Chop Shop

by Andrew Post

  He reached into his pocket and snapped open what Amber thought, at first glance, was a knife, but was a long, narrow screwdriver. He stepped to the side of the bed and began clicking around inside the handcuff’s keyhole.

  “Answer me,” she shouted up at him. When he continued to say nothing, she jerked on the handcuffs to make them snap tight against the rail, causing him to drop the lockpick. He bent to pick it up, patiently, and stood holding it in front of her face – the precise little tip close to the eye that wasn’t swollen shut and could see, easily, as it hovered near. Her eyelashes flicked against it.

  “Do that again and I’ll pop your goddamn eye.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Amber said, thankful for the catheter suddenly.

  He watched her pee trickle through the clear tube into the bag hanging on the side of the bed. He seemed pleased by having something to do with that happening. He took the lockpick away and went back to work on the cuff.

  She watched him, smelling his aftershave. “Tell me what’s going on,” Amber begged. “Please.”

  “Please be quiet.”

  “Who are you? Who are these ‘friends’ you’re talking about? Did I do something wrong?”

  “Be quiet please,” he said, still clicking around inside the handcuff. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

  Once the lock relented, he left the one metal hoop around her wrist on, the second dangling open on its chain. He dropped the bedrail, pulled up her hospital gown.

  “Hey!”

  He stared down at her as she scrambled to cover herself. “Then you do it. Remove all the tubes and IVs and the catheter.” He steered the wheelchair over to the bed. “And get in.”

  With shaking hands, fingers restricted by the cast, she pulled the IV from her arm and the tubes out of her nose. She reached down between her legs, found the catheter tube – and tugged.

  “Get in the wheelchair.”

  She scooted to the side of the bed, sitting up fully now that the drugs in her system were bouncing around her head, making everything feel about the way it did last night as she was leaving the tavern. The man helped her, plunked her down in the wheelchair and dropped her chart into her lap. “Hold on to that.”

  He wheeled her out into the hallway. She begged with her eyes as they passed nurses and doctors and patients similarly being carted around. No one gave her a second glance. She felt something sharp on the back of her neck, that little screwdriver. He leaned down over her shoulder, his breath rich with coffee and tobacco. “If you ever want to walk again, do not say a fucking word.”

  They waited for the elevator to arrive. The cop that supposedly was going to read Amber her rights came strolling up the hallway with a steaming cup of coffee in hand, radio barking on his hip. The man in the heavy boots turned her away to face the wall until the cop had passed. The elevator doors parted and he pushed her in. They had the car to themselves. He hit the button labeled P. The smell of exhaust, summer heat, and city stink rolled in as the doors parted. He pushed her along the parking garage ramp, passing car after car until coming to a plain suburban minivan. Bumper sticker: Proud Parent of an Honor Student.

  “Can you stand?” he asked her.

  “I think so.”

  He gave her a tap on the neck with the screwdriver. “Don’t try to run.”

  “Okay, okay. I won’t.”

  She got up on legs that felt far away. Trying to memorize the license plate, the digits and letters failed to connect with Amber’s drug-altered understanding of them – her one open eye blinking slowly. Every sound felt like it was hitting her brain after a long delay. The hot wind curling through the parking garage hurt her skin as it brushed over her many bruises and scrapes.

  He lifted the minivan’s hatchback. In the back weren’t soccer balls or groceries as she expected, but the back row of seats had been folded down to allow room for four full body bags.

  She tried issuing a scream but it came out as a hoarse wheeze. Trying to run, she twisted in place, tripped on her own numb feet. The hard cement floor of the parking garage caught her, hard.

  He scooped her up without a sign of struggle, like she weighed nothing, and carried her to the side of the van. She kicked her feet and swung her arms, the handcuff jangling around on her wrist. She struck him on the side of the head with her cast – probably hurting her more than him. He made an angry growl, suffered the blow, and pulled open the side door of the van. As he threw her in, he leaned partly inside to wind back and punch her in the face. She couldn’t get her body to cooperate in time to avoid the fist and her head snapped back. Blood ran down into her face – she touched at her forehead, her goose egg had burst.

  The man in the heavy boots wiped his bloody hand off on his scrubs pants, grunted a swear, and rolled shut the door.

  As he came around to get in on the driver’s side, Amber tumbled onto the floor and reached for the door handle, trying to lock him out. He yanked the door open before she could hit the lock switch.

  Beyond the dark-tinted windows, she saw an older couple approaching the Buick parked right next to the van. She screamed for help. The man in the heavy boots started the van and cranked the radio to a deafening volume. Amber still screamed and knocked her cast on the window but the old man helping his wife into the car never even looked up.

  Before backing out of the spot, the man in the heavy boots turned around, having to shout over the radio to be heard. “Be quiet. They don’t need you alive. They told me that. If you gave me too much trouble, they said I could dump you anywhere I want. Remember that.”

  “Who, though?” Amber said. “Who said that? What’s happening?” Her elbow brushed the black vinyl wrapping a dead body behind her seat – the body bags familiar sights to her, she having unzipped close to a thousand or more during her lifetime at the funeral home. “Who are these people?”

  The man in the heavy boots said nothing more. He kept the radio blaring, exited the parking garage – the sunlight burning into Amber’s eye – and out onto the street. They were in Minneapolis, she recognized the area immediately. She passed old haunts and stores she loved, feeling like this would likely be the last time she’d see any of them.

  The man in the heavy boots lowered the volume on the radio once they were on the interstate – Amber assumed out here it wouldn’t matter how much noise she made. She considered pulling open the side door of the van and jumping out, but they were moving at nearly eighty. She’d be dead instantly. She had to wait for the right opportunity. Maybe once they stopped the drugs would be out of her system enough she could run. She had to call Jolene. She had to tell her to run.

  “I can give the money back,” Amber said. Her eyes welled with tears. “I just have to find it. It was in the car when I crashed it, in the back. If there was something wrong with the body…. I’m really sorry, I didn’t know. Would you please talk to me? Please say something.”

  The hard eyes in the rearview mirror wouldn’t look back at her.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong,” she said. “If you could just tell me what I did wrong, maybe I can do something to fix it. Are you going to kill me? Please say something. Please.”

  “Be quiet. You can talk it over with them when we get there.”

  “Talk it over with who? I don’t know where we’re going.”

  “We’re almost there,” is all he’d say.

  * * *

  Jolene tried one last time to get a hold of Amber and gave up. She saw she’d made forty-eight calls to her phone since last night. She showered, checked her phone, blow-dried her hair, checked her phone, brushed her teeth, checked her phone. She got dressed in her work blacks, checked her phone. She went into the workroom, got today’s burial in her casket, touched up her makeup, got her wheeled into the viewing room, checked her phone, and started setting up folding chairs for the people who’d be there any
minute.

  Jolene felt fine with running a funeral on her own as its sole director. She’d done it before when Amber went on vacation with some of her other old sorority friends – none of whom Jolene ever established such a deep connection with as Amber – but the problem, this morning, was that there was no hearse to take the body to the cemetery once the viewing was over. Which, naturally, would cause some complaints. But Jolene went to the front of the funeral home, unlocked the front doors, stood in the reception area, wishing they had flowers or at least something to bring some color into the place, and went back into the living quarters half of the house and started the sixth pot of coffee she’d made since midnight. She stood smoking, flicking ashes into the kitchen sink, staring at her phone’s screen, trying to send a telepathic smack upside Amber’s head over the phone lines, wherever she was.

  The priest arrived first, as usual. He was one Jolene and Amber had met before and as soon as he walked in, announcing his arrival with a friendly, “Knock, knock!” Jolene tossed her smoke in the ashtray and clopped out in high heels to meet him. He was looking at the clean spots on the carpet where the rented furniture used to be, last time he’d been here. He made no mention of it, but smiled that big broad priestly smile Jolene’s way.

  “Good morning, Miss Morris.”

  “Hey.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Well, my partner is currently AWOL – with the hearse.”

  “You don’t have a second?”

  “No. Just the one.”

  “Hmm. That may be a problem.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you suppose you could rent one? Is that such a thing, a rental hearse?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Maybe we should google it and begin making arrangements, if such a thing is possible, soon. The loved one’s family will be arriving shortly and we’ll need some mode of transport for the deceased.”

  “Unless you’ve got a wheelbarrow handy.”

  “A wheelbarrow, Miss Morris? I hardly think that’d be appropriate for—”

  “I’m kidding. Anyway, could you maybe do crowd control if anyone arrives? I’m gonna go look into finding a hearse I can rent for the day. Good suggestion, by the way.”

  “Thank you. And certainly, Miss Morris, I will welcome those who arrive as if this were my own home. And Miss Morris? I hope everything works out in your favor this blessed day.”

  “Yeah. You and me both.”

  * * *

  The minivan turned into the Lake Calhoun Bowl & Bar. The man in the heavy boots drove around back and parked and sat with his hands on the wheel, watching the back door. Amber said nothing, waiting for her chance to run. The minute the doors unlocked, she’d bolt – or try her best to, in bare feet. She noticed two of the three refrigerator trucks parked behind the bowling alley were gone. Only the one bound for Texas remained. Exhaust trickled from its back end, running, keeping things inside cool.

  The back door of the bowling alley swung open and three men emerged. A tall, clean-shaven black man in an orange polo shirt and jeans, Fernando whom Amber had met last night, and the third – upon seeing him – filled her with a red spike of anger. It was Slug, in his low-slung jeans and tank top, cornrows now studded with colorful plastic beads.

  The tall black guy waved the van forward. The man in the heavy boots eased them into motion, drawing the side of the van even with the back door of the bowling alley. The doors unlocked and Amber rushed to pull open the sliding door. The three waiting outside the van formed a net of outstretched arms. She went for the smallest, Slug, grabbing at his face and hair, screaming at him. “You piece of shit!”

  “Whoa, bitch, cool down, you’re among friends here.”

  “What the fuck, Shawn? You’re working with these people?”

  “I fucking made the hookup, didn’t I? They liked my style, I guess, and made me full-time. Damn, girl, you ripped my shirt – this is new.”

  She spat at him. “We went to kindergarten together, you fuck. We’ve known each other our entire lives.”

  Slug lifted his eyes from his torn tank top to meet her gaze. He made a pathetic little shrug. “I got bills like anybody else. People kept shorting me, yo. Ten bucks here, ten bucks there, ‘I’ll pay you next week.’ I had to stop being a friendly dope slinger and do what was best for me.”

  “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  The tall black guy said, “Bring her inside. Luke, help Fernando if you would. Slug, grab the chair out of the back.”

  Amber tried wrenching away when Fernando came up behind her. The man in the heavy black boots, Luke apparently, bent to grab her by the ankles. They got her inside the bowling alley. Most of the lights were off and every lane was empty, the pins at the end of each standing waiting. Amber twisted and thrashed as much as she could. Fernando had her around the middle, Luke her ankles. She watched Slug come in last, pushing the wheelchair in ahead of him, drawing the door shut behind, and snapping the deadbolt. He flipped around the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and followed. Amber continued to scream things at him, calling him every name she could think of, but Slug, head down, walked along behind with the wheelchair, unable to meet her eye. Her hospital chart rode in the seat of the chair.

  Together, they went down along the head of the lanes, to the far wall, and to the maintenance door. Fernando walked with her backward, lifting his chin each time Amber tried to throw a head butt at his face. They carried her down a steep flight of metal stairs. It smelled like grease and disinfectant, like a mix of an auto body and a hospital.

  The basement was walled-in cinderblock. High steel beams above, the underside of the lanes. The machinery keeping each pin-setter at the far end was paused – it looked like they were inside a massive piano with so many mechanical jointed arms and cables running the length of the room in neat rows. Along the far wall were four buzzing freezer chests and four exam tables, tools scattered about on trays, adjustable lights angling down at the blood-spattered slabs. Amber recognized the three blue Coleman coolers sitting on the one table immediately. Becky stood with rubber gloves that reached up beyond her elbows and a filtration mask dangling around her neck. She noticed the men dragging Amber into the room and stepped out from behind the coolers, her easygoing demeanor from last night gone. Straight-faced, hair back tight, her voice even, she said to the tall black man, “We got a problem.”

  Slug, coming down the steps last, snapped the wheelchair locked, and continued rolling behind after everyone else. He still wouldn’t look Amber in the eye. Luke and Fernando dropped Amber into the wheelchair. Luke snapped the dangling handcuff around the armrest of the chair and knelt next to her with the tiny screwdriver in his hand again. “Behave. One word and this goes in your eye. Understand?”

  Amber nodded and nodded. Though she still wanted to fight, find a way to run, when she heard Fernando, returning upstairs, throw the basement door’s bolt, another fraction of hope died in her. This didn’t look good. But once given the opportunity to explain, she would definitely try.

  Standing, Luke snatched the medical chart from Slug and approached Becky and the tall black man with it.

  They hushed their whispered conversation. Becky took the chart from Luke and glared over at Amber, then briefly at Slug, standing beside her, then down at what she held in her hands, riffling through the sheets. With the droning freezer chests and the buzzing lights above her, Amber couldn’t make out what they were saying – but they weren’t pleased about something.

  Becky handed the chart off to the tall black guy and came walking over toward Amber, peeling off her long rubber gloves. “Your drop was a fucking disease bomb. It may’ve been packaged nice, but whoever that was had hepatitis C. And as for the blood, that was from three different people, all mixed together. There was even some O-negative in there. Care to explain?”

  “It cam
e to us like that. The guy who dropped it off, he—”

  The tall black guy said, “Frank Goode.”

  Becky nodded, understanding, and glanced over at Luke and the tall black guy, then back at Amber in the chair. “This puts us behind. Like everybody, we answer to somebody too. And you fucked us, bringing in this filth-riddled shit. That could’ve killed somebody. Imagine if one of those kidneys got put in somebody who was already on their deathbed. That’d be the same as a fucking bullet in the head, you dumb little bitch. Didn’t you ask Frank the background on this guy? Any info at all on him, where he came from, what killed him, any of that?”

  “No, I didn’t get the chance. He just dropped him in my driveway and drove off. Please, I’m really sorry, I can give you the money back. I only spent about a grand of it.”

  “We don’t care if you spent every penny of that first half,” Becky said. She put her hands on the armrests of the wheelchair to lean in close to Amber’s face. “That doesn’t mean jack shit to us. What we do give a shit about is clean product and yours, barring AIDS, couldn’t have been any dirtier.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you,” Amber said. “I didn’t know he was sick.”

  Becky stood back up from the chair and angled her eyes over to Slug. “Go upstairs, Shawn, and help Fernando bring those other bodies down.” She turned back toward Luke. “Who all did you get?”

  “Bryce Petrosky, his aunt, Robbie Pescatelli, and Joey Stefano.”

  “Wish I’d known beforehand, otherwise I would’ve told you not to bother bringing Bryce,” Becky said.

  “Why?”

  “He was the one, apparently, who gave Vasily the hep.”

  Luke glanced over at the three blue coolers sitting open and steaming on the nearby table. “So we know that was Vasily Petrosky for sure?”

  “Simone and I pieced it together. It’s him and Bryce got him sick.” Becky looked over at Amber. “Tough luck, girlie. Your load got the hep C the same night he died. It all would’ve been fine if Bryce had decided not to play the hero and give his cousin his blood.” She sighed, folded her arms, and looked at Luke and the tall black guy again. “So we won’t need to bring Bryce down here. Have someplace you can dump him?”