The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  I rushed out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and then my robe, off the back of the bathroom door as I ran past. I swung open our bedroom door to enter the hall, my mind shifting automatically to defense. I needed a weapon. I needed a gun and didn’t have one.

  More kids screamed. My heart jumped into my throat. My feet wouldn’t move fast enough as I struggled into the robe. I needed to be there right that instant, and my feet wouldn’t cooperate, not with the speed I wanted.

  I moved down the long hall to the source of the mayhem. I didn’t need a weapon. I’d tear apart anyone who hurt our children, do it with my bare hands.

  I turned into the kids’ room and flipped on the light.

  Toby stood on the top tier of the bunk bed, backed into a corner of the two connecting walls, his open hands up by his face, his eyes wide in terror, his open mouth emitting a horrifying screech that the other children mimicked. I looked around for the threat, my own heart up in my throat.

  Ah, a nightmare.

  His fear came from a nightmare. “It’s okay, everyone, it’s all over. You’re safe. You’re safe now. Get back into your beds.” I moved slowly over to Toby. “Come on down, little man. Come on over here. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” He still wore his clothes from two days ago. He wouldn’t let us take them off him without a major fight. We chose to let him keep his clothes on in the hopes another day would see him through his rough patch and he’d start to return to normal.

  Marie came in behind me and cooed to the children, instantly calming most of them.

  I held my hand out to Toby. “Come on, take my hand, come sleep with us. It’ll be much safer if you come sleep with us.” He stopped the screaming but didn’t move. I stepped up on the edge of the bottom bunk and leaned over, reaching for him. His eyes flitted from side to side; he was about to freak again. I stopped. “Toby, it’s me, your Papi. I wouldn’t ever hurt you. You know me, come on, take my hand. Let’s go get us some warm chocolate milk, huh? What do you say to that, huh, champ?”

  One of the children behind me said, “I want some chocolate milk.”

  Marie said, “Hush.”

  I wanted to climb up on the bed and lie down next to him, take my time, slowly coax him down from his fright, but I didn’t think the bed would hold my weight.

  Behind me, Marie said, “Bruno?”

  Without looking, I said, “I got this.” Then I said to Toby, “Okay, I guess you want me to leave. Do you want to stay here by yourself?”

  He shook his head, his first reaction to me since I entered the room. “Come on, little man, take my hand, let’s go get some warm chocolate milk.”

  He reached out a tentative hand that trembled. I let his hand come to me. I took it and gently pulled him toward me.

  All of a sudden he leapt and just about knocked us both to the floor. He clung on with his legs around my waist, his arms around my neck in a stranglehold. He was much bigger than Alonzo. His head was buried in my neck. He gripped me like there was no tomorrow. And I had no doubt that, in his mind, there wasn’t.

  I rubbed his back and whispered to him as I walked us out of the room and into the hall. “It’s all right now, little man, it was just a bad dream. It’s over now.”

  No one followed. Marie kept them herded together, and in a calm, firm tone, she got them all back in their beds. As I made it farther down the hall, she started one of her fantastical stories the kids loved so much, one filled with children and forests with castles and intelligent white horses that talked, black knights that were good, and white knights that were bad.

  I carried Toby into the kitchen and knew better than to try to set him down. One-handed, I pulled the milk out of the refrigerator and took a pan out of the cupboard. Rosie, our housekeeper, came out of her room off the kitchen, her long black hair in disarray, holding her robe together with both hands. I waved her off. “It’s okay, it was just a nightmare. Go on back to bed.”

  She hesitated a long moment and then said, “Something is wrong, Mister Bruno.” She shook her head. I put a free finger up to my lips to silence her and nodded in agreement. She turned and disappeared back into the darkness.

  I put the milk and then the powdered chocolate in the pot and turned on the stove burner, all with one hand while holding Toby with the other. He started to get heavy. I turned around and let his bottom ease down to rest on the center kitchen island while I let the milk do a slow simmer. He hadn’t let go of his death grip around my neck, and I didn’t want him to. It gave me a little comfort that he trusted me, and as narcissistic as it might sound, it was also something I needed. I had no faith in my fathering capabilities, not with my past failure with my daughter Olivia, and I knew that, like with Olivia, I’d somehow failed Toby as well.

  I gently rubbed his back. “It’s okay, little man.”

  Marie came in and stopped at the kitchen entrance. Her hand flew to her open mouth and her eyes went wide with shock. “Oh my God, Bruno.”

  “What? What?”

  “Look at his back.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  TOBY HEARD HER. He freaked out, jumped and kicked and scratched, trying to get away from me. He didn’t want anyone looking at his back. I picked him up and carried him still kicking and scratching into the large living room and sat with him on the leather couch. I ducked my head and held on. He eventually calmed. I held him close and gently stroked his sandy brown hair, saying over and over, “You’re all right. You’re all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, I promise.” But I had let something happen to him, and that was the problem. He and I both knew I’d failed him, so how could I ever be trusted again?

  After a time, all the energy left his body, and he relaxed. A minute later, his breathing evened out as he fell asleep, all the stress having worn him to a frazzle.

  Marie came in carrying two mugs of hot cocoa.

  I took a long slug from the one she handed me. The warm liquid calmed me down, and the sugar rush gave me energy to help my quaking nerves. “Could you please get me that afghan and cover us up?”

  Marie covered us and whispered, “You’re not going to sleep sitting there like that all night?”

  “Damn straight. He needs to rest, and I’m not going to risk waking him up again. He’ll feel much better in the morning with a good night’s rest.”

  “You know your back’s going to be a mess.”

  She got another afghan, wrapped herself up in it, and sat next to us. She rested her head on my shoulder.

  A large lump rose in my throat when I tried to find the words to ask her what she’d seen in the kitchen. Eddie Crane had acted similarly when we recovered him back in the States, where a truly evil person—the man to whom the county had entrusted Eddie—had taken an extension cord to his back and whipped some of the flesh right off. Eddie still carried the scars, emotional and physical, and they’d probably be there the rest of his life. To us it came as a reminder that children were never really safe, not entirely, no matter how hard we tried to protect them.

  And that’s what I envisioned in that moment when I saw Marie’s expression: those railroad-track scars across his back. We’d somehow let our guard down and allowed jeopardy to take hold of our Toby in the form of violence upon his little person.

  I didn’t want to wake him. I gently bumped Marie’s head with mine. She looked up at me. I mouthed the words, “What did you see?”

  She moved up close and whispered in my ear. I cringed, waiting for the worst kind of description.

  “Numbers,” she said.

  I leaned back. “What?”

  “Shush. Numbers. I saw a couple of large numbers written in black felt tip on his back.”

  “Numbers?” I found this hard to comprehend, especially after I’d conjured up the worst kinds of injuries.

  “Yes,” she said, “a nine and a six. I saw a part of another one, too. I bet there are more. I couldn’t see the rest—his shirt and your hand covered them.”

  I relax
ed a little. “One of the other children, probably playing a mean game, wrote on him with a marker, and he’s afraid we’re going to be mad.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Bruno.”

  I didn’t either, not with his over-the-top reaction.

  “He’s out cold,” I said. “Take a peek.”

  She didn’t argue. I held onto him and eased the afghan down. I couldn’t see and could again only watch her expression as she raised the back of Toby’s shirt. Her mouth dropped open in shock. Her eyes turned hard with anger. Then fear. Then grief.

  “What?” I said. “Tell me.”

  “Oh my God, Bruno.”

  “What? What is it?” I fought the urge to spin Toby around and look for myself.

  Tears filled her eyes.

  “Marie, honey, tell me.” My voice got louder, causing Toby to stir.

  She turned and sat down hard on the couch.

  I leaned over and put my mouth close to her ear. “Babe, please tell me.”

  “You’re going back to the States,” she said, her voice a drone, “and there won’t be anything I can do to stop you.” Her eyes stared off into nowhere.

  “What are you talking about? Go back to the States? Why? Over some silly numbers? Tell me.”

  She slowly turned to face me. Tears streaked down her cheeks. “And in a real sick way,” she said, “I don’t think I’d want to stop you. Even with the baby on the way, I don’t think I’d want to stop you. I think you’re going to have to crush them, Bruno. You’re going to have to grind them into the dirt. It’s the only thing those animals understand. Why does it have to be this way, Bruno? Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

  “Marie!”

  Toby jumped a little and grabbed on, but didn’t wake up.

  She slowly moved around again and put her lips to my ear as if to speak some sort of deadly poison that, if overheard, would whither and kill the vulnerable child in my arms. “It’s a phone number to Southern California with a San Bernardino prefix 909.”

  I still didn’t get it. Maybe the fatigue masked my thought process.

  My voice croaked this time as I whispered, “Tell me the rest.”

  She sobbed a little and got herself under control. “Right beside the number are two letters.”

  “Just two.”

  She nodded. “Double S’s, written like thunderbolts, the German Nazis’ S’s.”

  My mind took a long moment to lock in, and when it did, I went into a slow burn. I wanted to jump up off the couch and hurt some people, smash something, break up the house, anything to quell this sudden, horrific need for revenge. I had been the cause of this, of Toby’s fear and terrible emotional distress. My past actions, my choices, had brought this unimaginable pain on this young child. My past life had chased me down, and the evil in it now chose to make a statement through the pain of a small child in my care.

  And for no other reason than to get at me.

  I whispered through gritted teeth, “I’ll make ’em pay. I promise you that I’ll make every last damn one of ’em pay for this.”

  Marie stroked my arm as she sobbed and nodded. “Bruno, what are we going to do? You can’t go. That’s exactly what they want. They’ll be waiting for you. There are too many of them for you to do anything about it. We have to run. We have to pack up right now and run to Panama. It’s Rosebud, Bruno. We have to activate Rosebud.”

  We had an escape plan in place, not for something like this, but in case the feds came sniffing around. In 1994, Costa Rica signed an extradition treaty with the U.S., and even though thousands of Americans hid out in Costa Rica, most didn’t have to worry. They were small fish compared to someone who’d taken ten children and fled. Rosebud was our code word to hit the eject button and move our family over to Panama.

  Every nerve in my body vibrated with a rage more violent than I had ever experienced. I suppressed it as best I could. “Marie, honey, take down the number.”

  She shook her head.

  “Marie, please.”

  She continued to sob, got up, went to the desk by the phone, and came back with a pen and paper. She scribbled the number.

  I scooted to the edge of the couch. “Sit.”

  Marie sat. I stood and gently peeled Toby’s arms from around my neck. He started to wake. I stopped and whispered in his ear, “Everything’s gonna be all right, little man, here’s your mom.”

  Marie took him in her arms. Toby glommed onto her without coming fully awake.

  On legs weak with rage, legs filled with unrequited revenge, I walked over to the phone with the piece of paper in my hand.

  The piece of paper that contained the phone number to the president of the Sons of Satan, the outlaw motorcycle gang.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A FEW MONTHS earlier during a trip to the States, a series of unfortunate incidents led me to discover evidence that took down the president of The Sons, Clay Warfield, as well as the majority of the Southern California chapter. They all went to prison for life because of me. I had enlisted an unwilling participant, an ex-outlaw biker by the name of Karl Drago, and with the help of my friend John Mack, we attempted a robbery of The Sons of Satan’s clubhouse. A stupid, foolhardy move that got all three of us caught and severely beaten by The Sons.

  Now they wanted their pound of flesh, and they’d conveyed that message by sending some members of the club to Costa Rica. Those members had waited for their opportunity and somehow caught Toby alone. They sent their message to me in the form of a phone number written in black ink on the back of poor little Toby.

  I stood at the table in the entrance hall of our house, the phone in my hand, the dial tone loud in the quiet room. Was this the best path to take, the best solution for the problem? What good would calling these animals do? Why play their game, call them, let their smugness further enflame my rage? I should walk straight into the bedroom, pack my bags, and take off after them. Go handle this the BMF way.

  As detective on the Violent Crimes Team, I’d made my bones, proved my loyalty, and the team bestowed upon me the team logo in the form of a BMF tattoo on my upper right arm. I’d been proud of it in a time when I was young and dumb. Later on, after I shot and killed Derek Sams, my son in-law, and saw the law from its ugly backside, I became ashamed of that tattoo. I kept it, though, as a reminder of how the misguided could think and act.

  Now I wanted to channel those wild days working on the Violent Crimes Team, where I’d crossed the line into the gray area of the law again and again, and did whatever it took to take down a violent asshole. Took them down the BMF way.

  Because back then we were Brutal Mother Fuckers.

  I had no intention of treading lightly with these assholes, men who’d hurt a child like that, and worse, one of our children. These men who’d threatened my family.

  My past experience told me to take a step back and think it through—that same experience that had kept me alive through some pretty hairy violent confrontations. I tried to force down my rage in order to think more rationally but couldn’t. All I wanted was to get my hands around the throat of the man responsible for this.

  A member of The Sons had to be in Costa Rica, right there in our village. That put my family at risk. How could I leave to go take care of this problem and still protect my family? Who could I trust for such an important job?

  My brother, Noble.

  He owed me, and I could trust him. Sure, I’d call Noble.

  With that problem solved, I got right back into my unchecked rage, a comfortable place to be. I let the rage creep back in and slither around in my gut. I dialed The Sons’ number. The phone on the other end rang once.

  Someone picked up, a male with a raspy cigarette voice. “Took you long enough, Mr. Watermelon Man. Oh, but I forgot. Mud People are none too bright. Ain’t that right, Mr. Bruno The Bad Boy Johnson? You’re of the mud persuasion, right? Negroid.”

  I took a deep breath and checked my anger. “What do you want?”

&nb
sp; “Let’s not pretend I’m some kinda fool here. You know exactly what we want, nigger. We want you back here so we can lynch your lying black ass. That’s what we want. And if you don’t make the trip, we’ll be glad to bring it to you. We’ve already proven we can do that. The Sons have put up a twenty-thousand-dollar reward on your sorry ass. And believe me when I say someone’s gonna try and collect it no matter where you go to hide.”

  “You’re making a big mistake. I come back there this time, there won’t be one swingin’ dick in your organization left standing. That’s not a threat, that’s a promise. And this time I won’t be nice and use the law. You understand my meaning here?”

  Raspy-voice laughed. “You’re threatenin’ me? They said you had a set a balls on ya. If you’re dumb enough to bring ’em here, I’ll make you eat ’em.”

  I lowered my voice so Marie couldn’t hear. “Just tell me where and when and I’ll be there.”

  “When you get here, you call, and we’ll set up a nice little meet and greet, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He hung up.

  No scenario existed where this would end any other way but violent.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I CALLED NOBLE in Spain. He didn’t balk or hesitate, he jumped right on a plane. I couldn’t leave until he arrived, in fifteen hours or so.

  I took my father to his chemo appointment. He had stomach cancer and had been fighting it too long. The battle had eaten his body from the inside out. He’d retired from the United States Post Office with forty years of service, never using one sick day. Now it seemed those accumulated illnesses he’d dodged throughout his life caught up with him all at once. As a child I remembered him as the biggest, strongest father in the neighborhood, with his narrow waist and broad shoulders and thick biceps. A man who took no guff off anyone, especially not gang members trying to recruit his two sons.

  I helped him out of the cab and decided I could, if need be, and without difficulty, pick him up and carry him the entire way. He couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds. He couldn’t afford to lose any more. His once-glistening black hair, now turned pure white, reflected the bright sun and stood out in stark contrast to his black skin.