“Stay there,” I instructed, like I was training a dog too stupid to qualify for the Westminster Dog Show.
I dragged the groggy Moley off the floor and hauled his bulk onto the bunk as well. It was like hauling a pig carcass out of a slaughterhouse. I slapped him across the face. “Which guard is most likely to take a bribe?” I asked.
Moley slurred something and drool dribbled out of his mouth.
“What was that?”
I held him by the jaw, forcing him to look at me. Fuck. Maybe I’d hit him too hard.
“Why’s it matter?” said Mini-Me, still smarting from the humiliation of defeat and the effects of the obesity-related atherosclerosis I imagined would eventually kill him. He was trying to suck in oxygen, his brow furrowed deeply with the concentration that required.
“It matters because I’m gonna bribe him and get us out of here, so we can go have that drink.”
Moley slurred something again. I looked questioningly at Mini-Me. Maybe they’d been stuck in here together long enough to have developed interpretive skills.
“He said,” said Mini-Me, “Harvey Smith.”
“Well, then,” I said, “let’s find him and get out of this shithole.”
Chapter Twelve
When Eliza McNamara woke in the cold damp of her exhaled morning breath, she found herself sealed in a soundproofed room. The walls were covered in black foam pads, square tiles and patches of blue and purple carpet. Above the carpet tiles and set into the foam pads in one wall of the room, was a two-way mirror staring at her. Behind her, in the far corner, back from the window, sat a white Pearl brand drum kit with the skin smashed through and no sticks and no pedals. The drumkit seemed disused and disinterested. A guitar stand loitered on its right; it held no guitar, only cradled thin air. An air-guitar? The thought made her smile and cringe at the same time. Two seams in the adjacent wall indicated what Chief McNamara thought could be a door, but there was no handle on this side, just black square soundproofing tiles. In front of the possible doorway on the floor was a dog bowl filled with soggy-looking cornflakes and water.
The place had a heady odor of new plastic and old spilled beer. There were no cables on the floor or power outlets for her to unscrew and stick her fingers in. The only ways out as she could gather were through that door or through the window, and neither looked promising.
Her left leg had gone to sleep under her, and as she stood shakily, pins and needles jabbed into her muscles. She put all of her weight on her good leg, and then banged on the door. The sound was dulled by the rubber-foam-carpet mix. McNamara pushed as hard as she could. Nothing.
The pins and needles began to dissipate as her adrenaline surged.
McNamara stepped back a pace, and then another, and ran up, taking a lunging dive into the foam pads and the door behind it. Again, nothing.
She slumped back into the room, picked herself up and took another run up, slammed into it again. Nada. Her cheeks were red, her breath came ragged, her heart thumped in her neck.
This time, she turned to the drum kit, picked up the snare and flung it at the two-way mirror. It bounced back and rattled and tattled, the snare springs ringing from the impact. But the mirror didn’t crack. Ironically, a sheet of glass seemed to be the most solid thing in the room.
Fuck.
But she didn’t get to where she was in life by declining impossible challenges. Fired up by increased motivation and fury, she picked up the guitar stand and took it to the window, pounding at the mirrored glass again and again and again, as hard as she could. She screamed, her voice loud, a roar of anger and frustration.
Nothing happened.
No one came.
The window didn’t so much as quiver, let alone break. She flung the snare set onto the ground and picked it up and hurled it into the drum kit. Another rattling, another thumping, another scraping . . . then nothing, just silence.
She sat there for a long, long time, pondering, just looking at the room, considering all the things that had happened in her life, all the things that had gone wrong, and tried to work out how she had ended up here, now, in this predicament. Nothing came to her. No one opened the door. There was no shadow behind the two-way mirror.
Eventually, she crawled on all fours over to the bowl of cornflakes, poked around for a spoon and realized there was none. She lifted the bowl to her lips, and drained the soggy tasteless mess.
Eliza McNamara dreamed of a time long before she was a police chief and long before she was even on the police force. She dreamed of a dark, damp room underground, where pieces of ply and insulation batting poked out from where a window had once perched, uncovered and bright with morning sunlight, but which now obscured the outdoors and the sound of her screams. The mildewy odor of the dank room in her dream reminded her of the voices chatting outside; all men, all bigger than her. She knew, deep down, that they would come inside this room and that she wouldn’t be able to fight them off.
And, in her dream, the door clicked open, and in came a stream of rats, spilling one over the other into the room and onto her body, scratching, clawing, nuzzling, biting, the tiny legs scurrying across the light shift she wore, snickering and crawling, scrabbling over her skin, around her face, under her arms, into her eye sockets. She kicked out, screamed, flailed, but there was nothing she could do. The swarm surged in waves and waves; her body was engulfed, and her mind sought refuge somewhere else, somewhere deeper, somewhere more real.
She’d never told anyone about her ordeal, never revealed even the slightest hint. She hadn’t thought she’d get out, that she’d be alive, that life would keep going on after everything that happened to her in that room. She’d considered ending it there, in the dank dark room with the chicken-fat-yellow batting and makeshift soundproofing and the chattering noise of men every second or third night, with the occasional rat.
But, there had been nothing else in the room other than her; occasionally a bowl, occasionally other men, and the light piece of clothing draped over her was already in tatters and wouldn’t have held her weight. There’d been nothing to hang herself from, either.
Ever since, she’d kept it to herself. She dealt with the lingering memories as best she could. Occasionally, she went and saw a psychologist, who couldn’t do much, since she never really shared the truth that was the basis of her emotional upheaval.
As it turned out, the best psychology for Eliza had been joining the police force, and taking down scumbags like the ones who’d held her captive . . . yet still in her dreams the rats swarmed, and still she kicked out and cried out. The dreams never left her, no matter how many years had passed, no matter how many different Christmases or how many criminals she locked up. They were always there, gnawing at the edge of her subconscious.
She never let anybody near her, near enough to sleep with her, near enough to feel her kicks, her night-time punches and screams, as they raged inside her and outside.
And now, here she was, trapped in another small room with another bowl of unwanted food pushed through the door. Here she was in her nightmare.
In her dream, Eliza McNamara grabbed one of the biggest rats and flung it, face first, into the boarded-up window, and then she sat upright.
Her eyes opened, groggily at first, and then more alert. She took in this soundproof room and realized the door was opening inwards, and a man’s arm was followed by his shoulder and his head sporting a mop of long dreads.
She knew this man.
She’d seen him before.
Very recently.
Chapter Thirteen
I’d always hated the saying, “Make hay while the sun shines”, because I’d always made my hay when the going was rough and when people were shooting at me. But now, with $300 million on a scrap of paper, with the rest of my belongings front-counter of the county jail, I didn’t even need to make hay anymore, and yet I felt an urge to indulge in the life I’d lived, not only to get out of here but to continue writing articles that pissed my edito
r off and encouraged a flood of angry op-eds, letters to the editor and furious commentary online. That was my life now, that and getting out of situations I never asked to be in in the first place.
As we walked, Mini-Me and Moley chatted excitedly. “You gonna give Smith a million dollars?” said Moley.
Mini-Me grunted.
Moley continued. “That means you get us out and you give us a thousand each.”
“Twenty-five thousand,” said Mini-Me, and patted my shoulder heavily. He drove a hard bargain.
Everyone else was moving off to their jobs, but Mini-Me and Moley led me to the cafeteria and pointed across the room.
“Him,” said Moley.
“Yup,” said Mini-Me.
I followed their gaze. There was only one guard who they could be looking at, and he was the ugliest motherfucker I’d ever seen. His face wore long deep wrinkles as if he’d once had cheeks filled with fat which had disappeared and been replaced by these long desert troughs. Under those troughs and across them, he wore scars of all shapes and sizes like badges. His white sleeves were rolled up just before they met the Chatham County logo embroidered on the shoulder. His forearms were tanned, deeply wrinkled, covered in fine freckles and moles and tattoos of naked women and strong words. A German flag played along the back of one shriveled hand the size of a meat cleaver, and I half expected that if we took off his shirt we’d find a swastika or a Nazi Eagle.
He looked more like he belonged in the jail as a guest rather than as one of its guards, and he chewed, loudly, on either gum or chewing tobacco. There was no way in hell I’d be giving this sucker a million dollars without any terms and conditions, and the terms and conditions I was likely to apply would be wrapped up in fists and knuckles.
I spat on the ground at my feet and the guard’s jaw jutted up. Suddenly, his eyes, beady and steady, locked on mine, and he stepped purposefully, slowly, his boots clacking on the polished concrete until he stood mere inches from my face. His eyes never left mine, and all other eyes in the room turned to enjoy the spectacle.
“Clean it up, prisoner.”
He spat on the ground. Tobacco it was, then.
I spat another wad of phlegm on top of his happy little glob. “Make me.”
His eyes lit up and his hand darted out so quickly it caught me around the neck by surprise. Which was my bad: I should have seen it coming. His fingers dug in tight and my eyes bulged, pressure squeezed in on my Adam’s apple, blood pumped in my temples, and my feet were lifted off the ground.
“You got something to say, prisoner?”
I tried to squeak out something witty, but nothing came, just hoarse air, and I needed what I had left just to survive.
His grip tightened; my eyes welled, my feet came farther off the ground, and then he stepped in, getting his face up real close, closer than it had been, not feet, not inches—millimeters. His breath was hot and garlicky, and I waited another second as a whiff of cologne reached my scorched nostrils that were trying to pull in air but couldn’t.
And then, I brought my knee up fast.
I pulled back down with my arms around the back of his head. He hadn’t realized I’d moved them there.
I drove his head into the ground, pulled him over and slammed him down on his back. He rolled over as if to get it back up. I smashed my other foot across his face—and down he went, hard. I planted another kick in his kidneys and swiped his baton and his detective special. I tucked the baton under one arm and checked the gun was loaded. A hand gripped my ankle, and he rolled over, groaned, and tried to find his feet.
Mini-Me and Moley grabbed his arms, and I aimed the gun between his legs and fired off a round. He squealed and blacked out again. I rolled him over, pulled his shirt off . . . and sure enough, there was the Nazi Eagle sitting atop a swastika, gray with age and bleeding ink into thinning skin.
Sometimes the best laid plans are the ones you don’t make. We moved through the jail, strapping the guards one by one by their own handcuffs to the grates and the bars, with dire warnings that any attempt at sounding the alarm would be met with a bullet to the balls. Nobody dared to see if I was kidding.
Soon I was out in a large parking lot. Mini-Me and Moley followed me, as did several other prisoners. As they dispersed in various directions, I decided I’d help the police round them up, maybe, if things worked out that way and I had time.
I took in my surroundings, behind me was the short squat building I’d just stepped out of. In front a lightly wooded area and a dirt road disappearing towards the Jim Gillis Historic Savannah Parkway, a busy road. There was no point remaining on foot, so I found the prison staff parking lot, looked for a vehicle in the space labeled Warden, found it, smashed through the window with the guard’s gun and played with the wires under the dash. Soon, I was on the Parkway, heading over the rail tracks and roaring east in into the warm sticky day.
Chapter Fourteen
The man with the dreads swung into the room with a chair, and then stepped out and brought back two hot steaming mugs of coffee, one black, one cappuccino thickly crusted with chocolate flakes.
“No sugar, right?”
“I’m sweet enough,” retorted Eliza McNamara.
“No one’s saying you’re not. Excuse me,” he said, stepping once more outside the door and pushing in a wheelie chair that rattled as it clicked over the carpet pads on the ground. He indicated for Eliza to sit in the first chair. She did so, the mug in both cold hands. Its heat made her feel a bit better—but only a bit.
The whole thing was bizarrely polite and pleasant, like they were neighbors about to start their quarterly Kiwanis board meeting.
“Sorry about the cornflakes,” he said, spinning in the chair, and then picking up his coffee from where he’d left it on the ground.
Eliza took a tentative sip of the coffee lest it was poisoned.
“I didn’t add anything,” he said. “It’s not why you’re here.”
Eliza shrugged, took a sip, and licked the chocolate off her lips. She peered at the man over the rim of her mug. He looked somewhat familiar, not just because she’d met him the previous day when he’d thrown an egg at her—or was it longer ago—not just because she’d had him in her office and had a discussion in which he’d told her to go find Ray Hammer and then had walked away.
“They’ve appointed Keith Groening,” said the man, “in your role.”
She flinched. So she’d been away longer than just a day, then. Not Carter? she thought to herself but didn’t say it out loud.
“Not your protégée, no,” he responded to her unspoken thought with uncanny accuracy.
Eliza took another, even longer sip on her coffee this time, keeping her eyes fixed on her counterpart. He seemed to know what she was thinking, which unnerved her . . . aside from the fact that he’d drugged her, snatched her off the street, and had been holding her in this recording studio-slash-dungeon. There was also something about the way his dreads fell . . . or was it the shape of his cheek or the angle of his broken nose?
“Is Groening part of your plan?” she asked.
“In a way,” said the man, taking a small sip of his own coffee. He looked down into the depths of the black-stained water.
“You get used to it, you know, having your coffee that way?”
“You didn’t find Ray Hammer,” he said; not a question, just a statement of fact.
Eliza rose to her feet, considered hurling the coffee at him, thought better of it. “How dare—I would have found him if you hadn’t kidnapped me!”
“Admit it,” said the man.
“Admit what?” said Eliza.
The man sat down, resigned.
“All I found were some newspaper columns from a year ago and some trashy articles . . . I’d have put a call into the paper, but you snatched me.” It was hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“Sure, you would have.”
And then, she remembered where she’d seen him, his name in lights, his fac
e glowing in the stadium glare, a guitar strung around his neck—the Super Bowl. He was Jimmy Barrens, legendary guitarist, rock god and political rights activist. He watched her closely and saw the recognition flicker in her eyes.
She waved to the smashed-up drum kit. “What happened to your drums?”
He stood up and hurled his half-empty cup at the kit. It clattered and smashed and splashed black coffee over the carpet.
“I got sick, dammit!” he said. “Sick and tired of all this! Sick and tired of our brothers and sisters being killed on the streets. Sick and tired of this damn country and its double standards.”
“If I’m out of the way,” said Eliza, “Groening will fuck things up royally.”
“And we get our revolution,” said Barrens, and his voice became a soft, almost reverent whisper. “We get our damn revolution, finally.”
There was a knock on the window, the one-way mirror, and Barrens asked Eliza to excuse him. He stepped out, and then the door opened again. Lieutenant Carter stepped into the room. McNamara’s mouth dropped open. Her eyes widened and then she scooped her jaw off the floor. Then she shook herself; no way she was going to show any signs of weakness in the presence of one of her officers.
“Hey, boss,” Carter said. “So, Jimmy’s been telling you the plan.”
“Something like that,” said Eliza, still reeling inside at the idea that one of her own officers would be involved in a federal crime against her. But she tried to remain calm, at least until she could figure out her situation, and how much danger she was in. “What I don’t get is how this Hammer character fits in.”
Jimmy stepped back into the room.
“He got my brother off a murder charge once. A few articles he wrote were good enough to expose the lack of evidence the prosecutor had.”
The Fight (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 4) Page 4