To Bring My Shadow

by Matt Phillips

  Then the red dot appeared on the guard’s chest.

  As he scurried to get in close to the guard, the point promised himself he was going to kick that fat ass in his pencil-dick as soon as they got outside.

  It took the guard a couple seconds to notice it, then a few more to understand what it was before jumping out of his chair. He went to dive under the desk, seeking cover, when the point man wrapped one thick arm around the guard, pressed a cloth against his mouth with the other. He guided the guard’s body down to the tile floor, resting him gently.

  When the guard was fully out, the point man stood and cracked his neck.

  The short man stepped forward, assuming control of the situation. “Tape him up.”

  “On it,” the point man said.

  “Not you. Him.”

  “But—” the fat man started.

  “But nothing. You watch one TV show and you think you’re a criminal genius?” He snatched the laser pointer from the man’s pudgy hands on the way to the servers, shoved it into his pocket, and pulled out a thumb drive. “Make sure he’s comfortable and keep a lookout. We’ve got work to do.”

  Raymond Cody’s eyelids flickered open. His lips slapped together, trying to find moisture. He started to call out, but caught himself as images slammed against him. The red dot, the man choking him, the rag. He stayed quiet and shut his eyes, in case someone was close and had a mind to finish the job. He listened to the noises, determining position, number, temperament. Raymond wagered there were at least two of them, both men. There was a bunch of clacking and a voice farther away, on the other side of the office. Labored breathing behind him, thick inhalations through a busted nose, maybe ten feet away. So make that three perps. He let his eyes crack open.

  Blue light shone on two faces in the server area, both hunched over a computer and rapidly typing, pointing at things on the screen. He had no idea what they were doing but doubted it was particularly good. Could they steal money that way? Maybe they were hacking into the clinic’s accounts, a pretty low move, stealing from a nonprofit.

  A few minutes later, the two finished the computer work. The third one set something on the security desk. Raymond closed his eyes when they turned toward the main office.

  They stopped beside him, one pressing his fingers against Raymond’s neck, checking his pulse. He reflexively swallowed, kicked himself for it as soon as it happened.

  “You don’t have to pretend to be out,” the man said.

  Raymond opened his eyes. A short man crouched down a hair, a black balaclava covering his face.

  “You feel okay?” he said.

  “Head’s fuzzy.”

  “It’ll be like that a bit. Are you comfortable?”

  Raymond looked down—his wrists duct-taped to the chair’s arms, his ankles to its legs, his torso to its back—and motioned with his hands.

  “Sorry, not much else I can do,” the man said. “You don’t have circulation issues or anything do you?”

  “I’m not that old,” Raymond said. “And would it matter if I did?”

  The man cocked his head. “Good point. But there’s no reason for you to be unnecessarily uncomfortable. You haven’t done anything. In fact, everything we’re doing is for you.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’ll see.” The man stood. From his demeanor, Raymond expected him to be much taller, not a squat five-foot-six. “A few days from now, when everything starts happening, remember what I said.”

  The three of them made for the door before Raymond called out. “What about when I have to piss?”

  “You’re not that old, right? Hold it.” The man laughed once before walking out.

  The clinic was quiet once more, computers humming, air ducts rattling. Raymond sat in the dim light, flexed his fingers, and sighed hard.

  “Holding.”

  2

  Jay Brodsky punched the button on the car radio to change the station. He couldn’t handle listening to more coverage of the Harper twins, who were both afflicted by the same congenital disease, the name and nature of which totally escaped Jay. But the big story was that their mother’s insurance company had determined it was a pre-existing condition and could therefore deny payment, forcing the mother to choose which twin received the life-saving procedure. As the twins’ health worsened, the mother had to make the worst, most painful choice a parent ever could: decide which child would live and which one would die.

  Jay didn’t have kids but damn near teared up every time he heard the story. Even two weeks after the story broke, news outlets continued to cover it. Jay figured they would have moved on to a different tragedy already. He turned left and came face to face with a colorful mural that took up the whole side of a building. Justice for the Harpers ran across the bottom of the painting on a cloth banner, with No Healthcare? Go to Hell and other slogans written around the edges.

  So instead of listening to coverage of dying children, Jay was now listening to meteorologists’ vast and varied predictions for the path of Hurricane Donovan—where it would make landfall, how strong it would be, what the damage might be. Jay sighed hard and turned off the radio completely, opting to spend the rest of his commute in silence instead.

  Click here to learn more about Radicals by Nik Korpon.

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  Here is a preview from Sangre Road, the first Moses Kincaid crime thriller by David Tromblay, published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  1

  The Red Dirt Chop Shop has a 1968 Chevy Custom Camper sans camper for sale down on the tail end of Sangre Road. How much they want for it is soaped on the windshield but blocked by a sign that cannot be read so well. It’s gone into disrepair—the sign, not the truck—like a family plot with no more relations above ground. The sign is sort of impaled on a four-by-four-inch post somebody whittled down until it got small enough that all four of the set screws could be tightened. I know this because I wanted to know how much they wanted for the truck, and, then, since I was idling on the shoulder of said Sangre Road, I took however long to look over the cast-iron historical marker which read:

  THE LAST “BOOMER” TOWN

  About ¾ mi. east of here

  300 armed “boomers” made their last stand for settlement of Oklahoma country, led by Wm. V. Courtright, and surrendered to U.S. Calvary troops commanded by Col. J. Hastings, Jan. 26, 1885. On this site, the “boomers” built log cabins and dugouts for their town of Lawson, founded on Dec. 12, 1884.

  Seeing how the town was established and surrendered in the span of six weeks and the sight itself is now nothing more than a few acres of decrepit automobiles, it all seemed insignificant and extraneous—not warranting the casting of a marker. There wasn’t even one of the brown signs telling motorists a historical marker waited up ahead.

  Saying surrendered seems like it wasn’t all that bloody of a battle, being there was no mention of a body count on the marker, but there is the matter of their naming the road Sangre, meaning: blood en español. Figuring in how the Spanish-speaking population here is nada, I’d wager it’s a roundabout way of them covering up a bloody past but kinda-sorta acknowledging it without outright saying the boogeyman’s name.

  $3,000 firm was the price on the Chevy. It comes with a spiderwebbed windshield, no bumpers, and every inch of it is primered black, which makes me think it’s either dinged to hell or comes with a full rust package.

  No thank you.

  This way of thinking is what you get when you spend too much time by yourself alone in an automobile. But I wouldn’t have to stay inside my head a whole lot longer, luckily. Sangre Road became a smorgasbord of signs and ads once I crept inside the city limits.

  A diner stood right on the other side of the fifth church I passed, the one with the marquee that read: No one is perfect, Moses was o
nce a basket case.

  I ordered a sweet tea as a show of faith to let them know I meant to differentiate myself as a customer rather than a loitering member of the public, then I made my hurried pilgrimage to the men’s room.

  After taking a swig of their world-famous sweet tea, in walked a man boasting all the physical attributes of a double-sized soft-serve ice cream cone, the extra creamy kind made with double the milk fat. Prescription glasses with lenses tinted the color of watered-down rosé wine clung to the tip of his nose. I say prescription because when he tilted his head back to find an open table, he became bug-eyed.

  His dress shirt was one with ruffles sewn into the chest, though it wasn’t the bleached white you’d see someone wear with an older tuxedo. I imagine it was sold as ivory, but it was the color of a midmorning piss following the downing of an entire pot of coffee along with some multivitamin with 1000% of the recommended daily values.

  Both pockets on the chest of that shirt were packed with pens, sans pocket protectors. He was obviously a man who liked to live dangerously. He’d filled the left side with what I’ll call Easter or pastel colors, while the right side was all primary pen ink colors: black, blue, red, and two others: one looked to be stainless steel, and the other was a gold-plated pen. Both of which could have held any imaginable color of ink.

  Around his neck hung a shoelace, weighed down with no less than two dozen keys—by my count. A fist sat plopped atop a cane in which he lent far too much trust. I only say so because of how the floor let out a muffled cry, announcing his presence a few short seconds before each footfall. Other folks passed through the dining area without the floorboards offering a word of protest. It could have been the light playing with the lacquer, but I’d swear I saw that cane bow each time he hobbled this way and that. He’d swayed through the side door, too, which was a little wider than the front door—to allow for deliveries—and led straight into the kitchen. His pendulum gait hypnotized me; I am embarrassed to admit. That’s how the waitress surprised me and announced her presence by setting down the sweating glass of ice water as she asked me, “Are you ready to order, or are you going to need another minute with the menu?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said with an embarrassed smile, “I am indeed going to need a few more minutes, please. Everything sounds so mouth-wateringly delicious.”

  I went with a pecan waffle and what they called Huevos Mexicano. The latter came with hash browns and toast and jelly or biscuits and gravy. I went with the latter coupling thinking the gravy would add a little sustenance to the meal. Without the drink, it came to ten bucks. Not too bad. The trip to the bathroom did not lead me to believe the meal should come with a complimentary tetanus shot, so I found myself in better spirits than when I realized where this latest paper had brought me.

  The telephone book I acquired from the phone booth outside of the Get-N-Go was no thicker than a weekly edition of the TV Guide. From that alone, I knew I’d be on my way in no time at all—and cue the Caruso of Rock to remind me of the day they hung my name in the fool’s hall of fame.

  Bolstered by the aforementioned short-sighted assurance of the ease of how fast I’d be pulling a U-turn, I got a motel room. I took advantage of their hourly rates where it’s well known no one wants to be seen or see who is coming and going, where I could shit, shower, shave, and get to work—without being bothered about when I was checking out.

  I may have never visited this town before, but I knew the place well enough. The public library operates on banker’s hours, there are as many adult bookstores as churches, and you cannot, no way, no how, buy a beer on the Lord’s day.

  Atop that, sat the conundrum of living in a city so small is that every citizen shoulders the stress of celebrity. That’s to say when everyone is bored, nobody else is boring. There’s no minding your own business. Everyone is family. Not necessarily blood, but there’s a closeness that causes me claustrophobia.

  Being so fresh a face in so small a town, I knew I couldn’t set up somewhere and surveil someone without more eyes looking my way than what would have proved beneficial. It’s like that adage warning away from pointing a finger at someone because there’ll be three others pointing back at your own self.

  I borrowed the bible from the bedside table the Gideons placed in my room and stood out on the corner closest to the Jefferson Lines station and preached the Word to passing cars.

  Silly as it may seem, it’s the perfect platform to watch the comings and goings and not have to worry about being an unfamiliar face and drawing too much attention to my own self.

  I call it tradecraft.

  A curbside crazy is easy enough to ignore and hiding in plain sight is a whole lot less nerve-racking when you’re a stranger in a strange land and do not know who it is you need to watch out for other than who you came to find. In that same breath, a panhandler holding a sign and begging for whatever change you can spare may draw the attention of the authorities depending on local ordinances, but not a sidewalk preacher. Especially in a place where everyone is so afraid of coming off as a piss-poor Christian. I make such speculation about my newfound workplace based upon seeing so many bumper stickers mentioning Him that you’d swear He was up for reelection.

  If ever I’d take note of someone taking too much stock in what I was saying or doing or where I was loitering, I could always cook up a splash of misdirection.

  The first instance I felt compelled to do so during this job was with a gentleman who came out of the hospital in a wheelchair looking like he was still getting the mechanics of it down, and, poor him, he hadn’t anyone to give him a push. Though he wheeled his own self into the package store with enough ease.

  When he exited and came across the intersection toward me, I did not hesitate to seize such an opportune moment and did what I could to divert the attention of every driver toward him. By God, by some miracle, he was able to stand and walk and navigate that wheelchair up and over the median without dumping the case of beer or any of the bottles of liquor hidden away in the brown paper sacks, which were now riding in the wheelchair. It was quite a sight. I did not want a single soul to miss it, so I hollered out, proclaimed, “It’s a miracle, right before our very eyes, brothers and sisters! Just hearing the Lord’s message has helped this man to walk again. Rise and walk! Rise and walk, my son!” I screamed above the knocking engines and the nauseating exhaust tightening my chest. “Rise and walk. You don’t need no wheelchair. Go on and tell your doctor how he has failed you, but it is the Lord who has healed you.”

  If only there were cameras around to capture the moment.

  I’d bet my trigger finger he was hoping against all hope there wasn’t anyone from the insurance company within earshot, too.

  He put his head down once he saw how he was being followed and judged by every eyeball inside every stopped vehicle.

  One searing gaze was cause enough for him to lift his heels a touch higher than normal and get as far from me as fast as his feet could carry him—and there were at least a dozen and a half staring him down.

  Amen for that.

  If any of those glances drifted over to me in his absence, I’d toss around words like judgment and abomination and His return until every last set of eyeballs fixated on the dangling traffic lights. Doing so got each car to creep toward the intersection in a clear demonstration of their building impatience and want over need for the light to go from red to green.

  Click here to learn more about Sangre Road by David Tromblay.

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