by Chuck Dixon
A kid asleep in a car seat. I’m not good at ages. A toddler I guess, gently snoring away while Daddy shot up.
There was a smart phone on the seat by the dead guy. It lay under a newspaper meant to conceal the syringe, lighter, spoon and the tiny white packet that lay there as well. I picked it up and went back to the Hyundai.
I called 911 when I was a few miles away. I gave the dispatcher the location. Told her there was a baby crying in the back of an SUV behind the pancake place. I hung up in the middle of her next question. I rolled the window down and tossed the phone into a lake of slush at the curb.
The cop car was gone from its parking spot. They were out for the night. Frustrated, I punched the dash, putting a permanent dent in the upholstery. In my mind I would brace them on their way out of the apartment building. The plan didn’t go much further than that.
I found a spot near the main entrance and parked the Hyundai. It was a secured building. I’d need a key card to run through the slot. The door into the lobby only opened when an occupant buzzed down from their place. I loitered by the wall of mailboxes until a couple of men came in with plastic Target bags hanging from the fingers of both hands. They groused at one another until one of them slid his card down the slot. I moved away from the mailboxes with an apology and held the door open for them and they hustled in. I followed behind as they went to the bank of three elevators. I made for a door off the lobby into a stairwell.
The sterile hallway that bisected the sixth floor ended with a floor to ceiling window that offered a view of the twinkling lights of a highway. There were doors to apartments on either side of the hall. I pressed the bell to the north-east corner unit. I was pressing an ear to the door to listen when I heard the snap of the deadbolt and the door was yanked inward.
Roxanne stood in the door, wearing an open men’s dress shirt and panties. Her head bobbed back in a gesture of surprise though her black eyes remained cold.
“What the fuck do you want?” she said.
You know, I wasn’t sure.
• 24 •
“Are you going to invite me in?” I said.
She stood aside and waved an arm at the dark interior. I stepped inside. The place was an open plan with a wide living room and kitchenette off to one side. The windows were covered over with thick plastic trash bags and duct tape. A TV was on in the living room.
“You can’t stay,” she said.
“Your boyfriend’s coming back?”
She slammed the door with a huff and walked to an overstuffed sofa. I followed. She threw herself down, bare feet propped on an arm. She pretended interest in an old movie on the TV.
“Why aren’t you out with him?”
“He was called to work.”
“You left me, Roxanne,” I said. I leaned on the arm of a leather recliner.
“How could I leave you? I was never with you.” Her eyes on the TV, a couple seated at a table in a night club while waiters rushed by with trays of drinks.
“You know what I mean.”
She shrugged, her lower lip stuck out in a pout.
“We’re leaving. Me and him,” she said.
“Leaving? For where?”
“They’re moving Chad to day shift. We can’t stay. Spring is coming anyway. The nights are getting shorter.”
Chad.
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I go with you? I can’t stay here either.”
She laughed at that. A bitter snort.
“I know. I have seen your stupid face on the television. You drew attention to yourself.”
“I want to leave, too.”
“They are looking for a dead man. No one is looking for you. You are dead. Forgotten.”
“Aren’t you feeding tonight?”
She rose from the sofa and went into the kitchenette. She came back from the fridge with a plastic baggie of blood. She tossed it to me. It was frosty cold in my hands.
“Chad took them from an ambulance the other night. Help yourself. We have enough,” she said. She dropped onto her belly on the couch again.
“Take-out,” I said. I slid the packet into a pocket of my raincoat.
She seemed to forget me, watching the TV as the same couple as before ran laughing down a street under a pouring rain. They stepped under the awning before a store to share a gentle kiss.
“I need your help, Roxanne. I’m not good at this,” I said.
“You seem to be managing, mon petit,” she said. We were back to that.
“Not for the long run. I don’t know about so many things. I need your experience.”
She sighed and turned to me, black eyes blinking.
“I should have known you’d be trouble.”
“Well, you got me into this shit.” I was getting frustrated.
“You are welcome.”
“For what?”
“Immortality.”
“Like this? As a junkie? A bottom-feeding parasite?”
She sat up then, running her nails through her hair.
“All right. It is okay. You can go with us,” she said.
“What does Chad have to say about that?”
“He will do as I tell him to.” She stood then to move close to me. She parted my knees and stepped between them, her hands playing over my chest and throat.
“Poor petit. So alone. So lost.”
I grabbed her wrist. She stiffened. I tightened my grip.
“Where will we go?” I said.
“New York. We can live by night without notice there. Anonymous and faceless with beaucoup places to sleep through the day undisturbed.”
I pictured sleeping in filthy tunnels and cellars, feeding off the disenfranchised or unlucky. A sea of blood waiting to be lapped up from a million throats.
“Come back tomorrow night. We leave then. After dark.”
I released her wrist. She took a step back, trailing her nails along my leg as she moved.
“I’ll be here.”
“It will be good. You will see. You will learn and I will teach you.”
She walked me to the door and touched my arm. Her ebon eyes looked into mine. Her lips curled in a smile that showed a hint of white teeth.
That’s when I knew for sure.
They were going to kill me.
• 25 •
“I can’t give you the same room,” the weedy clerk at the Tartan said.
“They’re all the same, right?” I said.
He shrugged and scooped my bills out of the slot. He passed me back a room key. A-6. Ground floor.
“And no housekeeping,” I said.
“Sure. Sure.” He went back to his TV.
In my new room, same as the other room except for a painting of a field of daisies instead of a herd of running horses, I went through the same light proofing ritual. Box spring against the window. Towels around the gaps of the window and door. Dresser against the door.
Nothing new on the news. No more mention of the missing corpse or the murder at the coroner’s.
The sports guy was on talking about a golf tournament someplace warm.
I thought about my next move. When darkness fell I’d have to leave. I ran through my options, places I knew. Or maybe it would be better to go somewhere I’d never been. The uncertainties worried me. I needed to feed. I needed to hide. Improvisation was dangerous. There was no winging it in this life.
Only the certainty was worse. The absolute certainty that Roxanne and her cop were going to kill me if I showed up to join their road trip. I had to be just one in a long string of companions for Roxanne. Probably a hundred years or more of jilted partners behind her. My time was up. Three was a crowd. And having me free range was not in her plans. Like a black widow, she mated and she killed. When the sun went down I’d drive west.
I woke up blind.
Light was everywhere. I threw my arms over my face and rolled to the floor. The covers tangled around me.
Hand
s were on me. Rough hands pulled me upright. The door was wide open. The dresser lay sideways. Afternoon glare smashed at me like a physical thing.
I fought to keep them from dragging me to the door. I was weak, sick. The men were big, their grip on my arms unbreakable. I felt a searing heat on my face and hands.
“Jesus! Shut the door!”
One of the men released me and went into the source of light. I raised a hand to the one still holding me. He lifted me from my feet to slam me into the wall. The field of daisies came off its hook.
The other guy shut the door leaving only a sliver of radiance at the foot of the door.
“Sick motherfucker.” The guy holding me drove a knee into my gut. I threw up a pinkish spew onto the bed. His fist in my hair, the guy slammed my face into the wall. I dropped to the floor, the world unmoored under me. The carpet heaved like an ocean storm.
“This the guy for sure?” the other one at the door said.
“Matches the photo. Thinner. Dirtier. But it’s him,” the guy over me said.
He had me facedown, knee in my back. He zipped plastic cuffs on my wrists. A second band went around my ankles. A new grip in my hair and he yanked me upright.
They were cops. Black uniforms, boots, gun belts. Nylon jackets with county sheriff stars on the shoulders. The other cop dumped my carry-all out onto the bed. Then my coat pockets. He came up with the carpet knife. The opening was ringed with gummy red residue.
“Well, well,” he said. He flipped open a plastic bag from his pocket and dropped the knife in.
“You going to arrest me?” I said.
“You want us to arrest you?” the cop who cuffed me said.
“Just don’t take me outside. I’ll tell you what you want.”
“Yeah. You have a condition. We heard,” the other cop said. He stuffed the evidence bag in his jacket pocket.
“We’re not the one you want to talk to,” the cop standing over me said.
The other cop flipped on the TV and tabbed through channels to ESPN. He took a seat in the only chair. His partner sat on the edge of the bed, careful to avoid the crimson spray of vomit drying there. They became absorbed in a discussion of football draft picks. I sat between the bed and the wall, forgotten by both of them.
They were waiting.
The slit under the door turned pink, then gray and then lit by the cold radiance of the lights in the parking lot. The cops had ordered a pizza and ate it while watching a tennis tournament in shared silence. I was mostly in and out over the last of the afternoon hours, the weight of sleep heavy on me. Now I was recovering from effects of the dose of sunshine. And I was beginning to feel the need to feed. I tested the strength of the plastic bands around my wrists and ankles.
A rap at the door. One of the cops called out a “Yo!”
Chad, the redheaded cop, came into the room, eyes fixed on me.
• 26 •
They didn’t take me without a fight. Even cuffed hand and foot I managed to shake off the first two cops. Chad was another story. He had my animal strength combined with a weightlifter’s build. He wound up on top of me with his pistol in his hand. He brought the steel butt down on my face again and again.
I didn’t lose consciousness. I’m not sure I can. The blows stunned me though. Enough to let them haul me out of the room and stuff me in the trunk of Chad’s cruiser. The redhead gave me a half dozen farewell rabbit punches before slamming the door shut on me.
Jammed into a fetal position in the pitch dark, I could hear Chad speaking to the other two.
“This is the guy, right?”
“It’s the guy.”
“The license plate matched. But he looks different from the picture.”
“It’s him. He’s a junkie. The dope changes them. Thanks for doing this.”
“Not sure I like this being off the books.”
“Live with it. You owe me, remember?”
“How many years, Chad? You’re never going to forget that?”
“It’s forgotten now. We’re even.”
They mumbled goodbyes. The door squeaked and slammed. The engine gunned and I was thrown against the spare tire.
The license plate. The kid’s Hyundai. They found the body and put two and two together and it led to a car parked at the Tartan.
Now Chad had me and was taking me someplace I was sure I wouldn’t like.
The road hissed and swished by beneath me. I could feel myself recovering from the dose of ultraviolet light. But I was hungry. Damn, I was hungry.
The car rolled on a while, the brake lights turning my world crimson at the stops. A tight right turn and the car came to a dead halt, engine idling. A door opened and shut. A slight shift in balance as someone took a seat by the driver. I could hear two voices in conversation, the tone not the words. Chad and a female voice.
He’d stopped to pick up Roxanne. This ride was going to end the same way it did for those kids they dropped off the bridge.
I tested the straps around my hands and feet again, applying steady outward pressure. I could feel the plastic stretching, straining. With a furious burst of sheer anger-driven strength I felt the cuff behind me snap.
It was a tight fit but I reached down to tug at the cuff around my ankle. It was an awkward angle with no room to really pull with any kind of force. I undid the laces of my sneakers and slid them off along with my socks. I stretched the cuffs enough that I could slide them down over my ankles and then my feet.
I was free.
The tires under me crunched over a broken surface a long while before coming to a full stop. My fingers found the cold surface of a tire bar. I gripped it and braced my bare feet against the inside of the rear quarter panel.
When the trunk opened I leapt and swung. Chad jumped back, eyes wide and teeth bared. I tumbled out onto sharp edged gravel. He came for me, a steel-capped boot sailing for my head. It struck a glancing blow off my shoulder as I rolled under the cop car and across a puddle of icy slush to the other side. Chad raced around the car to meet me as I regained my feet. He pulled his pistol and trained it on my head.
“Non! No noise!” Roxanne’s voice behind me.
I whirled in time to catch her fist full in my face. I stumbled back. Chad kicked the back of a knee and the leg went out from under me. He stomped on me a while until Roxanne called him off. I was dazed and slumped against a wheel.
Roxanne crouched to grip me under the chin, her nails digging into the flesh of my neck while Chad cuffed my wrists. This time with steel handcuffs. She tilted her head to study my face.
“You are so much trouble, mon petit,” she said.
“I thought you liked that about me,” I said. Chad jerked me upright by the steel chain between my hands.
“This was never about what I like or do not like,” she said. “I told you that it is all about anonymity, invisibility. Your face was on the television. In the newspapers. Too many unanswerable questions.”
Chad shoved me forward across the gravel lot. There were cargo containers stacked six high in neat rows to either side. We walked to the end of the row and turned to walk along a pier. The cop held me upright as we moved down concrete steps toward the edge of a canal. The water was still and black between sheets of ice white as lace in the moonlight.
I was shoved to my knees.
“I guess this is au revoir,” I said.
“Non,” Roxanne said. “This is goodbye.”
• 27 •
“Where is the ax?” Roxanne said.
“In the car I guess,” Chad said.
“Then get it!” Roxanne said. She spat the words.
Behind me I heard the scrape of boots on the gravel scree. Roxanne’s hand pressed down my shoulder. The sharp stones bit into my knees and shins.
“You’re going to chop me up? That’s how it’s done?” I said.
“One of the ways. We will take your head first. I see no need to be cruel,” she said. There was a smile in her voice. This amused her.
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br /> “And will I die? I mean, is that the end of it?”
“Eventually. There will be no pain.”
“And how can you know that?”
“It is what I have been told.”
I had no time to think about that. The flat crack from three explosions went off. The sound echoed to us from the steel canyon of the stacked containers. Shots from a gun followed by a voice shouting.
Roxanne’s hand leapt from my shoulder. I craned my neck to see her move quietly to the head of the concrete steps. She stopped there to watch for a few seconds before running back down the steps and past me. She continued on down the tow path by the canal, cowboy boots flying.
Something she saw scared the shit out of her. That was enough for me. I struggled to get to my feet and fell on my side. Footfalls were coming from between the containers. There was a high keening scream coming from somewhere. Bouncing beams of iridescent blue light stabbed out of the dark.
My options were shrinking fast. There was one thing and one thing only that I understood about what was happening. I did not want to be here when those beams of light fell on this pier.
I dug into the gravel with a knee to set myself rolling. I rolled over to the edge of the canal and tipped myself over the side.
My body struck the ice sheet that had formed along the stone wall. The ice squeaked and popped under me as I continued to roll. I slid off the edge of the ice shelf and into the black water. I let myself sink into the cold dark. Those blue light beams played through the veneer of ice, dancing back and forth and then were gone.
I sank deeper and deeper until the soles of my bare feet touched the muck at the bottom of the canal. I panicked for a few seconds, my body thrashing, my wrists pulling on the cuffs. This lasted until I realized that my body was not reacting to any of this. No feeling of strangulation, no intense desire to breathe. I didn’t breathe any more.
I couldn’t drown.
My eyes adjusted until I could clearly see the channel of the water way. The high smooth walls rising either side, the floor littered with debris of all kinds. A car flipped on its roof. Shopping carts and an old refrigerator. I was aware of the cold but it caused me no pain or discomfort. With my wrists behind me I couldn’t really swim. But I could walk.