by Michael Kerr
“No, just money that I have no need of,” Logan said.
“Is it stolen?”
“It’s untraceable and has no memory. Put it in your bag and let it help you get back on track. Did you call your sister?”
“Yes, she’s on her way,” Rhonda said as she contemplated taking what appeared to be a lot of money from a man that she had never met before that day on the bus.
Logan smiled. “There’s no catch, Rhonda,” he said. “If you’d rather, I’ll stick it in a charity box.”
“I don’t understand why you’re giving it away, but I need it, so I’ll take it,” Rhonda said as she pushed the chair back a few inches, unfastened her bag and tucked the paper with the rich filling inside it.
They were drinking a second cup of coffee when a harried looking woman in her early fifties came through the door, spotted Rhonda and headed for the table.
“This is Logan, Pam,” Rhonda said to her sister. “I met him on the trip down here.”
Logan smiled, then got up, kissed Rhonda lightly on the forehead and said “Take care,” before picking up his rucksack and walking out of the coffee shop.
Rhonda was taken by surprise. She felt the need to say goodbye properly to the stranger that had so briefly been in her life. “Watch my bag, Pam,” she said and made her way to the door and looked both ways along the sidewalk, but couldn’t see him. He had just vanished as though he had never been.
CHAPTER THREE
WOLF drove back to the highway and stayed on it for a few miles, exiting at Punta Gorda, driving under I-75 and finally pulling in to the lot of the Cottonmouth Motel, several miles from the interstate. It was owned by an associate of the boss’s, and was an out of the way venue for drug deals and weapons and people drop offs and collections. Had the dump relied on paying customers, then it would have gone bust years ago.
Jimmy raised his hand to the manager sitting behind the window of the small office as Wolf stopped the car.
Nelson Brown had known that they were coming. He got up and lumbered out the door and across to where Jimmy lowered the window at the passenger side and put his hand out palm up to take a room key attached to a large plastic fob with the number 12 on it.
“There’s just one guest in number three,” Nelson said. “And he’s out. Apart from that you’ve got the place to yourselves.”
Jimmy nodded and thumbed the rocker switch to close the window as Wolf eased his foot off the brake and proceeded across the pothole-pitted lot to the end of the single row of rooms.
Moonlight and shadow made everything light or dark with very little color. The motel was flanked by deep stands of mature pond cypress trees, many of which were almost sixty feet high. They thrived near the swamp-fed, tannin-stained blackwater river and the numerous ponds in the vicinity.
Jimmy hated this area. It stank of sulfur and was alive with mosquitoes that seemed to home in on him. He quickly opened the door to the room, and then went back to help Wolf carry the woman inside, as Jade climbed out of the SUV with the kid.
Once inside the room, Jade switched on the wall-mounted TV and sat on one of the beds, still holding Kelly with one arm as she took a pack of Marlboros and a disposable plastic lighter from her purse and lit up.
Wolf had a baggy of coke, and poured out a small amount on to the top of the dresser, cut it into two lines with his hunting knife and rolled up a dollar bill to snort the sparkling nose candy.
Jimmy threw Debbie onto the other bed, and then made a phone call to tell his boss that they were at the motel with the package. After ending the call he ripped the tape from Debbie’s mouth and took Wolf’s knife off him to cut the tape binding her ankles together.
“We’ve got about forty minutes before you and your kid get collected,” Jimmy said, standing at the foot of the bed and grinning down at Debbie as he removed the Glock pistol from his waistband and placed it next to her thigh. “So let’s have a little fun while we wait.”
“W…why are you doing this?” Debbie said.
“For money, honey,” Jimmy replied, leaning forward to remove the woman’s keds, before undoing the metal button at the front of her shorts, pulling the zip down and then tugging them and her wet panties off and tossing them into a corner of the room.
“What are you going to do to my daughter?” Debbie demanded, even though she knew that she was in no position to change whatever was about to take place.
Jimmy decided to tell her. “Your daughter will be put on the market and end up with some sad couple that can’t manage to grow one of their own. As for you, you’re too old to groom as a hooker, so you’ll be sold on, maybe as slave labor, but more likely to have your organs harvested.”
Debbie found it almost impossible to believe what the man was saying to her in such a lighthearted tone of voice. She needed to scream, but knew that if she allowed herself to he would just tape her mouth again.
“Please, don’t do this, let us go,” Debbie whimpered as Jimmy unbuckled his belt, undid his pants and let them fall to his ankles.
“Spread your legs, bitch,” Jimmy said as he kneeled on top of the bed and shuffled towards her with his erect penis bobbing, throbbing; aching for her.
Debbie obeyed.
Jimmy was groaning as he pulled her T up to release her breasts. He reached out, took her nipples between his index fingers and thumbs and twisted and squeezed them as hard as he could.
Debbie did scream, loud and long.
Jade picked up the TV’s remote and tapped up the volume.
Wolf giggled as he placed the knife on the dresser top, took his dick out and started to masturbate.
One hundred yards away, a very tall man stopped at the entrance to the lot and cocked his head to the side, sure that the muffled noise he had just heard was that of a woman screaming.
It had been two days since Logan had left Gainesville. He had hitched rides and made his way down to Orlando, stayed the night in the downtown area of the city, twenty miles east of the tourist district near Disney World, and after a full breakfast had hit the road again and got a ride in a Peterbilt that was heading west on the I-4 to Tampa. He liked the Bay area, stayed overnight, enjoyed a fine meal of steak fajitas and a couple of beers at Miguel’s Mexican Restaurant on W Kennedy Boulevard, and then grabbed a solid eight hours’ sleep at the Howard Johnson Inn on North 50th Street. By nine a.m. the following morning he had enjoyed a free continental breakfast and a lot of coffee, and got into light conversation with an old guy who said he’d been a fishing guide on Sanibel Island back in the eighties and nineties, but now lived up near Scanlon on Apalachee Bay.
“Art Gilmore,” Art said, putting his coffee cup down and sticking his scarred and blocky hand out in greeting, even though they had been chatting about nothing in particular for ten minutes.
“I’m Logan. Pleased to meet you, Art.”
“What brings you down to Tampa?” Art asked. “You don’t look like a tourist or businessman, and you’ve got a New York twang.”
“I was a cop up there for a long time,” Logan said. “Now I’m footloose and fancy free. I like to keep on the move.”
“With no plan?”
“Exactly. I’m on permanent vacation.”
“Sounds as if you’re looking for something, but don’t know what.”
Logan smiled. “You could be right, Art. But I’m enjoying the journey.”
“Where’s your next port of call?” Art said as he rose slowly to his feet, wincing with pain in his right hip, which was giving him grief and needed replacing.
“I’m hitching south,” Logan said.
“I’m heading for Punta Gorda, if that’s of any use to you. It’s an annual get-together with some buddies. We fish and chug beer and tell each other the same old tall stories that we always do.”
“That would be fine, Art,” Logan said, and a few minutes later they were in Art’s pickup, heading out of Tampa for I-75.
The trip was enjoyable. Art was fine company. They stopped fo
r a bite to eat halfway, and Logan filled his bottle with water. Soon after, Art dropped Logan off. They wished each other good luck, and then Art was gone; another face to be forgotten as the days and then weeks rolled by.
On a whim, Logan decided to head inland. He started walking east out of Cleveland, and after two hours was in what he considered to be semi wilderness. It was hot, and his water was gone. Buzzards circled high in the sky, reminding him of a time in Arizona when he had found a dead, mangled body on a railroad track. That brought Kate Donner to mind. He had sat in the shade of a fat barrel cactus and phoned her while he waited for the local sheriff to arrive at the scene. Now, he wondered if Kate was still practicing law in Carson Creek, Colorado, and whether she was in a relationship. He missed her, which was in some way annoying, because he didn’t like to be weighed down with any emotional baggage. He determined that life was in essence a series of joyful and grief-filled events that memory singled out from the thousands of mundane days that passed unheeded, with nothing to mark their drifting by. There were highs and lows and run of the mill times. That was basically existence in a nutshell. He would probably give Kate a call, soon, or maybe he wouldn’t, because he was pretty certain that he would never see her again.
Another mile behind him, and up ahead at the side of the blacktop he saw a sign. It was for a motel, and as he drew near he made out the name: The Cottonmouth Motel. Below the neon tube lettering was an illustration of a coiled snake.
Logan veered off the country road and ambled up to the office, to walk in and savor the aircon.
Nelson Brown didn’t get up. He was sitting behind a counter watching an old war movie on a portable TV: The Young Lions starring Brando, Clift and the crooner, Dean Martin.
“You got a room?” Logan said to the obese black guy.
“Yeah,” Nelson said, pulling his eyes away from the screen to look up at Logan. “You’ll need to register.”
“I’m on foot,” Logan said. “I’ll pay cash up front, and I won’t need a receipt.”
“Forty bucks,” Nelson said as he heaved himself up out of the swivel chair, unhooked a key from the board behind him and slapped it down on the counter. “Number three.”
Logan gave him four tens, took the key and said, “Is there anywhere to eat within walking distance?”
“Two miles up on the left,” Nelson said. “It’s a roadhouse called Jake’s Place.”
Logan nodded, left the office and went to the room, unlocked the door and surveyed the cheap furnishings. It was exactly as he had expected, and what in general he was accustomed to. The short-tufted cord carpet was multicolored, ideal to repel liquid and conceal stains. There was one chair, two narrow beds with thin mattresses, a dresser and a couple of lamps, and a TV bracketed to the wall. He shut the door, put the latch on and tossed his rucksack onto the nearest bed. The bathroom had a shower over the tub with a rusty head that was dripping. The plastic curtain was ripped, and several of the wall tiles were cracked. He grinned as he urinated in the stained toilet bowl. This seedy motel could be anywhere in the country. It was a dump with no attractive features, which suited him just fine.
After having a lukewarm shower and then shaving, he dressed and unrolled a fleece from his rucksack, to shake it out and put it on. The evenings could still be extremely cold at this time of the year, even in Florida.
He took his rucksack with him, set off walking along the dark highway and had covered the two miles to the roadhouse inside thirty minutes.
Jake’s Place stood in the center of a large parking lot that was half full of pickup trucks, eighteen-wheelers and bikes. It was a two-storey building with steps leading up to a wood plank frontage with a corrugated roof. Speakers were blaring country rock music out into the night.
Logan was surprised that the place had a greeting station. Alongside it was a display case full of shrink-wrapped steaks. A sign invited customers to: ‘select one, and tell us how you want it served up’.
A thirty-something blond with a fixed smile ‒ that didn’t reach her eyes ‒ and wearing a T with Jake’s Place printed over the skull and massive horns of a longhorn steer, and a pair of frayed denim shorts that bit into the tops of her fleshy thighs said, “Hi, big guy. You eating with us this evening?”
Logan nodded and pointed to a large piece of the wrapped steak. “I’d like that piece cooked medium rare with home fries and a pot of coffee,” he said.
The place was dominated by booths under muted lighting. The layout was broken up by a series of shoulder-high walls, creating a semicircle-shaped dining area that wrapped itself round a central bar. Alan Jackson was on the juke singing some haunting Hank Williams lament, and there were also TVs at the bar. At the rear of the large room was an arch leading through to a poolroom that was packed with leather clad bikers. Jake’s was an oasis in the middle of nowhere; a bright, noisy and crowded gathering place, like a shining light that attracted people the way a naked light bulb drew in moths.
The coffeepot was almost empty when a waitress slid the plate onto the table in front of Logan. He asked the youngster if she had strong English mustard, but the blank look in her bovine eyes told him he was out of luck.
It was over an hour later when he arrived back at the motel. The light was off in the office, but there was a pickup parked down the side, and by the flickering screen of the TV he could see that the manager, who may also have been the owner, was still sitting in his swivel chair. It looked as though he had a can of beer in his hand. And then he thought he heard a scream. He stopped and listened. Nothing else. Could have been some wild animal.
It was as he unlocked and opened the door to his room that he heard another muffled scream. He tossed his rucksack inside and closed the door again.
He looked and listened. There was a big Ford SUV at the end of the lot, outside the last room. And the sound of another TV was now loud enough for him to hear clearly. Someone had cranked up the volume. And the shriek was a different kind of sound to whatever was being broadcast. Not a bird or animal, but a woman in some kind of distress.
Walking out across the lot, Logan was in cover of darkness as he moved up to stop opposite the room. A light was on, but the blind at the window was pulled down. He approached from behind the Ford, rounded it and stood to the side of the door.
Debbie screamed again as Jimmy dug his clawed fingers into her breasts. His overlong nails split the pale, soft skin and blood welled up from the crescent-shaped wounds as he withdrew them and moved closer, now just an inch away from inserting his dick into her.
“You bastard,” Debbie shouted, and Jimmy took the time to backhand her again.
Logan had three options. Decided that whatever was going down in the room was not with the consent of the woman that he had now heard scream twice, and was currently badmouthing whoever was abusing her. The screams had been fear or pain-filled, not part of some sex game. There was a difference. He could knock and assess the situation if someone answered the door, or go back to the office and tell the manager to phone the police, or mind his own damn business and return to his room. The choice took him less than three seconds to consider before making a decision. He went with a fourth option, backed-up two paces and kicked the door at a point next to the handle with all the power he could muster.
The cheap lock ripped free from old woodwork and the door flew open. Logan took in the scene. There was a man on one of the beds with a woman, either screwing her or about to. Another male was standing and watching the proceedings with his dick in his hand, and sitting on the bed nearest to him was a young woman holding a child.
Everyone but Logan froze for a couple of seconds. He took immediate advantage of the shock that they were experiencing and prioritized, deciding that the woman and infant were of no threat to him. He rushed forward, and as the Hispanic guy let go of his dick and picked up a knife from the dresser top, he delivered a blow to his face that knocked the man backwards to crash into the wall separating the room from the bathroom.
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nbsp; Wolf didn’t know that the knife had slipped from his now slack fingers, or feel much of anything as the back of his head impacted against the wall. He slid down to the floor temporarily dazed and with blood running from his nose and mouth.
Jade was quick to react. As the intruder attacked Wolf she ran for the open door, out to the SUV, to climb in the driver’s side and dump the kid on the passenger seat as she reached under the steering wheel, to thank God, under her breath that Wolf had, as usual, left the keys in the ignition. Twisting the key, she put the transmission in reverse and backed up as she wrenched the wheel to the right, to then accelerate away so fast that the wheels spun and threw twin lines of gravel up into the air. At the entrance she made a right and headed west, back towards Punta Gorda. After traveling a mile she stopped at the side of the highway to make a call. “Fuck!” Her cell was in her purse, still on the bed in the motel room. She drove on, looking for somewhere to stop, hoping that without any cash she would be able to convince someone that she needed to use their phone.
Logan swiveled away from the guy who was sliding down the wall. His bare-assed associate was stretching his hand out to reach for a pistol on the bed.
Grasping the guy by his hair, Logan wrenched him backwards, away from the semi-naked woman that he had been on top of.
Jimmy was in trouble and knew it. With his pants now twisted around his ankles he was as good as hobbled. But his arms were free and his reactions were quick. As the unknown assailant attempted to kick him, he grasped the booted foot with both hands and twisted it sideways.
Logan lost his balance and fell, but quickly got to his knees, just as Bare-ass managed to lean forward and grasp hold of the gun on top of the bed and begin to turn to take aim.
Lunging at the man, who had the beginning of a grin forming on his unshaven face, Logan grasped the barrel of the 9-millimeter and jerked it down and sideways, and took pleasure in the subsequent cry of pain as the trigger finger, that was inside the guard, was trapped, to snap like a twig, just a second before he delivered a roundhouse punch that knocked the guy out cold.