Chop Shop

by Andrew Post

  Luke nodded.

  Becky had started to turn away. “Wait, Joey’s in the van? Joey Stefano?”

  “Yeah,” the tall black guy said.

  “Why did he go to Frank’s?”

  Luke shrugged. “Dunno. But he did. Now he’s in the van. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I got their charts all right here.” Sneaking a hand under his scrubs and beneath his bulletproof vest, Luke drew out four manila folders, a few pages spilling out. “Bryce and his aunt were both A-positive. Robbie Pescatelli’s B-negative. And Joey Stefano is a good ol’ A-negative.”

  “Well,” Becky said, “at least we got our little ace up our sleeve sitting pretty right here.”

  Amber stuttered, trying to say: “What…what do you mean? What are you gonna do to me?”

  “You’re AB-positive, Amber,” Becky said. “Which is exactly the blood type of the bone marrow we need.”

  Screaming again, Amber tried to overturn the wheelchair. Becky slammed her hands down on the arms to keep it in place and jammed a firm finger against Amber’s burst goose egg. “Stop wasting your breath. Nobody can hear you.”

  “Please don’t kill me. Please. Please. Let me call my partner, maybe we have something.”

  “For your sake, you’d better fucking hope to hell you do. Otherwise…Ted?”

  The tall black guy stepped from the next room with something in his hands Amber couldn’t quite make out in the poor light – but he was dragging behind him a length of extension cord. One quick rev of the electric engine and Amber recognized the sound of the BranchBuster.

  Amber turned and shouted at Slug, who by now had gone to the far wall and was standing with his arms folded, back turned to everyone else. “Stop them, Shawn. Do something. You’re going to let them do this to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Amber,” Slug said.

  “I didn’t know he was sick! Please!”

  With quick angry strides, Becky went to one of the tables, snatched Amber’s phone up, ripped the Ziploc bag from around it and shoved the cracked screen toward Amber’s face. “Tell me who to dial,” she shouted. “We have until the end of the day and that shipment needs to be on the fucking road – whether it goes to Texas with your leg is entirely up to you.”

  * * *

  Jolene sat in front of the office computer with the door closed, typing ‘rent a hearse’ into Google over and over again, getting nowhere. There were plenty of hearses to buy, but none to rent. Her phone went off in her pocket and she scrambled to tear it free of her suit coat’s small pocket.

  “Amber? What the fuck happened last night? Where are you?”

  “Jo, listen to me. I’m in a lot of trouble. They have me.”

  “Who has you?” Jolene’s blood iced. “What’s going on?”

  “There was something wrong with the stuff. The guy was sick and they can’t use it. They need bone marrow, AB-positive. Do we have anything at the house? It has to be AB-positive.”

  “No, no, everyone’s embalmed.” Jolene lowered her voice. She could hear just outside the door as the priest was welcoming people into the funeral home, shadows moving past the bottom of the office door. She cupped her hand around the phone. “Where are you?”

  “They said I can’t tell you that. We need to figure something out. They’re gonna cut off my leg. Jo, please do something, I—”

  Another voice came on the line, female. “Is this Jolene Morris?”

  “Yes. Let her go, please, don’t hurt her.”

  “Shut up. You have until three this afternoon. Lake Calhoun Bowl & Bar. Don’t call the police. We’ll just leave her here to bleed to death. Or, if you really piss us off, your gal pal here can learn there are things worse in life than death – I can only imagine winding up a quadruple amputee is right up there. Do you want that for your friend, Jolene?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. AB-positive. Leg. Fresh. By three.”

  Chapter Eight

  In his mirror, Frank saw the sky-blue Honda come around the corner of the closed Pizza Hut a few minutes shy of ten o’clock. He watched Simone, alone, pull up behind his Lexus and sit staring out through the windshield, eyes narrowed. He gathered his things – his phone, Big Robbie’s phone, and Robbie’s handgun, which he tucked into the back of his cargo shorts. Frank stepped out, used the keychain to lock his car, but paused.

  There was no point in thinking he’d ever be back for it.

  Tossing the keys on the ground, he got into Simone’s car on the passenger side.

  The car was full of trash, up to his ankles in the floorboard. She sat behind the wheel, glaring over at him. “Where to, Miss Daisy?” Gum crack.

  “Cut the shit.”

  “Still need to know where you wanna go.”

  “We can’t stay in the city. Take the highway, we’ll find something on the outskirts.”

  Simone put the car in gear. Frank watched out his window as they passed his Lexus, leaving it abandoned behind a closed restaurant. He considered what Ted had told him just the day before yesterday – which now felt like a lifetime ago. He had to let go of that old Frank, because he was no more. And though the separation was proving to be painful, Frank knew his friend was right. He watched the Lexus fall from sight behind them, and faced forward. He reached behind him and took out Simone’s uncle’s handgun and held it low, in his lap, the barrel – with nothing in its chamber at all – aimed at her.

  She glanced as she drove, and snickered. “Seriously?” Gum crack.

  “Where’s yours? In your purse here?”

  “Don’t you go through my fucking purse.”

  “Just drive the car, Simone. Watch the road.”

  Simone got them on the highway. Frank found her small chrome handgun, stuffed Robbie’s gun in his shorts’ cargo pocket, and held Simone’s gun on her. “I’m sorry about your uncle and your boyfriend.”

  Simone drew in a sharp breath, perhaps ready to scream at him, but only sighed. “An entire generation of Pescatelli men wiped out in one fucking night. That’s gotta be a record, even for us. Wait, why’d you switch guns? Ah, fuck, that other one wasn’t even loaded, was it?”

  “No. But this one is.”

  “Far as you know.” Grin. Gum crack. “Maybe I took the bullets out.”

  Frank leaned over to press the barrel to Simone’s ribs, easily found through her thin spaghetti-strap tank top.

  “Okay, all right, stop, stop,” Simone said. Gum crack. “I’m just fucking around. Gawd.”

  “Spit out that fucking gum.”

  “It’s a fresh piece. Keeps me from smoking.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Fine, Jesus.” Simone rolled down her window and spat her gum out. “Happy, sourpuss?”

  In the cupholder between them, Simone’s phone rang. Frank watched Simone glance from the highway ahead to the phone, to him, and back at the road. “Can I answer that? It’s my girl Becky. She might need something.”

  “No. Where’d you tell your mom and aunts you were going?”

  “I did what you said, I said I was going to Denny’s to get breakfast.”

  “How long before they’ll suspect something’s up?”

  The phone in the cupholder stopped ringing.

  Simone shrugged. “Couple hours. They’ll call me to see what’s up before calling the police. We don’t like the cops.”

  “And you spoke to no one about coming to get me?”

  “No, nobody.”

  “Not even this Becky person who just tried calling you?”

  “No. She’s my friend. She probably heard what happened last night and she’s worried, wants to be a good friend and be there for me. But you probably don’t know nothing about having friends, do you?”

  “Stay in this lane,” Frank said. “And keep it under sixty-five.”

&n
bsp; “Wait a minute. Why’re you asking about my family being worried about me being gone? You planning something I should know about, Frank?”

  “I don’t want them to know I’m with you.”

  “Is that all?”

  “All you need to know.”

  “Killing me won’t unfuck anything, Frank.”

  “Who said anything about killing you?”

  “Well, according to the radio that’s what you do. You kill people. Russians, Italians, don’t matter. You’re the Twin Cities’ own Doctor Hannibal Lecter and the Punisher rolled into one.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody. They killed each other. Because of what you did.”

  “Okay, I fucked up. I shouldn’t have killed Vasily. I should’ve let Joey and his crew or Uncle Robbie do that, at a better time when innocent bystanders, like you, wouldn’t get pulled into the mix. There. I’ll admit I screwed the pooch on that one.”

  “I’d say it was a bit more than that. Eleven people died in my house after, yet another, you murdered. And you basically murdered me, too. I’m lucky to fucking be alive. I can never go home, I’ll probably never see my daughter again, and as far as ever setting up a practice – illegal or otherwise – it’s never going to happen. I’ll have to get a fake name and do factory work in Mexico just to keep a roof over my head. You ruined my life, Simone. I don’t think you understand that.”

  “Understanding and giving a shit about something are two different things.”

  “So you don’t even care? I had no part in any of this.”

  “I mean, sure, it sucks Uncle Robbie’s dead, but me and Joey were kinda on the rocks anyhow. From what I could tell the only reason he was even with me was so he could secure his place in the family by fuckin’ his way into it.”

  “Just drive the car.”

  They went a few miles in silence. Becky tried calling two more times. Frank saw it flash on Simone’s phone that she had nine voicemails waiting.

  “So you want a motel, huh?” Simone said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And after that?”

  “A ticket for a bus heading south.”

  “Mexico?”

  Frank said nothing.

  “Why not Canada? Closer.”

  “That didn’t work out so well for me last time.”

  “Right, right, I learned your whole life story on the way over here. Why was you even selling pills on the side anyhow? Didn’t they pay you enough playing doctor?”

  “Slow down. I think I remember there being a motel along here.”

  They were coming into the outside fringe of South St. Paul where it was mostly auto dealers with the dancing inflatable noodle men beckoning potential buyers and RV lots and miles of motorboats sitting beached in the sun. Frank told her to turn into the Land o’ Ten Thousand Lakes Motel. The place was like any you’d see on long road trips: a few short buildings ringing a a diseased-looking swimming pool. Desperate-looking people sat by the ice machine in moldy lawn chairs, smoking, one arm tanner than the other, road-worn.

  Simone pulled them up alongside the office. Frank slunk low in the seat. “Go inside and get a room. Don’t tell them anything.”

  Simone went inside. Frank watched from the car as she talked to the cashier. She came out a moment later, got back in, and drove them around the back of the building where the rooms, evidently, didn’t have many people staying in them. Few cars were parked before the rows of doors on this side.

  Frank waited until Simone opened the door and went inside the room before he got out, scrambling inside with his cargo pockets full of phones and weaponry. He slammed the door behind them. Simone turned on the AC and sat on the corner of the bed, waiting for the old CRT TV to warm up enough so there’d be a picture to match the sound.

  Frank tossed Simone’s phone onto the stained bedspread next to her. “Get on the internet and use your credit card to get me a bus ticket. Laredo, Texas. Today. Earlier in the day the better.”

  Simone fished her credit card out of her purse and held it alongside her phone as she keyed in the numbers. “You really think they won’t have somebody with your picture sitting at the border?”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Frank sat at the small table by the window after drawing shut the curtains – leaving them open just enough to see if anyone came around the corner to the back side of the motel. He set Simone’s chrome pistol on the table, then Robbie’s next to it, Robbie’s phone, and his own phone, and sat staring at the collection of gadgets and guns.

  “There. Done. You’ll leave tonight at eleven-thirty.”

  “Eleven-thirty p.m.? There was nothing earlier than that? That’s twelve hours from now.”

  “What, do you want me to eat some metal and shit you a bus that’ll leave whenever you want? It was either at eleven-thirty tonight or noon tomorrow.”

  “Fine. Whatever. We can wait.” He noticed she wasn’t on the internet anymore, but clicking through her text messages. He snatched her phone from her and tossed it on the table with the other two. “Don’t think I’m not paying attention.”

  “I wasn’t doing nothing. I was fucking checking my messages.”

  “You don’t need to talk to anybody right now.”

  Simone stood, kicked off her high heels, and padded over to the bathroom. She left the door open. Frank watched as she leaned into the mirror, poking at the corner of her eye with a pinky finger, clearing some wayward mascara. Finished, she scooped a hand down the front of her shirt, lifted a boob back into place and adjusted her shirt’s straps, giving herself puffy-lipped looks.

  “Lost some of the baby weight already, I see,” Frank said.

  “I did a cleanse.”

  Frank stared at the TV. Midday talk show. Jabbering heads talking about nothing. A scroll along the bottom of the screen kept repeating his name and the police tip line. He glanced out the window again, saw nothing, and tried to convince his heart to slow down – but it wouldn’t. He still had a question he had to ask, one that would decide how things would go for Simone. He didn’t want to ask it, but decided to leave it up to fate. He could learn for himself, without her even saying anything, by looking in her purse where she’d left it, right there on the bed. But he wanted to ask her, to have it be a decision that, in some way, they made together.

  Simone sat down on the edge of the bed again and turned the TV back on. “I was watching that.”

  Frank asked his question. “How much cash do you have?”

  “Huh?”

  “Cash. How much do you have on you right now?” He felt sick.

  “I don’t carry cash. I got a check card and a credit card. Look, I just paid for your stupid room and your stupid bus ride, what more are you gonna want from me? And, out of curiosity, am I your fucking hostage right now? Is that what’s happening? Because I got shit to do today.”

  “Shut up,” Frank said. “Just shut the fuck up.”

  “I’m gonna go. I think we’re square now.”

  Frank snatched up the gun and snapped back the hammer. “Sit down on the bed.”

  She remained standing, only a small shine of fear in her eyes. “I could go out to the ATM, but—”

  “Sit down.” He stood. “I said sit down.”

  “Fine, all right, okay, I’m sitting.”

  Frank sat again too, after dragging the chair over in front of the door. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, gun heavy in his hand. “Turn the TV off.”

  Simone turned the TV off. “Okay, Frank, it’s off.”

  He could see she was scared. He couldn’t look at her as he said, “When I was still at the clinic, I saved four hundred and forty-two people’s lives during my time there. I breathed life back into children who’d been hit by cars running into traffic after balls. I gave elderly people a few more years with their loved ones, lasering out tumors on their brains.
And I helped bad people too, because that’s part of the job. A woman with ten kids sitting out in the waiting room, each one with cigarette burns running up and down their arms and legs. A meth head who came in with third-degree burns after he blew himself up in his garage. I gave mouth to mouth to a man who, I later found out, had a little girl in his basement lying dead inside a dog crate. It wasn’t my job to decide who lived and who died because I’d taken the Hippocratic oath. I was beholden to saving people, regardless of who they were and what they’d done to themselves to wind up in my O.R. needing my help. I wanted to let a few of them die. I knew the world would be better without them. But I never hesitated, because hesitating even half-seconds can decide everything. And I want to think that if there is a God maybe saving those four hundred and forty-two people permits me, now that I’m not under any oath, to end one life I know doesn’t deserve to continue.”

  Simone turned on the bed to face him fully. After pushing a strand of hair from her eyes, she rested her hands in the lap of her denim miniskirt, movements even. Her dark-ringed eyes were calm. “So all that blah-blah-blah boils down to you’re gonna throw the whole do-no-harm thing out the window because I messed up your day? Okay, let’s talk hypotheticals. You kill me and do what with me exactly? Call your funeral home girls to come pick me up? Get some cash for trading me so you’ll be nice and comfy once you’re in Mexico? Was that the plan?”

  “How do you know about them?”

  “That doesn’t matter. What matters, Frankie, is you just threatened me. I don’t like being threatened.”

  “How do you know about what they do?”

  “Because you do like everybody does. Like everyone in my family did. You wrote me off thinking I’m just some stupid tart that spends all day taking selfies and going to the tanning salon. But I ain’t. I’m smart. I got connections. Yeah, pick your jaw up off the floor. Shoe Store Simone’s got connections she made all on her own. Like ones in the red market.”

  “You’re part of it? You…you’re Rhino?”