Final Stroke

by Michael Beres

  “All right,” said Valdez. “Maybe I guessed the hostages were pur posely held until Reagan was inaugurated. But many pundits and bloggers have also pondered this.”

  “It’s not so much the timing of the release,” said Hanley. “More important are the maneuverings that took place in order to return Iran’s eight billion in frozen assets. Part of the maneuvering that oc curred can be linked directly to the situation we’ve been assigned to address. In short, if someone manages to follow the money—all of the money—they might find out that a portion of the frozen assets, albeit a tiny portion, was liquidated by a long-gone idiot who funneled funds to Illinois.”

  The GPS lady interrupted, saying to prepare to exit on the right in two miles. Traffic still crawled, so despite the GPS lady’s forewarning, it would be a distant two miles.

  Valdez turned to glance at Hanley, then looked back out at the tail lights of the car ahead. “There can’t be many who know about this.”

  “Let’s hope not,” said Hanley.

  Hanley turned in his seat again, this time to reach into the back seat. He retrieved one of the briefcases they had picked up at the com pany warehouse, placed the briefcase on his lap, and stared back out the windshield at the traffic.

  Steve pulled alongside the truck at a stoplight to take a look at the driver. Because of the height of the truck, he had to lean to the side toward the passenger window in order to look up at the driver. Nor mally this would not have been a problem. But he was a stroker, his brain thinking the right foot would take care of things as the left foot slipped off the brake allowing the Lincoln to roll forward into the intersection. A car speeding across the intersection swerved and sounded its horn as Steve sat back behind the wheel and slammed the brake back on.

  He glanced into the mirror to make sure no one was behind him, then put the Lincoln in reverse and backed up. After he reached over with his left hand and put the transmission into Park, he leaned over again to have a look. Inside the truck, a man with dark hair held something white to his face. When the man removed the white thing, holding it in front of him and looking at it in the glow from the street light above, Steve saw what looked like a handkerchief.

  The man’s nose was bleeding. A flat nose. A flat nose and some thing familiar in the man’s eyes when he suddenly glanced down at Steve. The man’s eyes opened wide for a second before he faced for ward and the truck’s engine roared and the letters “C-h-r-i-s-t” flashed past as the truck sped away.

  As Steve chased the truck, weaving in and out of traffic, his left foot back and forth between gas and brake, his left hand dancing on the wheel like that of a mad puppeteer, memories of where he’d seen the man with the flat nose emerged from the traffic jam in his head.

  Hell in the Woods. Someone on staff. No, with someone. Tyrone. The man with the flat nose had been with Tyrone in a small dimly lit place that smells of cleaning fluids and the sweat of angry men. The janitors’ closet.

  The truck turned west, then north, then east, trying to lose him on dark narrow side streets. When the truck sideswiped a double-parked car, Steve knew the chase was on. When he sideswiped the same car, the jolt sent spasms of pain through his right side. He thought he heard himself shouting in pain, but his voice came to him from a dis tance. There was no time for pain. Not here, not now. He glanced in his mirror and realized the shouting in the distance came from a man running down the middle of the street.

  Several blocks farther on, at a stop sign, the truck turned south, back on a wide street with streetlights and other traffic, back the way Steve had come earlier. If the truck continued this way they’d cross over the Stevenson Expressway. But if the truck got on the expressway …

  No! He couldn’t afford to prolong this. Jan was in danger and the man with the flat and bloody nose knew something.

  In a dimly lit section where traffic eased up, Steve floored the Lin coln and managed to get up on the right side of the truck. His plan was to try to push the truck into parked cars on the other side of the street. He would push it with the Lincoln’s left side because he needed the right-hand door to get out into his wheelchair.

  The Lincoln tore into the truck just behind its front wheel. The cowling beneath the Lincoln’s front bumper ripped back into its tire and the left front fender of the Lincoln pressed against the truck’s tire, making buzz saw sounds. The Lincoln’s left headlight blew.

  Despite the noise and vibration, Steve continued steering into the truck. The guy with the flat nose knew something. If he died trying to stop this guy, well then, he’d just die. At least he’d die knowing he’d done what he could to find Jan. The possibility of Jan being dead made him turn the wheel even more to the left.

  Parked cars coming up fast ahead. Collision soon. But the pave ment was too wet and the truck too heavy for the Lincoln. Steering wheel turned full left, but the Lincoln continued straight ahead, then to the right, across the road. Parked cars there, too. No choice but to straighten the Lincoln’s wheels and slam on the brakes at the last second.

  The Lincoln’s left front shuddered when he continued the chase. He could see by the unevenness where the hood was supposed to meet the top of the fender that he’d done a job on the Lincoln’s left side. Fine, a guy crippled on the right side driving a car crippled on the left side. As he drove he realized he was sitting toward the center of the front seat, having apparently moved over while the Lincoln was doing its best to force the truck into parked cars.

  Most of the businesses and stores they passed were dimmed for the night, some with security gates pulled closed. But when they passed a brightly lit drugstore, Steve had a sudden flash of memory that threat ened to sidetrack him.

  A drugstore in Cleveland. Arriving there after the shooting. Sue shot and not a damn thing he could do about it. Suddenly it was there before him. A night long ago paralleling this night.

  Expressway coming up. No way to catch the truck if it gets on. No way for the Lincoln to keep up with its front end so badly dam aged. And cops. Someone will see the two of them speeding down the expressway and call the cops, and instead of finding Jan, there’ll be nothing but questions without answers.

  He had to do something. And so, when the truck slowed to make its turn at the corner onto the expressway ramp, Steve maintained the Lincoln’s speed, jumped the curb up onto the sidewalk, just missing a light pole, put the Lincoln into a slide that took out a trash can, and slid the tail end of the Lincoln onto the entrance ramp and into the side of the truck.

  This time the Lincoln made its mark, changing the direction of the truck and forcing it off the ramp, over the narrow shoulder and down an embankment into the tall chain-link fence that kept pedes trians from wandering down the slope of the hill and onto the express way. The Lincoln also started down the embankment backward, but Steve straightened the wheel and floored the Lincoln, barely managing to keep it up on the road.

  Although traffic moved below on the expressway, the ramp was quiet and dark and no one else had turned onto it. He stopped the Lincoln on the edge of the ramp facing down at the cars speeding along the expressway just in time to see the flat-nosed man jump out of the truck’s passenger door and begin running along the fence back up toward the lights on the overpass.

  Despite pain in his right side that felt like the lick of flames, he had no choice. He didn’t know it for certain, but there was a good chance this man could help him find Jan. It was time to do another of those automatic things he’d been able to do after his stroke. He gave the Lincoln a burst of speed in reverse, slammed on the brakes. He lowered the window all the way, reached into his side pocket, took out his forty-five, and cradled it in his impaired right hand while he released the safety with his left thumb. He carefully repositioned the barrel and held it tightly in his left hand. The flat-nosed man was on a steep part of the embankment near the fence, his figure silhouetted against the lights beneath the overpass as he climbed frantically, reach ing forward to grab at the wet weeds.

  Steve sho
uted, “Stop, motherfucker!”

  When the man did not stop, but kept climbing closer to the over pass sidewalk and escape, Steve held the gun in his left hand, steadying his arm on the doorsill. Then, knowing full well he’d been a right-hand shooter, he aimed and squeezed the trigger with his left hand.

  Above the sounds of traffic on the expressway, the man’s scream, as he stumbled forward then slid back down the wet embankment, sounded like the chirp of a bird. He fell like a bird, scrambling on the ground, his arms flopping around like he was trying to fly off the face of a cliff. He did not fly. Instead, his arms and legs found the ground and he began crawling, regaining the ground he’d lost. As he climbed, the man looked behind as if the bullet had come from down the em bankment instead of from the side. Although he crawled awkwardly because of the bullet in his foot, the man seemed oblivious to Steve, even when Steve shouted he would shoot again. The wound did not seem fatal, but the man was like an animal crawling into a corner to die. To the flat-nosed man, the only thing that seemed to matter was getting to the top of the embankment.

  Steve opened the driver’s door to make sure it was not damaged in either of the collisions with the truck. The door was okay and he slammed it and put the Lincoln in reverse and backed all the way up the ramp. Then he shut off the Lincoln’s lights and pulled onto the overpass in reverse, backing slowly along the curb, then up onto the sidewalk to the place where the fence on the embankment joined the fence that kept kids from throwing things down onto the expressway from the overpass.

  By backing the Lincoln onto the sidewalk he blocked the path of the flat-nosed man. A car going onto the overpass slowed, a man and woman inside staring at the idiot who had not only pulled onto the sidewalk, but was facing the wrong way. But the couple in the car continued on their way and he was thankful that, until now, he hadn’t seen one squad car except for the one in the parking lot a couple miles back at Hell in the Woods.

  When the flat-nosed man appeared at the top of the embankment he was still looking behind him. Although Steve could not hear him because of the din of traffic on the expressway below, he could see, by his rhythmic movements, that the man was panting from exhaustion and in a state of panic. If he pointed his gun at the man and told him to stop, he’d probably turn to go back down the embankment, or fall backward down the embankment.

  He needed to talk to this man. And so he positioned the Lincoln, inching forward a bit to put the driver’s door even with the man. Then he shoved the transmission into Park, and, just as the man reached the edge of the sidewalk and turned to see where he’d go from there, Steve pushed the heavy door open as hard as he could and caught the flat-nosed man full in the chest.

  The weeds beyond the edge of the sidewalk were wet. He could feel the wetness on both hands, but mostly on his left hand. He had thrown the forty-five on the passenger seat before diving out onto the ground with the flat-nosed man. The courtesy light on the Lincoln’s door shown in the flat-nosed man’s eyes as he lay on his side staring at Steve. They lay side-by-side in the weeds like kids playing hide-and-seek for just a moment before the flat-nosed man began scrambling away.

  When Steve reached out and grabbed a handful of jacket, the man fought him, screaming, “You shot my fuckin’ foot!”

  The man was wriggling away, Steve’s left hand barely hanging on as the man pulled him along. Right hand seeming to flop around uncontrollably. But then Steve managed to get his right arm around the guy’s waist, and when he did this he let go with his left hand and reached for the guy’s neck. But the flat-nosed man was too fast for him, and he slid down the guy’s flank. It was like trying to catch a reptile. And soon the reptile would slither away.

  He needed to know what this man knew! He needed to do some thing! He’d had a goddamn stroke and there wasn’t much he could do. He needed an edge. So he reached around the man, and with his left hand, grabbed a handful of the guy’s crotch and squeezed.

  The guy’s fists seemed relentless, so much so that Steve thought he might go unconscious. But he stayed with it, squeezing as hard and he could, and eventually the screaming and cursing and flailing subsided, the guy realizing that the squeezing was reduced only when he stopped swinging his fists. During this tirade, Steve got hit a couple good ones in the neck and jaw. As it had many times since the stroke during bouts of intense pain, his brain put on an illusory show, making him visualize his nerve endings as tentacled creatures separate from him self. Then he screamed into the face of the flat-nosed man.

  “Fuck you, pain! Little worm bastards inside me tougher than you! Little bastards’ll get out and eat you! Eat me from inside out, then eat you, motherfuck! Burn me up, worm fuckers! I give a fuck! Burn me up, nerve fuckers!”

  The pinkish-bluish glare from the overhead expressway lights gave the flat-nosed man’s face an eerie radiance and Steve could tell by the look on the guy’s face that his own face also looked eerie, perhaps even more so because he probably had on his stroke grin. And now that he’d said what he’d said about his nerve endings, the guy’s eyes had opened wide.

  When he said, “No time for mess,” the guy gave him a puzzled look, but his eyes were still open wide and he began shaking like any tough guy who’s forced to cross a certain threshold.

  “What, man? What?!”

  “Talk!”

  “Talk to who? About what? You shot my fuckin’ foot and …”

  He gave the guy’s balls a good squeeze to let him know this wasn’t the way he wanted the conversation to go.

  He pushed his face closer, their noses touching. “Desperate! Got to know what at Hell in Woods! I’ll fucking take you apart down there! If … if you don’t tell …”

  “Tell what?!”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Jesus Christ!”

  “Why Jesus Christ truck left fast?”

  “I left fast ‘cause I wanted the hell out of there! I’m tellin’ the truth, man. Quit squeezin’! Jesus Christ!”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened where? Holy shit! Okay! Okay!”

  “Talk!”

  “I was goin’ there to meet someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh shit!”

  “Who?!”

  “I was goin’ there to meet Tyrone!”

  “What happened?”

  “How the fuck? Oh, Ma! Geez!”

  “Who and what? Exactly! Now!”

  “Okay! I was goin’ there to meet Tyrone. He meets me at the loading dock for deliveries. Only this time instead of him meeting me, I see spaghetti heads carrying him out the back door and he’s screamin’ for help! Hey! Easy! Goddamn! Okay! So I try to help, but this heavyweight spaghetti head comes over and lays a pile driver on me. Then I get the fuck out!”

  “What about woman?”

  “Woman?”

  “With Tyrone!”

  “Was no woman, just spaghetti heads.”

  “Where’s Tyrone?”

  “You mean right now?”

  “No. Back there!”

  “Those guys took him.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere out in the parking lot. I saw a bunch of ‘em by a van. They stuck Tyrone’s ass in the van and got back in their cars. That’s when I got the fuck out!”

  When Steve let go his grip and began crawling as fast as he could toward the open door of the Lincoln, the flat-nosed man held himself with both hands and curled up in the weeds like a baby. The last thing Steve heard him say was, “Oh shit, what kinda night is this?”

  Back inside the Lincoln Steve got the engine started but couldn’t get his left foot to the pedals because his right leg was in the way. He reached down with his left hand, pulled at the leg and realized the leg brace had slipped, allowing the leg to go crooked and helpless. He reached down with both hands, trying to force the right hand to help, and after several tugs was able to pull the leg brace back into place, allowing him to lift his right leg back where it belonged. For all he knew it could be broken,
but he didn’t have time for that now.

  After he put the Lincoln into drive and bounced it down the curb and across to the right side of the road, the seatbelt warning sounded and the pain in his right side threatened to take over the way it had when the flat-nosed man was pummeling him. Only this pain was even worse. More pain then he could ever remember. But he was a damn half-brainer, and half-brainers weren’t supposed to be able to remember everything. So why not forget pain? He’d probably had greater pain than this. Right side muscles not on fire from pain but from exertion. Concentrate. Concentrate! Fuck the pain!

  While driving back to Hell in the Woods, he felt as if he’d gone beyond a critical threshold. The pain was still there, but it didn’t matter anymore. The pain didn’t tell his muscles what he could or couldn’t do anymore. He clenched and unclenched the fist of his right hand as he drove. Of course it was still weak, but it would come back with therapy. He’d promised Jan he would do his best, take the thera py all the way to its completion. Now maybe he’d have his chance.

  There were three worlds.

  In the first world, the side door to the van was open slightly so she would be able to hear the beating taking place a few feet away. Be sides the obvious sounds of blows landing on flesh, she heard guttural moaning. Random syllables, the kinds of sounds Steve was able to make when he first came to after his stroke.

  In the second world, a large man without legs and a smaller man with legs groped her beneath her raincoat and slacks. Because there were two of them and they were crammed into the back seat of the car, resisting seemed pointless. Whenever she turned away from one, the other would be there.

  In the third world, she inflicted great pain upon her wrist, bend ing it far back, then using her weight pressed upon the bent wrist to bend it back even more. She was Houdini, about to escape the locked box so she could rescue her lover from another locked box. By bending her wrist in a way it had never been meant to go, she had managed to get one finger beneath the edge of the tape and she wiggled this finger back and forth, tearing ever so slightly at the tape with her fingernail. In this world, the other two worlds might come crashing down. She could see it. The tape off. Then she strikes out, disabling her molest ers long enough for her to leap from the car and tear open the van door to see if the man they are beating is really Steve. And if it is Steve?