The Heartless

by David Putnam

  Payaso shrugged. “Not my Monopoly game, jefe.”

  Borkow wanted to slap the back of his head for his non-answer.

  The girl and her boyfriend hurried over to a sun-faded VW Rabbit, got in, and took off.

  “Yeah, for right now I think sending a message is the way to handle it. Go on,” Borkow said. “Follow them. We got some time.” He reached across the small table, took Lizzette’s hand, and squeezed. She tried to smile, but failed.

  “She’s just a kid, Louis.”

  “Now, Lizzy, honey, this is none of your business.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  PAYASO FELL IN behind the VW Rabbit and followed at a distance that made Borkow nervous about losing them. He couldn’t tell Payaso anything; the man went his own way.

  Lizzette continued to watch Borkow as if he were some kind of animal. He’d have to work on getting back her trust.

  “Hey,” he said to her, “come on, ease up on me. I want it to be like it was. You screwed up, I spanked you a little, and it’s over. Let’s move on, okay? Pretend like it never happened, okay?”

  “Really? You’re serious?”

  He held out his hands wide. “It’s me, baby, and you’re my best girl. You know that.”

  She nodded and used both palms to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. “If you’re sure, Louis. I am real sorry. I do want it back the way it was. You just tell me what you want me to do to show you that you can trust me, and I’ll do it.”

  “Good deal, then that’s the way it’s going to be. I owe you a great debt for getting me out. That was really something, a feat of unbelievable skill and daring. No one but you could’ve pulled it off. To prove my sincerity, I’m going to let you have that pair of shoes after all.”

  She shot him a genuine smile. “You don’t have to do that, Louis, really you don’t.”

  “So, you don’t want them?” He smiled back, despite the queasiness in his stomach. The rolling hulk of the RV was a lumbering land yacht traveling a sea of uneven concrete.

  “I didn’t say that. Of course, I’ll take them, if you’re really offering them.”

  He picked up her damp hand. “Ah, baby girl, if I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think you only loved me for the shoes I give you.”

  “That’s not true and you know it.” She smiled again, this time trying for coy and missing the mark. “I also love you for your money.”

  “Of course you do.” He didn’t have any true friends, only leeches who hung on him for financial gain.

  He shifted in his seat to focus outside the front windshield. The heat and Lizzette’s body odor exacerbated his discomfort, taking him to the edge of embarrassing himself. He was about to tell Payaso to pull over when the Rabbit found a place to park on the street with a quick jerk of the wheel and a sudden display of brake lights. Payaso went on by and pulled into the parking lot of Lucy’s Mexican takeout. Oddly, though the RV had stopped, the floor seemed to keep moving. Borkow staggered to his feet. “I’m going out to get some air.”

  “Not a good idea, mi amigo. Let me go. I’ll get you something cold to drink and a couple of orders of enchilada con mole. They make it good here, even better than mi tia, and that’s saying something.”

  Borkow put his hand to his mouth and belched. The thought of eating anything at all, especially something spicy, repulsed him. “No. I said I’m going.” He put on his sunglasses and ball cap. At the edge of the couch, from the large carpetbag that used to belong to Lizzette, he reached in and took out his blue windbreaker. He shrugged into it. The heaving floor started to subside; the land yacht had officially dropped anchor.

  Lizzette watched him carefully.

  He said, “You hungry? You want me to get you something?”

  She shook her head. She was going to bolt. Too bad. When he got back, he’d have to fix it so she couldn’t—maybe take Payaso’s hammer to her foot. Maybe not the foot, but the knee.

  She put her hand out and touched his. She whispered, “Please don’t leave me here with him. Let me go with you.”

  “My friend Payaso won’t hurt you. Will you, Payaso?”

  Payaso, his hands still on the big steering wheel, looked up in the rearview at them and said nothing.

  Borkow shrugged. “See, everything is cool.” He reached into the bag to feel around for the knife and found it along with another little tool he’d forgotten about. He put them both in the pocket of the windbreaker. “I won’t be long. I just need to send that big black bastard of a bailiff a message. Then we’ll get back to the gym, pronto. You and I will take a nice sauna and a swim. How’s that sound?”

  “That sounds great, Louis.”

  “Excellent, then it’s a date.”

  He went out the side door and down the one step to the black asphalt parking lot. He took a moment to breathe in the hot summer air.

  Cars on Long Beach Boulevard zipped by. He watched to see if any of the passengers or drivers did a double take and recognized him from all the recent press coverage. Paranoia—or vanity?

  No way anyone could identify him with his disguise. He took in two large breaths, held them for a moment, and let them out. Ah, better already.

  He looked inside the windshield as he walked around the RV. Payaso had left the driver’s seat and he now sat on the diner couch next to Lizzette. He’d placed his six-pound sledge on the table to menace her. Payaso didn’t like Lizzette. She hadn’t told him about living in the Santa Monica apartment with Twyla and that they were lovers. Both girls worked for Borkow, and two girls like that were not good for business. Payaso wanted the go-ahead to get ugly with Lizzette over her disloyalty. Borkow wouldn’t give it.

  Borkow shrugged and moved into the patio area, where a couple dozen people sat at picnic tables eating their chalupas, their chipotle, and churros. He stood in the long line waiting to order at the outside window. He kept both his hands in his windbreaker pockets, his ball cap low over his brow. His fingers clutched the knife in its sheath.

  In the parking lot, the RV shimmied a little. Now what the hell was Payaso up to? When he got back, Lizzette better be just the way he’d left her, or else.

  Or else what? How could he possibly threaten a man like Payaso? The day would come when he’d have to deal with that problem, Payaso’s blatant insubordination. He’d need Payaso a little longer though to take out that big black bastard of a bailiff. The way things were going, Payaso might be the only one capable of doing it.

  The wind created by the passing cars and trucks on Long Beach Boulevard fluttered the tattered wheel cover of the spare tire attached to the back of the RV. It drew his attention. The cover touted a smiling, hand-painted mug of a man, one with big black hair, and the words underneath declaring him a member of something called “The Good Sam Club.” Yes, that’s exactly what his new hideout qualified as, a rolling Good Sam Club in need of a couple of new members.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  THE LINE AT the outdoor window moved at a snail’s pace. Borkow moved up another couple of steps and came even with the picnic table not two feet away from the little chavala western where she sat with her smartass boyfriend. That’s what Payaso had called the girl, a chavala western.

  She clutched both hands of her boyfriend in hers, her adoring eyes eating him up as if he were a hot fudge sundae with extra whipped cream. Ah, young love, who could remember what that was like?

  She had the most inviting green eyes. Borkow leaned back a little to inspect her feet. She wore a pair of sandals. Like most women, she’d not emulsified her dark skin well enough. Her feet looked a tinge dusky. But her bone structure on display in those cheap peasant sandals was nothing short of pure art. With art like that you could work on the dusky. He’d even rub the lotion in himself. The thought made a warmth rise to his face. His eyes fell to a silver-colored ring on her big toe that made his heart skip a beat. What a perfect touch of … of what? Innocent style? Or maybe truth?

  “So please, please tell me where you were? How come you
didn’t call me?” the girl asked.

  The smartass kid leaned in and kissed her again for the umpteenth time since Borkow had started watching them. The kid didn’t want to tell the girl where he’d been and thought he could sidetrack that undeterred determination with a little lip distraction. Might’ve worked had the girl not been the daughter of that hard-headed bailiff.

  The kid kept looking at the receipt in his hand for the number to their food order to pop up at the take-out window, hoping for that interruption to save him.

  “Derek, come on, look at me. I want you to tell me.”

  He still hesitated and stared at her.

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Okay. I will. If you really want me to, I will. I’ll do it. You’re not going to like it, though. I’m telling you right now, you’re not going to be happy about it. When I do tell you, you’re gonna somehow turn it around and blame it on me. I’m going to get all the blame when I was the one minding my own business when it happened. I was the one just standing out there on Central at a pay phone talking to you.”

  Her expression shifted from anger to confusion to fear. The young never hid their emotions well. That’s what made them such easy victims. They need to mask it early on—a survival technique—or the street would eat them.

  “So, tell me right now if you really want me to tell you. I will. I’ll tell you.”

  She hesitated and nodded. “Yes, I do. Please tell me.”

  He took hold of her hands, looked into her eyes, and squirmed one more time. Before saying anything, he checked around again. Over her shoulder, his gaze stopped on Borkow as he stood in line looking back at them. The kid’s eyes tried to peel back Borkow’s disguise, as if the kid had caught a whiff of recognition even through the ball cap and sunglasses and bulky windbreaker. Now this kid was a survivor.

  Borkow didn’t look away. He’d never met the kid in person; the kid had taken his payoff via Payaso. Borkow had talked to him on the phone that one time from the jail when he’d ordered up the distraction at the house on Pearl. The boys on Pearl went a little overboard when they socked him up to make it look good. He still carried the bruising and swelling on his face. The dumb little shitass.

  Borkow dropped his head a little and lowered his dark sunglasses so only the kid could see and smiled at him.

  The kid sat straight up. His mouth dropped open. His eyes went large. He must have seen Borkow on the news reports, the most wanted man in the seven western states. His face plastered all over every news broadcast for the last forty-eight hours.

  The girl whipped around to see what had caused that kind of reaction in her boyfriend. But Borkow had moved his sunglasses back in place and turned away.

  Borkow watched the reflection in the take-out window. The kid grabbed his girl’s hand and pulled on her. “Come on. Come on, we have to get out of here. Now!”

  “What are you talking about? What about our food? What’s going on?”

  “Forget the food, come on, we have to go!” He tugged her off the bench so hard she stumbled into the line of customers. Borkow turned, put his hands out, and caught her so she wouldn’t fall to the ground and skin her lovely naked knees on the rough asphalt. “Take it easy there, little girl. You could fall and break your nose. You might even skin up those lovely feet. That would be a terrible shame.” She looked up at him, scowled as if he were some sort of perv, and immediately shifted her attention back to the kid.

  Borkow resented the implication. He gripped the knife in his pocket.

  The kid pulled on her arm, his eyes not leaving Borkow. “Come on. Come on.”

  They hurried away.

  Borkow took a deep breath, smiled, and watched them flee to the Rabbit. They got in and chirped the tires as they sped off to a safer haven. Only there wasn’t any place safe for those two.

  Borkow decided to stay in line. He bought Payaso an enchilada con mole along with some Horchata. He also bought churros for Lizzette. She was sitting back at the table in the RV. Lizzette, his very own chavala western, who was also waiting to tell him something important, something she, too, was dying to say.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  STUNNED, I STOOD in the abandoned garage, but I did have the peace of mind to hold on to Twyla’s wrist. Had I let her go, she’d have fled on skinny legs and been difficult to chase down in an open-field pursuit. I tugged her deeper into the dimness to get a closer look.

  Just like every deputy on the department, I’d worked MCJ—Men’s Central Jail—and had stood my share of watches in Visiting while relatives and friends on the freedom side of the reinforced glass windows visited with the confined—both the sentenced and the presentence inmates.

  Before me stood a four-window mock-up that represented a section of Visiting in MCJ. The staged set even had the stainless-steel shelf under the window, and the stainless-steel round seats where the visitors sat. The cost to fabricate a structure that picture-perfect would be enormous. The frames to the windows didn’t have any paint. All the bolts’ heads were exposed and shiny from overuse. A few even lay scattered on the shelf below the window, a couple on the bare concrete floor.

  I yanked on Twyla’s arm, spun her around, and sat her on one of the seats. I pointed at the windows as anger rose inside me. She’d been a part of this, a party to Gloria Bleeker’s violent death.

  “Do you know what this means? Do you know that someone has died? That someone has been brutally murdered by getting her head caved in because of your involvement in this escape?”

  Nicky interrupted, “They caved her head in?”

  I looked up. I caught her eyes. I was sorry for letting too many words slip. I didn’t so much as nod an affirmative response, but she understood just the same.

  I turned back to Twyla. “Do you know what that exposes you to as far as time in the can?” I looked back at Nicky, who had gone back to leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

  “I can easily get her twenty-five to life. She’ll do three-quarters time, eighteen years, minimum before even thinking about parole.”

  “Eighteen years? Did you hear that, Twyla? You want to go away for two decades?”

  She shrugged out of my grasp. “I can’t rat on Louis. I won’t do it. I’d be dead. Twenty years in the can is better than dead any day of the week.” Tears filled her eyes and flowed down her narrow cheeks. “Damn you, Johnson, why’d you have to come here now, this minute? Ten more minutes I would’ve been gone. You can go ahead and stick a fork in me, I’m done, my life’s over.”

  Nicky said, “We’ll give you protection. No one will get to you if you give us Borkow.”

  Twyla looked up at me and hooked her thumb over toward Nicky. “What world’s she livin’ in, huh? You know better, Johnson. Go on, tell her. Tell her how that really works. You’ll put me up in some sleazebag motel until the trial, feedin’ me cold pizza and Chinese. Then once you get what you want outta me, it’ll be a big thanks for showin’ up and good luck with the rest of your life, which isn’t going to be too long once I rat.”

  I sat down on the steel stool one over from her. I wanted to show that I trusted her just a little.

  “Come on, let’s book her ass, Bruno,” Nicky said. “We can move down the line to the next associate. Give someone else the opportunity to help themselves if she won’t do it.”

  I shot Nicky a hard look. She didn’t have to be so coldhearted. I liked her a little less for it.

  Twyla looked at me with tear-filled eyes. Her chin quivered.

  My voice came out in a whisper. “What’s it going to be, Twyla?”

  “No. I like breathin’ too much.”

  I nodded. “All right, what about Sammy Ray?”

  Her back straightened. Something flashed behind her eyes as she thought about it as a real possibility. Then she slumped back. “He’s not much better. Everyone on the inside and out is afraid of him, too. I might live a day or two longer if I ratted on him. So no, I don’t think so.”

&nb
sp; I nodded and thought about it for a minute. Nicky started to say something, but I held up my hand. She shut her mouth and continued to stand, leaning against the doorframe, arms across her chest.

  “Okay,” I said. “What if I do a little changeup in the game?”

  Nicky raised her hand. “Hold it, Bruno, maybe we should talk outside before you say something my office isn’t ready to back up.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “If she helps us out, you said you were prepared to let her walk on the accessory ‘after the fact’ charge, right?”

  Nicky hesitated. “Sure, along with a three-year probation tail. Someone died, Bruno. I’m not in the business of giving away the store.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Twyla said. “I’m not gonna rat.”

  “Just hear me out. What if no one hears about you ratting? What if we just happen onto Louis and take him down. No one has to find out that it came from a tip from you. We don’t need you to testify on the escape charge; we can find plenty of witnesses for that.”

  Twyla’s eyes lost focus as she thought over this new offer. She started shaking her head before she spoke. “No, Louis isn’t human. He’ll find out or he’ll figure it out somehow. No, I won’t do it. You don’t know him like I do.”

  “Bruno?” Nicky said.

  “Okay, hold on, hold on. What about that same deal for Sammy Ray? Little Genie?”

  She nodded. “You’re sayin’ the same deal with him? That all I have to do is tell you where to find him and I walk?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Bruno?”

  I held up my hand to silence Nicky before she cheesed the deal that had just started to emerge.

  “I’m an officer of the court, Bruno, I—”

  Twyla ignored Nicky. “Naw, what would I do then? Where would I go?”

  “You were going to go to San Francisco.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, but I was gonna hitch all the way. It’d take me forever doing that, if I made it at all. Lotta creeps on the road today. Then once I got there, where would I stay? I gotta start over.”