wilted streets: a novella & stories

by Steve Shadow

  “Better call for a clean-up on Aisle 7.” She said.

  Roxanne looked at her in horror. “Are you crazy? You find this slaughter amusing?” She was holding her arms to the side of her head. “This nightmare has to end. I can’t take any more of this”

  Annie walked up to her. Roxanne looked like she was going to start screaming. Annie pulled her hands down and slapped her across the face.

  “Shape up! You’re a doctor. You’ve seen blood before. Keep it together.”

  “Ease up, Annie. Roxanne is just scared. Shit, I’m scared.”

  “Well we got a real situation here and the last thing we need is a freaked out civilian.”

  She turned to our prisoner and pushed him into a chair. “What are we going to do with this guy?”

  “We need answers. Maybe he can clear this whole fucking mess up but we can’t stay here.” I turned to Roxanne and went over to where she was sitting and holding her face where Annie had slapped her. “Roxanne, I need your help. If we go back to that house we were at yesterday can you still get us into that safe room? We need somewhere to question this guy.”

  She nodded her head. Her eyes were bugging out of her head. She looked scared to death. I squeezed her shoulders and tried to calm her. I had no success.

  The man we had handcuffed sat silently watching us. I got in front of him and was about to ask his name when he lashed out with his leg. I fell on my back as he stood up. Annie hit him in the back of his head with the butt of her AR-15. He crumpled in a heap next to me. He was out cold.

  I leaned over and went through his pockets. He had a wallet with a few dollars and a driver’s license. He also had a cell phone. The name on the license was Georges Cotrubas.

  “Shit, if this is legit then these guys are not Mexican. This is a Romanian name.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  We wrapped the two dead men in a combination of clothing and some of my sheets. Annie and I struggled to get them into the elevator and took them downstairs and put them in the back of Annie’s SUV. We went back and gathered up all our arms plus the ones we had taken from the dead men. Our captive was in a semi-conscious state as we hustled him down the back stairs. The minute we exited the building the heat hit us like a wet slap in the face. The monsoon season had arrived in Arizona. Now it was not only very hot but the humidity was climbing rapidly. Annie opened the lift gate of her SUV and we pushed him inside where he landed with a thud on top of his dead comrades. She secured his ankles and threw a blanket over him. I got Roxanne into the front seat. She was quiet but still shaking and clutching her backpack as if it were a life preserver. I got in the back seat with the shotgun we had taken. I gave Annie directions to the safe house in Eloy.

  We pulled away from the apartment house. She had the cars AC unit running full blast but it was no match for the intense heat. We were all sweating. The guy in the back was thrashing and moaning.

  “Hey, asshole shut the fuck up or I’ll smash your skull in.” I reached over the back of the seat and uncovered his head. “You speak English?” He nodded his head. “Good, then just shut up or you’ll end up like the lumps you’re sitting on. You’ll have plenty of chances to talk later.”

  “You do not know what you are getting into. Let me go.” He muttered this in heavily accented English with his eyes wide open and filled with fear.

  “I told you to shut up. One more word and I’ll crack your head again.”

  He turned his face from me without another sound. We sped down the 101 to pick up the 10 going south. We could see lightning strikes across the southern horizon. I just hoped we made it to Eloy before we were hit with a haboob. These were giant dust storms that rolled in with the monsoon and could cover a swath of land 50 miles wide with blinding dust and flooding rain. Luckily the storms held off and we did not run into any accidents or delays. We got to the house in a little over an hour and a half. We saw no other cars close by. I had Annie pull her SUV off the road and we dumped the dead bodies into a wash and threw dirt over them. 15 minutes later we pulled in behind the house. 88

  The garage door was closed and we did not have the opener or the entry codes. We went to the back of the place and I busted a window. I crawled through and opened the front door. Luckily no alarms had been set and the thermostat had been left at 78 degrees so we would not melt from the heat. Annie had untied Cotrubas’ ankles and we marched him inside. While Annie checked the house Roxanne and I led him upstairs. She once again opened the safe room with her code and thumb-print. I sat him down in a chair and secured his legs. He stared at me with large brown eyes set a bit too close together. He had a thin mouth and a pointed nose. I could feel the hatred coming off him in waves. He was sweating heavily and breathing hard.

  Annie came up and said the house was clear. Cotrubas sat and glared at us but remained silent. Roxanne sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room.

  “Roxanne,” I said. “You are the expert. Do you want to ask this man some questions? Do you think you can get him to talk?”

  Annie walked up to him and kicked him in the shins. He stayed quiet but tears popped out of his eyes. “I’ll get him to talk. I also forgot to tell you I was at Abu Ghraib for a spell. Let’s just water board the creep; He’ll talk real soon.”

  “Jesus Annie. I had no idea that you were some hard-ass ex-soldier. I sure read you wrong.”

  She turned to me with a faint smile. “Yeah, well I thought maybe we could hook up and I didn’t want to come on too hard and scare you off. Well, so much for that ploy. Just give me a few minutes with this douche bag and I’ll have him singing show tunes for you.”

  Roxanne spoke up from the other side of the room. “I am not going to be a party to torture.” She glared at Annie. “Billy this woman is nuts. She is going to get us all killed. Let me talk to him before we are in anymore trouble.”

  “Listen,” I said. “This woman saved our lives. If it wasn’t for her skill we would be dead. Annie, let Roxanne have a shot at this guy.”

  Annie stood leaning against the wall with her AR-15 pointing at our captive. She did not say anything.

  Roxanne pulled a chair up in front of the man. She stared into his eyes and began to speak in slow measured tones.

  “Hello, I am a doctor. We only want to know why all this is happening. Why were the agents killed this morning and what do you want from Mr. Wilewski?”

  He said nothing. She held up the license we had found in his wallet.

  “Is this you? Are you Georges Cotrubas?”

  He leaned his head back and brought it forward rapidly while letting loose a giant gob of spit into Roxanne’s face. She leapt back out of her chair, wiping at her dripping chin. Annie stepped forward and chopped the back of his neck with some Karate move. He slumped forward. She stepped around to the front of the chair and kicked him in the chest so hard that the chair tipped backwards and his head hit the floor with a thud. Roxanne was in the bathroom washing off her face.

  I stood staring in amazement at my once seemingly kind-hearted neighbor who had turned into a calm, cool and vicious killing machine.

  Cotrubas was blinking rapidly while trying to clear his head. Annie was at the sink filling the coffee carafe. Roxanne was in the bathroom crying and mumbling at the same time. I was wishing I could teleport myself to another dimension.

  Annie knelt beside Cotrubas. She placed the towel over his face.

  “I guess you know what’s coming next. You want to start talking or do we continue?”

  He said nothing. She began pouring water over the towel until it was soaked. She kept it up and he started choking and gagging.

  “Hey Billy, get down here and hold his head.”

  I did as she asked. He was screaming something but with the towel over his face I could not make out a word. I looked up to see Roxanne standing and watching. She had a horrified look on her face but said nothing. I guess Annie knew what she was doing because the next time she asked him if he was ready to talk he shook his head up an
d down. We lifted him back to a seated position and she removed the towel from his face. He was still gagging and spitting up water. His face was so red I thought he might have broken capillaries. She punched him in the side of the head.

  “You will now answer our questions. If you do not then we will continue this until you are dead. Do you understand? I have already killed your two pals so one more death means nothing to me.”

  He nodded. Water dribbled down his chin and he could not stop coughing.

  She walked around him until she was directly in front of him. “You will now answer all the questions we ask of you. If you resist and pull another trick like spitting in our faces again then I will proceed to cut off your fingers until you have none left and then I will let you bleed to death.” He nodded his head once again.

  She turned to me. “Billy, he is all yours.” I motioned for Roxanne to join me. “Come here and help me out. Maybe you can tell if this moron is speaking the truth.” She slowly came and stood behind me.

  “Let’s start at the beginning. Why was I brought back to that house? What happened there? How did I end up on McDowell in the morning? Did you drug me? And who the hell are you?”

  Before he could answer we heard a crack of thunder that sounded as if it was directly over us. The house began to shake in the wind. Rain began to pelt the roof. The monsoon storm had finally arrived.

  While the storm raged we questioned him without a break. I had to slap him a few times but he was not holding back anymore. He kept looking over my shoulder at Annie. While the hail and wind pelted the house he answered every question we put to him. Bubbles of blood were coming out of his mouth and tears were running down his face. One eye was swollen shut and after an hour he started moaning and pissing himself. Roxanne began pleading with me to stop and let him rest. Annie told Roxanne to shut up. I felt nothing for the asshole and just kept at him. He finally passed out. A pot of water thrown into his bloodied face brought him back to consciousness and we began again. The thunder and lightning drowned out some of his mumbled responses. I made him repeat himself. Every time Annie moved he jerked in fear. We kept up the questioning until he could no longer go on. Roxanne sat in a corner staring at the wall. I slumped over as a feeling of tiredness swept through my body. I was drained and we all needed a break.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Through the repeated questioning, endless reiteration, backtracking and prodding from Annie’s rifle butt we began to get a full picture of what I had fallen into. Cotrubas, having endured a three hour session of torn lips and bruised face seemed all answered out. He sat in front of me, a defeated mess. A soft moan issued from his bloody mouth with diminishing volume. Annie again threw some water in his face. He did not react. We left him tied up in the safe room sitting in a puddle of his own urine and blood. The three of us went downstairs. The rain had stopped but lightning was still flashing in the sky. Even though the house had an efficient air-conditioner, the monsoon humidity permeated the walls.

  We were sweaty and wrung out. I was sickened by what we had done. Roxanne was almost catatonic and I imagined she would be seeing her own psychiatrist after what she had been through today. Only Annie seemed all business and did not appear to be affected by any of this. I got us all some water and we sat down at the kitchen table.

  Roxanne came awake and pulled a notebook from her pack. She began to make notes in a shaky hand. Annie had her weapons on the table and was wiping the blood off her rifle. She then, as I watched in fascination, began to disassemble her pistol and begin cleaning it. Her movements were economical and efficient. I began to appreciate her more and more. We began to go over the information that we had beaten out of our Romanian captive.

  Roxanne looked up from her notes. “I don’t know if we should stay here. They must be wondering at ATF headquarters what happened to us.”

  I looked from her to Annie. “Well that is based on the assumption that they even knew what these two dead agents were up to. For all we know this entire operation might be off the books. Remember you told me you got no notification about your services being needed through the usual channels. Maybe this was all done without any one knowing anything. Maybe Breck and Johnson were on vacation time. I mean there is a phone here and we haven’t had anyone calling. Roxanne, you told me everything we said upstairs was being monitored. Is that done here or is the room linked to ATF in Phoenix?”

  “As far as I know it is just connected to a recorder and speakers in a room at the back of the house.”

  While Annie continued cleaning her weapons, Roxanne and I went into the next room. It had a full array of audio-visual devices. A set of speakers were mounted in the corners and 3 sets of headphones rested on a table. An array of buttons and dials filled a black console.

  I leaned out the door. “Hey Annie, can you come in here?”

  She left the table and walked into the room. “Wow, some set up.”

  “We have to destroy everything that was recorded since I was brought here yesterday. Annie, are you familiar with this stuff? Can we make everything go away?”

  “Yeah, sure, just give me a few minutes and I’ll melt this shit down to rubble.”

  I laughed despite the situation. “Hey Rambo, do you think you could maybe, you know, just erase everything? Aside from all the charges we may face I don’t want to be liable for destroying zillions of dollars of government property.”

  “Sure Billy, no problem.”

  Roxanne and I left Annie to her work and returned to the table in the kitchen. We sat down and she pulled out her notebook.

  She screwed up her beautiful face into a frown of concentration. She took in a deep breath and let it slowly slide out from her pursed lips. We sat in silence staring at each other. The images playing in our heads were not pleasant.

  “Let’s lay out what we have here.” Roxanne finally said as Annie returned from the back room giving us an OK sign.

  Annie sat down and resumed cleaning her pistol. “I got everything off the tape and hard drive. I’m afraid some things got a little damaged but I wiped all surfaces clean so they won’t have any fingerprints. The console was linked to cameras upstairs but those are wiped and disabled.”

  “Jesus Annie,” I said. “Were you a marine or a secret agent. You sure you’re not in the CIA or something?”

  She looked up at me and grinned. “If I was, you two would be arrested and turned over to someone you never want to meet.”

  “Well, what’s our next move? It seems to me that we have limited options. If we turn ourselves in to the cops we are going to have to explain two dead ATF agents, two dead Mexicans, if they are in fact Mexicans and two dead guys of Romanian origins. On top of that we have the man upstairs along with assorted break-ins and property damage. I believe the chances of us being given a fair hearing are limited.” I looked at Roxanne. “I think that you are in way over your head. I can only assume that you were meant to die like the rest of us but so far you are in the clear. If, as we assume, you were dragged into this by the agents on their own time then no one even knows you are here. I would suggest that you call your office and make some excuse about an emergency and get out of town until we see what we can do. If this calls for more killing I think you would be best out of the way. You have gone through enough as it is. Do you have somewhere you can hide out for a while?”

  Roxanne tapped her pad with the eraser of her lead pencil. “First off I am my office; I work alone. I can call my service and tell them to cancel all my upcoming appointments. I do have two friends who are Zen monks and I am sure I can stay at their center in Portland without a problem. They are very private. I’ll leave you the center’s number and when things have cleared up, send me a text. They do not answer phones.”

  “Good, I’ll call when or if it is safe to return.” I stared at her and realized that as beautiful and competent as she was she was very scared and her hands still shook. I wanted to take her in my arms and try to reassure her that things would be all right b
ut I knew that was a lie. Annie and I had pretty much burned our bridges and the only way out of this was to handle things ourselves. I never in a million years imagined myself in such a situation but now that I was in it, it felt right. I always thought of myself as a peace-loving guy with a distaste for violence (except in my westerns). I now realized that there was something in me that reveled in this mayhem. Annie, who I had completely misread, seemed to share this with me. I felt a strange pride at our exploits these past two days and I itched for more. I was high on adrenaline and felt completely energized. The disgust I had felt over our torturing of the Romanian was gone. My mind was racing a mile a minute. I jumped up and started pacing. Roxanne was staring at me.

  “OK, here is what we are going to do. We bundle up Cotrubas and take him with us. We drop Roxanne off at the airport. We know the location of the house I was taken to that night. And now we know where this Sergiu guy is. I guess we will have to try and take him ourselves. I thought that maybe I should run this by Ridley but I think it is best not to involve him anymore than he already is. This may end badly.” I put my hand on Annie’s shoulder. “Are you up for this?”

  She looked up from her weapon cleaning and smiled. “Fuckin’ A, Billy. Let’s go kick some ass.”

  “Roxanne, get your stuff together and let’s try and wipe down everything we may have touched.”

  We did the best we could. We went back upstairs and cleaned Cotrubas up as much as we could. His hands were still cuffed behind him. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him.

  Annie was giving the place one more wipe down. I sat in front of our hostage. “You do not have to die. If what you told us is all true then we will make your boss disappear.”