Resurrection Blues

by James, Harper

  ‘Was Lauren’s middle name helpful?’

  ‘No,’ Evan said. ‘When I saw how unusual it was—’

  ‘Yeah, it’s some kind of family tradition. All the women in the family had it as a middle name. From the old country, that sort of crap.’

  Evan listened politely, then talked him through his fruitless search, got back an occasional and unenthusiastic uh-huh before he got onto the reason for his call.

  ‘What happened to the van?’

  The question threw Levi for a few seconds.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we need to get your laptop back.’

  ‘I told you, I searched the van the other night. It’s not there.’

  ‘It’s worth another look. It was dark. You were in shock from the fight and almost having your fingernails pulled out. Then you looked in the toolbox and freaked out.’

  Levi was quiet a moment.

  ‘I suppose you’re right. I left it at the mall.’

  ‘Have you still got the keys.’

  Levi laughed.

  ‘Yeah. I locked the van and was going to drop them down the drain. To piss them off.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No. I don’t know what stopped me.’

  ‘Good. We need to meet—’

  ‘No way,’ Levi squawked. ‘You can do it, not me. They might be watching it. I’m not taking any chances.’

  Evan patted the air with his hand even though Levi couldn’t see him. He couldn’t blame the guy.

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  Levi calmed down once it was clear Evan wasn’t going to try to force him to go. Evan didn’t even try to persuade him to meet him at the mall to hand over the keys. They arranged to meet halfway.

  It took less than a minute for Levi to hand over the bunch of keys, give Evan a rough description of the van and tell him where it was parked. Then he was gone again. He didn’t even wish Evan good luck.

  Evan found the van easily, parked at the far edge of the parking lot. He cruised past it in his ‘69 Corvette Stingray, the car way too loud and conspicuous for this sort of work. He saw a space between a big SUV on one side and a pickup truck on the other and pulled into it. Facing away from the van, he had an unobstructed view of it in his mirrors. He slipped down in his seat and settled in to wait.

  He doubted the guys who picked up Levi were watching, but it didn’t hurt to be careful. He’d seen what a nervous wreck Levi was, wouldn’t have been able to make him return to the van even if he’d stuck a cattle prod up his ass. They knew that too. Nobody narrowly escapes what they had in mind for him and then comes back to give them a second chance.

  Not when they can pay some other idiot to do it for them.

  He studied the other keys on the ring, wondered what they might open, wondered why the hell some people carried around so much crap on their keyring. There was a name tag with Henry on it, a bottle opener and a little plastic Elvis, some other junk. It’d make a hole in your pocket lining.

  A flash of movement reflected in his side mirror interrupted his thoughts. He glanced down at it, saw a big man standing by the van, peering through the driver’s window. Evan froze, his breath catching. The back of his neck was suddenly cold. If he hadn’t waited, he’d be in the van now, trapped. He imagined the irritation on the guy’s face—most likely Henry, the owner of the keys—as he peered into the van expecting to see his keys still in the ignition. Evan shifted in his seat to get a different angle, see if he could catch sight of the other one, Tomás. He couldn’t see him anywhere.

  He studied the big guy in the side mirror more carefully, took in the way he was dressed. The crisp, military-style shirt, the cloth shield sewed to the upper arm. Dollars to Donuts, his boots would be buffed to an impossible shine.

  Evan let out an embarrassed laugh, thankful there wasn’t anybody else around. The guy was security. The van had been sitting there for two nights now. It was starting to arouse suspicion in the mind of a bored security guard looking for something to pass the time.

  The guard had his face up against the window now, his hand shielding his eyes. Evan saw him drop his hand and try the driver’s door. It was locked as Levi had said. The guard walked around to the back of the van.

  Evan jumped out of his car while the guard was still out of sight. He’d be a useful distraction if Tomás and Henry were waiting and watching and things went wrong. There was a sound like the flat of a palm on a metal panel coming from the back of the van as if the guard thought there might be somebody asleep inside, somebody who needed a rude awakening.

  Evan strolled casually towards the van swinging the ring of keys against his leg as the guard appeared again by the passenger door. He tried that too, then saw Evan approaching. He pulled his chin in, stood up straight. His name badge said Diggs and Evan was right about the boots.

  ‘Is this your vehicle, sir?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry, I meant to get it yesterday. I got held up.’

  He slapped the keys in his palm, made sure Diggs saw them.

  ‘You’re lucky it didn’t get towed.’

  ‘Lucky you were here to make sure it didn’t get stolen,’ Evan said, biting the inside of his cheek, trying to keep a straight face.

  Diggs gave him a strange look as if to say, who’d steal a heap of junk like this?

  ‘You could get a ticket for that,’ he said pointing at the crack that ran from the top of the windshield to the bottom right in front of the driver.

  Evan sucked in air through his teeth.

  ‘Thanks, lucky you spotted that. I might not have noticed it.’

  ‘And you’re not allowed to sleep here.’

  Evan suddenly realized Diggs was happy to stand there all day telling him exactly what he couldn’t do, what he might get a ticket for. It was better than going back to his position and picking up cuddly toys for every screaming brat who threw a tantrum in his stroller.

  ‘No problem.’

  Evan unlocked the van. He got in quickly and closed the door in Digg’s face. On the top of the dash there was another little plastic Elvis attached to a sucker. Diggs stayed where he was, staring at Evan through the window as if he still had a lot more to say on what Evan could and couldn’t do. He made a circular motion with his hand, wind down the window. Evan pretended he didn’t see and turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed into life. He revved it a couple times until Diggs finally got the message. He rolled his neck, hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, then sauntered away with his best you were lucky this time swagger.

  In fact, he was the lucky one, he just didn’t know it. On the other side of the lot, Tomás smiled through his cut and swollen lips, his breath whistling through his broken front teeth. Next to him Henry adjusted the sling that supported his dislocated shoulder and relaxed as Diggs walked away. He wouldn’t have posed a problem but there was no reason to hurt anyone they didn’t need to. Now they could concentrate on the guy in the van in peace—although there wouldn’t be a lot of peace going on in there in the next couple hours.

  They didn’t care if it wasn’t the same guy. Wrong place, wrong time. Shit happens.

  Chapter 14

  EVAN WAITED UNTIL DIGGS was out of sight. He went to climb between the front seats into the cargo area of the van. Something made him stop halfway, reach around and switch off the engine. He didn’t want anybody sneaking up on him, their approach masked by the engine noise. For that same reason, he pushed down the door button, locking the driver’s door. But for reasons he could never explain afterwards, that same innate caution didn’t make him do the same on the passenger side. Maybe he didn’t realize that even on an old van like this one, both doors unlocked when the key was turned in the driver’s door.

  Feeling stupid about his paranoia, he clambered into the back. The smell hit him immediately, the same smell of human waste that had clung to Levi’s clothes and hair, the smell of pain and suffering and despair. He saw the handcuffs hanging from a rail, the surface of the rail scr
atched and pitted where some poor wretch had tried to pull himself free. No wonder Levi freaked out, had refused to come back.

  On the opposite side of the van was an identical grab rail. There were no handcuffs hanging from this one, just something that made him shake his head in despair. Clamped around the rail was a mounting bracket for a cell phone, the sort of thing you’d expect to see on the dash where the little plastic Elvis sat so the driver could use his phone’s GPS hands-free. But the only directions any phone mounted in this bracket had ever given had been a personal journey to hell and back for the unfortunate individual cuffed to the rail opposite, his agonies captured on video by the sick sadist, Tomás.

  The toolbox Levi hadn’t been able to resist was all the way down the back of the van, one half of the lid open, inviting him to inspect its contents. He understood the perverse motivation that forced Levi to look at something he’d so narrowly escaped from. It was the same primeval, life-confirming instincts that made drivers rubber-neck on the freeway.

  There but for the grace of God go I.

  He opened the toolbox fully, lifted out the pliers Levi had described, saw the dark staining on the jaws and rubber-coated grips. He dropped them back into the box amongst an assortment of other everyday tools.

  The toolbox had a top tray that lifted out. The bottom compartment was easily large enough to house a small laptop. He took hold of the handle to the top tray. A noise outside made him hesitate. It sounded like a careful, surreptitious footstep. He held his breath without knowing it, his heart racing as he strained his ears, imagined Henry or Tomás doing the exact same thing, poised like him, waiting to see if their careless footstep had been heard through the thin rusting metal of the van’s side.

  Nothing. Maybe he imagined it.

  He went to lift out the top tray and hesitated again. But it wasn’t a sound that stopped him this time. It was the memory of Levi’s words, the words he’d dismissed so easily when he wasn’t in the back of the mobile torture chamber.

  The guy said he collected them.

  Them being pulled-out fingernails. Was the bottom section of the toolbox filled with the grisly mementos of his cruelty? Evan didn’t want to look. Who knows what else might be in there? Teeth? Ears? Eyeballs?

  No. He was letting his imagination run away with him. Do it.

  He yanked the top tray out in one sudden movement sending the tools clattering across the floor of the van. He stared into the bottom of the box, a surge of relief washing through him. Empty. No laptop, but at least it wasn’t full of blood and small, shriveled-up body parts.

  He picked up a heavy pry bar that had been thrown out of the tool tray, slapped it into the palm of his hand. Were any of the tools used for the purpose they were designed for? Or had each one been carefully selected for its unique means of inflicting pain?

  He looked around the cargo area. There was nowhere obvious to hide something the size of a laptop. He moved slowly down one side of the van tap-tapping at the sides with the pry bar, listening for a different, hollow sound. He started back up the other side. He was making a hell of a lot of noise. A shiver went through him as if someone had walked over his grave. Suddenly he didn’t feel comfortable making so much noise. Turning off the engine had been like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. If Tomás and Henry were still around they wouldn’t need to worry about creeping up on him. They could come running and jumping across the lot shouting we’re going to get you and he’d never hear them. He didn’t bother finishing banging his way down the other side of the van. There were no secret panels that something could be hidden behind anyway. Only in comic books.

  He squeezed back between the front seats taking the pry bar with him and dropped heavily into the driver’s seat. He bashed Elvis on the head with the pry bar a couple times because he felt like it and he’d never liked Elvis much anyway, then lobbed it into the passenger footwell. He sat with his hands on the steering wheel for a minute, drumming his thumbs into it, knowing he was wasting his time.

  Levi had already checked the glove compartment. He checked it again anyway, found a bunch of vehicle-related junk and an old girlie magazine missing the front cover. No laptop.

  He pushed the driver’s seat all the way back, groped around underneath. Still nothing. If it wasn’t under the passenger seat, then that was it. He’d have to give up, admit that Levi had been right. He leaned sideways, twisting until his chest was resting on the passenger seat, his head facing into the footwell. He slid his left hand under the seat as far as he could reach. His fingertips brushed something. His heartbeat picked up. It felt like hard plastic, didn’t flex like an old fast food container would. He couldn’t get a grip on it. Pressing his chest harder into the seat, he squeezed out another two inches of reach. He still couldn’t get any purchase on the smooth surface.

  He grabbed the pry bar, hooked it over whatever it was and slid the object along the floor, into the footwell. His heart sank. It was a laptop-sized plastic box, but it wasn’t a laptop. It had a clear plastic lid. Inside was an assortment of auto fuses, different-sized bulbs and screws, the sort of things you’d need on a daily basis driving an old junker like this. He dropped his head off the seat and twisted to look right under it. There was nothing else. He whacked the side of the plastic box angrily with the pry bar, knocking it back where it came from.

  He rested a moment with his chest on the passenger seat, his head hanging off. It was relaxing, stretching out the muscles in his back—apart from an unpleasant smell he didn’t want to identify coming from the soiled foot mats. He dropped the pry bar and pushed himself up off the seat. Levi had been right, the laptop wasn’t in the van. He’d risked coming back for nothing.

  He raised his head and looked straight into a man’s face staring through the passenger window. It was Henry, his right arm in a sling, his face looking as if it had been used as a football.

  Evan let out a sharp hiss of surprise as Henry jerked open the unlocked passenger door. Too late he realized his stupid mistake. Henry leaned in and hit him with a straight left, aiming at the center of his face. But he was punching downwards at an awkward angle, the sling and the door getting in the way, his left hand lacking the power of his right to begin with. It caught Evan a glancing blow on the cheek, dazing him rather than knocking his head into the next ZIP code. Henry clamped a massive hand on the top of Evan’s ringing head. He pushed his face down into the passenger seat, grinding his face into the greasy fabric. A sharp, stale smell as if a very old dog or a very young child had sat there filled his nose. Henry smothered him with all his weight, suffocating him. He shouted something Evan didn’t catch. Then the van rocked on its suspension as Tomás, the sick one, yanked on the locked driver’s door.

  Evan swept the floor with his left hand. He found the pry bar. He got his fingers around it as Henry pushed his face harder into the seat, still yelling for his compadre. Evan had the pry bar fully in his left hand. In the confined space of the van’s cab and with his weaker arm he couldn’t get a good swing. He flicked his arm upwards in the general direction of Henry’s face, felt it connect solidly with his chin or cheek.

  Henry yelped, more in surprise than anything else. His grip relaxed on the back of Evan’s head, the pressure easing. Evan drew in a ragged breath, threw his head backwards, surging upright. Behind him, the driver’s door creaked as Tomás tried to pull it off its hinges, the rusting metal scant seconds from giving way.

  Evan switched hands, the pry bar flowing from left to right hand faster than the eye could follow. It felt like a different weapon, an extension of his arm, as if it was custom made for him to do some real damage. The space was still tight but the arm was stronger. He brought the bar down hard onto Henry’s kneecap, felt bones or ligament compress and give way under the savage blow.

  Henry howled in pain. He lost his grip on Evan’s head. He staggered a half step backwards, all his weight on his damaged knee. It gave way, his leg folding under him as if he’d been hamstrung with a mache
te. His arm flew outwards, thick, muscular fingers grabbing hold of the door frame.

  Evan swung the pry bar again at the hand on the frame, his technique improving with every blow in the cramped space. The blow mashed Henry’s fingers between the hard iron of the bar and the sharper edge of the doorframe, cutting through his flesh.

  Henry yanked his hand up and away, flicking a spray of blood over Evan’s chest and face like a priest gone mad with the holy water. Evan jabbed him viciously in the face with the bar, knocking him clear of the door. He dived for it, his fingers scrabbling for the handle, pulling it sharply towards him as he got a grip.

  There was a sharp crack. The handle came off in his hand. He flew backwards, slamming into the driver’s door. He stared dumbly at the door handle for a split second. That was all the time Henry needed. He grabbed the edge of the swinging door and pulled it fully open again, climbed half into the cab.

  It seemed Henry didn’t want those fingers. Evan put his foot on Henry’s belt and pumped his leg out as he hammered at his fingers with the pry bar, hard fast blows until Henry lost his grip and fell backwards, went sprawling on his ass on the asphalt. Twisting his arm, Evan hooked the curved end of the bar around the door edge, pulled it towards him. The door slammed shut. Evan dived on the button so hard the whole van rocked.

  Where the hell was Tomás?

  His answer arrived with a bang as the driver’s window exploded behind him, showering his back with glass. The end of a ball bat followed through into the van, caught Evan a nerve-numbing blow on the elbow as he automatically raised his arm in protection. Tomás pulled the bat out, jabbed it viciously at Evan’s head. But Evan was ready for it. He threw his upper body sideways away from the window, the bat jabbing uselessly at thin air. Still lying half across the passenger seat, he turned the key in the ignition. The motor coughed into life, then died. Tomás gave up trying to hit him with the bat, used it instead to knock away the broken remnants of the window. Any second now he’d have the door open. Evan turned the key again. The engine wheezed and coughed like a smoker on a cold morning, finally caught.