The Last Savage

by Sam Jones

  He was inside his room on the ground floor of the Motel 6 off 36th street, registered under the name “Sam Malone” and cowering behind closed curtains with the handset to the room phone up to his hear, grinding his teeth and pestering the man on the other end of the line to pony up the ten thousand dollars Nicky was now eager to collect.

  He was living out the worst-case scenario he had prepared for but never thought would arrive. Nicky was a careful man. Tactful. Always thought one step ahead. His alcoholic father taught him that it was important to be thorough and to have backups in place for every possible scenario, so Nicky lived life according to those rules that his father beat into him at an early age. He was prepared for every situation, from dressing himself to running a business, and had contingencies set up in case a virus like Kruger ever infected that business.

  Which it did.

  Yesterday he was running a lucrative transportation operation with Larry Yurek:

  Larry flew the planes, Nicky handled the money. Everything was smooth. Everything by the numbers. Everything under the radar. They had money coming out of their eyes from the success of their well-oiled machine, and a big part of that had to do with Nicky always being able to account for every last penny. There was a reason he and Yurek were so flush with green, and that was because Nicky was a moneyman. The guy knew how to flip a dollar. He knew how to cook the books. As a result he had a big house, a big pool, and a big taste for Cuban woman that he paid a significant amount of coin to indulge, being that his own merits and personality traits were hindrances that prevented him from obtaining any kind of woman on any normal occasion.

  But now, today, Nicky “the Nickel Nurser” Hendrix was draining everything, packing it up, and catching a ride with Tony Soza and his brother—his and Yurek’s biggest business rivals in the transpo biz—to an unknown part of the world, where he would hide out in a cabin and never spend more than a couple of hundred bucks a week on supplies. It was a good plan.

  The only problem was that he should have left hours ago.

  Because—like Larry Yurek had told Billy—Nicky the Nickel Nurser Hendrix (though he was a finicky and organized man) was greedier than Wall Street. He had enough funds to float him the rest of his life, but being the money-grubbing nitwit that he was, he had been blindsided by a paltry 20K collectively owed to him by three different parties that he needed to collect, because Nicky Hendrix (always accounting for every last penny) was going to get back everything owed to him before he went anywhere, a squad of trained killers on his heels or not.

  It was a move only a nickel nurser would make.

  At this point, Nick had collected 15K of the debt owed to him—only a measly 5K was left.

  “God damn you,” Nicky said into the handset, swinging the cord tethered to the phone away from his feet as he stormed around the room. “You were supposed to pay me back over a week ago, Julian.”

  The voice on the other end of the line said, “You said I had until Tuesday, Hendrix.”

  “Yeah, well, things changed. I need it today. Now.”

  “Come on, man—”

  “No, Julian. You listen to me. I know you’ve got the money. We both know you’ve got the money. You’ve just been sitting on it and hoping I’d forget all about it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh yeah? So you didn’t make a dope deal with Tommy Russo last week for ten grand? Tommy lied about that when he opened his fat mouth to me about it at Pedro’s?”

  Nothing from Julian’s end.

  “That’s what I thought, asshole,” Nicky said. “The Motel 6 off 36th. Room 12. You’ve got one hour; otherwise I’m coming to you. Packing.”

  Nicky slammed the handset down in the cradle and placed it on the nightstand. He moved over to the chair in the corner, sat down, and drummed his fingers on the armrests, checking his wristwatch every few seconds as he waited for Julian and his five thousand dollars.

  Twenty minutes later, at 6:09 p.m., two knocks sounded at the door.

  “About time…”

  Before the second knock sounded, Nicky jumped out of the chair and rushed toward the door, ready to grab his money and get the hell out of dodge. “Julian?” he called out as he brought his eye up to the peephole and retracted the lock.

  Then the door was smashed open.

  The brutal contact it made to Nicky’s face busted up his nose and knocked him flat on his back as Billy Reese and Maria Delgado rushed inside the room.

  “Nope,” Billy said as he lowered his foot away from the splintered wood. “It ain’t Julian…”

  Billy grabbed Nicky, still rolling on the floor in a daze, and pulled him to his feet by the collar, his legs like rubber as Billy struggled to help him regain his balance as Maria closed the door and jammed it back into place.

  “What the…” Nicky mumbled. “What the fuck?”

  Billy hoisted him up and sat him back down in the chair. “Sorry about smashing you in the face like that,” he said. “Actually, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry.”

  Nicky’s head was bobbing and weaving, his brain trying to recalibrate from the impact as he reached a hand up to his now-broken nose, blood running down his lips and onto his stupid pink shirt.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, the blood making him nauseous. “You broke my fucking nose, man!”

  Billy pulled his badge. Nicky’s eyes went wide.

  “I could make a joke about you getting violated in prison,” Billy said, “but I think that’d be too easy, don’t you?”

  Maria threw Nicky a towel for his nose, hitting him in the side of the face with a light slap.

  Nicky eyeballed the towel, Maria, and then Billy. “What do you guys want?” he asked as he began dabbing at his nose.

  Billy then told him, “Larry Yurek’s dead.”

  Nicky took a quick second. Thought about it.

  “And?” he said. No remorse. No sense of anguish.

  Billy stared at Nicky for a solid five seconds, his squirrely little brain coming up with a squirrely little plan.

  “Do you smoke?” he asked Nicky.

  “Yeah…”

  Billy then asked, “You got a pack?”

  Nicky took a beat, stood up, walked over to the nightstand, grabbed the half-depleted pack of Marlboro Reds resting on it, and brought them over to Billy.

  Maria made a face—What the hell are you up to, Billy?

  Billy took the pack from Nicky, pulled out a loosie, popped it in his mouth, and searched his pockets for a lighter. “Crap,” he said. “I can’t find it. You got a light?”

  Nicky fished around in his pocket. He pulled out a cheap plastic lighter, flicked on the flame, and brought it up to the cigarette dangling from Billy’s lip.

  “Thanks,” Billy said. “Much obliged…”

  And then he grabbed Nicky by the throat and slammed him against the wall, pinning him with his arm.

  Nicky gasped and gurgled, the veins in his head popping out as he squirmed wildly against the wall. “Let me go!” he said, clawing at Billy’s viselike grip around his throat.

  “I’m fine with choking you to death, mullet head,” Billy said. “I’m not even kidding.”

  “Please!” Nicky spat as he looked to Maria, Billy twisting his forearm tighter and deeper into Nicky’s larynx.

  Maria didn’t flinch, her lack of movement relaying everything to Nicky: The hell with you…

  “You made a deal with Kruger to fly in a bunch of merchandise in Bogotá,” Billy said. “And I want the details. I want the whole skinny…”

  Nicky looked pleadingly in Maria’s direction. “Ple—”

  “Don’t look at her,” Billy said to him. “She can’t help you. Only I can. I’m your papa san now, big boy.”

  Nicky was ready to pass out, and the red hue on his face began to turn to blue.

  Billy tilted his head—You gonna talk to me?

  Nicky was at the point that he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even spit, even though some was seeping out
through his puttered lips. After a beat, he did manage to muster every pathetic shred of energy he had stored up and gave Billy the subtlest of nods to show his contrition.

  Billy released his grip and dropped Nicky to the floor, Nicky sucking in as much fresh air as he could as his normal shade of hot-dog pink began to return to his face

  “Nice little shout to Cheers by the way with that Sam Malone bit,” Billy said. “I’m sure you knew it was a dumb move to register under that name, though. Just like I’m also sure that you know the CIA’s been after you too.”

  Nicky looked away as he tried to rub the soreness out of his neck. “They’re gonna burn me,” he said.

  “Oh,” Billy said. “So you already know…”

  “Burn you?” Maria said. “What do you mean?”

  Nicky’s head drooped. His shoulders slouched as he sat against the wall—exhausted, tired, and kicking himself for not leaving town when he had the chance.

  “I was snitching to them,” he finally said.

  Billy took a step forward. “To the CIA?”

  Nicky drew in a breath.

  He nodded.

  Maria and Billy exchanged a look. “How long?” Maria asked Nicky.

  “Six months,” Nicky said. “They threatened to lock me up for a money-laundering operation I ran back in Detroit a few years ago unless I kept them in the loop about stuff going on down south. You know, transpo-related stuff. Yurek and I were doing well…I guess we got on their radar.”

  “What kind of transpo-related stuff were you dishing to them?” Billy asked.

  “Nothing big. Just names of players. Dates. Deals going down. But I never gave them anything big. I just told them enough to keep them off my back.”

  “You kept your ear to the ground for them; they let you run a business,” Billy said.

  “Right.”

  “And I’m guessing Yurek didn’t know about this little arrangement?”

  Nicky looked up and connected eyes with Billy.

  He shook his head.

  “Well,” Billy said, “it looks like both of you were keeping secrets from each other.”

  Nicky perked up. “What do you mean?”

  “Yurek dimed you out to me,” Billy said. “He’s been keeping me in the loop on things around town for a little while now too. He never gave you up, though. Until tonight, that is…”

  Nicky was dumbfounded. “What?” he said. “Yurek was dishing out stuff to you? To the feds?”

  “Bit ironic, I know. He was snitchin’ to me; you were snitchin’ to the CIA. Small world, right?”

  Nicky buried his hands in his face as he thought back on all the bad choices he had made in the past twenty-four hours.

  “What about the deal going down with Simon Kruger?” Billy asked him. “Did you tell the CIA about that? What do they know?”

  It took Nicky a few seconds to collect himself before he started talking. “I told them about the deal,” he said. “But I was lying to them about what was actually happening. I was giving them bogus information to keep them chasing their tales while the deal went down.”

  “Why?”

  “It was too much money, man. I couldn’t risk them interfering with it or shutting it down.”

  “Well, looks like that plan kinda fell to shit, didn’t it, you greedy little pinhead?” Billy said.

  Nicky looked away, blood still dripping from his nose. “Looks like it…”

  “And now they’re looking for you.”

  “Some kind of wild hair crawled up their ass the minute I told them about my deal with Kruger,” Nicky said. “The second I mentioned his name, they end up transferring me to this other guy in the agency that had some kind of interest in him.”

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked.

  “I told them I made a deal with a guy named Simon Kruger. When I mentioned that name, they started asking me all these questions: Have I met him? What does the deal entail? How are you communicating with him? After that, I started talking to someone new.”

  “And you lead him in the wrong direction?”

  “Almost every second that passed and every question he asked.”

  Maria asked, “Why did you give them Kruger’s name? Why didn’t you just lie about that, too?”

  “I never did before,” Nicky said. “Usually I’d tell them about stuff that was going down, and they didn’t really care. They let us conduct our business and turned a blind eye as we went about doing it. All they wanted was a head’s up. But when I mentioned Kruger—then they started getting all worked up. They tightened the leash on me. Things went from cordial to tense in seconds.”

  Billy moved over to the edge of the TV stand and leaned against it, one leg crossed over the other, cowboy-in-a-saloon style. “Did you ever meet Kruger?” he asked Nicky.

  “No,” Nicky said. “Just the guy with the red eyes that works with him…”

  Maria and Billy gave each other the subtlest of looks.

  “He was the messenger,” Nicky continued. “I only met him once when we first struck up the deal. After that, everything was done through pay phones. Then, night before last, I start hearing that the other people working the deal were dropping dead. So, I decided to leave. Done. Out.”

  “Why didn’t you hit up the CIA after you found out Kruger was gunning down the people he had working the deal?” Billy said. “They could’ve helped you.”

  Nicky waved him off and sat on the edge of the bed, cradling his head in one hand as he pressed the freshly bloodied towel against his busted-up nose with the other. “I didn’t want to see what happened when they found out I was lying to them the whole time.” he said. “I can’t trust anybody. So, I thought it would be better if I just…left.”

  Billy got down on one knee in front of Nicky. “Well,” he said, “you didn’t leave quickly enough.”

  Nicky looked up, his nose caked with red and his eyes swollen and watering. “No shit.”

  Billy patted Nicky on the shoulder and pulled him to his feet, Nicky shuddering when Billy touched him. “Relax,” Billy said. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m your only salvation now.”

  “The feds?” Nicky said incredulously. “To hell with that. I’m fucked. Kruger’s going to find me.”

  “Unless the CIA gets there first,” Maria said. “Then they’ll probably just squeeze you, beat you, and burn you.”

  Billy wasn’t sure if it was true.

  But it broke Nicky nonetheless.

  Nicky tapped the back of his head against the wall. “Fuck!” he exclaimed. “Why the fuck didn’t I just run?”

  “Get over it,” Billy told him. “This is your reality now, so just settle into it.”

  Nicky breathed. “Well,” he said, “what do you want from me then? What can I give you? What can you give me?”

  “Tells us about the deal you had with Kruger, then I’ll see about cutting you one.”

  Nicky took a beat. Breathed. “I can show you where the deal is taking place,” he said. “The location for the drop is very specific.” He stood up straight. Lifted his chin. Confident, a greedy glint in his eye. “But I want my money. There’s no negotiation on that. I’m still owed five grand. And I want it. That’s my money.”

  Billy couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  Nicky the fuckin’ Nickel Nurser.

  Billy cocked his head, like he didn’t process what had been said correctly and stepped toward Nicky as he balled up a fist.

  “Say that again…”

  Nicky swallowed, wishing now that he had kept his mouth shut. “Look,” he said. “You have to get me out of here, man. People are looking for me.”

  Billy held up a hand to shut Nicky up as he made out the unmistakable sounds of a vehicle that he had been driven around in not more than an hour earlier pulling up into the parking lot outside the room.

  Maria, having grown well accustomed to Billy’s ticks at this point, knew what the look in his eye meant. “It’s them,” she said. “Isn’t it?”<
br />
  Billy moved to the window and peeked through the curtains. Surely enough, thirty feet away—the blond, the redhead, and the raven-haired CIA goons were exiting their car and moving toward the check-in office four doors away from the room.

  “Shit.”

  Maria squeezed in alongside him and took a look. “That was quick,” she said.

  Billy shrugged. “Well, they are spies…”

  “Did they follow us?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Billy turned, snapped his fingers, and pointed at Nicky. “Get up, rat tail. We’re taking a road trip.”

  40

  NICKY WAS ANXIOUS, sweat from his brow now mixing with the blood on his face as Maria and Billy looked out the window. “Who is it?” he asked. “Is it that red-eyed freak?”

  Billy took him by the arm and moved toward the bathroom. Above the toilet was a window leading outside, wide enough for them to fit through.

  One at a time. Not all at once.

  “The parking lot is behind this room,” Billy said to Maria. “Yeah?”

  “Correct,” she said, keeping an eye on the agents through the curtains as they went about interrogating the night clerk.

  Billy closed the lid to the toilet, stood on the seat and checked the window for a way to open it.

  He ran into a snag.

  Sucker’s built into the wall.

  “Great,” he said as he turned his head. “Maria?”

  “What?” she called back.

  “I gotta bust out a window.”

  “You do that, then they are definitely going to hear us.”

  Billy pulled out his Colt. “No other way,” he said. “So you best scurry on in here before I start smashin’.”

  Maria moved away from the curtains and hustled into the bathroom, confirming with her eyes when she walked in that the window couldn’t be opened by any other means. She cast a look over her shoulder at the door, and then back at Billy.

  She looked at him—Do it.

  Billy took the butt of his Colt, turned his head away, and smashed out the glass. Just as Maria predicted—the three agents talking to the night clerk in the office were quickly alerted.