The Heartless

by David Putnam

  Wicks pulled a U-turn and stopped behind the line of cars about six back from the Rabbit.

  I grabbed the Ithaca shotgun and jumped out.

  “Bruno, wait. Wait, Bruno, don’t do this.”

  I hurried alongside the cars. Each driver turned scared as I passed. Who wouldn’t be with a big angry black truck driver toting a gauge?

  One car back, Sams saw me in his side mirror. His expression paled and his eyes went wide. He laid on the horn to get the car ahead of him to move. But nothing happened. Everyone froze, front and back, keeping his car pinned.

  I shouldered the shotgun and yelled. “Get out of the car, now.”

  He hit the gas and rammed the car in front of him—bumped it, really. The Rabbit’s engine was too small to do any real damage or to move it at all. There hadn’t been room to get up enough speed.

  He’d fed Olivia to that freak Borkow.

  I aimed the shotgun at his left front tire and fired. The shotgun roared and kicked.

  The tire disintegrated. The front end of the car dropped on that side.

  People in the other cars screamed and ducked and hit their horns. Some pulled out of line and scattered.

  The back tire of the Rabbit spun, smoking white. The two cars in front of him took off in a panic against the red signal. I racked the shotgun and blew out the back tire. The Rabbit gave a little shudder. The rim hit asphalt and spun, grinding a rooster tail of sparks.

  I racked it again. “Last chance,” I yelled. “Get out of the car.”

  With an open path, he took off at low speed on his two rims. I did a quick sidestep around to the other side and blew out the other back tire. He slewed sideways a little out of control, still trying to flee and moving away at seven or ten miles an hour.

  A shadow and a breeze blew past. Wicks, in his big Dodge, came in from a wide arc and slammed into the side of the Rabbit. The small car slid sideways on three rims and one tire. It came to a stop, smoking and hissing.

  I let the shotgun drop to the pavement. The driver’s glass had shattered with the broadside from the Dodge. I reached in and yanked Derek Sams out through the window. He screeched like a little girl, then yelled, “Help! Someone please help me. Please help. Call the police.”

  “Where is she? Tell me where she is.” I had him shoved over the hood of the crumpled Rabbit, pinned there.

  An LAPD cruiser pulled up. Two uniforms jumped out, guns drawn. Wicks, out of the car now, held up his badge. “I’m a lieutenant with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Stand down. Stand down. He’s a wanted fugitive in an ongoing kidnap/murder investigation.”

  I saw and heard it, but was focused only on Sams. I shook him again and lowered my voice. “You’re gonna tell me or so help me this time I will feed you to the fish.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  His quick capitulation stunned me. A small part of me didn’t believe a seventeen-year-old kid could possess such evil. I didn’t want it to be true. “Where is she? Tell me where she is.”

  One of the LAPD officers said, “That’s not right, he’s only a kid.”

  Wicks said, “You have no idea what’s going on here. I’m taking full responsibility. Get back in your car and get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m calling my supervisor.”

  Wicks came closer and leaned in. “We don’t have much time, my friend. We have to move.”

  I pulled a fist back slow to let Sams see what was coming.

  “Hold it,” he said. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all of it. Jus’ don’t hit me.”

  “Then talk. Now.”

  “He’s in one of dem houses on wheels. He’s always movin’ around. I don’t know exactly where.”

  “Bruno,” Wicks said, “grapple his ass up, put him in the car, and let’s get outta here.”

  I pulled Sams off the Rabbit and onto his feet. I half dragged him to the Dodge. I opened the back door and shoved him in. I started to climb in on top of him. Wicks stopped me, his hand tugging on my shoulder. He handed me the shotgun. “You’re driving, no argument, that’s an order.”

  I froze, looked at him, still seeing red, my fists clenched. He shoved me hard. “Snap out of it.”

  That was all I needed. He was right. I took a step back. He got in. Up at the shoulder, the knife wound bled and wet my shirt. The pain still had not made an appearance—that’s how powerful a drug adrenaline could be. I got in the driver’s seat and hit the gas before my door had closed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  IN THE CAR, Wicks sat next to Sams, his forearm across the kid’s shoulder pressing him into the car door. I headed south on Alameda and took the first left to get us out of view of LAPD. Then took another quick right and another left. I kept stealing glimpses in the rearview.

  “Talk to me,” I said to Sams. “Tell me the rest of it.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Wicks leaned in harder. “You’re going to tell us everything we want to know, right now.”

  “Okay. Okay. I tolt ya, it’s one of those houses on wheels.”

  “You mean an RV?” Wicks asked.

  “Yeah, one of them.”

  “Describe it.”

  I let Wicks take the lead on the interrogation. I tried to control my breathing and at the same time drive without piling up the car.

  “It’s ugly, man. I mean, like, it’s fallin’ apart. You’d never think to stop that thing. I mean never. It’s a perfect hideout. I wish I woulda thought of it.”

  Only something a true street thug would say.

  I wanted to ask him all the questions about how he’d betrayed Olivia for the second time. How he’d lured her out of Dad’s house and into the RV. How he did Borkow’s bidding, to send me a message by leaving the socket on the kitchen counter of our apartment. But if he told me those things, I knew I wouldn’t be able to contain my rage. I would pull to the curb, yank the back door open, drag him out, and snap his arms off his body like twigs and beat him with them. Kid or no kid.

  Wicks asked, “What does it look like? Describe it.”

  “It’s got one of those van front ends and that big thing kinda built up on the back. Part of it goes over the top of the van’s front. You know what I’m talkin’ about?”

  “What color is it?” Wicks asked.

  “White and brown. It’s more white with these shit-brown stripes.”

  “You get the plate?”

  Wicks was barking at the moon with that one. Gang bangin’ poo-butts didn’t think to get plate numbers. Especially this one, who cared only about himself.

  “Naw. But it’s got this thing hooked on the very back.”

  “What kind of thing?” I asked.

  “I think it’s a tire or some shit. I couldn’t really tell, but the cover is all shredded, you know, and it’s real easy to spot.”

  “No, I don’t know.” Wicks elbowed him.

  He yelped. “Come on, man, I’m tellin’ it straight. You don’t need to do that.”

  I watched in the rearview mirror. “Hey, take it easy, he’s only a kid.” I really didn’t know where that had come from.

  My pager went off. I checked it. Mike Moore from OSS. “I need to get to a phone, fast.”

  “Don’t just talk about it,” Wicks said. “Go.”

  He pulled away from Sams, took out his handcuffs, and cuffed one of the kid’s hands to the headrest post behind my seat.

  “How many are with Borkow?” Wicks asked.

  “Jus’ that crazy Mexican. He carries a hammer. A big one. You don’t even know he has it until he pulls it out from under his shirt. He almost broke my head with it. He’s mean as a snake.”

  I looked in the rearview and caught Wicks’ eyes. Cortez had used a blunt object like a big hammer on Bleeker and Lizzette.

  “Where does he park the RV?” Wicks asked.

  “I tolt ya, I don’t know that. He just pages me. I call him back, and he tells me where to meet him. That’s all I know.”

  �
��The pager—we could page him,” Wicks said.

  “Nah, he uses pay phones, and he’s given up on me. I’ve tried callin’, and he won’t call me back. He cut me loose.”

  I pulled up onto the sidewalk and drove on it along the front of a small strip center. A woman stood on the sidewalk talking at a phone booth, the kind with a single post and a blue half-dome shell. The headlights made her brighter as we closed in on her. I slowed down to a crawl but didn’t stop. The woman started talking faster and faster as the car drew near. She finally got mad, flipped us the bird, dropped the phone, and hurried away. I moved the car so the booth came right up to my window. I rolled the window down, leaned out, and dialed Mike Moore at the OSS desk.

  “It’s me, Bruno.”

  “Sorry, man, it’s a dead end. I got nothing.”

  The anxiety over finding Olivia quickly returned in force. “Come on, there’s got to be something, anything. I’ll even take the long shots.”

  “Okay, well, county tax records show that two years ago Cortez purchased a piece of property that had been abandoned for taxes. He got it for a song.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And nothing. It’s right next to the Grand Orchid massage parlor. It’s called Muscle Max. No way would he be hiding out in the hottest place in LA. Sorry, Bruno, I tried.”

  “Keep looking. Keep digging.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Please?”

  “You got it. I’ll page you if I turn anything up.”

  “Mike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s driving around in a beat-up RV, white with brown stripes. It has a spare tire on the back and the cover is shredded. Put it out to everyone, you understand? I mean everyone.”

  “You got it, brother. I’m on it.”

  I hung up.

  Wicks said, “That didn’t sound too promising.”

  I shook my head.

  “What did he say?”

  “Cortez—this Payaso—bought a piece of property two years ago.”

  “Well, hell, let’s go.”

  “It’s in the same strip center as the Grand Orchid.”

  “Ah, shit. We checked the Orchid. He ain’t there. I had a car parked down the street. Two guys from the team were watchin’ in case Borkow thought the place cooled off enough to go back after we hit it. It was a long shot, but I had nothing else. I pulled them about four hours ago. Borkow’s not going back there. He knows it’s too hot. I’m sorry, Bruno. What’s our next move?”

  “I’m out of moves.” The words came out in a half-whisper. They tasted too much like a death sentence.

  Sams smartened up and had gone quiet to let the adults talk.

  “Let’s get this kid back to headquarters,” Wicks said, “and really debrief him. He might know something he doesn’t know he knows. We’ll also put an emphasis on that BOLO for the RV. We’ll have every cop in the tri-state area looking for it. It’ll pop.”

  Not likely in four—no, now an hour and a half. We were out of time.

  Wicks said, “We’ll try and page this turd anyway. Something will work. We’ll have Olivia back in a couple of hours. You wait and see if we don’t. Come on, let’s go.”

  I didn’t share his enthusiasm and knew that if I asked him honestly what he really thought, he’d give long odds against it.

  I put the car in gear, turned the wheel, and drove over the curb. We bounced into the street and headed into the empty night.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  BORKOW SAT IN the chaise lounge with the young girl’s feet in his lap about to rub them with aloe-infused lotion as he watched Harold working the weights, his bicep muscles slick and bulging.

  Borkow found it difficult to suffer a fool. Harold fit that category and then some. But he stood six-foot-three and weighed in at two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, the kind of muscle that thumped like hard rubber when you hit it with a ball bat. He’d been one of the muscle heads who practically lived at Muscle Max in its heyday, and when the joint closed, he was cast adrift in an unfamiliar world that lacked routine and discipline. Borkow had found him living inside the closed-down Muscle Max and let him stay on as a property manager of sorts. Though he’d not known Borkow long, Harold had an absolute loyalty toward Borkow, one that had recently been tested in blood. And that was good enough.

  Borkow had told Harold that if he, without hesitation, did what he was told, Borkow would sign the gym over to him when Borkow was finished with it. With that news, Harold’s eyes came alive, and Borkow knew he had Harold’s undivided loyalty no matter what Borkow asked of him.

  Borkow sat on the edge of the chaise lounge and wondered what would happen if he sicced Harold on Payaso. He tried to envision that battle. It would be a David vs. Goliath–type contest. Only this David would be armed with a six-pound sledge instead of a slingshot.

  A slingshot—who believed that drivel? Give Borkow a shield and spear, he’d go up against a kid with a slingshot any day of the week. Who wouldn’t? So if that legend didn’t hold water, then Harold, when the time came, would have better than sixty-forty odds taking down Payaso. No, seventy-thirty, once you factored in all of that hard rubber muscle.

  “Come on, stick your other foot over here.”

  The bailiff’s daughter with the perfect feet lay on the chaise, her hands and her mouth still duct taped. She’d curled up, trying to stay away from him.

  Borkow had wanted to spend more time rubbing more lotion into her feet, but the sickening reek of chlorine in the large room with the pool drove him into the weight room. Brown butcher paper covered all the windows that used to look out onto the front parking lot on one side and the delivery area in the back on the other.

  He’d had Harold carry in the chaise and then the girl. In the back of his mind, he knew it wasn’t the chlorine that had driven him out. It was the bloody splotch on the concrete deck by the pool’s edge, a splotch that wouldn’t come out and constantly drew his eyes back to it. The brownish red stain was the unfortunate residual from Lizzette’s head splat. That’s what really drove him out. It shouldn’t have, but it did. He had to accept that he had a little thing for Lizzette and rued the day she disobeyed him for the last time. She forced him to punish her after repeated warnings. Well, not him, but Payaso with his hammer of Thor.

  Over in the corner, Harold moved to a different weight station. He loaded the bar with four hundred pounds that bent at the ends as he did squats, making his quad muscles swell and reveal thick veins just under the skin. Borkow realized he had traded chlorine for body odor and pulsating muscle.

  He squirted more Vaseline Intensive Care lotion in his hand and applied it to the girl’s foot. She deserved a more gentle and expensive lotion, but such was the life on the lam. Amazing how a little emulsifying can transform a beautiful foot into a flat-out gorgeous one. Yes, he’d be keeping her around a while longer.

  The girl watched his every move as if waiting for him to make the smallest mistake. Foolish little girl. What could she do if he did? It was that defiant gene again, the one she’d inherited from Daddy. He’d have to fix that or she’d end up going the way of Lizzette.

  A loud crash shook the building. Borkow swung the girl’s legs off his lap and jumped up. The window section facing the back side of Muscle Max came down with a clatter as a large boulder rolled in. The tiny cubes of safety glass entangled in the brown butcher paper folded over and rattled down to the floor.

  Stanky Frank stepped through the opening. He held a tire iron in one hand and carried a hateful gleam in his expression.

  Borkow pointed. “Harold!”

  Harold stepped out from under the bar. As he did, he shoved it back. The weights fell to the ground and caused the building’s concrete slab to quake, at least a 3.0 on the Richter Scale.

  Frank roared and came at Borkow. Harold ran to cut him off. He picked up a forty-five-pound weight on his way, picked it up as if it were no heavier than a large dinner plate.
Frank saw he wasn’t going to make it to his goal. He turned to face Harold, who held up the weight chest high like a shield.

  Frank feinted with the tire iron. Harold raised the weight to block. Frank clubbed him in the gut. Harold acted like the attack came from a child with a twig. He shoved the weight toward Frank and let go. It hit him in the chest, knocking him back against the unbroken window. The weight fell and crushed Frank’s foot. He went down moaning, one hand holding his injured belly.

  Harold looked to Borkow for direction, and Borkow put his finger to his neck and drew it across. Without a word spoken, Harold picked up the tire iron and finished off Frank with one sickening whack to the head.

  A noise drew Borkow’s attention. In all the hullabaloo, the girl had gotten up and silently made her way to the broken-out window. Her bare feet crunched the broken glass as she tried to pick her way through. She was ruining those lovely feet. They were going to be all cut to hell.

  Once she realized Borkow was watching her, she took off running, her hands and mouth still duct taped. She was going to disappear out the broken window and into the night.

  “Harold?”

  Harold took off running full tilt.

  Payaso appeared at Borkow’s side and said, “For a muscle head, that dude can really run.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Eating some chicken mole; it’s my lunch break.”

  “What exactly are you good for, huh? Tell me.”

  “It’s time to get back in the RV and start moving around. We’ve been here too long. You said just for an hour. It’s been four.”

  “I say when it’s time. Me. I do. Not you.”

  “Suit yourself, it’s your life. You know that bailiff is closing in and every minute we stay in one—”

  “All right, get everything we need gathered up, let’s get moving. But we’re not just going to drive around in circles anymore. We have a destination.”

  Harold stepped back through the window carrying the girl under one thick arm. She struggled and kicked against all that immovable muscle. The bottom of her feet flung tiny droplets of blood everywhere.