The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  Marie went right up to Sonja and hugged her. Marie said, “I’m so sorry. Bruno told me what happened.”

  Except I hadn’t. I hadn’t told her anything about how Bosco came to be in the hospital, just that he’d been hurt. I looked at Drago to see if he was as stunned as I was at this form of greeting from these two women. What the hell?

  Sonja nodded, her expression one of sorrow. Her face was lined with worry, making her look much older. “Thank you.”

  They looked at each other, eyes probing eyes for answers to questions I couldn’t hear. And I really needed to. Women possess that eerie ability of nonverbal communication that drives men nuts.

  Monster and Bobby Ray stood from their chairs and came over. Monster went right up to Drago and checked him out like some kind of dog sniffing another. Drago looked and acted like an outlaw biker. Neither spoke.

  Sonja, without a word, picked up the toddler, with curly red hair and freckles, and handed him to me. The child belonged to Bosco and was Sonja’s grandchild. Holding him inflamed my shame, increased my guilt tenfold.

  Sonja took Marie by the arm and guided her to the chairs. They sat and spoke in quiet tones like a couple of long-lost sisters.

  What had I been worried about with those two? I let out a sigh of relief and took a step closer, pricking my ears, and still couldn’t hear what they said.

  Bobby Ray stuck out his hands. “Here, let me take him. He’s a real handful.”

  “No, it’s cool, I got him.”

  The rambunctious child patted my head with one hand while he grabbed my nose with the other and pulled hard. Man, the little guy had a grip. He’d be a baseball player some day, a pitcher maybe.

  He had hazel eyes like Sonja. I really couldn’t see any traits passed on from Bobby Ray.

  The kid could easily star in baby food commercials with his smile and cute little giggle. Or did they call it a gurgle?

  Then the ugly thought weaseled in: What chance did this kid have growing up in an outlaw biker environment? Would he grow up and act just as Bosco had? Of course he would.

  I looked up and checked the news again. I found myself doing it too often, waiting for that hammer to fall.

  Bobby Ray said, “What are you doing here, Bruno?”

  That same shame wouldn’t let me meet his eyes, and I fought the urge to tell him the terrible secret I now kept suppressed, shoved down deep and festering in my gut, making me ill.

  Or it could’ve been the concussion causing the nausea. Sure, that’s what I wanted to believe.

  “Just coming to pay my respects. Is he doing any better?”

  Bobby Ray spoke through gritted teeth. “You know how the damn doctors are. They charge you out the ass in order to pay for their mansions and two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports cars. They don’t give a damn about anything else as long as they get their money. They’re the real cause of our health care crisis in this country, with their bullshit exorbitant wages. In countries where health care really works, doctors don’t get paid like that.”

  I nodded as if I agreed with his off-the-wall rant. I didn’t know what to say or do.

  Outlaw bikers, as a rule, don’t carry medical insurance, and Bosco’s stay would cost Bobby Ray upwards of half a mil.

  “Here,” he said, “lemme have junior.”

  I didn’t have time to answer before he took the kid from me. I loved kids, but an emotional weight lifted off me when Bobby Ray took this one out of my arms. He walked over and dropped him off in Sonja’s lap. Sonja didn’t even notice. She just accepted him and kept on talking to Marie.

  What the hell did they have to talk about? I only caught my name tossed around here and there by the both of them, as they each occasionally looked my way. Man, I wanted to hear what they were saying.

  Bobby Ray grabbed my arm and tugged me down the hall out of earshot of everyone.

  Drago and Monster still had not said a word to each other, two yard dogs sizing each other up, deciding who’d be the alpha dog if it came to blows. Good thing I hadn’t told Drago that Monster had been the one to whack me on the back of the head. Drago would’ve already ripped Monster’s arms off his torso and beaten him with them.

  “Now that you’re here,” Bobby Ray said, “maybe you would do me another favor?”

  “Sure, whatever I can do to help.”

  I didn’t need to stay in good with Bobby Ray as Special Agent Dan asked. Instead, for some insane reason, some crazy twist of fate, Bobby Ray wanted to stay in good with me.

  “Can you get with this Jumbo asshole and find out what his game is? Why he’s involved in this thing with that fed?”

  “No problem. How do you know Jumbo? You done deals with him before?”

  Bobby Ray’s head moved back a little and his mouth went to a slit. “What’s it to you?”

  “Oh, hey, I was just askin’ ’cause I know Jumbo. He isn’t going to give me shit unless I put the hurt on him. And I didn’t wanna do that if you got some kinda relationship with him, you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, right, I see what your sayin’. No, you can put the punk’s nuts in a grinder for all I care. Just get that money into the right hands and get that fed off my back. I don’t need to be worrying about Bosco getting thrown in the can, not for those guns, not when I got all this other heavy shit goin’ down.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’ll owe you big. Thanks, pal.”

  If Bobby Ray did do the train job and took down the military drone with Jumbo, he didn’t so much as twitch at the lie.

  I swallowed hard and asked, “What about the cop outside his door? They going to file charges on Bosco for what happened out there on the freeway?”

  “Nah, I’m not worried about that. The cops just went off on my people without any provocation at all. My guys were minding their own business. Some detective in plain clothes came up and started all the shit. When I find out who this guy is, I’m gonna pay him a visit, personal like.

  “Dirk said this guy tossed my Bosco right out into traffic. You believe that shit? Right out in traffic like he was a piece of garbage or something. Cops got rules. They’re not supposed to act that way. I’ll fix him, you wait and see if I don’t.”

  I again fought the urge to look back at the television. I started to sweat.

  Bobby Ray didn’t know about the video, the irrefutable physical evidence that would hang Bosco, send him to the Q for life. If he lived.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. Marie stood close, holding Little Bosco. She pointed over to Sonja, who was still seated. “She wants to talk to you. Alone.”

  “You sure? You sure you’re good with this?”

  “Yeah, I’m good with it. Go on, get over there, cowboy.”

  Bobby Ray stuck a thick finger into my chest. “Well, I’m not fucking good with it. You don’t need to talk to my wife up close and personal like that, not without me there.”

  He now had a place to vent his anger over the detective who’d tossed his boy out into traffic. I didn’t like getting poked, especially by him, and fought the urge to grab his hand and twist him up, take him to his knees.

  Drago quick-stepped over, his fists clenched. Monster came on close at his heels, ready to do battle.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  I HELD UP both hands and said, “Hold it. Hold it.”

  Everyone stopped in a little circle, posturing for a fight, ready to dig in with fists and boots and secreted ball-peen hammers if anyone made the wrong move.

  Sonja showed up, shoving her way into the middle. “This is a hospital. What in God’s name is the matter with you bunch of thugs, acting like some punk kids on a schoolyard?” She shoved Bobby Ray. “And you, you horse’s ass. I’ll talk to Bruno if I damn well please. And you’re not goin’ to say a thing about it. You”—she pointed at Drago and Monster—“get your asses back over there and sit down. I’ll tell you when it’s time to do the ass kickin’.”

  Everyone hesitated a long mome
nt, not moving.

  Sonja yelled, “Move!”

  Monster slowly started to do as he was told. Drago looked to Marie first. Marie nodded. Drago went to the chair and sat down.

  Bobby Ray still hadn’t moved. Sonja went up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Please, honey-bear?”

  Bobby Ray didn’t look at her. He stared me down and didn’t immediately move. He tried to recover some of the mojo she’d stolen from him, giving him orders like that in front of men like Drago, Monster, and even me, all men who lived in a swirling world of violence.

  She took his hand. “Please, honey.”

  He went. She watched him until he sat down in the chair, the one he sat in when we first walked up. Marie sat next to him, still holding the squirming toddler. I didn’t like Marie anywhere near dangerous men, especially pregnant and vulnerable.

  “Come on,” Sonja said.

  I followed her to the chairs and we sat.

  She looked me in the eye and put her hand on my knee. “Bruno—” She glanced over at Bobby Ray and jerked her hand off my knee when Bobby Ray started to stand, his eyes lasers burning a hole through me.

  He didn’t have one thing to be jealous about.

  In a crazy kind of way, I liked it that Bobby Ray cared so much about her.

  She whispered as she smiled. “That big asshole. I hate him.”

  I couldn’t read the smile, whether it was real or fake.

  “Sonja, what’s going on? Why are you doing this when it causes everyone involved so much heartache?”

  By everyone involved I meant Bobby Ray.

  She looked back from Bobby Ray to me. “You did good getting a woman like Marie. Don’t you screw it up with her, you hear me?”

  “I’m not trying to, but this world we live in has other ideas. I’m just a passenger on this bus.”

  She looked at me funny over that comment.

  “What do you have to say, Sonja? I have some things I really need to get to.”

  “First, I don’t want you to get involved with anything with Bobby Ray. Don’t do anything else he asks you to do. You don’t need that kind of trouble, especially with a baby on the way.”

  “Okay. That’s easy. What’s second?”

  “No, I want you to promise me, Bruno.”

  “I promise.”

  She said, “Okay. Then I just wanted to clear up a few things about Bosco.”

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to.”

  “Please, just hear me out, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t want Bosco in this life. I didn’t, not at all. I did everything I could to keep him out of it. I had him going to school, a technical school to learn how to weld. He liked it. I also told him I didn’t want him riding with Ol’ Hector, didn’t want him anywhere around these assholes. Bobby Ray didn’t like that edict, but he went along with it well enough. I made sure of it. At least I thought I did.” Her voice caught. “The bastards, the sons of bitches. I told them, I ordered them, that Bosco was not to go on rides and not to wear the cuts.

  “I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know he was still riding behind my back. I respect you too much, Bruno. I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t paying attention to my own son.”

  She had her own guilt to deal with, which only served to pile it higher onto me. The shame of it. And still I couldn’t tell her to relieve some of the pressure that continued to build.

  “I believe you,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about that. He sounds like a great kid.”

  “He is. He doesn’t deserve this, and when Bobby Ray finds out who did it, I’m going to be there when he gets his. You can bet your ass I will, I’ll be there.” She’d shifted just that quickly from sorrow to anger. Right at that moment I didn’t know if I’d be able to defend myself once they found out and they came for me.

  A lump rose in my throat. I couldn’t sit there and take much more.

  When I didn’t respond, she continued. “Now this other thing, this last thing. I was talking with Marie and she said that you didn’t understand what happened with Olivia, how I just dropped her off in your lap and walked away and never looked back. Now, after she brought it to my attention, maybe she’s right. Maybe it would look that way.” She’d changed her tone again with the dropped her off in your lap part, mimicking Marie.

  I didn’t like it and wanted to get up and leave. I didn’t need that kind of crap, not added on top of everything else going on. Not Sonja disparaging Marie.

  “Look,” I said, “that’s all old news. Olivia’s gone now, so it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” Talking about Olivia made that lump rise in my throat and grow thick enough to choke and bring on the tears. I fought it.

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” she said. “Just listen to me for one damn minute, would you please? Let me say my piece and then you can go ahead and condemn me. Go ahead and blame me for all your life’s chickenshit little problems. I won’t care.”

  I didn’t say anything and didn’t move so much as an eyelash. No way did I blame her for everything in my life that went wrong; what a ludicrous idea.

  I did blame her, though, for a chunk of what happened with Olivia.

  Then, once I examined that blame a little closer, it didn’t hold up. It was a cop-out. Those errors in judgment, my inability to raise Olivia, fell solidly on my shoulders and no one else’s.

  Now Sonja’s eyes filled with tears.

  Her tears made me feel like a heel. I said, “I’m sorry.” I wanted to put my hand on hers but didn’t, not under the circumstances.

  “No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “You shouldn’t have been left to raise our daughter alone, not like that, not in this world we live in. It takes two to watch out for a child these days. Lord knows Bobby Ray didn’t help me out with Bosco.”

  I waited.

  Olivia had fallen in with riff-raff, street people, and from there made the short leap into drugs. She’d overdosed and died, no small thanks to Derek Sams. So maybe in this case Sonja hit the nail on the head.

  “You see,” she said, “it’s . . . it’s just so damn hard to explain . . . to cop to such a failure. I buried all of that evil and ugliness years ago, and I really hate to dredge it up right now.”

  “Well, don’t then. I’m not asking you to.”

  “Just shut up, Bruno, and listen, okay?”

  I nodded.

  She stared off to a place I couldn’t see, even with the best telescope, and said, “I walked in and quit that night. I quit as soon as that asshole lieutenant Rodriquez told me Douglas Howard, the guy from Fruit Town, the guy I’d sapped too hard, that he didn’t make it, that he died. I was sick about it, Bruno, sick up to here.”

  She held her hand up by her chin.

  “First . . . no wait . . . I mean it really started with Maury Abrams, how those little bastards tried to rob Maury Abrams and forced him to shoot in self-defense. And then the Trey-Five-Sevens came back and burned them out. Killed them, fried that old couple right in their bed. The Abrams had bars on the doors and windows to keep the assholes out. Those same bars are what killed the Abrams.

  “Then . . . then I went and shot at that two-eleven vehicle when I shouldn’t have. I’d lost it, Bruno. I mean, I really lost it. Nothing seemed real anymore. I’m not making any excuses, I’m not. Really, I’m not. I just want you to understand what happened back then. I knew I was pregnant and with all of that shit going on and . . . and how could I bring a kid into this sewer of a world? Right? You understand what I’m saying here, right?”

  “I’ve never been pregnant,” I said, “but I could only imagine the pressure from all of that responsibility. I’m sorry you went through that.”

  A part of me wanted to argue that, if she’d told me she was pregnant and had not shoved me out of her life, we could’ve dealt with the pregnancy together.

  Tears wet her face now. “You see—when the nurse told me I had a girl—I couldn’t deal with a girl. Not when�
�”

  I put my hand on her hand and that stopped her from what she was about to say. “I understand. I don’t blame you. I don’t.”

  “Are you sure, Bruno? Are you sure?”

  I hugged her. Bobby Ray be damned.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  I STOOD UP, ready to go. I wanted in the worst way to get back to our children in Costa Rica. Under the circumstances, that goal looked a million miles away.

  Marie and Drago got up and started walking from the room toward the long white hall we’d entered through, the one with the cop sitting in the chair halfway down. I nodded to Bobby Ray, who nodded back.

  Marie still held little Bosco. “Hey,” I said when I caught up to her, “come on, give him back. Are you kidding me? We can’t take him with us.”

  Marie shook her head. “I told Sonja we’d take care of him until things calmed down.”

  “No, we can’t. That absolutely will not work. That’s just plain crazy.”

  “What are you talking about? You’re the one acting crazy now. This little guy needs people who will love and care for him. His father’s laid up in a hospital bed, and Sonja and Bobby Ray have too much going on to pay him the attention that he needs. Think about this child. We’re doing this, Bruno, no arguments.”

  Oh, I had the argument that would trump her arguments, trump her decision in spades, only I didn’t have the balls to tell her.

  “Okay,” I said, lowering my voice so Bobby Ray and Sonja had no chance of hearing me. “On one condition.”

  “No conditions, Bruno.”

  I took hold of her arm. We stopped. I looked her in the eye. “There will be this time.”

  I’d never talked to her that way.

  Her mouth dropped open. “Okay, Bruno, whatever you say.”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have talked to you like that.” I put my arm around her and we continued down the long hallway.

  Little Bosco reached up and patted my cheek.

  “I think that knock to the head might’ve jarred something loose. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand. Maybe when we get back to the hotel you can trust me enough to tell me what’s eating at you. Now what are these conditions?”