Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  The station plays some snippets from an impromptu news conference that took place just a few minutes ago.

  “Is the FBI taking the video seriously?” a female reporter asks.

  “Until we can disprove allegations, the Bureau takes all information seriously in an investigation like this.”

  “Do you think one of your own could have been involved?”

  “It’s too early to speculate on that. The woman in the video appears to be distraught. We are investigating.”

  “Where is Errol Lomax?” asks another reporter.

  “Lomax is in Texas.”

  “Are you questioning him?”

  “We will question him once we’ve located him.”

  “You don’t know where he is?”

  “We know he’s in Texas.”

  That’s as much as the press can get out of the Bureau.

  Then the local news switches back to election coverage. Jumbo Throckmorton, addressing a crowd in Lubbock a little while ago was helped offstage by his aides after suddenly appearing pale and stricken. The aides went to work immediately to quash speculation he’d had a heart attack.

  “The governor is suffering from exhaustion,” his campaign manager says. “It’s been a long and difficult campaign, a fight the whole way through. And the last few weeks have been unusually warm. All those rallies out in the heat have taken their toll. This isn’t a sudden thing. The governor just needs some rest.”

  I think back to that interview with Throckmorton on TV, how his body language changed when the reporter mentioned the plane crash. What if he really didn’t know what he was getting into?

  I try to picture it from his perspective. He’s protecting Sheldon Brown, who’s dealing from his clubs, and Throckmorton is squeezing money out of him at the same time. He’s forcing Brown to launder the cash his cops rake in on busts they’re not even reporting.

  A lieutenant and a patrolman get suspicious about what’s going on. They call in the Feds to have a look, just as Sheldon Brown starts going off the deep end, shooting coke, complaining about the governor shaking him down, threatening both Throckmorton and his cops.

  Rollins and Lomax figure out what’s going on. But Rollins is deep in debt and past caring about his job. He lays out all he knows to Throckmorton, and then offers to get rid of the witnesses and bury the findings of the investigation in exchange for money.

  Throckmorton probably pictures a sensible plan. He sees Dorsett falling off a boat in Hawaii. Brown ODs on coke in Vegas. Martínez and Robertson, who knows? But it’s a series of unrelated tragedies, spread all over the map. Just the daily goings-on in a world full of troubles. No one would ever connect the dots.

  Throckmorton thinks his problems are solved, until he wakes up one day to see how it all went wrong over Monterey Bay. Maybe he didn’t know Lomax was coming unhinged, that the drugs were making him psychotic. Put coke in the wrong person and he thinks he’s invincible. He thinks he’s so far above everyone else, he can’t make mistakes. He’s not just sloppy. He’s reckless.

  Jumbo learns a little too late it’s not just his mistakes he has to worry about, but all of his associates’ as well. They’re all liabilities. It’s only a matter of time before they screw up, and when they do, it’ll all come back to him. Just like Sheldon Brown said. Shit rolls uphill.

  So the governor’s aide wasn’t lying when he said this was not a sudden-onset sickness. Old Jumbo had probably been dreading this for quite a while, wondering how long he could keep a lid on it all. And the dread must have kicked into high gear when that plane went down.

  No, it wasn’t a sudden thing. Old Jumbo had it coming.

  Four minutes to the house. There’s Travis’s road. Two lanes of faded blacktop coming out of a clump of trees. I slow down and bear left.

  Three minutes and still no response from Julia. I look up ahead as far as I can see, which is a half mile or so before the road bends at another clump of trees. There are no other cars in sight. Nothing behind me either.

  Two minutes to go. Finally, Julia calls.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “In the house.”

  “Did you tell her to get out?”

  She hesitates for a second, and then chokes out her words. “She won’t go, Freddy.”

  “What do you mean, she won’t go?”

  Another little pause, and then the words of the concerned and baffled sister: “She says she wants to see him.”

  40

  The front wheels slide sideways on the gravel as I swing into the driveway, kicking up a cloud of dust that blows onto the porch. The car skids to a stop and I get out, gun in hand, and dash up the steps calling her name. If she’s in there, I want her to know it’s me.

  Inside, I see her through the bedroom door. At least, her arms and legs. She’s on the end of the bed, feet on the floor, arms hanging down between her knees.

  “Anna!”

  “Hey, Freddy.” Her voice is emotionless and flat. She holds the gun in both hands.

  “Come on, we have to go.”

  “You go,” she says. “I’m staying.”

  “I think Lomax knows where you are.”

  “Good for him. He always did know how to get to me.” I study her face for a moment, trying to see if she’s had a psychotic break.

  “Come on,” I grab her under the arm and pull her up onto her feet. “We have to—”

  I didn’t see it coming because I wasn’t expecting it from the left hand. She hit me hard with that gun right beside the eye, and it hurt. I can’t help my reflexes after all those years of training. I throw her on the bed before I even know what I’m doing. She points the gun at my face, the glow of the laser light dancing on my cheek.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I ask.

  “I’ve had enough,” she says coldly. “Today it ends.”

  “Yeah, what the hell do you think I came down here for? We leave now. The FBI knows about Lomax—”

  “Nobody really knows about Lomax.”

  “—they know, and they’re going to lock him up. The State Patrol will be here if he shows up.”

  “The State Patrol?” she says bitterly.

  “Not the ones protecting Sheldon Brown,” I say. “I mean ones we can trust. I have some guys coming from—”

  We both turn at the sound of tires crunching gravel in the driveway. The front door is wide open, and we see Travis’s truck pulling up out front. He gets out and examines my car. Then he pulls a gun from his waistband and walks up the front steps yelling, “Anna!”

  Jesus, you idiot! Don’t announce yourself when you know there’s a stranger in the house.

  “Back here,” she says.

  When he sees me, he stops in his tracks. His eyes go right to my gun. His arm hangs by his side the whole time, with his gun pointing down at the floor. His eyes are bleary from the breakfast he just drank, and he wavers on his feet. This guy isn’t prepared for anything.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he says.

  “Christ, I talked to you last night!” I say.

  Then he says to Anna, “This ain’t the guy, is it?”

  “Travis—”

  “She was on TV,” Travis says. “CNN. Saw her at the bar when they switched from Fox Sports—”

  “Shit!” Anna leaps from the bed at the sound of a car door slamming. “That’s him!”

  He must have come in slowly along the drive. Travis heads straight out the bedroom door, across the creaking floor of the living room, with me following and Anna bringing up the rear.

  “We’re three on one,” I say. And we could coordinate something intelligent, but Travis goes straight through the front door firing two shots without even aiming.

  “Get the fuck off my property, bastard!” He thinks he’s dealing with some trespasser who’s going to back off after a threat.

  A second gun goes off outside and Travis curses. I go to the wall between the
front door and the window. If Lomax makes it into the house, I’ll be behind him when he comes in.

  Travis fires four consecutive shots from the porch, and four more come back from the driveway. The first two of those are wild, making me think Lomax is off his rocker. One comes through the wall just beside my knee, and one goes through the window behind me. The third or fourth shot hit Travis somewhere bad. He staggers back into the doorway, groaning. I can see him through the crack between the hinges.

  Then I feel a bounce in the floorboards beneath my feet. That’s Lomax leaping onto the porch.

  A blast goes off behind the door, two feet from my face, and Travis thuds backward onto the old wood floor, dark blood spilling from the back of his head like wine from a ruptured gourd.

  I look back across the room to see where Anna is, but she’s gone.

  Lomax has to step over the remains of Travis Seldin to get inside, and as he does, I fire two shots through the wooden door, both about chest high. If either of them hit him, he didn’t make a sound. As soon as he’s past the door, he swings his arm around and fires, and I let off a shot at the same time. But he slips in Travis’s blood, almost going down, and we both miss. My shots wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He’s wearing a vest. That’s why the bullets through the door didn’t hurt him.

  On his way up, he sends a grazing shot along my right thigh, and I pull my trigger the instant his face is in front of my barrel. Only nothing happens. The slide of my gun is jammed open. Quick as lightning, I swing a left up under his chin and catch him hard. It stuns him for a split second, long enough for me to land another hard blow between the eyes with the useless gun. I drop it and grab his left wrist, his gun hand, with my right, but not before he gets another shot off. That one was point blank along my right side, grazing my ribs and burning the cotton of my shirt.

  When I push his left hand out, his gun goes off again, sending a bullet through the wall above the doorway. I’m trying to push him backward so he’ll trip over Travis, but he’s strong.

  I know his right hand will be coming because of the way he shifts his feet. I brace for it, and as his fist comes across, I swing a hard left hook at the side of his face.

  His blow lands just as I break my hand on the side of his head. His punch buckles my legs, but I know the one I threw hurt him more, because it hurt me plenty, and I feel some of the strength go out of his left arm. I’m pretty sure I broke the cheekbone under his eye, and the way he’s blinking, I can tell his head isn’t clear.

  I take my eyes off him for a split second to look around the room. Where’s Anna? Did she go back to the bedroom? Did she leave? Is she in the woods? This guy’s on drugs, and he has a gun, and I can’t hold on to him much longer.

  Just my luck to bring a fist to a gunfight, and then break it. Lomax’s strength comes back quickly, and his eyes are dilated like a crazy person’s. I’m down to one good hand, and that one is locked around his left wrist, to keep his gun away from me.

  What am I going to do? I want to push him back over Travis, but if I want to knock him to the floor, I’ll have to let go, and he’ll shoot me as he goes down. But I have no other option. It’s my only…

  He sees my eyes flick up toward the ceiling behind him, but he can’t see what I see. The red bead of laser light dances on the plaster. It’s coming up through the hole in the floor. As I start pushing him back, that grazing wound across my right thigh starts to feel more like a gouge. My pants are wet with blood, and I’m losing strength in that leg.

  But still I’m stronger than him. I slam my forehead into his nose, then throw a left elbow into his teeth just as his head snaps back from the butt. That nudges him back a step. His nose is broken, and I see a flash of doubt in his cocaine-dilated eyes. I can tell he’s never been pushed to his limit in a fight. But I’ve been there many times.

  He takes a swing at me with his free right hand. I twist my head away. His fist glances off my temple, and I counter with another hard left elbow to the mouth. His teeth are streaked with blood. I have his left wrist locked in a death grip, and with my forearm across his chest, I push him back another step.

  He digs a right hook into my ribs, but I’ve got him going backward, and his feet are in no position to give leverage to his punch. He looks at my face, he sees the punch had no effect, and I see his confidence drop another notch.

  I look him in the eye and think, If I have to throw you down to get you over that hole in the floor, I’ll do it, even if you shoot me in the process. He sees my determination. He’s breathing hard, starting to gasp, and he’s pouring sweat. That makes his wrist slippery. He’s twisting it, trying to get it loose, but he can’t. He blinks in confusion as my grip begins to cut off the circulation to his hand.

  I evade his head-butt, and when he throws a right hook at my crotch, I twist, and his blow lands on my hipbone. He hesitates, not sure of his next target, and I think, You finally get it, you fucking psychopath! You didn’t think you’d run into someone stronger than you, but you did. You didn’t think you’d run into someone more determined, but you did. You can’t intimidate me. You might shoot me. You might even kill me. But I will get you to her. I will.

  I can see the fear in your eyes, and you can see the anger in mine. Let that be your parting image of this world. All that anger. You can take it with you into the next life, because I’m done with it. I’m fucking done!

  His body starts to twist with another right hook aimed at my ribs. I smash my forehead into his nose, and his blow lands weakly against my side as the blood gushes from his face.

  “You’re losing and you know it, Lomax.”

  He’s breathing heavily and shaking. He spits his blood into my left eye, but I can still see out of my right. And then he begins his final mistake.

  I see what you’re lining up for. I’m a boxer, you idiot. I see you shifting your weight onto your left leg. I was trained to watch every move, remember? Your gun is stuck and your fists don’t hurt me, so what do you have left? A knee to the crotch. I push him back another step closer to the hole while the red bead of light dances on the ceiling.

  He lines up again, puts his right hand on my shoulder, shifts all his weight to his left leg—a mistake because it puts him off balance—and as his right knee comes up, I push with all my might against his chest and send him backward, letting go of his wrist so he can fall.

  “Now, Anna!”

  I see the fire from the muzzle of his gun as he goes down on his ass. Two quick shots, just as two more come up from beneath the floor. One of his bullets thuds into my right side, sending me down. The second tears a burning gouge through the top of my left shoulder.

  For a second, there’s silence. Then someone shrieks. I’m on the floor, on my side. Lomax has keeled over sideways, with his leg bent awkwardly beneath him. He shrieks again with the agonized cry of an animal in distress. He’s bleeding heavily, and the whole room smells like shit. She hit him in a bad place.

  I try to sit up—my fighter’s instinct to rise from the canvas—but the movement sends a jolt of pain through my body, and blood gushes from the hole below my ribs like toothpaste from a tube that’s just been stepped on.

  I hear the crawlspace door slam shut outside, and the footsteps coming around the corner of the house. Then Anna comes in, stepping through the pool of Travis’s blood, pale and shaking and out of breath. She’s got her gun out in front of her, the red dot dancing across the floor until it lands on Lomax’s twisted face. His gun is six inches from his hand, but he can’t even reach for it. His yells have turned to whimpers. Anna kicks his gun away, looks him over, smells the shit, and winces. She looks at Travis, dead in a heap by the door, and then she sees me on my side, still breathing and bleeding heavily.

  “Are you OK?”

  Lomax tries to get a word out. A call for help maybe, but it sounds like the cry of a wounded cow.

  “Not you, fuckhead.”

  She’s looking at me, but I can’t respo
nd. A look of anguish comes over her face.

  Lomax’s breath is fast, shallow, panicky. Every now and then he holds it for a second, and then lets out a deep, roiling moan, like a woman in labor. Anna stands over him with the gun and points the laser into his eye.

  “Do you ever wish it would just end, Lomax?” she says. “Have you ever been in so much pain, and you know the only person who can save you isn’t going to lift a goddamn finger to help, and all you can do is pray and pray and pray for it to end?”

  He lets out a desperate, high-pitched, gurgling moan.

  “They say suffering brings you closer to God,” she says. Then she slides the magazine out of her gun and pushes the bullets out one by one onto the floor beside his head.

  “That’s the one thing you did for me, you bastard. You brought me closer to God.” She flicks the last bullet out of the chamber and lays the gun on the floor.

  “Go ahead and pray, Lomax. You don’t have to do it out loud. I just want to know you’re doing it.”

  She stares at him for a few seconds, waiting. The hot blood is running out of me, from the hole in my right side, from the tear in my leg, from the raw red trench gouged through the top of my left shoulder. It all runs down into a sticky, slippery pool around my broken left hand.

  I hear the wailing of the sirens and the crunch of tires in the gravel drive. The red lights pulse through the dusty window shards like the beating of a shattered heart. Staticky voices crackle on the radios outside, and the cloud of dirt the cruisers kicked up comes blowing in through the open door.

  The paleness of Anna’s skin in the darkening world makes her float like a vision above the horror and the gloom and the blood and the stench. She kneels beside Lomax in his pool of filth, and she takes his hand, and she says calmly, “Don’t be afraid. I’ll show you how.”

  And the world fades to black as she begins.

  “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

  41

  I hear voices around me, urgent shouting, and the chopping blades of a helicopter.