by Deek Rhew
Monica lit a cigarette and, blowing a lungful of smoke, said, “So, I’m thinking...”
“Sounds dangerous.” Angel lay on the grass, her hands behind her head, eyes closed. The sun made its lazy descent in the west, and once it dipped below the distant mountains, the light nip in the air would turn to a chill. Already, only a smattering of people remained on the grassy fields, and those that stayed kept their distance, busying themselves with children and blankets.
Monica frowned. “Funny, Ang. In all seriousness, I’m thinking about Paris.”
“What about it.”
“We should go there.”
“I know. We just need to get your little ‘identity crisis’ resolved.”
Monica shook her head. “It’s more than just that.”
“Someone’s feeling reflective. It’s the Arch, it makes you look at the big picture. I told you it was a worthwhile endeavor. Hey, give me a hit off of that.” Angel stretched lazy and cat-like and seemed to be on the verge of going to sleep when she reached her hand out for the cigarette. Monica placed it between her friend’s fingers and watched her take a deep drag without so much as opening her eyes. “I’m thinking dinner then a big comfy bed. How much exactly did you steal from Lisa’s heirs?”
Monica cocked her head. “It’s just a loan, and that’s really cold, you know.”
Angel shook her head. “Uh huh. You lifted her credit cards, money, and took her car. She may be dead, but isn’t that still grand theft auto or something? In your defense, I guess someone did just try to kill you. Then there was the whole FBI thing. By the way, that name they gave you, Susan Rosenberg, that was just appalling. A little funny, but still appalling.” Angel’s reflectiveness permeated the night air. “Guess having taste has nothing to do with being accepted into the Bureau. Maybe you could plead severe annoyance?”
Monica sighed. “That’s not a thing.”
“It should be. Also, I’m glad you are growing your hair back out. You can’t pull off the badass, black-haired chick thing. You’re definitely a blonde. Me? I could totally do it.”
Monica stiffened. “Hey! I look smoking hot with my black hair.”
“Oh, no doubt, if I were a guy, I’d totally do you,” Angel replied. “I’m just sayin’ you can’t pull off ninja chick the way I can.” She made chopping gestures without opening her eyes or relinquishing her relaxed, prone position on the lawn. “Wha-cha-cha,” she said under her breath as she puffed on the cigarette perched between her lips and swiped at invisible foes.
Monica sighed. “What do you want for dinner, ninja girl?” She snagged the cigarette back.
“Now you’re talking. I’m thinking pizza. Do they have pizza in France? Ont-ils la pizza en France? It’s been a few years since Ms. Roth’s French class, but I still have it. Don’t you think? Mon?” Angel opened her eyes, rolled over onto her stomach, and froze.
“Hello, bitch. I’ve been looking for you.”
A small, cold circle, which could only be the barrel of a gun, pressed to the back of Monica’s head. “Well, it seems you found me.” A calm resignation settled over her as the survivalist took control.
“Who…who is that?” Angel asked.
The voice was one Monica heard in her nightmares. “Does he have a scar on his face?”
“Yeah. He’s kneeling behind you. He’s got a gun, Mon.”
She nodded. “Then it has to be Joe Pesci’s evil henchman.”
A light chuckle emanated from the man behind Monica. “I wouldn’t let him hear you say that.”
Monica raised her hands. “Or what? He’ll send someone to kill me?”
“There are things worse than death. This is what’s going to happen. You’re both going to stand up, and we’re going to head towards the east entrance of the park. I have a car across the street, then we’re going to take a little ride. Ready?”
“Like we have any choice.” Bitterness rolled off Angel.
He smirked. “Good. If you do exactly as I say, things will go a lot easier.”
Angel raised her chin. “For you, maybe. We’re dead either way.”
The murderer sighed. “Unfortunately for me, I’m in a bit of rush, so we don’t have time to play. Now if you don’t mind.” He got up and indicated the east entrance with the gun.
He took an extra step back, concealing his gun in his pocket, as Angel and Monica stood. They started meandering toward the side of the park. “Not the main path,” he instructed. “Too many people. Cut through the trees next to the lake.”
“Anything else we can do to make killing us easier on you?” Angel turned to Monica. “Can you believe this guy?”
“Just do what he says,” Monica told her.
“You can’t be serious? He’s going to kill us. You know that, right? A couple shots to the head and a trip down the river.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic.”
Angel gaped. “Melodra… You’re kidding, right?”
“Honey,” Monica said as they entered the canopy of trees, “listen to me. Do you remember the story about when I was a girl and my mom brought the guy home?”
“Yes, but what…” Angel paused, understanding dawning in her eyes then her voice grew louder. “I know what’s going on here.” She planted her feet, ceasing all forward momentum. When she did, the entire party stopped too. “This is one of your guy friends from back in school, right? Play a trick on the simpleton from the little town? You and your big city friends! Well, screw you!” She raged at Monica and then turned to the mobster. “And screw you too—” Before she got the words out, he hit her in the side of the face. Angel’s head snapped to the side, and she crumpled into a heap.
“You didn’t have to do that!” Monica crouched beside her fallen friend.
“Get up!” the man hissed. “Get up, or I’ll shoot you right here and leave your bodies for the birds.”
Monica stood, puffing hard on the cigarette still in her mouth. Lazy smoke wafted into the air and drifted away on the light breeze blowing in from the river. She stepped towards the hitman. “You’re the man I saw with Joe.”
He stared into her eyes but didn’t say anything.
She reached out and traced his scar with the tip of her finger, from the edge of his ear down his jawline. “If you’re going to kill us, I should at least know your name, don’t you think?”
He appraised her but didn’t say anything.
Monica moved closer. “What harm can come from that?” They stood almost nose to nose, and she smelled his Old Spice aftershave, saw the flecks of gray in his blue, bloodshot eyes. She’d recognize an alcoholic anywhere. She should, after all, having grown up with one.
“My name is Tyron.” He removed the gun from his pocket, keeping it close to his body and trained on Angel, who still lay on the ground, unmoving.
“Tyron,” she purred. Smoke passed out her lips as she spoke.
“Put that out. They make a girl’s mouth taste like an ashtray. I hate that.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you,” she said and took it from her mouth. “Better?” She leaned in closer.
“Yes. Now do as I said and—” He didn’t get the words out before Monica jabbed the smoldering end of the cigarette into his eye. Tyron shoved her back, screaming, his hands cradling his face. Monica didn’t give him a chance to recover; she stepped forward and kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, the hand holding the gun performing double duty as he used it to also clutch his testicles while the other remained attached to his eye.
Angel popped up, a large branch, about the size of a Louisville Slugger, in her hands. She pulled the stick back over her shoulder, took a tremendous swing, and conked the thug in the back of the head.
Though not as hard as the baseball bat from Monica’s youth, Angel’s makeshift weapon nevertheless stunned the would-be assassin, knocking him from his feet. He thudded on his side in the thick grass. Monica grabbed the gun, but Tyron clung to it. Maybe in the
ir struggle he would shoot his own nuts off.
Angel brought her foot down on his wrist, and he screamed in pain. Monica wrenched the gun from his grasp, and they sprinted for her car.
As they ran from the park, Monica threw the weapon into the lake. They scrambled into the vehicle. Angel started it, and with a slight squeal of tires, they pulled out into the light, evening traffic.
* * *
Tyron pulled himself to his feet using a nearby tree in time to see the Audi merge into the flow of cars. He leaned against the maple, the pain in his eye pulsing to the beat of his heart. Tears streamed from the burned orb, his wrist throbbed, a large knot had begun to form on the back of his head, and he wheezed from the blow to his crotch. All of his injuries combined didn’t come close to the beating his pride had taken.
Barry could go screw himself. When Tyron caught these two cunts, he’d make them pay.
He limped to his car and settled into the front seat. He moaned, jammed the key into the ignition, started the engine, and headed the way they had gone.
42
“So,” Angel said through a mouthful of veggies and cheese, “this looks pretty simple. We just get on the Seventy here.” She smudged grease across the screen as she traced the freeway from St. Louis. “It’ll take us into Indiana then Ohio, and then we turn left in Pennsylvania.”
“Lisa’s going to be pissed you dirtied up her screen. She hates that.”
“Well the next time we have a séance, she can talk to me about it.”
Monica’s face darkened. “Wow, with everything happening so fast, I hadn’t even really had time to digest the fact that she’s gone.”
“I thought you hated that town and everyone in it?”
“I suppose that’s true, and Lisa was probably the highest maintenance person I’d ever met. Self-centered. Artificial. But she was still my friend. She gave me my first job… Okay, sure the FBI arranged it somehow, but still.”
“Honey, I know this is tough, but we almost got shot and dumped into the river this afternoon. At least one crazed lunatic is searching for us, maybe more. I get you need to mourn her and all, but right this minute is not the time. I promise, no more dead Lisa jokes, okay?”
Monica nodded. “You know how to get there?”
“I think so, though I’m not entirely sure where we are, and I hate to disturb Mr. Congeniality.” She flicked her eyes towards the man behind the counter. They chatted while Angel finished her food and wiped her mouth. “I’m stuffed. Okay, no more stalling. I’m going in.” Angel stood to go talk to the proprietor when Monica grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“Wait,” Monica said, her eyes fixed on the front of the restaurant.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I think I saw him.”
“Who? The bald mobber?” Angel tried looking through the windows, but the darkness outside intensified the internal reflection. She could only see shadows on the street.
“No. Peter.”
“Peter? As in Peter, the bastard and hitman from Walberg? That Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. I saw someone on a motorcycle, and it kinda looked like his. He drove past, and I swear he looked right at me.”
Could the stress be making her friend see danger around every corner? No one could possibly know where they were.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I swear that’s what it felt like.”
She held up her hands as if in surrender. “All right, I believe you. So say it was him. Do we wait and see what he wants?”
“Huh? No!”
“Okay, then let’s get out of here.”
They stood to leave, but just as Angel reached for her coat and the laptop, someone pushed through the door. For a second, she thought it would be the man on the motorcycle, but the figure that entered wore a gray leather jacket and a baseball cap casting a shadow on his face instead of the standard motorcycle riding gear. She started to turn back toward Monica when the light caught the scar running from his ear to his jaw, and her stomach clenched. The pizza she’d eaten turned to a lump of lead in her gut.
Tyron stepped into the little restaurant, closing and locking the door behind him.
“Hey!” the large man behind the counter shouted. “You can’t do that!”
The mobster raised his silenced pistol and shot the proprietor in the forehead. The cook went right on flipping onions and peppers—swords clashing on the grill like a samurai, oblivious to his coworker’s death—until the huge dead man fell on him. He screamed and pushed the proprietor to the floor, terror registering on his chubby face. He then raised his eyes from the murdered man to the mobster, staring into the dark infinity of the killer’s gun.
A quiet “pumpf” from the gun, and a spot appeared into the middle of the cook’s forehead, a twin of his coworker’s. He fell forward, bending at the waist, landing face first on the grill where his skin began to sizzle and pop right alongside the peppers and onions.
“Good evening, ladies,” Tyron said. “I believe we have some unfinished business. No chances this time. Put your stuff down, and hands above your heads.” When they hesitated, he motioned with the gun. “Go on, or I end this now.”
“I wish you hadn’t thrown that gun away,” Angel stage-whispered to Monica as she set her bag down and raised her hands.
“I don’t know how to use one,” she whispered back. “Do you?”
“No. But right now I’d try and figure it out.”
“Tsk tsk. No forethought. No planning. You didn’t think you’d see me again. Unforeseen things unfold when you are unprepared. Now, here’s what’s going to happen.” He tossed a pair of handcuffs onto the table. “You”—he waved the gun towards Angel—“are dispensable. It’s your bitch friend I’m really interested in, so you will be my little helper.”
“Go bang yourself,” Angel said.
Tyron shot the table to Angel’s left.
She jumped as though electrocuted.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m the one holding all the cards. I have both your lives in my hands. Now unless you want me to start shooting little pieces of your friend off one bit at a time, you will cooperate. Now, cuff the bitch.”
Angel looked at Monica.
Monica nodded. “Just do it. Maybe if you help, he’ll let you go.”
“Mon—”
Monica put her hands in front of her. “Ang, please. It’s been coming to this for over a year now. I thought I could outrun these bastards, but it’s not going to happen.”
A tear spilled from Angel’s cheek as she clicked the cuffs shut around Monica’s wrists—the meshing of the metal teeth as ominous as the blade of a guillotine being slid into place.
“Okay, you’ve got me. Now let her go,” Monica said.
His quiet laugh mingled with the sound of the frying cook and vegetables. “No, I don’t think so. She’s going to be my driver. Besides”—he rubbed the back of his head—“there’s a little payback in order. So here’s what’s going to happen, you’re going to wrap her coat around the cuffs—no need to draw unwarranted attention to ourselves—then we’re going to go across the street to my car. You and I will get in the back seat, and you”—he looked at Angel—“as I said, will drive. If you so much as turn the blinker in the wrong direction, I’ll shoot a piece of her off, starting with her kneecaps and working my way to more painful, intimate, places.”
“Where are we going?” Angel asked.
“Someplace private. You will find out in good time; it’s all about proper planning. You’d be wise to keep that in mind next time.” He chuckled at his own little joke. “All right, let’s go.”
Angel wrapped the coat around Monica’s hands.
Monica’s eyes dropped. “I’m sorry.”
“It was my choice to come with you. I knew the risks.”
“Did you? Are you sure? Would you have still come if you knew
this was a possibility?”
“A million times over,” Angel assured her.
“Enough!” Tyron shouted. “Let’s go.”
* * *
As they made their way toward the front of the restaurant, a burning stench saturated the air—scorched vegetables and searing fry cook. Monica glanced at the sickening sight of the dead man blackening on the griddle.
Tyron followed her gaze. “Unfortunate.” He stepped aside, and for a moment, they clustered together. If she had planned to do something, the time had come, but she didn’t have any tricks left in her handbag. In the park, the pompous mobster had underestimated them, and they had used that to catch him off guard. But this time…
Maybe when they got outside, she could start screaming for help? If she threw herself on top of him, maybe Angel could get away? But as each new thought formed in her mind, she realized her friend would never abandon her, even if it meant their deaths. Resigned, she plodded towards the entrance of the small eatery.
A dull “Pop! Pop! Pop!” emanated from the front of the restaurant. The trio froze, staring as the big picture window overlooking the street spider-webbed and became frosted. A dark figure approached, like Death had decided to pay them a visit from another dimension.
The huge window exploded. A dramatic shower of safety glass rained down on them, and they had to turn away to shield themselves. Monica looked up in time to see a black-clad demon sail through the air. She and Angel stood just behind the bald mobster, when it—he—slammed into their assailant, and the four of them toppled to the floor in a heap of arms, legs, and miscellaneous restaurant paraphernalia.
