Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

  “Cody?” she said, her voice tiny. “I thought you left. I...”

  Everyone in the room turned towards her as she raised her hand and opened it to reveal an empty prescription pill bottle. The inside of her arm was sliced open from her wrist to her elbow. The pill bottle rolled off her palm and fell to the carpet.

  I took advantage of the distraction to pull the Sig and point it at Lovell.

  “Mom!” Cody made a lunge towards her but the toad gripped his shirt, shoving his pistol up under Cody’s chin.

  “Take it easy now, Cody,” the toad said. “And you—” He gestured at me. “Drop the gun.”

  Cody’s mom took a halting step forward, staggered and fell to her knees.

  “Get the fuck off me,” Cody cried, twisting frantically in his grip.

  “Tell your boy to let Cody go,” I said to Lovell.

  “Forget it,” Lovell said, staring me down without flinching. “You pull that trigger and the boy dies with me.”

  “Jesus, Mom,” Cody said. “Somebody call 911!”

  “Nobody’s calling anyone,” Lovell said.

  Hank knelt down beside Skye, pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around her forearm.

  “Hang on now, Ms. Noon,” Hank said.

  “Look, shoot me if you’re gonna,” Cody said, “but please, you have to call someone. My mom needs a doctor. She never did anything to you.”

  “You know, Cody, I’d really like to care,” Lovell said. “But I’m afraid I don’t.”

  That did it. Cody tore free of the toad and flung himself at Lovell. The toad swore, no idea where to aim as Cody and Lovell went sprawling across the sofa and rolled onto the floor. The big guy left his post at the door, grabbed Cody and peeled him off Lovell.

  Cody flailed and struggled, but the big guy was a brick wall. The toad had finally settled on where to point his gun. At me. I returned the favor and we stood there, frozen and bristling, staring into each other’s muzzles. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lovell getting his unsteady feet under him. He was flushed a furious crimson and bleeding from the nose.

  “Will somebody please shoot that fucking kid already,” he said.

  “Don’t,” I said to the toad, but I could see the big guy reaching for his gun. I knew the toad would blow me away the second I pointed my gun anywhere but at him. “Don’t!” I repeated, like a dog barking. Just a desperate, angry sound with no real meaning.

  Then I saw Hank moving towards them, fast and low. He kicked the big guy’s knee, making it buckle sickeningly in the wrong direction. The guy bellowed like a branded bull, clutched his leg and collapsed, taking out the cheap coffee table as he went down. Hank had no problem taking the gun from him.

  “Drop it,” he said, drawing down on the toad.

  Outnumbered now, the toad slowly lowered his gun. I took that opportunity to step up and stick the Sig in his ear.

  “Let’s have it,” I told him, gesturing with an open hand for his gun.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “I ain’t giving you shit, lady.”

  “Cody,” Hank said, gun still trained on the toad. “Go on and call that ambulance for your momma.”

  Cody nodded and crossed the room to pick up the cordless phone.

  “It’s too late anyway,” Lovell said.

  “What?” Cody turned to Lovell, fists clenching.

  “Just look at her,” Lovell said. “She’s dead. Overdosed. Bled out. Her forearm’s cut open clear to the bone. Frankly, I’m amazed she didn’t die sooner.”

  “Mom?” Cody dropped down on one knee beside his prone mother. “Mom?”

  “Tragic, really.”

  “Vernon,” Hank said. “You open your mouth again and it’ll be my pleasure to shoot you dead. I’ve had all I’m gonna take from you.”

  “Mom!” Cody wailed.

  “Way to go, Cody,” Lovell said. “Takes a real man to get both his fucking parents killed.”

  True to his word, Hank shot Lovell in the face.

  The toad spun, startled by the sound and I managed to knock the gun from his hand and then dance backward, out of his range. I raised the Sig and drew a bead on his forehead, freezing him halfway through a step. Lovell did a funny little backwards shuffle, waving arms outstretched like he was making fun of a blind person, then crumpled and hit the carpet beside the big guy.

  “Hank,” I said. “We need to get out of here, now.”

  “Get up,” Hank said to the big guy.

  “I can’t, man,” the guy replied. “My leg’s busted.”

  For a moment, no one moved. Then several things happened at once. The big guy lunged for the toad’s fallen pistol. The toad grabbed my gun hand, digging his left thumb into the soft underside of my wrist and forcing it downward while throwing a tight right at my face. I turned my head just enough to take it on the cheek instead of the nose and my vision went red. I heard a shot. Then another.

  I staggered back, shaking my head. When my vision cleared, I was almost afraid to look.

  But I did. The big guy was dead on his back, shot in the chest, the toad’s gun in his hand. The toad was shot too, but not quite dead. He was face down in front of the recliner, hands still scrabbling weakly like independent creatures trying to get away. Hank stood over the big guy, gun in hand.

  “You okay, Angel?” he asked.

  I touched the throbbing spot on my cheekbone where the toad’s knuckles had connected. I’d had worse.

  “Fine,” I said. “We’d better get rid of these bodies.”

  Hank nodded, running a shaking hand over his scalp.

  “Get some blankets, shower curtains, whatever,” I told him. “And help me get them into the back of the Suburban.”

  “Yeah,” Hank replied. “But what about...”

  He turned towards Cody, still hunched over his dead mother and talking softly to her, holding one of her limp hands.

  “We leave her,” I said.

  “He’s not gonna like that,” Hank said.

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” I said.

  Hank ducked into another room. When he returned with a bundle of sheets under one arm he paused in the doorway, leaning against the frame. His hands were shaking harder now, eyes squeezed down to slits.

  “Hank?” I asked, with an eyebrow raised.

  “Come on,” he said, pressing the heel of his free hand into his temple. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He took a step towards Lovell’s body, then staggered, flattening his palm against the wall to steady himself.

  “God...” he swallowed the rest of the curse behind gritted teeth.

  “What’s wrong, Hank?”

  “Just get Cody and I’ll take care of this,” Hank said.

  I nodded and knelt beside Cody. He was still holding his mother’s hand, shadow-eyed, not crying.

  “Cody, we need to go now,” I said.

  No response.

  Behind me, Hank dropped the sheets and started retching, vomiting against the wall. Cody looked up at the sound.

  “Hank?”

  Cody got to his feet and ran to Hank’s side.

  “Hank,” Cody said. “Shit. Do you have your Imitrex?”

  Hank wiped his mouth with his knuckles and nodded, pulling a prescription bottle from his pocket but he was unable to open it with his shaking hands.

  “Here.” Cody took the bottle and opened it, dumping a whole pharmacy of various candy-colored medication into his huge palm. “It’s the little triangles, right?”

  Hank tried to nod, but started retching again.

  “Okay, okay,” Cody said picking out the triangular pills. “Take these, but try not to throw up any more if you can help it. You really need to keep this down.”

  Cody got the pills into Hank’s mouth and slung one of Hank’s arms over his shoulder.

  “Get Hank out to the truck,” I said. “Quickly. I’ll take care of this.”

  Of course, that was easier said than done. The toad was finally dead, so I retrieved my
Warthog and stuck it and the Sig in my go-bag. I managed to wrap all three bodies in the stained sheets, but getting them out to the Suburban was a different story. The toad was the smallest of the three, short and no more than twenty pounds heavier than me, but the dead weight was still a bitch to move. I ended up half carrying, half dragging him. Once I got him over by the back of the Suburban, I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to get him up and in without help.

  Cody was over on the passenger side of the truck, fussing over Hank. I whistled softly, waving him over.

  “I need a hand here,” I said.

  He nodded and tossed the toad’s body into the Suburban like it was laundry.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer, just shrugged.

  “Look, here’s what I need you to do,” I told him. “First, help me get the other two bodies into the Suburban. Then I’ll drive it, following you and Hank in his truck until we find a good place to ditch them. Got it?”

  Still silent, he did what I asked. Moving the big guy nearly wiped us both out, but we managed. I got my go-bag, then climbed in behind the wheel. I was about to start the Suburban when Cody rapped his knuckles on the window. I rolled it down.

  “I need a minute with her,” he said. “Just one minute. To say goodbye.”

  I made myself take a deep breath before responding. No point snapping at a kid who’s lost both his parents in the space of forty-eight hours. On the other hand, I wasn’t so sympathetic that I was willing to wait around until the cops showed up just to make sure he got his emotional closure.

  “One minute, Cody,” I said. “Not one second more.”

  But he was already halfway to the door.

  It was the longest minute of my life.

  22.

  I was about to go back in there and drag Cody out of the house when the kid reappeared in the doorway and ran to Hank’s truck. As he fired up the noisy engine, I swore I could hear sirens in the distance. We got the hell out of there.

  Despite Cody’s warning about keeping the medication down, we still had to stop several times for Hank to stagger out onto the rocky shoulder and vomit. I was feeling keyed up and deeply paranoid, just waiting to be pulled over. We couldn’t dump that damn Suburban soon enough.

  Cody knew the area better than any of us and it wasn’t long before he found a perfect spot, a hairpin turn on a winding mountain road. The guardrail had been hit more than once and was deeply crumpled, ready to snap. In the moonless night, the stunning landscape looked like some barren and hostile alien planet.

  Cody left Hank in the truck and together he and I pushed the Suburban into the crumpled guardrail. The twisted metal tore like paper under the big vehicle’s weight. It disappeared into the ravine like a stone slipping under still water, soundless for several seconds before it hit the rocks far below.

  We stood together for a moment, not speaking, not looking at each other. It was a cool, clear night, like the night we met. Without a word, we turned and walked back to Hank’s truck.

  I sat in the middle of the bench seat, squeezed in between the two men with my go-bag at my feet. To my right, Hank leaned against the window, still shirtless and using the replacement t-shirt Cody had given him to cover his eyes. His body was tense with obvious discomfort. To my left, Cody drove in stunned silence. I wanted to open him up, get him talking about what had happened, but when I tried, he shushed me, tipping his chin towards Hank. Cody told me in a whisper that even the low rumble of the truck’s engine was excruciating for Hank while he was in the grip of one of his migraines. We needed to be as quiet as we could until the worst of the symptoms had passed.

  So I didn’t speak. I sat there, watching the winding road as the truck reluctantly climbed the 95 north, higher and higher into the mountains. The poor old truck was unhappy with our chosen route and made its opinion known by smoking and spluttering, releasing a desperate kind of burning metal smell into the cab. Just over an hour into the drive, the truck started shaking so hard that we had no choice but to pull over. Fortunately we were able to coast into a gas station just outside Quartzsite. Unfortunately, once Cody turned the engine off, it flat out refused to start again.

  The garage was closed, but the tiny convenience store was still open. The Mexican woman behind the counter informed us that the garage wouldn’t reopen until Monday, but that there was a motel down the road.

  I could sense Cody going hot and tense, getting ready to flip out. I put my hand on his arm.

  “Go get some water for Hank,” I said, giving him a slight shove towards the cooler. “We don’t want him to get dehydrated. I’ll handle this.”

  Cody nodded and did as he was told. I turned back to the woman behind the counter.

  “We need to be in Vegas by eight tomorrow morning,” I said in the calmest, most even tone I could muster. “Is there somewhere we can rent a car?”

  “Maybe over in Blythe,” the woman said without taking her eyes off a small fuzzy television bolted to the ceiling, playing a Spanish telenovela. “But not before eight on a Sunday.”

  “Listen,” I said, moving to block her view of the screen. “Isn’t there some other option?”

  She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  I briefly considered the Sig in my bag but I unzipped my money belt instead. I peeled off two twenties, setting them on the counter.

  “Find someone who can come out and fix my truck right now, tonight, and I’ll pay double what they normally charge.”

  She eyed the money, shrugged again. I added two more bills.

  “I’ll make some calls,” she said, sweeping the bills off the counter and into a large purple purse. “But I can’t promise nothing.”

  She took out a cellphone. After a few attempts, she launched into a rapid-fire Spanish conversation. The only thing I understood was gringos locos.

  “Okay,” she said. “My nephew will do it, but he can’t promise for sure that it can be fixed without looking at it. Either way you gotta pay in advance. For the labor, you know. Overtime.”

  “How much,” I said.

  She pointed to my money belt. “The rest of what you got in there.”

  The Sig was looking like a better and better option.

  Cody returned from the cooler with an armful of water bottles.

  “Be reasonable,” I said, still fighting to maintain civility.

  “You don’t wanna pay it, no problem,” she said. “I can call Chuy right now and tell him to forget it.”

  “Angel, if we don’t get moving again, and soon, we’re fucked,” Cody said, his voice tight and panicked. “What are we gonna do?”

  “Don’t worry, kid,” I said. “Go give Hank the water. We’ll be there in time.”

  “But...”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Hey,” the woman said as he walked out. “He has to pay for that!”

  “Let’s call it part of the package,” I said. I also selected a candy bar and a small packet of condoms to replace the one he broke. I wasn’t about to let that sort of thing happen again.

  Then I put the stack of bills on the counter. It was a lot—too much. But the truth was, I never kept all my money in one place and the amount in the belt was only about half of what I had on me. That didn’t mean I liked giving it up—I needed every dollar I had—but I’d made the promise to get Cody to Vegas and god fucking dammit I was gonna do it.

  Besides, I thought there was a better than even chance this bitch and her nephew were going to try to fuck us over, and if they did that, I’d happily take the money back by force, and carjack them too while I was at it. Asshole tax.

  The nephew, Chuy, arrived then, buttoning up a stained coverall as he shouldered open the door of his truck. He was young and sullen, and looked like he’d been dragged out of bed, but not sleeping. He smelled like a porn set in August.

  The woman spoke to him in Spanish and he replied. She handed him my money.

  “Show him the truck,” she said to me.

  The
nephew didn’t speak much English at all, so the woman reluctantly came along to translate. After several minutes of poking around under the hood, he let us know, via his aunt, that he could fix it, but he needed a part. He was confident that he could “find” this part, implying that he was planning to steal it, but said he needed a few hours.

  “Okay,” I said. Then, to Cody: “We’ll go check into that motel, let Hank lie down for a little while. As long as we get on the road by four, we won’t have any problem getting you to Matt Kenner’s place in time for the show.”

  The young mechanic looked up sharply when he heard the name Matt Kenner. He said something to the woman and she shrugged. She seemed to be very good at that.

  “He wants to know if you like the fighter Matt Kenner,” she said.

  “Like him?” Cody said. “I’m on Team Kenner for the new season of All American Fighter.”

  The woman translated. Chuy cracked a huge smile and pumped Cody’s hand like he was a presidential candidate.

  Cody smiled back and then jerked his thumb towards Hank, who was still slumped in the passenger seat with his shirt over his eyes.

  “That’s Hank ‘The Hammer’ Hammond,” Cody said. “He’s my trainer.”

  Apparently that didn’t need any translation. Chuy ran to the passenger door and tapped on the glass. Hank took the shirt off his eyes and looked up with a weak smile. He opened the door and got unsteadily to his feet. Chuy grabbed his hand with a flood of Spanish that the woman didn’t even bother to try and translate.

  “Hammer!” the mechanic said, struggling with the most rudimentary English. “Fight Japan very good. Number one!”

  He fumbled in his many pockets and pulled out a pencil stub and a folded garage invoice, mimicking writing and then handing them to Hank.

  “Sure thing,” Hank said. “You bet.”

  He signed his name with a shaking hand. Chuy thanked him repeatedly in English and Spanish, took the autograph like it was a sacred relic and then turned around and handed me back my money.

  “Free to Hammer,” he said with a grin.

  23.

  We walked over to the motel the woman had pointed out. The Desert Rose. It was a flea pit, but had the advantage of being nearly empty. Less then half of the two dozen rooms seemed to be occupied. We got a room on the second floor, with a view of the gas station so I could keep an eye on our new best friend Chuy.