by Michael Kerr
They left Boo taped to the chair in the kitchen. Logan went back through to the store to find that Harper had died. He knelt on his ribcage and used both hands to twist and pull the arrow from his chest.
“What do we do with the body and the guy in the kitchen?” Tom said.
“Get rid of the stiff, and then lock the other guy in the barn. You and the girls will have to keep away from the store until I’ve dealt with Cady and got Kelly back.”
“Hey, we’re in this together, Logan. I―”
“This isn’t something that you get to vote on, Tom. When these two jokers are missed, Palmer will send another crew to find out what happened here. I need for you to take Gail and Debbie to a safe location that you have no connection with. One way or the other this is going to be a done deal in twenty-four hours, or less. I’ve got all the info I need to take Cady’s outfit apart.”
Gail and Debbie took a little pity on Boo. It was obvious that he and his partner were just small fry in Cady’s organization, employed to do penny ante jobs. And so while Logan and Tom wrapped up Lee’s body in a sheet of tarpaulin and took it out and laid it in the back of the pickup in the barn, along with two heavy wheel rims and some nylon rope, they bathed Boo’s chewed-up, broken leg, applied antiseptic, splinted the limb, and then gave him four Tylenol capsules and a glass of water to wash them down with.
“Do you know where my daughter is?” Debbie said to Boo.
Boo frowned. Shook his head. “Nobody tells me anything,” he said. “Lee and I just get told to go somewhere and do something. We spend most of the time convincing small businesses to cough up protection money. Is Lee going to be okay?”
“He’s dead,” Gail said, feeling a little guilty, even though she had fired the crossbow at an armed intruder.
Boo’s face crumpled and he began to cry like a kid who’d just been told that his pet dog had been hit by a truck. Lee had been his best friend.
“You should start over and do something honest with your life,” Gail said. “I can tell by your aura that you’re not really an evil person, just misguided.”
Through the pounding pain in his leg and the sense of grief at knowing that Lee was dead, Boo let Gail’s words sink in. If he survived this situation, he would have to get the hell out of Fort Myers. He would make his way north and west to Ozark in Alabama, where his widowed aunt, Vera Caitlin, had a small timber frame house in a nice rural location, a spit away from a lake. He was sure that he would be welcome to stay there.
“I won’t be long,” Tom said to Logan. “I know a swamp that never gives up its secrets.”
Logan closed the barn doors after Tom had driven out and headed east on the deserted highway.
Less than fifteen minutes later Tom made a left onto a rutted track that used to lead through mangroves to a shack that had burned down a decade ago. Its owner, Zachary Selman, had got loaded on the corn mash white lightning he produced in a still out back, and had fallen into a stupor while puffing on his corncob pipe. The pipe had fallen to the floor, and the glowing embers had spilled out and set fire to the place, and to Zachary, who’d somehow made it outside, engulfed in flames like a human torch, to almost make it to the swamp before burning to death.
Fifty yards past the blackened skeleton of the shack, Tom stopped next to what had been dubbed Selman’s Swamp. He dragged the tarp-wrapped body over roots to the water’s edge, and then made two more trips for the wheel rims and rope. After removing the tarp, he cut two lengths of the rope and threaded the first piece through one rim and tied it around the corpse’s waist, and then repeated the process, attaching the other rim to the neck. The awkward part was getting the weighted body into the swamp. He had to step into the stinking quagmire and pull the dead man in. The steel wheel rims drew the slack body down, for it to disappear from view and sink into a thick layer of mud.
Tom lost a shoe as it was sucked from his foot when he climbed back out on to the bank. He stood for a minute until the last air bubble had broken the surface of what he thought of as the Black Lagoon, to leave it smooth and still again.
Less than an hour after he had left the store, he was back. He had made one stop on the return journey to dump the tarp in a storm sewer in a channel at the side of the highway.
After a hot shower, Tom joined the others downstairs in the kitchen. He gave Boo a withering look and said to Logan, “What about him? I can’t think of one good reason why he shouldn’t join his buddy in the swamp.”
“Jesus, Tom,” Gail said. “He’s injured and is no threat to us.”
“He came here armed, and would’ve shot you or Debbie if he’d thought it necessary, or been told to. He’s a no-account hoodlum; part of an organization that needs to be eradicated.”
“We’ll just keep him till we have Kelly back and Cady is dead,” Logan said. “He won’t be able to stay in the area, and Gail’s right, he’s no threat to us.”
Boo sat still and said nothing. They were discussing his fate as though he wasn’t there. The big bearded guy wanted to cap him, but the other appeared to be in charge, and he seemed to be the more rational of the two.
“What do you think, Boo?” Logan said. “Should we just put a slug in the back of your head and have done with it?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Boo said. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life. We were sent here tonight to get information on Thomas Cody; just ask questions and then report back. I’m a smalltime criminal. I don’t make decisions, I just follow orders.”
Tom drew a nine-millimeter pistol from the waistband of his pants, stepped toward Boo and pushed the muzzle up against his left eye with enough force to almost dislodge it from the socket.
Boo pulled his head back, but the pressure did not relent.
“Do it and you get to clean up the mess,” Gail said from behind Tom. “And you won’t get to fool around for six months.”
Gail’s words broke the dark spell that Tom was under. He stepped away from Boo and returned the gun to his waistband.
“We’ve got a few hours,” Logan said. “I need to go for a walk and think of the best way to resolve this.”
“I’m starving,” Tom said.
“How do scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries and toast sound?” Gail said. “Seeing as how you didn’t blow Boo’s brains out and turn the kitchen into a bloodbath.”
Tom grinned: “That sounds great.”
“Do you both want some?” Gail said to Debbie and Logan.
“Yeah,” Logan said.
“Please,” Debbie said.
“Do you think you could manage to eat?” Gail said to Boo.
“I’m hurting and I feel sick,” Boo said. “But I’d like to try some.”
Tom shook his head in disbelief. It seemed weird to be offering food to someone who’d broken in armed with a gun that he would probably have used.
“I’ll be back soon,” Logan said as he opened the kitchen door and walked out into the night.
The fresh air was cool and invigorating. The back yard led to a rail fence with a gate set in it. He opened it and walked along the edge of a field to where an old 4020 diesel John Deere tractor had settled into long grass and weeds and was just a rusted hulk. He reached out and touched it; ran his hand over the side of it and felt flakes of reddish-brown rust come away and fall to the ground. He closed his eyes, kept his palm against the cold and corroding metal and was transported back to when he had been a ten-year-old and spent many weekends on his grandparents’ small farm on Staten Island, where his grandpa, Walt Logan, had taught him to drive his 4020, which had been about the last of that model ever produced. The rush of memories was a welcome distraction. He had learned a lot from his grandpa. Being a farmer had made Walt a patient, considerate and understanding yet strong-minded man. He had come to know that you had to work with nature, not fight against it. And he had instilled Logan with values that he still held dear.
Logan took his hand off the tractor, and as if a connection had been broken he was f
ully back in the present. His grandpa had been in the ground for thirty years now, shortly followed by his grandma, who had just faded away without Walt by her side.
Returning to the store, Logan sat at the table in the kitchen with the others and ate the tasty supper and drank two cups of black coffee.
Tom had removed the tape that bound Boo’s wrists, and warned him that if he gave him any cause to, he would definitely shoot him and risk Gail’s wrath.
After finishing the meal, Logan went through to the store, found a couple of thick blankets on a shelf, spread them on the floor and used a folded fleece jacket from a rack as a pillow. He wasn’t particularly tired, but needed to be fresh for whatever the next day would bring, so laid down, closed his eyes and dozed, thinking of a time when he was a young boy again, with no concern of what might be waiting up ahead in life. Perhaps he had come full circle, and just lived each day moment to moment. He was now over fifty, but had not yet reached whatever his conception of illusory splendor the future might hold. Reality had blown away much of the adventure he had thought lay ahead. There was too much bad shit in the world, which youngsters would have to face when they left the fantasies of childhood behind them.
Logan walked a fine line, attempting to be an outsider to all that confounded him, but with a weakness to become too involved if need be, and fortunately possessing the mindset to utilize any amount of force necessary to right a wrong that he could not turn his back on. There would be more violence and probably loss of life before this situation was resolved, and he hoped that he would be up to the task. He had one goal only at this moment in time; to reunite a mother and child. Anyone that stood in his way was an obstacle to be ridden roughshod over.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ONE side of the Bunker was sectioned into holding cells fronted by steel bars. The floors were solid concrete, and cinderblock walls separated them from one another. There were also three large rooms used for storing drugs and weapons on the other side of the long corridor. Eleven people were being held prisoner at the present time, seven of which were girls aged between twelve and seventeen. There was only one infant, and that was Kelly.
When she woke up her head felt muzzy, as if it was filled with the white stuff that her mommy called cotton batting. It was difficult to think. Fear had driven out all cohesive thought. Kelly remembered that she had been crying, and asking the woman ‒ who had brought her to this cage ‒ where her mommy was. The woman had told her to shut up, and had then stuck a needle in her arm. It had stung, and then she must have fallen asleep.
She stayed still for a long time with her eyes tightly shut and her body curled up in a fetal position; back curved, head bowed, and arms and legs bent and drawn up to her torso. There was a thin blanket over her, but she was still very cold. Much later she let her body relax a little and slowly opened her eyes and looked about her. There was a single naked bulb hanging down from the ceiling on a short length of cable, but it only cast a dim glow. She was in a box. Three sides of it were solid, and the other had iron bars across it. She gripped the edges of the grimy sun lounger that she was lying on and pushed herself up into a sitting position. The only other item in the cell was a red plastic bucket. It didn’t dawn on her that it was there to use as a toilet.
Kelly could hear noises. There were men’s voices talking, someone crying, and the noise of another person throwing up. The sounds seemed to echo all around her. She wanted her mommy.
In the corridor, out of sight from Kelly, two men sat either side of a card table on wooden chairs. Bobby Thornton and Jack Devaney both believed that they had the best jobs in the world, apart from having to empty the buckets when they hosed out the cells. Most of the time they just got to ‘force groom’ teenage girls, turning them into drug addicts, while being regularly raped and beaten up. It didn’t take long to reduce the strongest will to mush. When the girls were sold on they were totally dependent on heroin, and had been fucked so much that their new roles as hookers was a breeze. It was amazing just how simple it was to reprogram people; to fundamentally alter their psyche by modifying it under extreme duress.
A truckload of what they thought of as no more than product had left less than two hours ago, bound for brothels run by a syndicate up in Atlanta.
Bobby and Jack had mopped out the empty cells, and the bunker now smelled of pine-scented disinfectant, that dispelled the stink of human habitation, to a degree.
“Funny how these broads latch on to you and actually start to enjoy whatever you do to them,” Bobby said as he twisted the cap off a bottle of Bud and took a swig.
“They rely on us for the smack,” Jack said. “After a few days on it they’d cut each others throats for a hit. Getting the next fix becomes the meaning of life to them.”
When Bobby finished the bud, they went into a cell that held two doped-up teenage girls, and laughed as the young women looked up at them with unfocused eyes and automatically parted their legs.
“Like well-trained bitches on heat,” Jack said as he unbuckled his belt and pushed his chinos down to his ankles. “And we get fresh pussy to play with every week or two. How good can life get?”
Carla Melville entered the bunker via a set of concrete stairs that led down to it from a door on the first floor of the building. The door was constructed to look like a tall rack of shelves, designed to spring open at the push of a well concealed button.
Walking along the corridor, she came to the cell that Bobby and Jack had entered, but said nothing, just stood and watched the men’s pale asses pump up and down, and listened to them grunting as they took the girls. It turned her on to watch the teenagers being abused.
Bobby was first to finish up. He climbed to his feet and turned round to see Carla staring at his now almost flaccid penis. He made no attempt to pull his pants up. He could see that Carla’s cheeks were flushed, and she was running the tip of her tongue over her top lip.
“You want to go in an empty cell and get it on?” Bobby said. “I should be ready to pop again in a few minutes.”
Carla said nothing, just walked along the corridor and entered an open cell. She felt dirty, but excited. She wanted it, and Bobby was twenty years younger than her, had a great physique, and didn’t run off at the mouth. What happened in the Bunker, stayed in the Bunker.
Bobby was standing tall in more than one way as he entered the cell. Carla was in her early forties, but knew all the moves. She stripped off and then knelt in front of Bobby and took him in her mouth, gripping his firm buttocks with both hands as she tasted both him and the girl that he had just taken.
She withdrew her wet lips and told him to lie on the lounger, and was astride him, enveloping him in seconds, to growl like a lioness as he rose to meet her thrusts.
She came quickly, three times, but was still up for more when Jack knelt behind her to make it a threesome.
Kelly heard strange noises. It was frightening and sounded like wild animals she had watched in TV programs. She hoped that the bars of the room she was in would keep them out if they found her.
Jack and Bobby were in the corridor, sitting at the table and sharing a joint when Carla came out of the cell. She was back in her dark two-piece suit and high heels and looked all businesslike again.
“You want a beer?” Bobby said.
Carla shook her head and smiled. “I’m fine now, boys,” she replied, walking past them back along the corridor. “Keep up the good work.”
She looked in on the little girl, who appeared to still be sleeping. And then she went back up to ground level, to walk to her Kia and leave the premises. She wanted a hot shower and a large Scotch rocks. On the way home she relived the episode with Bobby and Jack. The sex had eased a growing tension that she had been experiencing. Getting laid always took away the build-up of pressure. It was her addiction. It seemed that she could never get enough of it. And so she was not particularly choosy. She took on all comers with a stiff dick that they needed to stick in somebody.
Logan w
oke up four hours later feeling refreshed. He had also made up his mind what to do. The power of sleep was in part a way that let the subconscious sort and file and sometimes come up with practical solutions to problems. Getting up off the floor he stretched and heard the crack of bones as he rolled his neck. He could smell coffee, so made his way through to the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Gail said. “Did you sleep well?”
Logan nodded and grunted in the affirmative as Gail poured a cup of coffee and held it out to him.
“Thanks,” Logan said.
Debbie turned and smiled wearily at him from where she was standing at the partly open back door. It was obvious that she had not slept.
“I’ve been through the paperwork,” Tom said, entering from the hallway. “Looks like we have all we need to spring Kelly.”
“All I need,” Logan said. “I told you that I’d be going it alone from here on in.”
“And I decided that you won’t,” Tom said. “When we came on board it wasn’t just for one stop, it was a ticket to the end of the line. You need someone to cover your ass, and that someone is me.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll get things done better if I don’t have to worry about other people’s safety.”
“That’s not your decision to make, Logan. Getting Kelly back is the goal, and we’ll have a better chance of doing it together.”
“You could still get yourself killed.”
“Life’s a risky business. At least we know to expect trouble. It’s not like being taken out pointlessly by some moron driving under the influence, or being felled by a fucking heart attack, or―”
“Enough,” Logan said as he turned to face Gail and said, “What do you think? Do you want to take the chance of being a widow tomorrow?”
“You two are capable and have the advantage,” Gail said. “You know who these bastards are, and have their addresses. I agree with Tom, two is better than one.”
Logan sighed, finished his coffee and held the cup out for Gail to refill.