Smoke

by Joe Ide

  Ava was exhausted, desperately thirsty, sweat stinging her eyes. She put her hands on her knees and gulped air. She was covered with tree sap, dust and sweat. She heard Crowe yelling. She made her best guess and fought her way forward. Keep going, Ava, don’t stop. She saw light through the trees. A clearing. Was that where the voice was coming from? She clenched the Sig tighter and forced herself to go faster, slowing to a creep as the light got brighter. She reached the edge of the trees. She steeled herself, took a breath and stepped into the clearing. “Stop,” she shouted, swinging the gun left and right. “Leave her alone, Crowe!” She lowered the gun. No one was there.

  Shareen couldn’t go on. Her lungs were in cinders, her legs wobbling, she was bleeding from the scratches all over her body. She fell to her knees and flopped onto her side. She curled up and waited. There were pebbles and dirt stuck in her skin, a roaring sound in her ears. She couldn’t get enough air. She thought her heart would pound itself apart. She wondered how she’d gotten here, helpless and waiting for death. All she’d ever wanted was love. That’s not a lot to ask, is it? Or maybe it was. Maybe it was everything. She saw Crowe coming, heard his heavy breathing, dust rising from his clomping footsteps. He stood over her, the sweat from his face dripping into her eyes and making them sting.

  “Yeah, bitch,” he growled. “Got anything else to say?” He nudged her with his shoe. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” She closed her eyes. There was nothing she could do. Crowe picked her up by the armpits and dragged her. She didn’t know where they were going until she saw the edge of the cliff and there was nothing underneath her and she heard herself scream and saw the ground, hurtling up toward her.

  Ava was still in the clearing, wondering which way she should go, when she heard Shareen scream. It was coming from far away. Crowe was killing her. “Oh no,” Ava said, and she started to cry.

  The wound in Crowe’s shoulder was superficial, but it hurt like hell. Shareen had a first-aid kit in the car. He cleaned the wound with a bottle of water, slathered on Neosporin and covered it with gauze and a bandage. It was sloppy but the best he could do. He took her credit cards and money and threw the bag away. That was over and he felt good about it. It would be a long time before Shareen’s body was found if it was ever found at all. She’d bumped and rolled down the cliff, disappearing into the trees. Coyote food, he thought. Eat up.

  Crowe sat on the bumper and took a breather. All this mess, all this bullshit, and why? Warren. Fucking Warren. For some reason, the moron got it into his head that he had to kill “EX.” He said it stood for “execution.” Going after EX was a stupid, risky thing to do, not to mention pointless. Warren was certifiably insane, like, can’t-function-in-the-real-world insane. Take one look at him and you knew he was a lunatic. Some random urge would flash in his head and he’d follow it like a goddamn lemming. He was too far gone to be careful. No thinking, no planning. He would see EX and attack. Then he’d get caught and make a deal with the prosecutor. Give me life in prison instead of the death penalty and I’ll give up AMSAK. Warren had to be stopped, Crowe thought. Warren had to die.

  Crowe drove back on the dirt road. The car was running okay, but there were noises coming from under the hood. He passed an open space and saw a little white car. He stopped. It wasn’t there before; it must have come in after him. Did somebody see him kill Shareen? No, couldn’t have. The driver would have had to run down the road, fight through the brush, somehow locate Crowe and follow him without being seen or heard. Crowe sat there, the car idling rough like his brain. Should he ambush this guy before moving on? Naah. If the guy didn’t see anything and couldn’t find her body, then he wasn’t a threat. Anyway, Crowe’s shoulder hurt and he was starving.

  He returned to the highway. A hundred and ten miles to Coronado Springs. He drove on. Still, it bothered him. That car. He’d seen it before, but where? The gas station, yeah, he remembered it now. A coincidence? What were the odds of seeing a little white car pumping gas next to you at an Exxon station and then parked in the woods while you’re throwing your wife over a cliff? There was a girl at the gas station too, she was wearing a blue cap and fucking around with the air hose. Had he seen her before? Hard to say. Maybe if he got a good look at her. He glanced at the rearview mirror. The road was empty, but he knew she was after him. He smiled and said, “Come and get me.”

  Isaiah drove north on 185. Crowe was coming south. They’d meet—no, not meet, pass each other at seventy miles an hour. Isaiah could pull over and wait for him but he nixed that. He wanted the killer as far away from town as possible. So what are you going to do, Isaiah? Stop the guy? Stop a serial killer? How? Maybe let him go past you, follow him and force him off the road. Then what? You get out of your car, he gets out of his car and stabs you fifty times with his Bowie knife?

  Isaiah was afraid. His heart was skipping beats. Why was it his job to stop Crowe? He’d sworn off this shit forever. Turn around, you idiot! What the fuck are you doing? Hysteria was taking over. Oh, shit. What’s that? It’s a goddamn car! Fuck, it’s coming fast! Think, Isaiah, think, goddammit! He had nothing, his head was empty, the oncoming car nearly on top of him. He screamed as the car sped past. Some kids in a pickup truck.

  His hands were greased with sweat, his shirt stuck to his chest. A monster who had killed seventeen women was on his way and Isaiah didn’t know what to do. A long straightaway lay ahead of him, a red car just coming over the rise, a half mile away, the sun reflecting off its windshield. Can’t see the driver, squint, shade your eyes, still can’t see, can’t see, goddammit! Is it Crowe? Is it the serial killer? The red car was closing in. Is it him? Is it? YES, IT’S FUCKING HIM! Isaiah swerved in front of Crowe’s car and immediately swerved back, saved by a millisecond of rational thought. The red car shot past, the horn honking, fading until it was gone.

  Isaiah pulled over to the shoulder and stopped. He could barely breathe, forehead on the steering wheel, sweat like he’d been blasted with a fire hose. He’d almost killed himself. Was he like the man in the support group? Did he want to end his life to stop the pain? No. What he wanted was to give up. To stay here in the car with his eyes closed and let the rest of the world speed past while he slept, alone and at peace. Crowe would be nearing Coronado Springs by now, or maybe he was already there, scouting around for his eighteenth victim, smelling blood, grinning as he sharpened his Bowie knife. Isaiah sat up, drew in a long breath and put the car in gear. Then he checked his rearview mirror, made a wide U-turn and drove back toward town.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lebron

  Dodson’s second day on the job and he forgot to set the alarm. He got to work at nine-fifteen. The Skechers meeting was at nine-thirty. He walked into Stimson’s office and found him in his chair, slouched and facing the wall of dirt. He was on the phone.

  “Oh, it’s going great, Marge,” Stimson said. “I think I’ve really got something here. It’s a winner, all right.”

  There were dozens of drawings scattered on the floor, the table, the sofa. A few were pinned to the corkboard, more spilling off the easel. To Dodson’s eye, they were ordinary and boring. A young couple walking on a boardwalk wearing Skechers. A happy group of millennials hanging out in a pub, everybody wearing Skechers. An attractive young woman strolling through a college campus wearing Skechers. No black or brown characters. It was like Friends all over again. There were captions: SKECHERS WALKING SHOES, THE MOST COMFORTABLE SHOE IN THE WORLD. SKECHERS: TAKE THEM FOR A WALK. The rest were just as humdrum.

  “Yeah, Brad’s really going to be surprised,” Stimson said to Marge. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face. What? Oh, sure, meat loaf is fine. Okay, I’ll see you tonight. Love you.” He ended the call. Stimson turned his chair around. He looked like he’d spent the night in a clothes dryer, tumbling around with the socks and underwear. Some men seem more masculine when they’re unshaven. Stimson looked like a hobo. He read Dodson’s expression and sighed.

  “Yeah, I know. They�
�re all crap. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Marge. She’s so sensitive. I hate to see her cry.” Stimson was silent a moment. In almost a whisper he added, “I really do hate it.”

  “Got something to show you,” Dodson said. He put Grace’s poster board down on the desk. Stimson stood up and leaned over it. He stared at it. And stared at it. He hates it, Dodson thought. Thinks it’s bullshit. He’s hesitating because he doesn’t want to embarrass me.

  Stimson laughed, delighted. “This is amazing! I’m completely blown away! How did you come up with this?” Dodson was pleased but managed to keep his composure. Cool is cool. He shrugged.

  “I just did.”

  Stimson came around the desk and gave him a sloppy hug. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” Suddenly, he pulled away. “Wait a minute. I can’t use this. It’s yours.”

  “It’s yours now.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Stimson said firmly. “It’s not right.”

  “It’s right if I say it’s right. Besides, you don’t want to disappoint Marge, do you?” Tears ran down Stimson’s cheeks.

  “I can never repay you!” he gushed. He was going to hug Dodson again, but Dodson put his palms up.

  “Skip all that, will you? You’re gonna be late for the meeting.”

  “Boy, oh, boy,” Stimson said as he left. “Boy, oh, boy.”

  Dodson made the calculation. If Stimson got fired, he’d get fired and he’d be back cleaning food trucks for Deronda. If Stimson succeeded, Dodson succeeded, and if that happened, maybe he’d get bumped up to an assistant and from there, who knows? He was starting to think like Cherise. He was nervous. Stimson liked the idea, but given his track record, he wasn’t much of a judge. Would Brad and Walsh go for it? The heavy hitters? Would the idea stand up to that kind of scrutiny? Dodson had never been in a situation like this. Doing something he was proud of and having it judged by people who knew what they were doing. Who had expertise. He hoped the meeting didn’t take very long.

  Brad grew up in Beverly Hills and lived a Beverly Hills life. His father was a Beverly Hills attorney, his mother, a Beverly Hills real estate agent. They were severe and big on discipline. Brad was the youngest of three brothers. They were only a year apart and intensely competitive. Intensely. Their parents encouraged it. They saw it as preparation for a cutthroat, competitive world. There were rewards for winning, consequences for losing. Attention and affection were similarly dispensed. They were chickens in a behavior modification experiment. Peck the right dot and get a kernel of corn. Peck the wrong one and you went hungry.

  That’s how Brad felt most of his waking hours. Hungry, as if more accomplishments could fill the void left by the past. The brothers competed fiercely in every aspect of growing up. Grades, test scores, chess, ping-pong, body mass index, number of pull-ups, number of offices held, time in the 400-meter dash, who dressed the best, who had the prettiest girlfriend, whose car was cooler, who went to a better university. They even compared scores on their driving tests. Now that they were adults, it was who was more successful. Theo was a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins. Randle was, literally, a rocket scientist at NASA. Brad was middle management at an advertising agency that wasn’t even in Beverly Hills.

  It had always been that way, Brad routinely coming in last. Figuratively speaking, he was on the practice squad, the third string, the bronze medalist. His parents were greatly disappointed in him. The consequences weren’t draconian, but they were pointed. A 95 on the algebra test? No ride to school. Take the filthy bus with a bunch of deadbeat commuters. Learn how it is to be ordinary. You entered the annual chess tournament in a field of forty-eight. You had three losses. Theo had two. Randle won the whole fucking thing. A 4.0 grade point average? Impressive, except it was an unweighted score and didn’t account for the difficulty of the classes. Compared with his brothers, 4.0 was tantamount to a mental disability.

  What really hurt was baseball. Brad had been a dedicated fan since he was old enough to watch TV. His brothers didn’t play the sport and he couldn’t wait to join a Little League team. Unfortunately, he was a terrible fielder and his batting average was a subpar .178. Embarrassed, his parents made him quit. His favorite mitt was thrown in the trash, the posters of his favorite players torn down. He was forbidden to watch the sport on TV, his memorabilia given away. He hid something from his parents. An autographed baseball, Nolan Ryan’s loopy signature scrawled on it in blue ink. These days, he kept it on his desk in an acrylic cube.

  Brad had learned that it didn’t matter how hard you worked. Nobody gave a shit about effort. Nobody cared that you were exhausted, discouraged, and alone. His brothers were simply smarter and more talented and that was it. They were merciless in their taunts, sneers and insults. Brad felt like a snail, a zit, a gum wrapper in a mud puddle. If he wanted a smile from his parents, he had to bully, sabotage, oversell, tell ridiculous whoppers and blame others if something went wrong. He had to take credit for things he had no part in and distance himself from anything that smelled of failure and defeat. Brad hated to see his brothers win, and as he grew older, he hated anyone who was smarter, more talented, or who got more attention than he did.

  Brad loathed Stimson. The man was a slug and a waste of a salary. There was also the pension issue. If Stimson got his contract renewed and retired with full benefits, hell, he could live another twenty years. That amounted to a considerable sum. And for what? To support a guy who should have been fired a decade earlier? He should be paying them back for the time and money they’d already wasted on him. Stimson was a living example of what could happen to you if you weren’t a hard motherfucker, if you weren’t ruthless, opportunistic and devious, if you didn’t put a boot on the ambitious ones and undermine the ones in front of you. Stimson was a portent, an omen, your worst nightmare in a rumpled suit and a cheap tie, and really, Brad thought, who needs to see that every fucking day?

  Ted Walsh was executive VP in charge of campaign development and everybody’s boss. He sat at the head of the long white conference table in his dark gray suit and his mightier-than-thou attitude, his bulk and bloodhound face heightening the illusion of power. A large monitor was on the far wall. Presentations were digitized. No more easels, drawing pads, and overhead projectors. Brad resented Walsh. There was no question the younger man should be in charge. Walsh was getting too old for the sticky, unpleasant aspects of management. Cutting staff, cutting costs, cracking the whip. Better to let his ruthless, demanding attack dog do it. That was fine, Brad thought. It made Walsh look soft and Brad like a leader. The partners were starting to notice. Brad was their man of the future. He was blunt, abrasive, and nobody liked him, but he got shit done. He knew his business too.

  Also at the meeting were Marty Lupica, executive art director, Zack Sandler, the project manager, Erica Newberg, the account director, plus a strategist, someone from Advanced Planning and a couple of assistants. And there was Stimson in all his broken-down glory. God, he looked like he’d slept curled up on a bus bench with a newspaper over his head. Brad had convinced Walsh that this campaign was Stimson’s do-or-die. The doofus either came up big, or he could pick up his pink slip.

  Brad stood up. “Let’s begin, shall we? I don’t have to tell you how important Skechers is to the company. If we succeed, they will bring us other business, maybe all of their business. Millions and millions of dollars are resting on this one ad. Dunheath, Navarro, you’re up first.” Brad wasn’t naïve enough to rely on Stimson. Kameron Dunheath and Isaac Navarro were two hipsters who thought a lot of themselves. Dunheath had a James Harden beard, nerdy sunglasses and peg-leg pants that ended at his sockless ankles. Navarro wore suspenders, a wrinkled check shirt, jeans so tight they could have been a body tattoo and chukka boots worn down to a shine. They were pretentious assholes but they did good work.

  Navarro typed on his laptop. A digitized image appeared on the wall monitor. A beautiful young couple walking the red carpet. A crowd of paparazzi taking their pictures. She was wearing a hot
, sequined dress. He was wearing a tuxedo and both had on Skechers walking shoes. The scene cut to the same couple sitting courtside at a basketball game, cheering the home team on, the same couple at a hip nightclub dancing with drinks in their hands. The same couple in hiking clothes, holding hands and taking in a spectacular view. In every scene they wore Skechers. The caption:

  SKECHERS WALKING SHOES

  They’ll take you places.

  “I’m underwhelmed.” Brad sighed. “It has some of the elements but it’s soft. No edge, no zeitgeist.”

  “We needed more time,” Dunheath said.

  “You didn’t have more time,” Brad snapped. Disaster, he thought. Now it was up to Stimson, who was guaranteed to have shit. The room was tense and disquieted. There was a sudden interest in fingernails, loose threads and water spots on the table. No one wanted to see the old guy humiliated again.

  “All right, Stimson, the floor is yours,” Brad said.

  Stimson stood up, exhaling with his cheeks puffed out and his brow furrowed. My God, is he sweating? Brad thought. Couldn’t he pretend to have his shit together?

  “Yeah, I’ve, um, got something here,” Stimson said. He reached down and brought up a poster board. Poster board? What the fuck was this all about? Brad couldn’t see it at his angle. He glanced at Walsh and raised his eyebrows.

  “This should be interesting,” he said.

  “I didn’t have time to have it digitized,” Stimson said. “So you’ll just have to, uh, you know, look at it.” He handed the poster to Sandler seated next to him. Sandler held it up with two hands like he was looking at himself in a mirror.