Dead Heat with the Reaper

by William E. Wallace

  ***

  When Sonny and Luis found Marcel, the gang leader had Bitsy on a table in the side hallway of the Carleton with her underpants down and her legs up alongside his ears. He seemed pissed to have been caught having sex with the stoop girl. She didn’t look any happier to have him banging her in front of two of his posse.

  Sonny watched her primp her pink hair and plant a kiss on Marcel’s forehead before she hustled off with a brusque “Later, babe!” Luis had to look away to make sure the gang leader didn’t see him grin.

  Marcel didn’t take the news about Oscar One-eye well at all.

  “He’s where?” he asked Sonny, his voice climbing a half octave.

  “The county hospital, boss,” Sonny said. “His mamma said he’s in a coma. The cops came by to fill her in. They said he tried to hijack a guy who was leaving Gloria’s and the guy half knocked his brains out.”

  Marcel struggled to understand. How could Oscar end up underestimating a mark that badly? He must have strong-armed a dozen drunks leaving the place in the last couple of years. He always took them from behind and used a sap to knock them out. No way that a mugging like that could go sour. No way at all.

  “Jesus Christ,” Marcel said. “That’s fucking pathetic. Oscar must have been loaded or something. This is going to take some serious payback, man. We’re the 14th Avenue Crips. We can’t let some fucking square beat down one of our own. Who was the guy he tried to rob?”

  Sonny and Luis Cardeña exchanged glances. It never paid to be the one who gave Marcel bad news.

  “It was that big guy with the scars.” Luis swallowed hard.

  Marcel’s eyes widened. “You mean G.I. Joe had the balls to crack Oscar’s skull?”

  Luis and Sonny both nodded hurriedly. Marcel seemed to be madder at the guy with the burns than them. That would probably save both of them an ass-whipping for seeing him skewer Bitsy on the sly.

  “So what happened to Freddie Krueger?” Marcel asked. “Did Oscar get a couple of shots in?”

  Sonny licked his lips. “Oscar’s mom says they had to take scarface to the hospital, too, but to St. Bart’s, not county ICU.”

  “Wait a minute,” Marcel said, shutting his eyes, his anger flaring even higher. “You say Oscar’s in intensive care but this burned soldier guy isn’t?”

  Sonny nodded fearfully. “Yeah, Marce. Oscar’s mom says that the cops told her the guy cut his hand, is all.”

  Marcel put his thumbs in his waistband and slid them outward, opening the front of his jacket so you could see the butt of the .45 sticking up.

  “That fucking soldier boy wants a war with the 14th Avenue Crips, it’s on,” he hissed. “We’ll get a two-fer: we’ll have a little fun with his girlfriend, that skanky nurse, then we’ll kill the sonofabitch. Period. End of fucking report. That motherfucker’s going down.”

  ***

  When the adrenaline faded out of his system, Baldocchi crashed like a speed freak. He struggled out of the cab and up the stairs of the Claymore with Susan tucked under his left arm like a human crutch. The elevator—which was working for once—shuddered when she helped him stumble into it and he had to let her use his key to open the door to his apartment.

  He collapsed onto his tiny double bed with a crash that nearly collapsed it and began to snore raggedly as Susan removed his shoes and socks and lifted his feet onto the mattress. She left quietly, wary of waking him.

  ***

  It could have been the booze he’d consumed at Gloria’s, the stress of the fight with Oscar One-Eye, or the release of telling Susan how he’d become such a walking disaster zone, but Baldocchi began unreeling the dream as soon as he passed out.

  If only he’d been clearer in his instructions to the Bradley’s driver, they might have missed the IED completely.

  He would never have been rushed to the hospital. He might still be in Afghanistan.

  “Jesus, Sarge, make up your mind, would you?” Castlewood had said.

  He still couldn’t, after all this time. Every night before he dropped off to sleep, he still wondered: was he glad he had survived or sorry he was still living?

  In his dream the rubble was directly in front of the Bradley, the explosion only seconds away.

  Jesus, Sarge, make up your mind, would you?

  Take the right, Baldocchi mumbled, still coming out of the dream. Take the right fork; there’s something wrong with the road on the left hand side!

  But this time the dream did not end with the death and destruction that actually occurred. Olson was quicker to acknowledge Baldocchi’s order and veered away from the rubble a second or two before the bomb exploded. In his revised nightmare, the blast washed the left side of Baldocchi’s face with searing heat, but the pain was nothing like the gusher of liquid fire that had killed the other members of his unit and left him hideously scarred.

  For an instant, the Bradley teetered on one track, then collapsed onto its side. Beneath him, inside the APC, Baldocchi could hear the muffled cries of one of his teammates.

  Help! Help me!

  With a gasp, he woke up.

  Help me!

  The voice he had heard was not a fantasy. It was real—and it was coming from the room directly below him.

  He hoisted himself up and swung his feet into his loafers, his alcoholic dehydration sending a flash of pain ripping through his head that made him gasp with agony.

  Covering his face with both hands he listened. Then he heard it again—the sound of a woman in pain.

  Staggering to his feet, Baldocchi lurched to the door, held himself up by it for a second while his head swam, then plunged through it and down the stairs.

  The cries grew louder as he neared Susan’s apartment.

  “Susan, are you okay?” he called, hesitating in the hall outside.

  His hand closed on the apartment’s doorknob and he gave it a turn. As he did, the door swung inward, dragging him off-balance into the room. Something hard and heavy crashed into the back of his head, driving him down and forward into a small coffee table that buckled and splintered under his weight.

  He rolled over and saw one of the stoop boys standing over him, swinging a baseball bat in a hard arc at his forehead. Baldocchi managed to move just as the aluminum cylinder buried itself in the wreckage of the table.

  He recognized the youth as the one called Sonny and kicked hard with his right foot as the kid swung the bat again. Sonny took the kick in the stomach, landing next to the door with an impact that made the entire building shudder.

  Baldocchi was up surprisingly fast. Sonny plunged forward with a snarl and Alan punched him in the middle of his face, sending his head back into the wall with a second crash even louder than the first.

  His eyes wide and staring, Sonny slid down, his head leaving a dark streak of blood on the wallpaper next to the door frame, a two-inch deep crater where Alan’s punch had pushed the back of the kid’s skull through the plaster.

  Sonny slowly toppled to his right, his open mouth dripping blood onto the oak planks of the floor.

  Baldocchi turned to see the gangbanger called Marcel holding Susan down on her table, her uniform skirt pushed up over her breasts. Her panties were gone, apparently ripped off by the youth when he attacked her. There was a small puddle of fluid on the tabletop.

  The gang leader looked straight at Baldocchi. His eyes were like those of an animal, his pupils dilated to the size of dimes.

  Marcel had one of his hands over Susan’s mouth to muffle her cries. The other held a Buck knife poised for a strike to her throat. The gang member seemed to be frozen in place, staring at Alan with disbelief as he tried to figure out how he had managed to shrug off a clubbing that should have cracked his skull, then take out one of his strongest, fastest gang members with little effort.

  Baldocchi grabbed Marcel by the lapels of his Oakland Raider’s jacket and yanked him off the nurse so hard that the youth was suspended in midair for a fraction of a second. As he spun him halfway around, h
e saw Marcel’s trousers were unzipped and his dick—long, hard and twisted slightly to the left—protruded from his open fly. Marcel grabbed one of Baldocchi’s wrists with both hands and his knife clattered on the bare tile floor.

  Overcome with fury, Baldocchi pulled back his right hand and drove his fist into the youth’s face, crushing his nose with a pulpy crunching sound. He let go of the gang member as he threw the punch and the stoop boy slammed against the base of the wall in an awkward heap.

  “Are you all right?” Alan asked Susan hoarsely as he helped her sit up on the table and held one of her hands in both of his.

  She stared at him stupidly, shock clouding her face. Her eyes focused on something behind him. They widened as she screamed.

  Baldocchi turned halfway around and the scene registered on his brain like a still photograph: Marcel, halfway to his feet, had pulled an old Army pistol. He managed to aim the gun at Baldocchi’s chest and pull the trigger, punching a half-inch hole in the scarred man’s front and a much wider one in his back.

  The shot sounded like a bomb in the nurse’s tiny apartment. The ear-ringing explosion and the recoil of the pistol startled Marcel so much that he dropped the gun on the floor.

  Baldocchi made an animal sound in his throat and grabbed the stoop boy with his stubby hands. He swung Marcel wildly, his burned fingers clasped tightly around the youth’s neck, half dragging him across the room. The gang member’s eyes protruded from their sockets. A gurgling hiss escaped from his mouth like the wail of a small, frightened animal.

  Then Baldocchi hurled him through the window hard enough to shatter it and splinter its sill.

  Marcel was airborne before he had a chance to scream, taking the pane and most of the glass with him all the way to the concrete sidewalk three stories below. He might have survived the plunge if he hadn’t landed head first on the pavement with enough force to pulverize his skull and everything inside it.

  Baldocchi turned back to Susan, air whistling slightly through the gore-filled bullet hole in his chest as it sucked blood into his lungs with a gurgle. He stepped forward clumsily like a man trying to wade a creek. Then he toppled to the floor.

  Susan sank to her knees, cradling his head and comforting him in a whisper as she struggled to close his chest wound with the palm of her hand.

  “Don’t move,” she murmured. “I won’t be able to stop the bleeding if you don’t hold still. Help’ll be here soon, Alan. Just hold on. Everything will be fine.”

  He covered her hand with his and looked up into her face. “Not this time,” he gasped. “You get one do over in this world. Mine was in Afghanistan.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Don’t say that,” she whispered. “You’ll be fine.”

  But she knew it wasn’t true. She could feel his life pumping out under her fingers. There was no way to stop it.

  He squeezed her hand. “I want you to do something for me,” he rasped. “My doctor at the V.A. is Clinton Smith. Dr. Clinton Smith, internal medicine—can you remember that?”

  She nodded and gave him what she hoped was a brave smile.

  “Dr. Clinton Smith,” she said. “I’ll remember.”

  “I want you to find him, okay?” He gave her hand a hard squeeze then let it slip out of his. “Tell him I found out why God saved me. He’ll understand what it means. Can you do that?”

  “I promise, Alan,” she said.

  Baldocchi closed his eyes. His face contorted for the last time and then he was still.

  Susan made a small sound in the back of her throat and her tears came freely.

  Anyone else would have seen the final twist of his face as the grimace of a man in extreme pain. She knew better.

  She could tell Alan Baldocchi had given her his final smile.

  About the Author

  William E. Wallace has been a cook, dishwasher, journalism professor, private investigator and military intelligence specialist. He received his bachelor’s in political science at U.C. Berkeley and for 26 years he was an award-winning investigative reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Since taking early retirement in 2006 he has written two detective novels, The Jade Bone Jar and The Judas Hunter; a novella, I Wait to Die; a western novel, Tamer; and a collection of horror and fantasy stories, Little Nightmares.

  His stories have been published in Flash Fiction Offensive, Spinetingler, All Due Respect, Crime Factory, Dark Corners Pulp and Shotgun Honey.

  He lives with his wife and son in Berkeley, California.

  The following is from Alec Cizak’s short story collection, Crooked Roads. Check out all of All Due Respect’s titles at allduerespectbooks.com

  THE SPACE BETWEEN

  She wears a nametag—Susan. You want her to be more. To see the gray smudges on the bottom of your pants legs, to put a hand on your shoulder and say, “That snow bank sure seemed solid.” She should notice the gash across your left, index knuckle. Wince at how the wound has turned yellow and brown. “Sometimes we forget to aim the knife away from our bodies,” she should say. Beyond that, she should offer empathy over the alimony you can’t pay, the money you owe the IRS, the foreclosure. “An apartment might be more manageable, don’t you think?” The angle her head rests on her shoulders, the light bouncing off her eyes, the smile she greeted you with when the bell over the front door went ‘ding,’ these things dissolve layers of hatred gathering mold since your wife insinuated you’re a “mama’s boy.” They cancel the sneers in college, the snubs from attractive sorority girls, the signs stuck to your back in high school (Kick Me!). Your father’s fist, once a ton, now evaporates with a chuckle from you as Susan drops a cliché on the counter—“Cold enough for you?” You don’t hear the formality of the situation. You don’t realize this relationship is over the moment you pay and walk out the door.

  * * *

  The creak of your car door slices into your ears and carves canyons in your bones. Did you think the girl at the Kwik Trip would look at you twice? As you turn the ignition and wait for the heater to fire up, watching the fog of your breath splatter against the windshield and shrink, over and over again, you listen to the voice of reason on the radio (“This country ain’t what it used to be!”) and remember how you will spend the night in a motel with nothing but a television, mini bottles of shampoo, small towels, and a Gideon’s Bible that can do nothing to correct mistakes you’ve made your entire life. Mistakes other people tricked you into making—

  Your mother, dressing you in clothes from Second Time Around.

  Your father, refusing to look at you after you said you had no interest in baseball.

  Junior high girlfriends, lovers, and the wife, calling you one form of inadequate or another.

  Would Susan be any different? She doesn’t care about you, chump. Look at her now—can’t you hear the smacking of her bubblegum? She’s in uniform, on the clock, and yet she has her cellphone pasted to her ear. Remember the way she spoke to you, thinking you wouldn’t catch the disregard her cliché revealed?

  The car’s warm.

  There’s a tire iron in the trunk.

  Haven’t you reached that point where you could just drive?