Lovely Night to Die

by Caleb Pirtle III

  An eyewitness could not have seen him.

  The interior of the cab was a tangle of shadows.

  But someone knew.

  Someone knew who Richard Santana had been assigned to kill.

  One man with a gun.

  One man in the crosshairs.

  The wrong man died.

  It did not take long for the facts to sort themselves out.

  The one-eyed Bohemian knew immediately who had terminated the terminator and the blind man who drove the cab.

  Roland Sand was still a threat.

  Roland Sand possessed a secret.

  The Bohemian had his name and his file.

  The Bohemian had his description.

  A GPS had no doubt given him the location.

  It was easy to make the call.

  Sergeant, the empty voice would have said, I’ve just witnessed a murder.

  Where?

  That would have been the next question.

  In an alley behind O’Malley’s Irish Pub. Do you know where it is?

  I do. Can you tell me what happened?

  Sand could hear the conversation in his head as if he were on the phone himself.

  Two men fought. Two men died. One walked away.

  Did you recognize him?

  I did.

  Do you have a name?

  I know the name he’s using.”

  Do you have a description?

  The voice did. Height. Weight. Age. The number of bullets still lodged in his back, too close to his spine to tempt the surgeons. The length of his scars. The three numbers tattooed on his inner left thigh.

  From then on, Sand knew, it was just a matter of time.

  He thought he was safe.

  He thought the jail was a perfect hiding place.

  He was wrong.

  No jail could keep out the one-eyed Bohemian.

  Roland Sand was a dead man waiting to make his final exit.

  He looked up at Eleanor and smiled.

  “I made a mistake,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I should have run.”

  Eleanor leaned back in her chair. Her voice had not thawed. “If you’re innocent,” she said, “the law will protect you.”

  “Do you believe that?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  Sand’s face grew deadly serious. His eyes were like marbles of ebony. His jaw tightened. His voice crackled. “Miss Trent,” he said, “it would be best if you take the file on me, drop it in the trash can, walk out of here, never look back, and forget you ever saw me.”

  “Mister Sand.” She clipped her words.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t run out on a client.”

  “Miss Trent.”

  She nodded.

  “I believe you are a very good attorney with the best of intentions.” Sand’s voice was as soft as his eyes. “I could probably look through the names of every attorney in Durango and not find one as good as you.” He paused and let his words soak in. “But Miss Trent, there is one thing you haven’t considered, and you need to consider it carefully.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There are people who would sleep much better tonight if they knew I was dead, and now they know where I am.”

  “Why do they want to kill you?”

  “It’s best you don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I am expendable, Miss Trent.” Sand’s eyes were edged with flint. “You aren’t. If they think you know what I know, then I fear they will add one more bullet to their arsenal and come after you.”

  “I’m not afraid.” Her voice hardened.

  “You should be.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He smiled. “I am,” he said. “I know what the darkness holds.”

  Sand stood and motioned to the guard. He was ready to go back to the inner sanctum of his cell. They left Eleanor sitting alone in the middle of four gray, metallic walls lit by a single bulb.

  Sand glanced down the hallway. It was empty. It wouldn’t be for long.

  The Bohemian was coming.

  Lovely Night 6

  ELEANOR TRENT SAT alone in the dimly lit interview room, listening as the sound of Sand’s footsteps faded down the hall. A damp chill touched the back of her neck the way it always did when she was afraid, and she knew she had nothing to fear in the basement of the Durango jail.

  She was scribbling notes about her conversation with Sand when three men marched into the room like soldiers on a mission. She frowned and sized the tall man up immediately. He was in charge and obviously wanted to make sure she was aware of it.

  He hovered over Eleanor, wearing a black suit, black hat, and dark sunglasses in a room where the sun had never shone. He had a confident demeanor and toothy smile that did not reach his eyes.

  “Darrell Pendleton,” he said. His voice sounded as if his words had been dragged through an oil slick.

  He extended his hand.

  She ignored it.

  Pendleton stiffened his shoulders and stood at attention even when he was trying to appear untroubled and casual. He had a square jaw and a nose that had been broken more than once. He was thin as a fencepost, possessed a face shaped like the blunt end of a hatchet, and his monogrammed cufflinks could have come from a Red Cross bargain store. His hair was the color of the sky before a storm.

  “I understand you are the defense counsel for Mister Roland Sand,” he said. His voice was soft but had a cold edge.

  “Eleanor Trent,” she said as she stood to face him. Her eyes swept over the two men behind him, both young, both dressed in black suits, both solemn faced, both wearing wrinkled shirts and red neckties.

  The short one with brown shoes and black fedora had hands the size of beefsteaks and looked like the photograph of a prizefighter she had once seen go down for the count. He was, she surmised, the muscle when someone needed a tap on the head to think straight.

  His sidekick had sloping shoulders AND black-framed glasses hanging loosely on his nose. HE resembled some overgrown campus nerd who had answered a want ad for a Price-Waterhouse accountant. He leaned back on the heels of his shoes and stared at a spider swinging around the light bulb.

  “We’ve come for Sand,” Pendleton said.

  “What gives you the right to come for my client?” Eleanor folded her arms in defiance across her chest.

  Pendleton flashed the badge in his wallet. “The Federal Government,” he said.

  Eleanor’s smile was bemused. The man had been sent straight from central casting. Need a government agent who was cold, calculating, deadly, disingenuous, and never broke a sweat regardless of the circumstances? Darrell Pendleton was the man you would hire.

  She picked up the brown manila folder and clutched it tightly to her chest. She hoped no one saw her hands trembling. “And why,” she asked, “would the almighty Federal Government be interested in my client?”

  Pendleton pulled a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his coat. “I have a warrant,” he said. “Sand is now in our custody.”

  “What federal crime are you charging him with?”

  Pendleton lost his smile. He turned sharply and headed for the door. “It has nothing to do with you,” he said.

  “It does if I am his attorney.” Eleanor felt anger rising within her chest.

  “It has to do with national security.” Pendleton didn’t bother to look back.

  Eleanor followed him across the room. “You have to be more specific than that.” She spit her words out as if they were sour.

  Pendleton stopped abruptly and glanced back at her. “No, ma’am, I don’t.” He stared hard at her for a moment, then relaxed his stance. “Please be seated, Miss Trent.”

  “No.” Her voice crackled. “Let’s you and I take a little trip upstairs together.”

  Pendleton stepped back. “Why should we do that?”

  “To see the judge.”

 
“The warrant’s legal, I can assure you.”

  “I’d rather the judge told me that.” Her smile was gone.

  Pendleton removed his sunglasses and sat down at the table. “The case is cut and dried,” he said.

  “It’s cut,” she answered. A smile worked its way across her face. “It’s certainly not dried.”

  Pendleton glanced away and sat in silence. He looked up at the clock in the back of the room. It had stopped.

  “Have you met with Sand?” he asked.

  “Briefly.”

  “Just how long were you with him?” the government man asked.

  “Not long.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Maybe ten minutes at the most.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Eleanor sat back down in the chair and ran her long fingers through her hair. She was playing with the government man like a cat toyed with a mouse, and he knew it. “He wouldn’t even tell me his name,” she said.

  “But you know, don’t you?”

  She pointed to the folder. “It’s not in the arrest report.”

  Pendleton studied her a moment, then asked, “Who hired you to represent Mister Sand?”

  “I’m with the Public Defender’s office in Durango.” She shrugged and straightened the folds of her jacket. “We received a call.” Eleanor smiled. “We receive a lot of calls,” she said.

  “Why you and not someone else?’

  “I drew the short straw.” Her eyes were dancing.

  Pendleton drew up a chair across from her, sat down, and drummed his fingers on the top of the table. “Did Sand give you any details about the incident?”

  “What incident?”

  “The murders.”

  “Maybe you mean the alleged murders?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Not a word.”

  “I hope you’re not lying, Miss Trent.”

  “What do I have to lie about?”

  “Something Sand knows.”

  “If Sand is the name of the man who is my client, he certainly didn’t tell me.”

  “If that’s the truth, Miss Trent, you will never see me again.” He paused, then added through clenched teeth, “God help you if it’s not.”

  Eleanor felt her smile tremble, but she didn’t flinch. “That sounds to me like a threat, Mister Pendleton. Frankly, I don’t have to tell you a damn thing. I’m sure you recognize attorney-client privilege in Washington.”

  He rose, nodded at muscles and the accountant, and all three marched with stiff shoulders toward the door. “I’ll make life easy for you, Miss Trent. You won’t have to worry yourself about Sand anymore. He’s going with us.”

  “Where are you taking him?” Eleanor asked. Her tone was bitter and harsh.

  “You will be notified,” Pendleton said. He clenched his jaws and straightened his tie.

  “I demand to know right now.” Eleanor felt the heat rise from the frustration in her voice.

  Pendleton turned around sharply, his lips pressed together, his eyes the color of embers. “Miss Trent, you can demand the right to know all you want.” His shrug was filled with arrogance. “But, let me assure you, you don’t have a need to know.”

  Muscles glared at her as he walked out the door. His shoulders were broad. He had a barrel chest. His fingernails were dirty. Eleanor wondered who had taken his final exam for him.

  The accountant winked, his eyes unnaturally large behind the thick lens of his glasses. Was he looking at her with amusement, sympathy, or disdain?

  Eleanor raised her voice and hurried to the doorway. “You are not allowed to talk to Mister Sand or ask him any questions unless I am present,” she called after Pendleton. “The law applies to you as it does to everyone else. That badge does not give you the authority to break it.”

  The agents walked into the elevator without a word, and the door closed silently behind them.

  Eleanor was staring down an empty hallway.

  Just who was Roland Sand, she wondered.

  Why did the government want to silence him?

  What had he done?

  Who had he crossed?

  Was he guilty?

  Or a patsy?

  Was he one of them?

  Or had he gone rogue?

  Was he still her client?

  And would she ever see or hear from him again?

  She had been in the room protecting Sand’s rights.

  Why was he protecting her?

  Why would a murderer want to protect her?

  What did he know that she might never know, and why was he keeping it a secret?

  Eleanor hurried out of the Durango City Jail, paused on the street corner, and looked for any signs of suspicious cars.

  Was she frightened?

  Or just cautious?

  Sand, if that was his name, had warned her.

  Why should she believe him?

  All she saw on the street were a pair of pickups and a Fed Ex delivery truck. She didn’t picture Pendleton driving either of them.

  Eleanor walked inside a small coffee shop and ordered a caramel latte. She sat at a back table, staring at a wrinkled business card until almost dark. Finally, she retrieved a cell phone from her purse and dialed a number she had never expected to call in her life.

  Lovely Night 7

  WHEN ROLAND SAND jarred himself back into the world of consciousness, he found his wrists and ankles wrapped tightly with wet ropes, his body coiled into a ball. His muscles ached. His wrists burned where the rope cut into his skin. His head felt as if it had been dragged over a log road. Sand opened his eyes, and everything around him was blurred through a hazy film of gauze.

  As near as he could tell, he was bouncing around inside the trunk of an old car that smelled of sweat, vomit, blood, and gunpowder. His head was wedged down between his knees, and his arms, pulled behind his back and attached to the ropes binding his feet, felt as though his shoulders had been jerked from their sockets. A searing pain tore through the tendons of his joints every time the vehicle struck a pothole, and the car was barreling wildly down a street – or maybe it was a cornfield – that hadn’t been paved in a long time.

  Sand had no idea how long he had been unconscious.

  Maybe an hour.

  Maybe all night.

  Was it still night?

  It no longer mattered.

  He only knew he wasn’t dead, which, under the circumstances, was a fairly good sign. The dead didn’t feel pain, and he was convinced that someone who didn’t particularly like him very well was pounding the back of his head with the knob of a ball peen hammer.

  A flash bulb exploded in his brain.

  His eyes hurt.

  They cracked like marble

  The shattered pieces went dark.

  But, somewhere rattling around in the deep recesses of his memory, he could still see the faint images of three men walking into his jail cell like a congregation of jackals gathered in the dark shadows.

  Black suits.

  Hats.

  No faces.

  Nobody said a word.

  Where was the jailer?

  Dead?

  Or looking the other way?

  Where was the guard?

  And the shotgun?

  Who had sold him out?

  Who was the buyer?

  Fleeting questions.

  Impulses.

  Nothing more.

  No answers.

  No time to wonder.

  Life sometimes came at him like a runaway truck on the dead run. And there were mornings when life was little more than a whimper.

  Don’t react.

  That’s what he had told himself.

  Act.

  Or was it too late?

  He remembered it all.

  Pained.

  And disjointed.

  Moment by moment.

  Frame by frame.

  Black.

  Then white.

  Still life photos, suddenly bright, suddenly dark, s
uddenly yellowed with age and wrinkled.

  Polaroid images smuggled out of a funeral home.

  The big man was gripping a syringe like a knife.

  He came for the kill.

  Sand remembered rolling out of his cot.

  He had only a moment to stay alive.

  That’s what he thought.

  One last moment.

  He jammed an elbow in the big man’s face.

  A scream.

  A curse.

  He could smell the blood.

  Sand had a chance.

  That’s what he thought.

  Flash.

  The light in his mind was blinding.

  But he saw the man with glasses.

  Where did he come from?

  What did he have in his hand?

  Why was he clutching a needle?

  It looked like a dagger.

  It stung like a scalpel.

  Flash.

  The light detonated like a skyrocket.

  Sand gagged.

  The needle jammed into his neck.

  He went for the man’s throat.

  He tumbled into darkness.

  He kept falling.

  So, this is dying.

  That’s what he thought.

  Death was black.

  Death was gentle.

  Death held him like a woman he once knew.

  Had he killed her?

  Sand couldn’t remember.

  But he kept falling.

  Tumbling end over end, a slow dance amongst the stars.

  The stars had lost their twinkle.

  The stars had a wrinkled face.

  Dying was the only peace he had ever known.

  Why had he feared it?

  Why had he fought so hard for so long to stay alive?

  Death was a kiss in the dark.

  The falling would never end.

  That’s what he thought.

  The falling ended in the trunk of an old car that smelled like sweat, vomit, blood, and gunpowder.

  Sand fought against the wet ropes that bound him. He violently shook his head, no matter how badly it hurt, to clear the cobwebs. The webs hung like spittle in the wind. The spiders remained.

  He didn’t know whether he was elated.

  Or disappointed.

  Death had spit him back among the living.

  Sand took a deep breath. The black suits had found him. They had taken him.

  Why hadn’t they killed him?