Hell to Pay

by Dick Wybrow

  "Goddamn it, Raz!"

  Mumbling an apology, I slipped my helmet back on and waited for him to climb back aboard. The two men watched us. Then the skinny one nodded to my friend and raised an eyebrow to the other.

  "Ain't you the Dwarf King from that show?"

  The Actor sighed. "Yes."

  "I thought y'all had another year. That's what the in'ernet said, anyway. Sad to see the show go," the guy said and jammed his hands in his overalls pockets. "You all ain't going to do another season?"

  "How do you envision that?" the Actor asked, grabbing the strap as I fired up Sally's motorcycle. "Everyone's dead!"

  The man nodded. "'Cept you."

  "Except me."

  "You know, Chuck here had a crush on that fire princess. Something fierce," he said. "And a bit unhealthy, truth be told."

  The skinny guy scowled, looking down at his feet.

  I heard my friend drop the tinted mask on his helmet with a snap. Using the balls of my feet, I slowly walked the bike backwards as the two men watched.

  "You know, if you back into the spot when you park, it's easier to get out."

  Nodding, I gave him a thumbs-up and pushed my own mask down into place.

  There was something about being watched while trying to make a semi-complicated move. It felt like, any moment, some muscle would give out, and we would fall, crashing to the concrete to peals of laughter.

  I steeled my legs, moving a bit slowly. Instead of deliberate, I hoped it looked casual and cool. After a half-minute, we were facing the interstate again. I kicked the foot gear into first and gave the guys a wave.

  "You know," the big man called out after us. "I really liked you in that train movie! You should do another train movie."

  We left them behind in a thin cloud of dust and smoke.

  I was glad to have them in my rearview mirrors.

  * * *

  The short man, whose name was Ruben, watched the two men on the motorcycle ride off. He and his friend stared for just a moment as the bike hit the on-ramp then rocketed out of sight.

  "Such a fine machine, that there," Ruben said.

  Chuck looked over and gave him a gap-toothed smile. The rail-thin man tilted his head and lifted his shoulders.

  "Yeah," Ruben said, pulling out his cell phone. He pressed the number three on the keypad and waited.

  It took about seven rings, which made Ruben shake his head. These cowboy types and modern technology, he thought.

  "What?" someone said when they finally picked up on the other end.

  "Found your bike," Ruben said, smiling from ear to ear.

  The person said, "Tell me."

  Chapter Seven

  As the stolen bike growled down I-10 heading into the city, the Atlanta skyline grew from the horizon like gray-black crystals glinting in the sun.

  It had been the better part of a year since I'd been back in the city where I'd spent more than a decade. To say that I missed it would be an overstatement, but the familiarity of it did give me a warm feeling in my belly.

  What didn't give me a warm feeling was remembering why I'd never ridden a motorcycle in Atlanta.

  "Can't you go any faster?" the Actor barked over the in-helmet radio we'd picked up. I'd regretted that purchase within three minutes. "We're being lapped on both sides!"

  I twisted the handle a little, and we sped up.

  "We're already doing eighty, and this hell bike doesn't have a windscreen," I said. "I get hit by a Slurpee cup, and we're dead, man."

  He was right though.

  The posted speed here was sixty-five miles an hour, but even the crew who'd put up the sign all those years back must have laughed and laughed and laughed, taking selfies to post on social media.

  No one did the speed limit in Atlanta.

  The only way to not die was to match the pace of the other vehicles around us. But of course, on a packed interstate with cars going so fast, every accident led to a stomach-churning fatality.

  Edging into the "slow" lane, I was rewarded with a long blare of a horn from the car we pulled ahead of. When I looked in the mirror, a woman wearing a smart gray blouse and a short blond bob in an Audi was giving me the finger. Yeah. I guess I did miss Atlanta.

  From the interstate, I recognized the off-ramp for Buckhead, a very wealthy part of the city, and twisted my wrist a little to speed past it. Down that road somewhere was a drug dealer who wanted me to hand over a small fortune or die. Without the former, the latter was waiting for me.

  A few miles up, I took the exit leading to my old friend's house, and in a few minutes, we were pulling up into his driveway.

  Dan was loading a white van with three small cardboard boxes. The one on the top read "Study." Next to the vehicle was the detritus of household life—lamps, an ottoman, a set of shiny dumbbells.

  Parking behind the van, I cut the engine and dropped the key in my pocket.

  My friend took a half step back toward his house, his eyes locked on my tinted visor. When I pulled off my helmet, he hit me with a big grin.

  "Rasputin!" he said. "Holy shit, I thought you were about to rob me. How are you, man?"

  I'd met Dan many years earlier, when we were both in radio. He was still in and doing pretty well. I'd been out for a good while now. We were pretty inseparable for a while, but then he got married to Anza, and well, some people when they got married… I didn't see him much after that.

  Out of habit, I still called him by the name he used on the air.

  "Whaddya movin', Sideshow?"

  He looked back at the house and smiled sadly. When he caught sight of the Actor climbing off the bike, he threw a small wave. I heard my copilot mumble something under his breath, obviously in one of his grumpier moods after riding bitch the last ten hours.

  "Yeah," Dan said and sighed. "I got the morning slot on the hot AC station they just fired up in town. Flipped one of the Spanish stations."

  "No shit?"

  "It's an early wake-up but, you know, a bit more dough. So, I got a place in Midtown, closer to work."

  It was hard to miss. He'd said "I" not "we." Instead of broaching the subject right away, I gave him a bit of grief, as people do with close friends.

  "Hot AC, huh? You've always been a rock jock. Must be getting old, man."

  He laughed. "Nah, there's just the one rocker left. And it's, you know, all Foghat and BTO."

  I shrugged. "I like BTO."

  "Rock radio's dead, brother."

  Feigning a scowl, I said, "You know, I should kill you for saying that."

  "It's true."

  "So you're going all Joan Osborne and Jewel on me?"

  Again, he laughed. He looked like he needed it. "Jewel? Man, how long has it been since you've been on the air?"

  I propped my helmet up on the bike. The Actor pulled a long strand of sugar-coated candy from his vest and put one end in his mouth.

  "Radio? Too long," I said. "And not long enough."

  The Actor stared down like he was strangely interested in his own feet. He said, "Where's Anza?"

  Dan's smile fell, and he sighed, nodding to the house. "Time for me to take a break anyhow," he said. "Why don't you guys come inside?"

  The Actor poked me in the kidneys, and when I turned, his eyes were dancing around—a quick glance at Dan, a look at the house, back at the street. He spoke to me in a low voice. "Why do we have to go inside? Why can't we talk out here, Raz?"

  "What difference does it make?"

  "You said we need to be, you know, on the road. Let's get to it!"

  Dan closed up the van and walked toward his front door. When I went to follow, the Actor, again, jammed a finger into my side.

  "What, man?" I whispered.

  "I don't like it here."

  "These are called 'the suburbs,'" I said. "You'll live."

  Inside, we sat down on Dan's couch as he rummaged through a cooler full of ice in the kitchen. His fridge was empty and open. A gray rag hung off the door.

/>   The Actor scanned the room, looking like he'd mistakenly bitten into a lemon. I looked over at the table in the dining room and saw a collection of pizza boxes and empty Chinese food containers.

  Dan returned and handed a dark bottle with a blue label to the Actor, who took it with a grunt.

  "Thanks."

  My old friend looked at me, an eyebrow cocked, and I nodded. He handed me a bottle and went back into the kitchen to get another.

  When he returned, he sat down in a folding chair that he'd pulled out from amongst discarded boxes.

  "Where's that amazing Barcalounger you had, man?" I asked. "Best chair in the world."

  "When did you start drinking again?" he asked, ignoring my question and trying to smile.

  I took a sip. "Temporary sobriety. It didn't take."

  "You okay with that?"

  "Yeah, I'm good."

  He smiled, and his eyes closed for a moment. "Oh, you were always good with it."

  "Until I wasn't," I said and reached over to clink his bottle. "I know, but I got a new plan with it."

  "This should be good," Dan said, grinning. He looked at the Actor, but the smaller man wouldn't meet his gaze. "Let's hear it."

  I feigned a sad face. "Not if you're going to mock my journey."

  "Fuck your journey," he said. "I just don't want to be the one pulling you off people and getting clubbed in the process."

  "One time."

  "Five times," he said and laughed. "Maybe six."

  I shrugged. "Might be seven." I took another sip and looked at the bottle, but before I could speak again, the Actor cut me off.

  "Where's Anza?"

  Dan stared at his own bottle for a moment. He then stood up and looked out the window of his living room.

  "She left a few months ago," he said. "She's still, you know…"

  "Illegal?" the Actor asked.

  Dan shrugged. "All she was doing was filing paperwork, and she was nearly there. She just can't be here to, um, get here. Legally."

  "You guys are okay?" I asked.

  My friend slumped back into his chair, took another hit from his beer, and shrugged again.

  The Actor asked, "Where did she go?"

  "Back home," Dan said. "But to the east coast. She's in Cozumel. Teaching again, I think."

  "You think?"

  He tugged at the blue label. "Things haven't been so rosy the past little while. You know"—he looked at me—"since she got back from that thing with you."

  "I’m sorry, Sideshow."

  "What happened out there, Raz? I mean I know you went out there to save Cassie's life and all," he said, then his voice softened. "Sorry, man. I know she meant the world to you."

  I nodded, my vision going a little out of focus. My wife had been dying in the hospital, far too young. When the doctors gave up, I'd gone to the crossroads, and my deal with the Devil meant finding an old lamp that could cure her.

  It hadn't worked out that way. I'd only survived it because of the Actor, Uncle Jerry, and Dan's wife.

  "When Anza got back, it was going to be perfect," Dan said. "We were hitting a cool stride, then even better, I got the new gig. Better dough, better appearance fees, endorsements. But she was different. Distant."

  "It got that bad? All of a sudden?"

  "Not right away, and I mean, she had to leave for the paperwork stuff…" he said, waving his hand in slow circles, staring out the window. He took a sip from his bottle. "She's coming back."

  I looked over at the Actor, and he mouthed to me, Let's go. I shook my head once. My friend was really hurting.

  "Anza started having dreams. Nightmares," Dan said. "She would never tell me about them, but it seemed every other night I'd get up to hit the head and find her out here sleeping on the couch."

  The Actor sighed, but when he spoke, the edge of his voice was so sharp, I flinched. "It's because you're hideous man! Disgusting to look at," he said, and I shot him a scowl. "It's true."

  "He's right." Dan looked at the Actor and nodded slowly. "So you can still see too? Anza told me about it when she got back. How some people, um, can look different."

  It clicked. He was talking about the hell affiliated who were everywhere—not necessarily full-on baddies but people who were at various levels of service to the Downstairs. Sure, some knew it, like when I was sent on my task to the lamp. Others were, say, a porter at a hotel owned by shell companies owned by one of the two factions in hell: the Devil or Hell Inc.

  The latter was the new blood, trying to unseat the old man. They'd only been around a half century, or so I was told. Mostly lawyers and accountants and corporate brand managers, etc. They wanted to run the Downstairs like a business and were fighting the Devil for control.

  Those who were directly contracted with hell had a special "sight"—they could see those who were both contracted or merely affiliated. That was what it was like for me and my friends when I set out to save Cassie's life. Even those low-level affiliates looked like they were five-years dead—rotting skin, sunken eyes, blackened teeth.

  I said, "But after it was all over, the contract was up. I didn't see 'them' anymore." I turned to the Actor. "Did that happen to you? Did you keep 'seeing' people like that?"

  "No, went back to normal," he said and sipped his beer. "Until, you know… recently."

  Dan looked at me, squinting. "Well, she never lost it, it seems. Some hangover from your little adventure." He set his bottle on the floor and crossed his arms. "She got distant, you know. Who could blame her? Every time she looked at me—"

  "Gross," the Actor said. "Fleshy, nasty."

  "Hold on, but—" I said then realized it. "Your new radio gig?"

  Dan nodded. "Network is probably owned by someone down there."

  I said, "Why didn't you just quit?"

  "That's what I said!" He looked at his beer and took a sip so quick, I couldn't imagine there'd been anything in it. "But she said—she was always the smarter of the two of us—she said, 'But, Dan, this is good for us. Jus' needing to work some things out.' But within a few weeks, she was out the door."

  My heart hurt—for one, to see one of my best friends so wrecked and to know that it was because of me, and two, Anza had helped me and was still paying for that nearly a year later. I felt sick.

  "I can help her," I said.

  "What can you do, Razzie? You're chaos incarnate."

  I leaned forward and stared at my friend. "Sometimes, a little chaos is just what the world needs."

  Chapter Eight

  Sally stood outside the drab gray building and let out a long, wheezy breath.

  The bus terminal looked almost exactly as it had when first constructed decades earlier. Against the backdrop of an array of Dallas's gleaming multistory structures, it appeared to shrink into itself, as if its slightly askew walls were a silent but earnest apology for simply being there.

  Outside on a concrete bench, a man lay motionless, looking head-to-toe the exact same color of dirty gray as the bench—his shoes, socks, beard, skin, wool cap.

  As the gunslinger slowly passed him, she wondered if he was even alive.

  "If you're looking for a place to sit down," the sun-scorched old man said, eyes still closed, "my face ain't taken." He smiled then opened his eyes to a gleaming long-barrel pistol about six inches from his nose. "I… apologize."

  Sally, who hadn't even broken stride, holstered the weapon and kept walking.

  Inside was dark, damp, and echoing with the shuffling of paper and thin-soled shoes. A woman poking at her cell phone manned the dull steel counter. In front of her were a series of stanchions, each with a red rope, one strewn to the next. The effect was to create a cordon for wannabe passengers who would line up orderly, like cattle heading to slaughter. Or Memphis. Or Indianapolis. Or Seattle.

  "Can I help you?" The woman looked up as Sally walked past the maze, straight to the front. There was no one else waiting.

  "I'm seeking transport out east," Sally said and forced a
small smile. The woman looked her up and down—cowboy hat, leather vest, chaps, long mane tied into a braid that looked more like rope than hair.

  "I thought circus people took the train," the woman said, grinning, slowly putting her phone down. She leaned forward onto her elbows and looked down. "Are ya wearing spurs?"

  Sally looked down, tapping at her own mobile. The red dot had been moving but now was stopped in Atlanta. "I need to head east."

  "Where's your horse, cowgirl?" the woman asked and smiled. She tapped the counter. "I'm only kiddin' ya. I wish I could pull that outfit off, but I think every time I stood up, I'd end up peeing a little bit."

  "I don't—"

  "Just because," the woman said, her voice a bit lower, "ever since the kid, the last one, my bladder wall, ha, it ain't much of a wall anymore. More like the little fence they put around the playground at the mall. Toddlers can kick those right over."

  "Ma'am…" Sally said then struggled to come up with the next word.

  "I suppose, in some way, he did!" The woman burst into a pleasant cigarette-stained laugh. "All right then, lemme see."

  Sally flinched as the woman grabbed her cell phone with one hand and pulled on a pair of reading glasses with the other.

  "You going to Atlanta?" she asked, looking over the top of her glasses at Sally's device.

  "No, I doubt they're… I need to head east."

  "Hon, we don't got a bus that just goes east now," the woman said, chuckling. "You gotta pick a city." She handed back the phone and didn't seem to notice Sally snatch it from her hand. Nor did she notice that her customer's other hand was hovering precariously close to her hip.

  "I'm sorta following that dot," Sally said, feeling her face redden.

  "Well, Red Dot ain't any destination we send our coaches to, now! You ever been to Mobile? You know they had the very first Mardis Gras, not New Orleans like everybody thinks and like New Orleans likes to tell everybody?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Nope," she said, raising her hands. "Mobile, Alabama. Funny 'cause the only thing left there that's French is the fries and the kissin'!"

  Sally shifted her weight. She saw a man and woman with a small child come up behind her, notice the red rope maze, then retreat back to its beginning to wind through its path.