I know I need to do something, but I have no idea what.
Until I see the bit of discarded newspaper lying on the floor a few feet in front of me.
“MAN PULLS GUN ON PASTOR DURING SUNDAY SERVICE!” reads the headline.
It comes to me then like a gusher erupting from my insides.
“You fall in, sweetie?” Zumbo barks. “You got a date with the devil, don’t forget.”
“On my way, Zump,” I say, standing. The toilet flushes electronically despite my not having used it. Opening the stall door, I step on out and face the football fans.
“GUN!” I scream.
In a word, the place goes berserk.
Most of the men run for the exit. But the three Giants fans stand their ground, zip up, step away from the porcelain urinating fixtures, and line up like they’re linebackers and I’m the littlest Dallas Cowboys quarterback in the business.
“Not me!” I scream. “Him!” I point to Zumbo. “Look! He’s got the fucking gun!”
They turn to him. Zumbo’s holding an automatic in his beefy hand. They’re not mistaking him for a football great now.
Zumbo’s face is a mask of anger and violence. Doesn’t matter how big he is or that he’s armed. They fearlessly set themselves side by side, form-tackle position—knees bent, shoulders cocked, eyes wide and unblinking.
“Go for the knees!” I scream. “He’s got bad knees!”
Zumbo raises up his automatic like he’s about to shoot his way out of a perfect goal-line defense, instead of plowing through it with head, shoulders, and thrusting legs. The three Giants fans don’t wait for him to shoot. Acting like a well-trained defensive unit, they gang tackle the former fullback, sending him careening back against a sink and a mirror, shattering both. He fumbles the automatic and it drops to the tiled floor. I jump into the scrum, snatch up the gun, and coldcock his bulbous head. He’s out like a light with both eyes wide open. Or maybe I killed the motherfucker.
“You boys hold him right there,” I tell them. “Damn shame too. Another pro football player turned to the dark side.”
Right beside me is the janitor closet, the door to which is wide open. As if divine Providence were looking down upon me, there’s a roll of gray duct tape sitting out on a shelf, along with dozens of rolls of commercial-grade toilet paper. I grab the tape and hand it to them. But before they go to work on him, I reach into his chest pocket, pull out the flash drive, and stuff it back into my coat pocket along with the other flash drive.
“Call 911!” I shout before exiting the bathroom for the ladies’ room.
Out in the main lobby of the building, women and girls are running from the ladies’ room. People are racing for the doors. The sound of breaking glass can be heard above the screams in the ladies’ room. When I slip inside, I see Boris and Mr. Personality kicking in the doors on the stalls. They turn and look at me as I enter into the brightly lit restroom.
On cue they raise up their weapons.
I raise up mine.
No one shoots.
I shift my aim from Boris to Mr. Personality and back again.
No one’s saying a word.
When the first cop enters into the bathroom behind me, I drop to my knees. Two exploding rounds take out the cop. I fire from down on my knees and nail Boris in the thigh, just above the place where I disintegrated his kneecap almost a year ago. He goes down on his ass.
But Mr. Personality has kicked open the last stall door, dragged Lola out by her hair, and jammed the barrel of his pistol against the side of her head.
I drop Zumbo’s automatic and raise up my hands. “Don’t hurt her,” I say.
“I won’t,” Mr. Personality says, raising his first smile since they kidnapped us earlier. “First, I wish to make her my bitch, da?”
We exit the ladies’ room.
Boris shoots off a couple of rounds for effect. The deafening rounds reverberate inside the lobby, and the people who remain inside the building hit the floor. There’s a cop standing directly outside the side entrance. He’s using his radio, no doubt calling for backup. Boris hobbles through the first set of automatic sliding glass doors and shoots the cop in the head through the plate glass of the second set. Un-fucking-lucky cop.
Parked up along the curb is the cop’s blue-and-white cruiser.
Boris limps toward the open door and the dash-mounted radio that’s spitting out chatter about a SWAT team on its way. Raising his automatic, he pumps two rounds into the radio. Then he pulls the short-barreled riot shotgun from its housing between the bucket seats and grips it in his free hand.
“We need a car,” Boris spits, his face pale, blood dripping down his leg. “Something fast and big.”
He yanks on Lola’s hair. She winces in pain.
“I’m going to kick you in the balls when this is over,” she snarls.
Overhead, the sound of choppers arriving on the scene.
“How about the cop car?” I suggest, my hands raised over my head.
“No, motherfucker,” Boris answers, slapping me upside the head with the pistol barrel. “It will be equipped with LoJack. They will follow.”
My head grows light and the sharp pain seeps into my brain. Not now. Not. Fucking. Now. I concentrate with all my might, as if I can will the bullet in my brain not to press up against my cerebral cortex. Down and out I’ll go. I need to keep my shit together for Lola.
Mr. Personality extends his pistol hand and points to a full-sized, white Ford Bronco that’s being gassed up. “White Bronco!” he shouts.
“Just like O.J.,” remarks a smiling Boris. “Mr. Juice.”
The choppers are closing in, along with a train of screaming cop cars racing north along Highway 87. I’m hoping they get here before we make it to the Bronco. I’m also hoping that Crockett got my text and is planning our rescue.
Boris, in all his pain, cracks a smile. “Let’s do it,” he says. “Go! O.J.! Go!”
Stupid fucking Russians.
We race for the white Bronco.
There’s a typical dad gassing up the vehicle, not the actual soccer mom. The gas pumps are located a pretty good distance from the rest stop building, but the scene is nonetheless surreal. The dad is gassing up despite the obvious emergency going down in the very near distance. People are stubborn. People live in denial. He’s midthirties, dressed in pressed Levi’s, a yellow crewneck sweater under a Windbreaker. Taking the family out for a nice week of foliage watching up in the Catskills. It was probably hard to get time off from the office. Nothing’s going to stop him or ruin his plans. Until now.
“Grab your family and run!” I scream, just seconds before Boris turns and whacks me once more with the pistol barrel.
“Fuck up, Moonlight!” he shouts.
My head rings. “It’s shut up, Boris. Shut up!”
The driver tosses us only a glancing look. Two leather-clad Russians wielding weapons are coming at him, holding a woman hostage by the hair and another dazed and confused head case at gunpoint, and Soccer Dad keeps on fueling.
“Fucking run!” I shout out again, for which I receive yet another blow of the gun barrel.
This time it does the trick.
The dad opens the door on the Bronco’s backseat, yanks a child into his arms while his wife exits the passenger seat screaming. All three run for the patch of green that separates the highway from the rest stop gas pumps.
To the sound of choppers on the horizon, Mr. Personality shoves Lola into the backseat and forces me to sit up front with Boris, who, despite the deep thigh wound on his leg, insists on driving. Without bothering to return the hose to the gas pump, Boris fires up the engine and peels out. In the side mirror, I can see the hose snap off at the metal coupling, sending out a burst of sparks that ignite the pump and the excess fuel that’s leaked all over the pavement.
As we near the on-ramp the fuel catches fire and flashes. The entire island of pumps explodes, rocking the Bronco and sending the already panicked bystanders flat o
n their bellies.
“Van Damage.” Mr. Personality chuckles, poking me in the head with the pistol barrel. “We are badass motherfuckers. Say it, Moonlight. We are badass motherfuckers.”
Then, turning to Lola.
“You say it too, bitch…badass motherfucker.”
“Fuck you,” Lola says through clenched teeth.
“Just do it, Lo,” I say. “Badass motherfucker. That’s what you are, Mr. Personality.”
“You can learn from boyfriend,” Mr. Personality says. “But right now, I am boyfriend, da?”
I turn enough to see into the backseat through the corner of my left eye. Mr. Personality is trying to raise up Lola’s skirt with the pistol barrel, while he’s groping her left breast with his free hand.
She spits in his face.
He slaps her and resumes his groping.
That’s when the Bronco locks up, sending us all careening forward.
“Stupid fuck!” shouts Mr. Personality at Boris. “Why you stop on highway?”
Cars and trucks blare their horns and swerve around us. I’m bracing myself for a severe collision.
“We did not think to retrieve flash drive from Zumbo!” Boris screams, while throwing the Bronco into reverse. He’s backing the vehicle onto the soft shoulder. He’s proceeding to make a three-point turn while occupying the right lane on a major highway packed with all manner of vehicles doing anywhere from sixty to ninety per.
I look down at Boris’s leg.
It’s soaked with blood. His face is pale. He’s not thinking clearly. But then, he’s right. They forgot all about the flash drive.
They also have no idea it’s in my coat pocket.
He turns the opposite way onto the right lane and guns it.
That’s when I see the tractor trailer heading straight for us.
Boris steers to the right.
The confused truck operator steers to his left.
We’re heading directly for one another.
“Fuck!” Boris shouts. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
He steers left.
The trucker steers right.
Still heading for one another.
“Take foot off gas, stupid motherfucker!” screams Mr. Personality.
Boris might be trying to remove his foot. But his thigh is shot through. He’s got the pedal to the heavy metal as the Bronco races at the semi. Boris knows he’s about to die because he closes his eyes and throws his hands up over his face.
“Lola,” I say, turning. “Get down. Go flat onto the floor.”
She does it. Mr. Personality doesn’t quite seem to care. He looks like a deer caught in the headlights as the truck and the Bronco prepare to kiss grilles.
That’s when I grab the wheel from Boris, yank it counterclockwise, fishtailing the back end of the Bronco directly into the semi’s front grille.
There’s an explosion. The shattering of glass and the crunch of metal against metal. I’m tossed around on the floor of the Bronco like the little steel ball inside a can of spray paint. Time moves especially slowly during an automobile accident. It’s like one of those old grammar school reel-to-reel projectors slowed down so that events occur frame by frame instead of in one quick linear event.
There’s the collision with the semi.
The hard-left snapping/spin fishtail motion of the Bronco.
The tossing of my body up against the underside of the dash.
My going in and out of consciousness, knowing that I may never wake up from the darkness once it overtakes me.
My trying to reach out for Lola, but knowing it’s impossible…
My. Reaching. Out.
My blacking out…
When I come to, there’s sunlight shining on my face and the smell of acrid smoke filling my nostrils from a tire that’s on fire not far from my head. I slowly come to realize that the Bronco has been split in two, as if a giant hand had picked the vehicle up and torn it in half like a white business envelope instead of two tons of metal, glass, and plastic.
I see that Boris is still strapped into his seat, the steering wheel impaled into his chest. His eyes are wide open. Staring down all eternity. Staring into the seventh level of violent hell.
I drag myself from the wreckage and crawl along the road the few feet to where the back half of the Bronco is located. Beyond it, Lola is lying on the road, having been ejected from what’s left of the back portion. She’s not moving. She’s staring straight up at the bright sky, a trickle of blood running down her right cheek from out of her left eye.
I crawl toward her, trying to say her name. But I’m not able to make any words. My throat feels as if it’s on fire, my lungs filled with concrete. At last I’m able to reach out and touch her left foot—but that’s when a hand grabs my jacket collar and yanks me onto my back.
Mr. Personality is looking down on me.
There’s a small laceration in the center of his forehead. Or maybe a hole, since a combination of blood and clear fluid is leaking from it. I squint to get a good look and decide that if I could stick my index finger inside it, I would touch his brains. He doesn’t seem the least bit affected by the injury when he raises up his gloved fist, brings it down hard onto my mouth. He rears back and punches me again, the back of my head slapping against the pavement. I’m seeing flashes of blackness, and I sense I’m going to pass out again if I don’t try to move myself.
When he cocks back his fist for another punch, I suck in a blood-tinged breath and roll out from under him. His fist slams the ground, causing him to shriek. I find a piece of metal, some shattered length of tough rod, lying a few feet from me. I snatch it up and jam it into the side of his neck. He stops screaming then. For a moment he goes perfectly still, like the rod sticking out of his neck isn’t hurting him but empowering him all the more. Reaching into his leather jacket, he pulls out a knife handle and thumbs the switch that produces a blade.
“Moonlight dies now, da?”
He says it like he’s offering me a hot cup of coffee.
Raising up the blade with both hands gripped around the hilt, he’s about to thrust it into my heart when the little hole in his forehead expands and explodes, taking the back of his cranial cap along with it.
Mr. Personality falls dead on top of me.
I don’t stop to ponder the mystery of his spontaneously exploding head. I push his deadweight body off me and go to Lola.
By now I’m aware of the sirens and the uniformed police surrounding the site of the crash. But I don’t care about that. I need to get to Lola.
I manage to get up on my hands and knees. I go to her.
She’s still lying on her back. She hasn’t moved an inch since I first laid eyes on her after the crash a few moments ago.
“Lola,” I say, kneeling over her. “Lo, can you hear me?”
But she’s not responding.
I place my left cheek over her mouth and I don’t feel warm air coming from her lungs. She’s not breathing.
I straighten up my back, press the heels of both palms against her sternum, press down hard. I do this two or three times, until I reposition my face over hers and lock onto her mouth, forcing air into her lungs. Then I move back to her sternum, which I begin to punch as hard as I can, trying to shock the heart. Trying to make it alive again. Trying to bring Lola back.
Until I hear a voice from behind me say, “She’s gone, Mr. Moonlight. I’m so very sorry.”
I stop punching, and I feel the tears fill my eyes. The tears cloud Lola’s face. They run into my mouth. I want to speak to her, say something, but I can’t say anything. I can’t make the words to tell her how much I love her and how sorry I am for everything.
A hand on my shoulder.
“Take a moment, Richard,” says the soft voice of Agent Crockett.
I feel the air leave my lungs and my throat constrict. I feel my heart pounding in my chest, and it takes on an unbearably heavy weight.
Leaning into Lola, I close both her brown eyes with a tre
mbling hand, then kiss both lids. I place my lips to her face and I taste the blood that stains it. Then I press my mouth against hers. For what will be the last time on this earth, I embrace her lips with a kiss.
A cold breath escapes my lungs. I wipe away my tears with the back of my hand. I force myself onto my knees, and then onto my feet. I steal one last glance at Lola. At her body. At her face. At her memory. Turning away from my one true love, I begin to make my way toward the sounds of sirens and the vision of flashing lights.
I feel nothing.
I’m sitting in the backseat of Agent Crockett’s ride. She’s in the front passenger seat, her entire body shivering like she’s freezing to death in sunny, seventy-plus-degree weather. Indian summer. I’m smoking a cigarette while she sips from a cup of hot tea to which she’s added a shot of brandy from an emergency fifth she stores in the glove box of the big black suburban. From what she’s told me, it comes in handy when she has to discharge her weapon at a live human being, like she did when she fatally shot Mr. Personality.
“How many people have you killed?” I ask her after a time.
“Including our Russian friend?” she answers. “Three. And each of the other two gave me the shakes for hours afterward. So we’ll just sit, if you don’t mind.”
I stare out the window onto the scene. The crushed Bronco, the three bodies covered with rubber sheets, the disabled semi. Its blue-jeaned operator is being interviewed by both the cops and a guy in a suit who arrived on the scene in a car with the word “Progressive” painted on the side panel.
“I’ve killed more than I can count,” I say after a pregnant beat. “At the time, I thought they deserved it. But I’m not so sure anymore.”
“If they were going to kill you first, you had no choice.”
I nod, smoke. “Maybe,” I say, exhaling a stream of blue smoke. “I nearly killed myself once, and I’m still here. I let myself live.”
I follow up with a laugh. But there’s nothing funny in this. I believe in heaven and I believe in a hell. I’ve seen myself in hell in my dreams and I just can’t shake the image.
Blue Moonlight Page 17
