Two in the Head

by Eric Beetner

  “Samantha,” he said and put his other hand over mine.

  “Yeah, it’s me.” I smiled. God that felt good. Not as good as when he hugged me. I almost forgot what it felt like. He held on tight, like we were floating in a raft away from a sinking ship. All we had was each other. He kissed me. I didn’t expect it. He came in hard and we knocked teeth, found trouble lining up our lips. He seemed desperate for more touch, more contact as if my skin held the only proof of my identity.

  I held on, kissed him back. Took strength from him. Also, in the back of my head I thought if this is how I go, not a bad way to end it all.

  We broke our embrace and I looked him in the eye. “We gotta go.”

  “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  “It can wait.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. You need to lead me out of here like I’m blind. You need to be quiet as you can. Wait,” I said.

  I reached up over my head and felt along the table top until I found the note pad and pen next to his keyboard. I brought them down under the table and kept my eyes straight ahead as I wrote. I’m sure my penmanship looked like a first grader when I wrote:

  Play music. Distraction. Lure her.

  I had no idea if it would work. She might be reading my thoughts now to know it is a fake, she might be simply smarter than to fall for an old trope like that one. Even if it got us a split second of distraction it would be worth it.

  I couldn’t feel her inside my head. Hopefully she got frustrated with my eyes-down approach and decided to hold off on the headache and search on her own. She also might be waiting at the end of the table with her gun out waiting for us to pop or heads up like gophers ready for target practice.

  I’d learned to stop guessing.

  Lucas nodded to my notepad plan. “I do need to tell you something though.”

  “Fine, what?” I said, a hint of bitchiness in my voice. I’d never been so proud of my bad attitude.

  “I knew.”

  I blinked at him. “What?”

  “I knew about you. About Calder and Rizzo. I knew.”

  Another Daddy-ism came to mind: Could have knocked me over by blowing a kiss.

  “You knew?” My brain, taxed enough over the last few days, did not compute.

  “Not when we met, but a few months after. I knew you were working with them. We had guys, investigators, watching them. They saw you.”

  If I’d had anything in my stomach I would have thrown up.

  He saw me starting to reel and sped up his explanation. “I knew you had to have your reasons and Blake finally explained yesterday. They were gonna kill you. I knew it had to be something like that. But then I knew you would be my star witness. I knew you’d testify against them. I knew you’d do the right thing.”

  “Jesus Christ, Lucas…”

  “I know. I just want you to know I still love you. I stayed with you, I still loved you, even after I knew. I want you to know in case we…”

  Die in here, is what he left off. My God, if we did, how long until somebody found us?

  I CAN’T GO FOR THAT (NO CAN DO)

  I know it sounds irrational—but his confession pissed me off.

  I don’t know exactly why. I hadn’t been as good of a cover up girl as I thought? He kept a secret from me? He didn’t immediately offer to help? He planned on using me for his case?

  Answer: D) all of the above.

  Sure, I’m still the one who done wrong. This evened the score a tiny bit. Right?

  Well, we sure would have something to talk about on cold nights while speaking through bullet proof glass during visiting hours at the penitentiary.

  If he could get us out of here, that is.

  “Lucas,” I said. “We really have to go.”

  He poked his head up, moved his mouse and found his music player on the computer, clicked the mouse and it sounded like a shotgun. Too late for being subtle now.

  He spun the volume on his speakers and took my hand and we bolted down a row of metal shelves.

  I shut my eyes and kept my head down, let myself be led to the blaring Hall and Oates soundtrack. Oh Lucas, you sweet little nerd. So out of touch. Hall and Oates? For a daring escape?

  Being blind was terribly disorienting. Turns came unexpectedly, We made more of them than I remember coming in. He weaved a haphazard trail out. Good.

  I searched for her eyes, found them moving fast down indistinguishable rows of file shelving. We could turn a corner at any second and come face to face with her. I needed to trust Lucas.

  Now, again, I know it sounds hypocritical, but some of that trust had been broken. The idea he let me stay in a dangerous agreement with two notorious drug kingpins kinda pissed me off a bit. Now that I started gaining the capacity to even be pissed off again, I’d found a place to focus my anger.

  What if something had gone wrong? Would he step in to save me? And would my testimony be given in exchange for immunity? Or would he see me sent off to prison anyway, my usefulness spent on his career-making case?

  I assumed Sam heard his confession as well. And to think she wanted him dead before. Man, what the hell would she do to him if she caught us now?

  “This way,” he tugged on my arm, pulling me around another corner. “Almost there.”

  Hall and Oates went dead. She’d made it there, and we were almost out. I knew she would be listening for our footsteps and she’d track us quickly. Still, we’d made it far enough to have a chance.

  And then what? How many more times would she catch us? Like a light switch flicking, I’d grown tired of running.

  I had no more secrets to keep. No more lives to protect. I wanted it all to be over. Right then and there.

  We smashed through the double doors and Lucas pulled me into a sprint down the hall.

  “There’s a door directly into the parking garage from this floor,” he said.

  I opened my eyes again, saw myself running away from the solution.

  “Lucas, wait.” I tugged on his hand, slowing him down.

  “What is it? Let’s go.”

  “No, wait.” I came to a stop. Lucas gave me an anxious look. “I’m sorry.”

  He panted for breath. “Is this the best time for that?”

  “For everything. For getting you mixed up in my mess.” His eyes kept watch on the door behind me. “For this.”

  With everything left in my brain, I brought my arm back, made a sloppy fist around the gun in my belt, brought it forward and drove the butt of Blake’s pistol across Lucas’s temple.

  FACE TO FACE

  As he fell I could tell he wasn’t out. The look on his face was confused, and a little betrayed. He must have thought he’d been wrong all along and I was really her.

  The hard slap against the tile floor—that’s what knocked him out.

  I lifted his legs and slid him backward to the stairwell, bumped the door open with my butt and dragged him in.

  I started walking back to the fire doors on the library. If I could smack Lucas in the face, I may have a chance with her. Maybe.

  I made it about half way down the hall before she came bursting out. She stopped almost immediately, coming to an awkward stop with a slight limp from the second of Blake’s two bullets in her.

  Marjorie’s Smith and Wesson, already in her hand, came up to look me in the eye.

  “Where is he?”

  I stood still, looked her square, unblinking. Neither one of us bothered to be inside the other one’s head. We could see everything worth seeing from where we stood. I said, “What are we doing?”

  The question threw her. I kept my gun at my side, trying to be as non-threatening as possible.

  “You kill Lucas,” I said. “Then what?”

  She froze up like someone forced to give an impromptu speech. “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly. So why do it?”

  Before, two days ago, she woul
d have blurted out some cold blooded answer making her sound more machine than human. Now she paused.

  Balance. A hesitation. It was all I was gonna get right then.

  “There’s a lot of things we don’t know,” I said. I lifted my gun to meet hers in a staring contest. She realized the Samantha behind the gun was a different one than who came down the steps at Marjorie’s house. Something in my eyes, the way I held my body. I felt it, she saw it. “We still don’t know what happens if one of us dies.”

  “You saying you want to find out?”

  “I’m saying I want this to be over. You heard him, right?”

  “He knew.”

  “Yeah. He knew. So all of this has been for nothing. All the hiding, the lying, the making excuses to our self. All bullshit.” Ah, a little light profanity sure does spice up a conversation don’t it? You don’t miss it until it’s gone.

  “So go ahead,” she said. “Pull the trigger, you feel so sure about yourself.” Her aim stayed true. Surprisingly, so did mine.

  “We’re done anyway. You know that, right? Prison, probably for a long time. You can’t run forever. We couldn’t keep out of trouble, even on Calder and Rizzo’s payroll. Did we really think we could?” She listened attentively. I kept going, expecting to get cut off by a bullet any second. “What part of you kept the cotton in my ears and blinders over my eyes? I’m a decent person. I used to live inside you. And now? The good part of us? It’s all here for the looking. All out on top.”

  We stood maybe fifteen feet apart. Arms out at right angles to our bodies, hunks of black steel at the end of each. I kept my speech going.

  “I love him. I fucked him over, got him into this with your help. I’ve blown it for so many people. Cranner and Blake and Marjorie. But Lucas, I’d take a bullet for him. I would do it to make up for the lies. A bullet to burn away the guilt. Question is—do I shot myself, or does myself shoot me?”

  “You really want to find out?”

  “Don’t you?”

  She adjusted the grip on her gun. “Guess my twenty million isn’t gonna happen.”

  “Nope.”

  “And our face is wanted by the cops, huh?”

  “Cops, DEA, FBI. You name it. Homegrown terrorists, that’s what we are.”

  “Then I guess there’s nothing left to fight for.”

  “Not true,” I said. I held my aim, kept my eyes on hers despite the growing pain in my head. Napalm crept up the insides of my skull, ran fire down my veins out to my finger resting on the trigger. “We still have ourself to fight for. Which one is it gonna be?”

  A slow smile crept across her face. A face that looked so damn familiar.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Stereo gunshots in a concrete basement hallway. Damn, that had to be the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.

  DING DONG THE WHICH IS DEAD?

  Blake sat up in bed, laughing at something Lucas said. I watched them from outside Blake’s hospital room. Never thought I’d see them paling around together. I guess it was good to see them laughing but, something about it unsettled me too.

  I’d waited outside long enough. Blake would get out tomorrow or the next day, Lucas already had stitches in his head and a sling over his shoulder keeping his right arm in place from the dislocation when he hit the floor. All patched up and ready to go.

  My leg still hurt, random aches and pains all over my body from the last three days. Any agency psychologist will tell you it’s not the physical scars you need worry about.

  One big problem was off my plate at least. Her. Dead and gone. We were wrong. When one dies, we didn’t both die. Some sort of bypass switch got hit. I didn’t even feel the bullet once she closed her eyes for good.

  The DEA was so turned around by the fucked up mess of it all they still hadn’t caught up to me. I helped Lucas to his feet in the stairwell and didn’t let him look back. We drove straight here. He insisted on seeing Marjorie before he got patched up. Guess I understood since she is his sister after all. My brief experience with having a sister was not typical, I realize that. For her, what did Daddy used to say? I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire. Don’t think Daddy ever said it about a woman though.

  So, yeah, enough loitering in the hall. Time to get in there and take the next step. What comes after, I still don’t know. No way to plan ahead with something as crazy as what I’ve been through.

  Now that the balance is returning, this next bit won’t be easy. Not one bit. Saying goodbye never is. My two favorite guys in the world.

  Funny, all the security at my office, Lucas’s office, hell, a fucking post office these days has more security than a hospital. A girl could bring a knife in here and not even have to worry about hiding it.

  The gun I left behind. Too much noise anyway. Around here? They got needles, scalpels, chemicals, anything you need. Me? All I need is my knife and two minutes alone with these guys.

  Not gonna be easy. No, sir. But I didn’t come this fucking far for a dry hump. Might as well be one of those sorry bitches who gets left at the altar. No, that’s not me anymore.

  Only wish that goody-goody cunt could have been alive to see it.

  Back to TOC

  ERIC BEETNER has been described as “the James Brown of crime fiction—the hardest working man in noir.” (Crime Fiction Lover) and “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson” (LitReactor). He has written more than 20 novels including Rumrunners, Leadfoot, The Devil Doesn’t Want Me, The Year I Died 7 Times and Criminal Economics. His award-winning short stories have appeared in over three dozen anthologies. He co-hosts the podcast Writer Types and the Noir at the Bar reading series in Los Angeles where he lives and works as a television editor.

  EricBeetner.com

  Back to TOC

  BOOKS BY ERIC BEETNER

  The McGraw Crime Series

  Rumrunners

  Leadfoot

  The Lars and Shane Series

  The Devil Doesn’t Want Me

  When the Devil Comes to Call

  The Devil at Your Door

  The Fightcard Series

  Fightcard: Split Decision

  Fightcard: A Mouth Full of Blood

  The Lawyer Western Series

  Six Guns at Sundown

  Blood Moon

  The Last Trail

  Stand Alones

  The Year I Died Seven Times

  Criminal Economics

  Nine Toes in the Grave

  Dig Two Graves

  White Hot Pistol

  Stripper Pole at the End of the World

  A Bouquet of Bullets (stories)

  All the Way Down

  Two in the Head

  Dark Duet: Two Noir Novellas

  With JB Kohl

  Over Their Heads

  Borrowed Trouble

  One Too Many Blows to the Head

  The Bricks and Cam Job Series (with Frank Zafiro)

  The Backlist

  The Short List

  The Getaway List

  As Editor

  Unloaded Volume 1

  Unloaded Volume 2

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview from Final Cut, a Vince McNulty thriller by Colin Campbell.

  Click here for a complete catalog of titles available from Down & Out Books and its divisions and imprints.

  ONE

  Vince McNulty never had a childhood. He went straight from damaged orphan to troubled man with one swing of the Bible and a broken nose. Not his nose. At Crag View Orphanage. He missed out on all the things other kids enjoyed like devoted parents and trips to the seaside. His only pleasure was the movies. Not, going-to-the-cinema movies, but Sunday afternoon films on TV. Growing up to be a cop was a direct response to the broken nose. Working in Hollywood was the result of all those Sunday afternoons.

  “McNulty.”

  The producer shouted across the parking lot.

 
“Can you get this guy to stop walking like a duck?”

  Okay, so Titanic Productions wasn’t exactly Hollywood, but it was the movies. McNulty stood beside Larry Unger and glanced at the actor who was trying to look like a cop.

  “I know lots of cops who walk like ducks.”

  Unger turned to his technical adviser.

  “In England, maybe. Here in America they walk like John Wayne.”

  “I thought you wanted this to look real.”

  “John Wayne is real.”

  McNulty shook his head.

  “John Wayne wasn’t even John Wayne.”

  Unger raised his eyebrows.

  “Doesn’t matter. In America cops walk like John Wayne. Haven’t you heard of the John Wayne syndrome?”

  McNulty was fighting a losing battle, but he was going to fight it anyway.

  “That’s more to do with the mindset. You know, wading in to save the day. More cops die because they think they’re invincible than anything else. That’s the John Wayne syndrome.”

  Unger glared at McNulty.

  “What am I paying you for? To be my shrink now?”

  He indicated the actor standing next to the makeup trailer.

  “Get him to walk like a movie cop.”

  McNulty let out a sigh and nodded his understanding. Like they said in that John Wayne movie about shooting Liberty Valance, when the truth gets in the way of the legend, print the legend. Looking at the narrow-shouldered pipsqueak playing the lead, he reckoned he was going to have his work cut out for him.

  “Alfonse.”

  He strolled over to the struggling actor.

  “Let’s go through this walking thing again.”

  The movie circus that Vince McNulty had run away to join was filming in Quincy, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. It couldn’t replace the brotherhood of blue that all ex-cops missed, but it was more family than he’d had growing up. Vince loved the movies. He felt like the kid who joined the Big Top because he liked clowns and lion tamers. Titanic Productions had plenty of clowns. There weren’t many lion tamers. That’s why Larry Unger employed McNulty. McNulty’s query letter laid out his qualifications.