The Vanquished

by David Putnam

  My voice came out barely a whisper. “Yes. Yes, everything’s fine.”

  Only it wasn’t.

  “Marie, honey, we really need to talk about this later. You need to get out of there now.”

  “You . . . You. That’s why you didn’t want to take the baby. You’re the one . . . Oh my God, Bruno, how awful. Are you sure you’re okay? Where are you? I need to be with you.”

  All of a sudden I realized I needed to talk with Sonja and not Marie. I had to tell Sonja myself. Look her in the eye and tell her what I did to Bosco. I’d been a coward not telling her something so important. What the hell had I been thinking? I needed to fix it.

  I swallowed hard to get the lump out of my throat and said to Marie, “Are you out of the room?”

  “Yes, in the hall, moving to the elevator.”

  “Okay, grab a cab and find a place with lots of people around. Let me know where it is, and I’ll have the FBI there in a few minutes.”

  I looked up to the rearview to Mike’s eyes. He watched me and nodded, picked up his cell and dialed.

  “Marie, where did Sonja say she wanted to meet?”

  “Joey’s. She said you’d know the place.”

  I pulled the phone down to my chest and said to Mike, “We’re close to the GMC, drop me there and pick up my wife, and please take good care of her. I’ll give you her cell.”

  Back into the phone I said, “Marie, I’m going to meet Sonja. I have to . . . I have to talk to her.”

  “I understand. I love you, Bruno.”

  “I love you, too.” We stayed connected in the silence for a long moment.

  Mike pulled into the shopping center and alongside the GMC. I said, “Gimme your cell.” He handed it to me. I said into my phone, “I’m going to hang up and call you on another phone.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m out front looking for a cab. It’s going to be okay, Bruno, I promise.”

  How could she possibly know that? No way could it be okay, not after what happened, not after what I’d done.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll call you right back on the agent’s phone.”

  I did. She picked up. “I’m handing you over to Mike. He’s a good guy. Stay on the line with him until he picks you up. Love you, babe.”

  I handed the phone over. He took it. “This is Mike, Mrs. Johnson.”

  I got out of the Suburban. It took off, tires screeching, before I even closed the door.

  I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to face Sonja. This would be the most difficult conversation I’d ever had.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  THE HIPPY IN the GMC truck slept prone across the front seat. I opened the door to the stale, sweet scent of marijuana smoke. “Come on, get up. Get out.”

  The FBI cell phone in my pocket rang. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I reached in and shook the guy. “Come on, get out.”

  The guy stirred, got up, and looked around with bloodshot eyes. “What the hell . . . what’s goin’ down?”

  “Get out. Please get out now or I’ll have to drag you out and I don’t wanna do that.”

  “Keep your wigwam on, chief, I’m movin’, I’m movin’.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, here’s the money I promised you.” I handed him the two hundreds, moved him out of the way, and got in.

  “Hey,” he said. “You gonna gimme a ride over to the shop so I can get my wheels?”

  I didn’t have the time. I waved, got in, and took off. The forty or so miles to Chino might take an hour to an hour and a half with traffic on the freeways. I had to get there to get this extraordinary weight lifted off me.

  The phone rang again. I answered it.

  “Bruno, it’s me, Dan.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s out. The video, it’s out.”

  “I know.”

  “Come on back, it’s too dangerous now. You can’t go.”

  “I have to tell Sonja in person. I have to tell her face-to-face.”

  “No you don’t. You don’t owe those people anything. Those men on the freeway were all adults. They made their choices, the wrong choices. You did exactly what I or any other cop would have done under the circumstances. Only we probably wouldn’t have survived, not up against three of them like that. That was a hell of a thing to watch, Bruno. That cop, she wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t interceded.”

  I whispered into the phone what Bobby Ray had said: “Cops would’ve played by the rules. No one else would’ve tossed Bosco out in traffic like that.” I hung up the phone and drove on, my mind working my hands and foot, directing the truck while I wallowed in the dark emotion of it all. Back in the lizard part of my brain, I knew this move, going to see Sonja, to be idiotic. That video would be all over the media. In just minutes after it first hit, it would go worldwide. My God, now the whole world would know what I’d done.

  Including all the Visigoths.

  Including Bobby Ray.

  And worse, far worse, Sonja would know. She’d also know that I’d known all along and had not told her.

  She’d have already seen it on the news or on her computer or phone. She’d have already seen her son flipped out into traffic. Seen that horrible look on his face the moment before—the visual of her son . . .

  The summer sun sat low in the sky by the time I turned onto Pipeline and then into the parking lot of Joey’s Barbeque. The early dinner crowd already started to fill the parking lot. I recognized the large truck backed into the parking slot at the end of the building. The truck I first saw out in front of Bobby Ray’s motorcycle shop, the truck that towed the trailer I rode in, unconscious on the floor, alongside Bobby Ray’s motorcycle. The truck with the Good Sam Club sticker on the bumper.

  Sonja sat behind the wheel of the rig minus the fifth wheel trailer. The mere sight of her made me sick with sorrow and bitter regret over Sebastian, the kid I’d tossed out into traffic.

  I pulled up alongside in the black GMC and rolled down the automatic window on the passenger side. “Sonja, I’m so sorry about Sebastian and—”

  “Not now, not here. Follow me.” She took off before I could say anything more. I backed up and followed her out onto Pipeline, headed west the way I’d just come in, toward the general direction of LA.

  She had looked haggard, her gray hair in disarray, dark half-moons under her eyes . . . and she looked older. She looked twenty years older. She’d somehow turned into an old crone, years before her time, and more so since I’d seen her last in the hospital.

  I drove along behind her and tried to imagine how our conversation would go and couldn’t envision it from any angle. Not those terrible words coming out of my mouth.

  I needed to hear Marie’s voice, hear her confident, soothing words. She’d know what to say and how to say it. I dialed the FBI phone. It went right to Marie’s voice mail. I hung up, and before I could hit redial to try again, it rang.

  I answered it.

  “Bruno,” Dan said, “where are you?”

  I knew right then, based on nothing more than the tone of his voice.

  “Marie? Where’s Marie?” All the poor-me crap, all that sorrow bullshit, went right out the window. Anger rose up and cleared my head, made me think straight like I should’ve been thinking all along. Made me see the terrible mistakes I made in the heat of emotion.

  Hot anger replaced all else.

  “We don’t know,” Dan said.

  I spoke through clenched teeth. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know. Special Agent Mike Donavan picked her and the child up and was headed to a safe house, and that’s the last we heard from them. We’ve got everybody on, and I mean everybody. We’ll find them, I promise you. Where are you? We’re going to come to you.”

  I held the phone to my shoulder and took out the gun from my back waistband. I pulled the magazine; two rounds left. That’s all I needed.

  I said, “You know where I am. You’re tracking this phone.”

  “Bruno, wait for
us. I know you’re angry, I can tell by your voice, and you have every right to be, but there’s more at stake here. Think about this, please.”

  “There’s no more time for talking or waiting. There’s nothing more important than my Marie.” I clicked off. Dan would have an airship headed our way along with a string of FBI vehicles. He wouldn’t trust it to the locals, not something as important as this. I had maybe twenty minutes max. The FBI had a different agenda that they would push no matter what. They wanted the drone and the missiles, the military onboard software. I rolled the window down to toss the phone out just as Sonja turned off the main street onto a side road and into a light industrial area loaded with single-story manufacturing buildings. We’d driven somewhere deep into the west side of Pomona.

  What I saw on that street changed the whole game.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  BASED ON WHAT I saw, the way the scene developed, I didn’t have any time at all to think it through, to put all the pieces together to see if they fit, before I had to act.

  Not far down the curved street, headed right at me, a red Peterbilt semi pulling a forty-foot trailer chugged out of an empty parking lot. The trailer advertised for its company with a large painting on the side, in the style and creative motif of an old-time traveling circus, clearly by the same artist who’d done the airbrush painting on Bobby Ray’s motorcycle.

  The painting stopped me cold, made my mind run at full speed trying to catch up. It depicted a large gray elephant with big floppy ears, happy as he flew through a blue sky loaded with fluffy white clouds. The elephant wore a jaunty hat and a huge smile. Big red letters announced the logo, “Dumbo Auto Parts without a Jumbo price.”

  Nothing more than a ruse, a cover for what really lay inside.

  Jumbo would never put up with being called Dumbo; he hated it. This reeked of Bobby Ray’s morally bankrupt sense of humor—a cute, childlike character painted on a truck hauling a lethal payload.

  Sonja pulled into the same driveway the truck came out of and disappeared from view around the back of that same truck as she drove deeper into the parking area.

  I slowed, and at the last second cut in front of the Peterbilt, making the driver slam on his brakes. I got out, my hand in my pocket, pressing the panic button on the FBI phone. I held down the button and started counting as I waved and smiled at the driver.

  One thousand one.

  One thousand two

  One thousand three.

  I went up to the driver’s window and looked up at a biker with a craggy face and dirty brown hair down to his shoulders. The small black tattoo of a cross in the corner of his right eye disappeared when he squinted.

  “What the hell you think you’re doin’, asshole?” he said. “Get that piece of crap outta the way or I’ll ram it outta the way.”

  One thousand six.

  One thousand seven.

  “Ho, hey, oh, sorry,” I said, as the count continued in my head. “I just wanted to know if this was the warehouse for Jumbo Auto Parts.”

  “Hell, no. Now move it or lose it.”

  I waved again, took a step to the side, and tossed the phone on top of a folded-up blue tarp, the one strapped down with bungee cords in between the semi cab and the trailer. The phone wouldn’t stay there long, a few miles anyway. But maybe long enough.

  I’d just tossed away my safety net. I’d just tossed away Marie’s safety net.

  I got back in the GMC and went to find Sonja’s truck.

  She had parked right out in the open by a shorter, smaller side door next to a larger roll-up door. The faded, defunct sign above the small door read Heavy Metal Extractors Inc.

  She stood next to her truck with her arms crossed, her eyes watching me park and get out.

  “You bastard.”

  I thought in this situation that as soon as she spoke I’d slink away like the dirty, low-down dog that I was. I no longer felt that way, not with Marie’s safety at stake.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  Her expression of contempt turned to confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “Marie’s gone.”

  She said, “What the . . . What about my grandbaby?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She ran to the side door, yanked on the knob, and disappeared inside.

  I drew the Smith .45, held it down by my leg, and followed her. Just before I went across the threshold, I looked up. A small closed-circuit TV camera, an older model under the high eave, watched all who entered. Bobby Ray knew I was coming. Nothing I could do about it.

  We moved through a small office with a dusty and cluttered counter, right on to the pass-thru door and out into the warehouse.

  The warehouse looked immaculate: stacked boxes, a big yellow forklift, shelving with more boxes. Lots of boxes marked Lamboni Bros. Stereos, Big Steve’s Appliances, or Dentco Inc.

  Shipping and receiving central for Bobby Ray’s gun-smuggling operation.

  And Sonja brought me right to it.

  She didn’t plan on letting me survive this little meeting.

  In the open bay area sat the sleek new van from the meet with Jumbo at the Sears parking lot, the one Bobby Ray had looked out from.

  He now sat at a desk in the center of the bay with his feet up. Monster stood right next to him, Bobby Ray’s bulldog ready to be let loose. Neither overtly carried a gun.

  I raised the Smith .45 just as Sonja yelled at Bobby Ray. “What the hell? What’d you do with my grandbaby? I told you not to mess with my grandchild, you son of a bitch.”

  “You need to settle the fuck down, woman.” He stood and hooked his thumbs in his belt.

  Monster started toward me.

  Bobby Ray wore a black leather vest with Visigoths embroidered on the right chest. On the left side in smaller letters he had President. He wanted me to be sure what happened to me next came from the Goths’ organization, the revenge for what had happened out on the freeway. He grinned and said to me, “So you—”

  I shot Monster in the knee. He went down in a heap and rolled to his side, put both hands on his leg, his fingers instantly going red. The gunshot echoed off the boxes with a loud slap. A cloud of white gun smoke rose in the still air.

  I pointed the .45 at Bobby Ray, who’d reached behind his back for his weapon. He’d gotten slow being president and not having to get his hands dirty.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’m not in a good mood. I only need one of you alive to tell me where my wife is. And the way things are going, I’d just as soon make it Monster. I don’t like you very much, Bobby Ray.” I spit his name out. “So do yourself a favor. Take it out slow and toss it on the floor.”

  He froze, his hand behind his back. He didn’t lose his grin. “You think I didn’t know you were coming, dickhead? You think I’d just let you waltz in here big as you please and throw down on me if I wasn’t holdin’ trump?”

  Monster rolled and moaned, leaking on the clean floor.

  I had one round left in the gun. That’s all I needed for Bobby Ray.

  Sonja stuck a gun to the side of my head. “Gimme the gun, Bruno.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  WE’D BEEN PARTNERS, worked a patrol car together. That should’ve meant a lot. We were friends. We were lovers. All that didn’t count for shit. I kept the gun pointed at Bobby Ray and said, “You want me to shoot your husband?”

  She took her eyes off me and looked at him. She thought about it for a long moment and finally said, “Go ahead. Do what you gotta do, Bruno, ’cause if you pull that trigger it’ll be your last conscious act.”

  I slowly nodded. “Just tell me if Marie’s okay.”

  “Sure she is,” Bobby Ray said. “She’s in the van with the baby. She’s a great nanny. Great ass on that, too, congrats.” He waved his gun. “After all this is over, I think we’ll keep her on.”

  Sonja stepped back, taking her gun out of range of my hands. She looked at Bobby Ray and said, “You brain-dead twit, what the hell’s the matter with you, bringin
g a child into a thing like this?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that, Sonja. Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. We’re about to be multimillionaires, and if I don’t want to, I never have to listen to you piss and moan at me ever again. So watch your mouth, woman.”

  I yelled, “Marie. Marie, come on out of the van.”

  On the other side of the van came the sound of the van door sliding open. Marie came around the back end. She wore black slacks and a red knit top and looked scared. I let out a long breath when I saw she was okay.

  “They hurt you, baby?”

  She didn’t answer, just shook her head.

  Sonja said, “Where’s my grandchild?”

  Marie pointed back at the van. “Inside asleep, but he won’t be if you crazy bastards keep firing those guns. Think of the child. Bullets can go right though the side of that van.”

  “You mean like this?” Bobby Ray fired.

  The round slammed into my hip. A searing pain spun me around like an out-of-control top. I went to the floor.

  The cool concrete floor.

  The .45 Smith left my hand and clattered out of my view. One round left in it.

  “Bruno!”

  Marie ran toward me. Bobby Ray caught her arm and slapped her across the face with his gun. She stopped clawing and kicking. He held her under her arm, slumped in his big hand. Her eyes rolled up, showing the whites under tented lids.

  “Leave her alone.” My words came out with only half the strength I intended. The intense pain snatched at the words on their way out.

  Bobby Ray said, “Tape her to the chair. She can watch what we’re going to do to her husband. Hurry, before he bleeds out. I hit him pretty hard, he’s bleedin’ good.”

  Sonja hesitated, then walked on wooded feet toward Marie, whom Bobby Ray held up like some sort of limp dishrag.

  I didn’t have any weapons left. Sonja had tossed me to the curb when she put the gun to my head. She’d made her choice. I now owed her nothing.

  “Bobby Ray, you’d better think about that for a minute,” I said. “Sonja here’s flipped, she’s working for the feds.” I’d made it up on the fly. I had nothing left to use but words.