no one would hear this far into the hills. I put the car in park right in the dirt path and got out. I stood at the back of the car and tried to get up my nerve to do what had to be done. Three years earlier, before I’d gone to prison, when I still worked with Robby Wicks on the Sheriff’s Violent Crimes Team, this would have been standard operating procedure. I could hear Robby now behind me whispering in my ear: “What’s the matter, pussy? You turn soft? You want your daddy to do this for you? Stand aside, you pussy, I’m only going to show you one more time.”
In the end, Robby had turned into a narcissistic asshole, but I still wished him to appear and help me with this unholy task.
I tried to keep out the image of the child, Jonas Mabry, bleeding in my arms as I rolled code three up Atlantic Avenue, the other deputies risking punishment to blockade the intersections. I shook those images off and pulled the Glock from my waistband, unlocked the trunk, and stepped back.
The trunk deck popped open. I half-expected an evil clown to bob up like a jack-in-the-box.
Jonas didn’t move. Maybe when we bumped across those deep divots he banged his head. Maybe he was knocked out and needed emergency aid. I took a step forward to peer in and caught myself. Don’t fall for a simple trick like that. I stepped back and leveled the gun at the opening. “Come out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
From in the trunk: “What’s the matter, big man? You a scared of a skinny, pencil-necked geek like me?” His voice mimicked a small child.
“Come on out or I’ll shoot some rounds right through the side.”
His hand appeared over the bottom lip of the trunk. “Hold your water, big man. I’m coming out. But we both know you won’t shoot. I’m too important to you right now.” His face appeared next, his smile full with the black hole. He swung his leg out. “You know this is all a waste of time. We should just skip this part and move on to the next.” He climbed out. “You know you can’t make me tell you what you want. You can’t threaten me with death. That’s a bite without teeth. You can’t kill me. You’ll never find those cute little children. And, of course, the big factor with you is that I have super powers. You see, you’d never take a life that you saved, you’d never do it.”
I needed to take back control of the situation. “Turn around and assume the position.”
He held up his hands. “Or what, big man? What are you going to do?”
I rose up and kicked him right in the chest. He flew back. His head banged into the trunk deck as the rest of his body folded into the trunk.
“You aren’t listening to me, are you? I said get out of there. Now.”
He gave a wilted cackle as he again climbed from the trunk, one hand holding his head. He stood on shaky legs and pulled a bloodied hand away from his head. Blood covered his hand and rolled down his wrist.
Scalp wounds bleed a lot.
“Now,” I said, “turn around and put your hands on the car. I’m going to pat you down for weapons.”
“Little late for that, don’t you think? You asshole.”
Finally, some emotion. He turned slowly. I helped out, kicked him again in the ass. He flew forward and banged his forehead on the open edge to the trunk deck. Another laceration. Blood ran down the side of his face.
His injuries didn’t bother me, and I only had the urge to beat the shit out of him more as my anger rose. I had to control my emotions. I grabbed the back of his shirt. With my other hand I put the gun in the back of my waistband and patted him down.
Under his sock, taped to his leg, I found a dirk, a double-edged knife. A felony. Taped to the small of his back I found a .44 derringer. Two felonies. I tore it off. He had nothing else, no wallet, no bits of paper, just some money and a prescription bottle with four Demerol tabs.
I stepped back and looked at the gun in my hand, a reminder he’d made me nothing more than a pawn in his game. I hadn’t played this smart. I should’ve patted him down before he went in. If he’d wanted to kill me, he could’ve had the gun ready when I opened the trunk. I thought of Marie and the kids back home. I kicked him from behind, right between the legs. He fell to the ground. His bloody head flopped in the dirt as he writhed in pain, his hands clutching his crotch.
“You going to tell me, or are we going to keep this little game of pain going until you’re nothing but a bloody lump of flesh?” I asked.
He gasped. “You’re an asshole, Deputy Johnson. And you’re going to pay for everything you do here today. So think carefully.” He coughed and spit, got up on his hands and knees, his head lolling, dripping blood. “I’m not telling you a thing. Think about it. Do you think I haven’t mentally prepared for this? Do you think we’ve come this far for me to simply roll over and beg forgiveness? We want the money. You owe my mom and me a million dollars. Not money from the FBI. And not money from some person concerned over the little brats, but money from you. It has to come from you. Call it poetic justice.”
My anger rose up again, and I kicked him in the ribs. The air blew out of him in a huff. “I’m the asshole? I’m not the one who’s kidnapped three helpless little children, huh? And, putting all that morally corrupt mess aside, how, exactly, how do you figure I owe you a million dollars?”
He coughed and choked and let out a crazed laugh. “You know, asshole, you know.”
“I don’t, so tell me.”
He looked up, blood running in his eye. “Because you had to be a big man that day. You had to kick our door in. If you’d have done your job the way you were supposed to, you should’ve just walked away. But no, you had to be the big man and kick the door in. We would’ve died like we were supposed to, me and Bella. Me and my mom would’ve died with my sisters like we were supposed to. Instead…instead look at me. You created me. You’re a son of a bitch, a monster maker.” He kicked out and missed.
I took a step back, awed at the intensity of his insanity.
Another piece to the crazy puzzle fell into place: Micah Mabry. The only person who could’ve told him about that day, about kicking in the door when I didn’t have to, was his father. I said, “Did you kill your father?” Micah Mabry was old and could have succumbed to age. The government had not done an autopsy.
Jonas rolled over onto his back, chest heaving. “I would’ve killed my old man, believe me. I would have. I planned on torturing him, just like you’re doing right now. Only he told me about you without any prompting at all. He told me what you’d done, the whole dumb-assed story. Then I told him what I was going to do to you for what you did to me and Mom. He died right there, grabbed his chest and keeled over like some kinda weak pussy, asshole.”
“That was two years ago. Why did you wait two years to do this?”
“What? Wait a second, you don’t know, do you?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, that’s a good one. Believe me when I tell you, that’s really a good one. You’re not only an asshole, you’re a big dumb asshole. Come on, big man, break me up a little more, let’s get on with this little dance. Figure out that I’m not going to tell you shit about those cute little children so we can get this thing going.”
He’d been planning this for two years. I didn’t know the significance of those two years, what they had to do with his plan, but it showed his resolve. I realized he wasn’t going to give up the information. The sun beat
down, draining my strength. Hopelessness crept in. What was I going to do now?
Jonas saw the shift in my resolve. “We done here? What a pussy. That’s the best you can do? I expected a lot worse from you, of all people, a BMF, a Brutal Mother Fucker. That’s right, I did my research.”
His words made the BMF tattoo on my shoulder burn and tingle. Mistakes and poor judgment would haunt me the rest of my life. I could’ve had the tattoo removed, but left it as a reminder.
He used that word again, the one Robby would have used: pussy. I walked over and shot him in the foot.
He screamed and rolled around in the dirt. The dirt stuck to him like a Foster Farms chicken, dusted in flour before Dad dropped it into the hot grease.
I tried one last time. “You going to take me to those children?”
He groaned and continued to flop around. I dragged him back over to the car and shoved him into the passenger seat. What choice did I have?
He tossed around in the seat, fumbled with his prescription bottle, and popped two Demerols into his mouth. I headed down off the mountain. In ten minutes his agitation calmed. “Take me to Mission, west of Central in Montclair,” he said.
“Why? Do you think I’m done with you? I could be taking you to the FBI.”
“Really? We going to keep playing this game?”
“I don’t want you to hurt those children.”
“You do what you’re supposed to do and I promise you—I give you my word—nothing will happen to them.”
No way did I believe him.
We drove on for a few minutes. He wiggled until he got his foot up onto the seat. He gently peeled off his Nike. Blood was everywhere and his foot looked horrible. I felt bad and regretted the course of action I had taken. He took off his shirt and tied it around his foot. The tattoo the old crone from Landers had described, the heart with the bullet scar in the center, covered his left breast. As he moved, I spotted a larger tattoo in Gothic lettering across his abdomen: “Mama Tried.” Right below that: “Patricide, try it.”
“Please, tell me why you’re doing this?” I asked.
His eyelids drooped from the narcotic, the muscles in his face slack. “You’re a smart guy, you’ll figure it out.”
“Tell me.”
Out the window he watched the passing landscape. “I need the money. I need the money because you ruined my life.”
That logic, of course, didn’t make sense. I had saved his life. “How can you be mad over what I did?”
He turned and looked at me, his mouth agape. His missing teeth gave an illusion that his hole went on forever. “We’re done talking.” He laid back and closed his eyes. “Take the freeway to Central, get off and go south to Mission, hang a right then a left on Kadota. Wake me when we get there.”
“Wait. Tell me the name of the boy.”
He opened one eye. “I don’t know why I should. It won’t help you.”
I said nothing.
“Eddie Crane.”
He closed his eye. “From Bell Gardens.”
I drove and looked at him, again and again. I found it difficult to take my eyes from him. I didn’t want to, but I did. I regretted the day I had saved his life. He slept with his mouth open, the eyes behind his closed lids moving constantly as if he was watching a lively tennis match.
Twenty minutes later I turned onto Kadota. I slowed. “Jonas.” He didn’t stir. I reached over and shook him, his skin cold to the touch like a cadaver. He roused, slow, coming up out of a sound sleep, even with a bullet through his foot. He lifted his head, looked around, and waved for me to continue. I drove until he held up his hand and I stopped the car.
He got out with a limp. “Wait a minute.” He went across the sidewalk, through a fence and into a yard with a car parked on the dirt in front of the house, a broken-down, faded-green ’84 Grand Marquis. The house looked abandoned, a derelict. He reached into the Grand Marquis and came back to the street, leaving a bloody snail trail. He tossed a brown paper bag into my car window. “Call me when you have the money. You have one day.”
“One day isn’t enough. How am I supposed to come up with a million dollars?”
“Not my problem. Do what you gotta do. Rob a bank if you gotta. Twenty-four hours.”
I opened the bag and found a disposable phone. I looked back at him, then at the house behind him to memorize it for later.
He smiled a droopy smile. “Won’t do you any good. I covered my tracks. You won’t find a lead here. I’m to meet a doctor of questionable ability, who’s been disbarred or whatever you call it for doctors. He’ll fix me up. But I gotta tell ya, I warned him I’d be a lot worse than this. I’ve been hurt worse falling off my tricycle as a kid. I hope this isn’t an example of the kind of work you do. If it is, I guess I’ll never see my money. You have a nice day, Deputy Johnson.” He turned and hobbled back into the yard.
“You’ll always leave a trail,” I said.
He turned and scowled and shook his head. I pointed to the bloody path he’d left.
“You’re a fool,” he said.
I drove away. Maybe I was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I woke when the motel door slammed shut with enough violence to shake the walls and rattle the gloomy painting above the bed. If the cops had come for me, they’d have busted down the door. They wouldn’t close it behind them. I put the pillow over my head. I needed to squeeze out another minute or two of sleep. I was so damn tired. Some of the fatigue came from depression, the hopelessness of the situation, the fact the kids had not been rescued and continued to be in serious jeopardy. I brought the illuminated dial of my watch up close to my eyes; I’d dropped Jonas off only three hours earlier.
“Come on,” Mack said, “Get your sorry ass up. Where is he? What’d you do with Mabry?” Mack grabbed my foot and twisted it.
I kicked free, rolled over, and sat on the edge of the bed, my head hanging in my hands as I tried to wake up. The room was dim without the lights on. “I know you’re mad. I just didn’t want to involve you.”
“I know all that. Skip to where you got him on ice. Where is he?”
“We need to get the money. Mabry’s not going to do anything until he gets the money. I’m convinced of that now. Only then will we have a move to make. If we don’t get the money, we don’t have a chance. He’ll give up the children if he gets the money.”
“You squeezed him? You really put the boot to him, and he still wouldn’t give it up?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I guess you didn’t do it good enough, did you, good buddy? Shit.” He kicked the bed, then sat down next to me. I rubbed my face.
“I’m sorry for leaving you hanging like that,” I said.
He didn’t acknowledge the apology and lowered his tone. “You know how this works—the money’s no guarantee. In fact, the odds in this kind of thing go against the kids if we do give him the money.”
“I know, but in this case, I think he’ll give us the kids once he gets the money. I really do. I’ll do the exchange myself, and won’t give up the money without proof of life.”
I wasn’t sure about the kids coming back safe. But I was sure about one aspect of Mabry’s game: He wanted to hurt me any way he could, and I was somehow in his plan to do just that.
“This caper, coming out good, with the kids safe and the asshole dead, is only wishful thinking. You really did your best, beating this asshole?”
He knew better then to ask me that.
With my head still in my hands, I turned and looked at him. “Yeah, I did.”
“You try putting his nuts in a vise and twisting?”
“No, I left my medieval torturing devices in Central America.”
He reached over, took my right hand, and checked my knuckles. I jerked my hand away. “Stop it. We need to get the money.”
Someone knocked at the door. I jumped up and headed for the bathroom to hide. “You expecting anyone?”
Mack went to the door. “C
hill out man, it’s only Barbara. When I saw my car—the one you parked right out front like some kind of in-your-face-asshole move—I called her. That was real ballsy, coming back here with the FBI a few doors down.”
I wanted to ask how it was different from when he did so, but didn’t have the energy.
He peeked out the window and then opened the door. Barbara Wicks slipped in. She spun around right into Mack’s arms as he closed the door. He hugged her as if one of them had been stranded for years on a desert island.
I backed up and sat back on the bed. I hadn’t seen them as a couple; it’d never crossed my mind. The irony. Not nine months prior, Mack had gunned down her husband, Robby Wicks, with an Ithaca Deerslayer 12-gauge shotgun. Mack kissed her like a ravenous lion, three days without food. She returned the same intensity. I needed to call Marie. I needed to talk to Marie. “You two want some privacy?” I asked.
They broke and half-turned away from one another, heads down a little, embarrassed. I no longer wondered how Barbara weaseled the information about where I had taken up residency in Costa Rica.
Barbara straightened her blouse and composed herself. She turned professional. “Sorry. Where are the kids?”
Mack answered for me. “He didn’t get them. Mabry still has them.”
Her eyes widened. “What? You had Mabry, what the hell happened, Bruno?”
“He tried, he really tried,” said Mack. “Mabry wouldn’t give up the kids.”
She looked at Mack, her eyes narrowed. “Let him talk.”
“We need to get the money,” I said. “He’ll give the children up once we get the money, I’m sure of it.”
“You’re sure of it?” she asked. “You’re sure of it? You know what the stats say about giving up the money?”
She’d turned her eyes to full intensity. I pulled the bed sheet over to cover my nakedness; I wore only BVDs. “What did I bring you here for?” she asked. “Didn’t we discuss this?”