Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 11/01/10

by EQM

  Danny’s frown morphs into something else, a dark spot on the far side of his soul, the cold and brittle crevice where thirty years of insults and playground beatings have been brewing.

  His mouth twitches, eyes darken. He grips the pistol tighter, knuckles turning white, muzzle shaking.

  “I got the same message from Sinclair.” I hold up my phone. “He’s on to us.”

  Danny’s eyes narrow, finger tightens on the trigger.

  “Ah jeez, c’mon, Danny. Don’t shoot us.” Chrissie holds up her hands, voice panicky. “We’re your friends.”

  “F-f-friends?” He limps inside. “You treat me like d-d-dirt.”

  Neither of us respond.

  “How much?” He points to the money.

  “A lot.” I ease a step closer. “Enough to get us gone from this part of the world.”

  Danny stops by the table. “Where’s the envelope?”

  “In the trash.” Chrissie points to the kitchen, obviously ignoring the key that sits next to her pack of Capris, a few inches from the pile of cash.

  Danny turns that way but hesitates. Indecision etches itself across his face.

  “Put your piece on the table.” He waves his gun at my waistband. “And get the envelope.”

  “He’s not gonna let any of us go,” I say. “He’s just playing us against each other.”

  “Nuh-uh.” Danny shakes his head. “He’s gonna give me a job, a full-time gig at one of his cathouses.”

  Sinclair is not stupid. He’s offered the two things most important to Danny: steady employment and women who have no choice but to pay attention to him.

  My phone is still in my hand. It buzzes again.

  The same Waco number: too late, sucker.

  “He’s lying to you.” Chrissie stands.

  “Shut up.” Danny’s face is red, mottled like a moldy tomato. “SHUTTHEHELLUP.”

  His phone buzzes, a text message. He looks at the screen and his face turns gray.

  I lunge across the small living area, grab for his gun.

  He lets me take it, offers no resistance.

  Chrissie runs to the door, slams it shut. Her phone rings, a call coming in. She looks at the screen. “It’s my cousin.”

  Danny stares at me, a blank look on his face. He seems to get smaller, shoulders falling in on themselves.

  “Why are you calling?” Chrissie answers and peers out the remaining window, moving aside a gingham curtain. “I told you we’d be gone in a couple of days.”

  The room gets very quiet, nothing but the low rumble of the asthmatic air conditioner.

  “You told him WHAT?” Chrissie lets the curtain drop, looks at me. “ ’Course I know what a blowtorch can do.” She rubs her eyes. “How long do we have?”

  I throw money in the bag. Grab the key to the storage locker.

  She hangs up. “Sinclair knows where we are.”

  Danny begins to hyperventilate.

  “What do we do now?” Chrissie lights a cigarette, takes one puff, and stubs it out.

  “He doesn’t care about the money. That’s what the messages said.” I look at her. “He wants the envelope.”

  “The key.” She nods, points to the item in my hand. “It was in the envelope.”

  A car door slams outside.

  “We give him the key, then.” I peer out the window.

  Sinclair Wachowski stands by the front of a late-model Chevy dual-axle pickup, beefy arms crossed. He’s wearing a faded pair of overalls and a wife-beater T-shirt. A large man, if by large you mean obscenely overweight, Sinclair would field-dress three hundred pounds if you were to gut him like a deer.

  “Stay here.” I hand Danny’s gun to Chrissie, leave the money on the table. “Cover us.”

  To one side of the truck stands a younger, fitter man about the same girth but taller. He’s holding a gun. His skin is ruddy and hairless, and he looks like a side of beef straining the thin material of his sleeveless T-shirt.

  “W-w-w-what do I do?” Danny says.

  “You’re going with me.” I push him toward the door. “Safety in numbers.”

  Outside, I blink at the glare. The key is in my pocket, gun in one hand.

  Sinclair watches us descend the rickety stairs, eyes like slits. He doesn’t move except to work his jaws around a wad of chewing tobacco in one cheek.

  A blowtorch sits on the hood of the truck.

  “I didn’t know it was your game.” I stop a few feet away.

  Danny is behind me, out of direct view, whimpering.

  “Uppity Czech trash, that’s what you are.” Sinclair spits a stream of brown tobacco juice into the dust. “Your old man thought he was sumpin’ special, too.”

  His accent is pure Brazos bottom drawl, as country as smoked brisket.

  “I wouldn’t have hit one of your games.” I keep the gun pointed down, next to my thigh.

  “Give it to me.” He holds out a fat hand. “And the money, too.” He smiles. “You didn’t think I was really gonna let you keep all that cash, didya?”

  I toss him the key, try to squelch my anger. I think about the Dallas lawyer, my bitchy ex-wife. The son I’m not gonna get to see anymore.

  “What the hell is this?” He holds up the key.

  I don’t reply. My skin gets cold despite the heat.

  “Hey, Danny the Dumb-ass.” Sinclair peers around my shoulder. “What is this bull crap you’re pulling, huh?”

  Danny moans but doesn’t reply. He leans against me like he’s gonna faint.

  “That’s what you wanted,” I say. “The key.”

  “You’re as dumb as Danny.” Sinclair shakes his head. “I don’t want some dang old key.”

  I blink, running through options, the adrenaline in my system making my brain mushy.

  Danny figures it out, once in a row.

  “You want the envelope,” he says. “That’s what your text said.” He pauses. “It’s inside.”

  “You better hope so.” Sinclair picks up the blowtorch, points to the trailer. “Let’s go.”

  The envelope is not inside.

  Neither is Chrissie or the money.

  The door on the shed out back that was closed is open now, the storage space empty.

  Sinclair takes my gun and watches us while his bodyguard, the slab of meat who’d been standing by the truck, searches the double-wide. After a few minutes, Slab-O-Meat returns to the living room and shakes his massive head.

  “Start talking.” Sinclair turns on the blowtorch, and a blue tongue of heat emerges.

  “Chrissie.” I lick my lips. “She was in on it. She took the cash and the envelope.”

  “That’s funny.” He turns up the flame. “Who do you think put me onto you two?”

  “Chrissie?” Danny looks at me. “She s-s-screwed us?”

  I nod, the fear a physical presence in the pit of my stomach, a lead brick that sits there.

  She screwed us and good. She came in late and screamed so there would be no way she could be tied to the robbery. She arranged the hideout and apparently the getaway car hidden in the shed. She told me the key was important, not the envelope itself.

  “Where is she?” Sinclair approaches, my gun in one hand, the blowtorch in the other.

  “I don’t know.” I shake my head. “Honestly, have no idea.”

  “That’s too bad,” He waves the blowtorch. “Because I REALLY need that envelope.”

  I don’t say anything. All I can do is stare at the blue flame. The fire consumes my consciousness to a point that I almost don’t react when he tosses me my handgun.

  I catch the weapon, look at Sinclair and his guard.

  The Slab-O-Meat holds a pistol by his side but is not aiming it at me.

  “You’re gonna get that envelope back,” Sinclair says.

  I nod slowly.

  “If you don’t—” he holds up the torch—“then I’m gonna start on your toes and work my way up.”

  I look at my gun, afraid it’s a trick. The
magazine is still there, a round in the chamber.

  Then I get it. Sinclair knows I won’t do anything. I’m just poor dumb Czech trash that’s been given a lifeline, a slim chance for redemption. His power and reach in my world is all-consuming.

  I start to shake and sweat uncontrollably.

  He smiles at me like I’m a three-legged dog, his face reflecting the utter self-confidence one gets when dealing with lesser life forms, a look of supreme control.

  I grip the gun, think about bringing it up.

  “That ain’t the way this plays.” Sinclair shakes his head. “You coulda taken me out a dozen times over the years, but you didn’t. You’re not gonna grow a set now.”

  I lower the gun.

  “Just in case you don’t get the gist of what I’m talking about,” he says, “I’ll give you a little demonstration on Danny the Dumb-ass.”

  Danny gasps, runs for the door.

  Slab-O-Meat grabs him with one hand, holds out a skinny arm. His other hand brings up the pistol my way. Danny yells, struggles.

  “Not like anybody’s gonna miss him anyway.” Sinclair walks toward my friend, blowtorch at the ready. He pauses, looks my way. “You ain’t got a problem with this, do you?”

  I hesitate, breath caught in my throat. Then I shake my head and wait for hell to commence.

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  The darkness is all-consuming, even in the bright light of day. The permanent night that is in the center of my mind never rests. I have a tiredness about me that no sleep will ever cure, not even death.

  But I do have a goal, and that’s important, according to the guidance counselor at juvie lockup way back when and a self-help book I read one time. The counselor had said, “A goal is a good way to break free from lowered expectations that people place on you.”

  My goal is Chrissie, and I am as close as fleas on a pound dog to reaching her.

  I stand outside the end unit of a motel a block from the beach in Port Aransas, at the north end of Padre Island. Peeling paint, rusty window frames, a couple of old cars and sand in the parking lot. A flickering neon display that reads “Vacancy.”

  Early November, and there’s only one occupied room and barely anybody in town, most places closed since the season ended months ago.

  I grip the shotgun and kick in the door.

  Sunlight spills into a darkened room that smells like cigarettes, burnt metal, and sweat.

  Chrissie screams, pulls the sheet up to her neck.

  A man in his forties with a week-old beard sits in an easy chair by the desk. He’s comatose, mouth slack, eyes rolled back in his head. A bent and blackened spoon is on the desk next to a lighter and a syringe.

  “Where’s my money?” I cross the room and slam the barrel down on her legs underneath the sheet, aiming for a knee.

  She screams and babbles, words unintelligible.

  I let her cry.

  The guy in the chair doesn’t move, doesn’t appear to breathe. He is thin, cheeks hollowed. His skinny, needle-scarred arms look like twigs sticking out of a San Antonio Spurs T-shirt.

  “Please-don’t-hurt-me-please-please.” Chrissie shivers even though the room is warm.

  “The money,” I say. “And the envelope.”

  She cries harder, shakes her head.

  I raise the barrel of the gun.

  She holds up a hand. “D-d-don’t. Please.”

  I stop.

  She rolls off the bed, naked. Wraps herself in the dirty sheet, pads across the room to a dresser, limping from my blow.

  “Don’t try anything.” I shoulder the gun, aim at her torso.

  She shakes her head. Tears stream down her face. From a duffel bag on the dresser, she pulls out the envelope. She crosses the room and hands it to me. It’s empty.

  “Where’s the money?”

  “What money?” She wipes her eyes, sniffs. “Look around, willya.”

  A wallet sits by the bent spoon and the syringe on the desk. I open it. No cash. The ID reads “Joel MacIntosh, Parole Officer.”

  “He promised me we’d leave Texas,” she says. “We were gonna start over in California.”

  “Where did it all go?” I mentally slap myself as soon as the words leave my mouth.

  “Where do you think?” She points to the spoon. “Up his arm. At the dog track. Hell, it just blew away like the damn wind.”

  I read the outside of the envelope, the name of a bank in Atlanta, a phone number, some other cryptic marks. The information so important to Sinclair.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she says. “I just want to go home.”

  I point the muzzle at her stomach, and an anger blacker than the darkness in my mind oozes from my pores.

  “Jesus please no.” She shakes. The sheet drops, and she makes no move to cover her nakedness.

  “We’ve known each other since we were kids.” I tighten my finger around the trigger. “And this is what you do to me?”

  “I just wanted out.” She crosses her arms, covering her breasts now. “I wanted to go somewhere new.”

  “You finally got to see the ocean at least.” I close one eye, aim at her face.

  “I could buy my way back home with the envelope, couldn’t I?” she says. “It’s all I’ve got. Please tell me I could.”

  And then, like a light extinguished, the anger is gone.

  “I’m sorry about Danny,” she says. “But Sinclair told me he needed to make an example out of somebody, you know, to keep people in line.”

  “You’re not fit to say his name.” I sling the shotgun over my shoulder by its strap and pick up the lighter.

  “You and me,” she says. “We could ransom the envelope to Sinclair. Use the money to start over.”

  I smile, the decision made. I flick the lighter, hold the flame under the envelope.

  “NOOOO.” She lunges toward the fire.

  I kick her away, hold the envelope up high until the flames singe my fingers and the precious slip of paper is consumed.

  “See you around, Chrissie.” I let the ashes flutter to the dirty carpet.

  Two blocks down is the car I’ve left parked by the seawall. I leave and walk there, the permanent darkness in my mind lessening just a fraction.

  The ocean is cold and gray, a line of storms visible on the southern horizon. The beach is empty except for a couple of people surf-fishing and an old guy with a metal detector. The air smells like sea water. Gulls trill overhead.

  Danny the Dumb-ass sits on the hood of the car, watching a tanker steam by in the distance. I sit next to him.

  “Did you find her?” he says.

  I nod.

  “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know.” I sigh. “Maybe we should go to California.”

  They say every dog has its day, so I guess every uppity piece of Czech trash has a chance to break free from the burden of lowered expectations.

  Sinclair, of course, is dead. Every night in my dreams I picture the surprise on his face as I shot both him and the guard right before they went to work on Danny with the blowtorch.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Danny smiles. He slides off the hood and gets in the car.

  I look at the Texas coast one last time and do the same.

  An hour later, we’re on the highway by the cutoff.

  I ignore the road west and point the car toward our place in this world, the little corner of Central Texas where we’d both been born and would die.

  Danny doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.

  Copyright © 2010 Harry Hunsicker

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