by Tom Kakonis
“That’s what happens next.”
Undoubtedly it would have too, had it not been for Lester’s sudden appearance, untimely for him, fortuitous for Marshall, who seized the subsequent instant of Lester’s grisly passing to lunge for the drill and to touch its trigger, flattening the skinny one against a shelf with a jabbing motion, clearly understood, as though Marshall possessed the power to discharge the whirring bit like some lethal mini-missile, which instead he drove into the flank of the dancer, spinning too late to dodge it, though in the violence of his convulsive shudder wrenching it from Marshall’s grip and sending it clattering across the floor, spitting rashers of torn flesh. His knees buckled. A squawk, guttural, croaky, but remarkably restrained considering the pain he must have felt, echoed off the walls and ceiling of the shed. Marshall bolted for the door, made it through, but not before he heard rising on the sustained squawk the bawled commands, “Get him! Kill him!”
He came out shouting, his voice a frantic yip lost in the dissonant, unrhythmic clash of sounds. He glanced to his right, his left, searching desperately for help. Welders busily welded, machinists machined. Nobody took notice. No help here. The scrawny one stumbled through the door. Scrawny, yes, puny even, but empowered by deadly knife and emboldened by vengeful purpose.
He took off running. Less was it a run, this flight, than ambulant twitch, part hobble, part skitter, the comic wiggly motion of a windup toy, its mechanisms defective, corroded. He got to the entrance, looked over his shoulder and discovered, as in some cataclysmic vision, his pursuer narrowing the gap between them. About to fall on him.
He swiveled. Backpedaled toward the rolling belt. Some unyielding object stalled his retreat. A Dumpster, by the feel of it, redolent of freshly shaved metal. He stiffened himself against it. No help anywhere. Nowhere left to run.
Like some runtish agent of ruin, the knife wielder pressed in on him. Slowed. Stopped short of him by a couple of feet. His eyes were wild. Mouth a venomous slit. His blade hand made quick pecking thrusts. Over the boom of the hot mill thundering up behind them, he bellowed, “What’d I tell you, suckwad? What’d I say? Now you gonna feel the heavy hurts.”
Marshall reached over the top of the Dumpster, grasped a jagged sheet of scrap metal, sidestepped and raked the makeshift weapon across the eyes of the charging figure. Who screamed. Dropped the knife. Caromed off the Dumpster, reeled about blindly, a spastic dance. Marshall plowed into him, driving him back, sprawling him face first onto the belt. A great silvery ingot bore down on him like the prow of a massive dreadnought.
Marshall’s senses registered, in concert, a dazzling blur: deep rumble, hiss of oil, splash of scalded water, howls of unendurable agony; acrid stink of grinding metal, sour tang of shredding tissue; peculiar seepage at his chest; savor of varnish in his mouth; flashes of bone and gristle and butchered meat, tomatoey red, crawling up the small lateral conveyor belt and firing into the Dumpster. He allowed himself an ironic coda to this extraordinary sensory spectacle: “Your turn for the hurts.”
He set out again, retracing the route that had brought him to the machine shop. His step was steadier now, surer. Along the way he passed his tour group. The guide spotted him, called, “Sir, sir.” Marshall responded with a dismissive swatting at air, kept on moving in the direction of an exit just ahead. Never looked back.
Which was a mistake. For if he had he might have seen the other one, the dancer, not so nimble now, not so agile, but still stumbling on doggedly, gaining on him.
The sight of them out there, Dale and Davie, her two men, advancing across the lawn, taking turns with the hose, conscientiously, if belatedly, drenching the parched grass and hopeless garden, filled her with such joy she felt almost weightless, anchored only by a heart grown too big for her chest. Almost sanctified she felt, blessed by this gentle, good man, and by the solemn, sweet child miraculously plucked from life’s bewildering grab bag, its surprises sometimes exquisite (Sara, for instance), often cruel (again, Sara), always mysterious.
Norma stood at the kitchen window, shaking off the torpor that comes with the unaccustomed luxury of a late sleep. Unobserved herself and watching them this way, thinking these thoughts, she experienced a curious scattering of emotions. There was the joy, of course, and the pleasured anticipation of a family outing about to begin. But also, sprung from nowhere, an odd sensation of misgiving, of a reckoning yet to come, and, odder still, the shadowy guilt of the eavesdropper or the stealthy witness to a loved one’s slumber, the familiar face sealed with secrets, weirdly distanced behind the impenetrable mask of sleep.
A trilling of the phone released her from these bizarre and unwelcome reflections. She said her hello into it and got back a breathy voice telegraphic in its message: “Gotta talk to Buck.”
“Waz? Is that you?”
“Yeah, me.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. He there, Buck?”
“Yes.”
“Put him on, can you?”
“Just a minute. I’ll get him.”
She fluttered over to the screen door and called, “Dale, telephone for you.” He handed Davie the hose, directed him by gesture to a particularly arid patch of lawn, and walked leisurely toward the house. As he neared the porch she said, “It’s Waz. He sounds awfully strange.”
“Whadda you mean, strange?”
“Not like himself.”
His face darkened. He speeded up. Came through the door and crossed the room and lifted the phone to his ear. “Waz,” he said. “What’s up?”
“He’s comin’.”
“Who is?”
“The old man.”
“Who you talkin’ about?”
“Davie’s old man.”
It was strange, all right, his friend’s voice, clotted and thick and full of the squeezed accents of pain. Also was Buck conscious of the sounds of water running in the sink behind him, drawers opening and shutting. Norma elaborately busying herself, but listening, surely listening. Had to keep cool, steady. Had to choose his words carefully. “How you know that?” he asked.
“He was here.”
“At the plant there?”
“Yeah.”
“You talk to him?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d he find you?”
“Dunno.”
“You, uh, told him?”
“I hadda, Buck. He jumped me. Cut me up bad. Woulda killed me.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Lester, though, he’s dead.”
“Lester? How’d he get in it?”
“Bad luck.”
“He did it?”
“Who?”
“That fella you said.”
“No.”
“Who, then?”
“Jimmie in on it. Some other guy. Don’t matter now.”
“And you say he’s comin’?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Buck felt a sudden sickness of the heart. Though he couldn’t have known it, all the color was drained from his face. “All right,” he said formally. “Thanks for lettin’ me know.”
“Buck?”
“What?”
“Listen, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, man. You done what you could.”
“You watch out for yourself, now.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
He put up the phone. Braced himself against the wall. Against the tidal waves of shock washing over him, numbing him. Against the lynch mob world tightening in on him.
“Dale, what is it? What’s wrong?”
That would be Norma addressing him, her features crimped in an attitude of wifely concern. Had to speak to Norma. Tell her something. Buy some time. “Been an accident out to the plant,” he told her. Wasn’t all that far off the truth.
“An accident? What happened?”
“Uh, boiler blew,” he improvised. “Somethin’ like that. Ain’t exactly clear.”
; “Was Waz hurt?”
“No, he’s okay.”
“Thank God for that.”
“But Lester was.”
“Lester?”
“Lester Caulkins. You remember him? Chubby little guy, all the time tellin’ crazy stories?”
“I remember him. Was he hurt bad?”
“Got killed.”
“Oh, Dale, that’s just terrible. I’m so sorry.”
Everybody sorry today, but nobody got any answers, directions, solutions. Him included. “Yeah, well, that’s how it goes sometimes,” he said, for a thing to say.
“But Waz is all right?”
“He’s fine.”
“Do you want to go over there?”
For a moment he didn’t reply. Something unusual was happening inside his head. Half of it was attending to this time squandering conversation, supplying him words absent and empty of substance, while the other half sorted through a tumbling rush of crafty plots, schemes, tactics, visions of flight, exotic destinations, safe harbors, all of them out of reach, as phantasmal as those shimmery fragments of dreams that nudge the borders of sleep.
“Dale?”
“Huh?”
“Do you think you should go out to the plant?”
Out of desperation’s negative reduction he arrived finally at the only sanctuary he knew. He said, “No, nothin’ I can do there. Gonna go over to the park awhile. Take the boy.”
Norma looked puzzled. “But why would you go there?”
“Just I need some time to, y’know, think about this. What happened and all. We’ll get started later, Dells.”
“We don’t have to go today, Dale. Not if you’re upset.”
“Said we will,” he snapped, and because now she looked hurt he added quickly, “Just little later, is all.”
“I understand. Are you sure you want Davie along?”
“I’m sure.”
He was too, sure as he was of anything anymore. Park was safe. Park was a place you could run to. Get your head straight. Get a plan together. Something solid, workable, made some sense. He’d come up with one. Time was all he needed. Little quiet, and time.
Except there was Norma here, and the guy, the father—maybe father—coming, on his way right now. What about Norma? Bring her along? Leave her here? He didn’t know. Everything snarled, disordered. Everything a riot of confusion. And instantaneous choices to be made. “Look,” he said, “if anybody comes by, don’t tell ’em where we at.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m askin’ you, is why. Better yet, don’t talk to nobody. Lock the doors and stay inside.”
A gathering alarm clouded her face, and the concern he’d seen before was rapidly shading over into apprehension, and from there to dread. “There’s more to this, isn’t there? More than you’re telling me.”
“Just do it, okay? Do it for me. We’ll be back real soon.”
He sprinted out into the yard and scooped up the boy and carried him around the house to the Pontiac parked in the drive, mumbling something about the park, the ducks, the merry-go-round. Something incoherent. The child, half bewildered by this abrupt change of plan, half delighted, said nothing, but he waved a vigorous goodbye to Norma, standing at the front door, watching them with stricken eyes. She returned the wave limply.
Buck backed the car into the street and streaked away. He was still mumbling, but his gaze was fixed on the road. Had he looked in the mirror above the dash he’d have seen a boxy Volvo just then rounding a corner a few blocks behind them, and picking up speed.
Except for the wardrobe, Glenn Wilcox off duty was, by training and instinct and a lifetime of jaded experience, not a whole lot different from when he was on the clock: stolid, unflappable, leery, alert behind the curtain of perpetual fatigue. He’d been on enough domestics, his day, to know enough to come strapped, and from what he could get out of her on the drive to Cicero (which wasn’t much beyond the bare-bones account he’d heard over the phone), this one was shaping up a possible domestic. Or worse. Near as he could tell, what you got here is a loose cannon hub playing at gumshoe, raising sand with some very tough citizens, sinking himself deeper in the doo by the ticking minute. Add to that a wife spaced on one kind of helper or another, trying to throw him a line he don’t want. Stir them ingredients together and you got a bag of first-class fireworks waiting to go off. Fourth of July in August.
Accordingly, he’d brought along a throwdown piece (discreetly hip-holstered under his loose-fitting jacket) and a pair of cuffs (slid under the front seat of his ancient Dodge), just in case. Even though his capacity here was strictly unofficial, like some poor schmuck neighbor or a distant relation unwillingly dragged in to referee a family dispute, never hurt to pack some policy. Come this close to hanging it up for good, last thing he needed was a blindside zap off a good-deed errand gone bad. Stranger things been known to happen. Your luck, could happen to you. So you better be alert.
’Course, it was his own fucking fault, being here, first place. Never learned. Was always a mark for a fluff in distress (though this one, sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, absent look on her face, seemed more resigned than distressed, aloof from it all, a pretty lady on her way to a party she’d rather not attend). Still was booting himself in the ass for caving in. Putting himself between a rock and another one just as hard. Doing the eagle scout number, a role he never liked, was never really suited for, and not very good at either.
He liked it even less when he turned the Norse Aluminum corner and came down the road leading to the security building and saw what he’d hoped not to see: couple of Cicero P.D. cars, their dome lights whirling, an ambulance, also sparking, and a jam of people swarming around an entrance to the plant. He stole a quick peek at her, expecting a panicked yelp or instant waterworks. Got neither. Instead all she said, quietly and with her hands still in her lap, was, “I knew this would happen.”
“We don’t know what ‘this’ is yet, Mrs. Quinn. You don’t wanta go leapin’ to conclusions.”
“It’s him.”
“Whyn’t we find out first?”
“It’s him.”
A flash of his shield got them by the gate. He pulled up behind one of the Cicero cars, cut the engine, loosened the knot in the tie he wished now he hadn’t worn. “You better wait here,” he said.
“No, I’ll come along.”
“Think you oughta wait till I see what’s shakin’ down.”
“No.”
There was a firmness in it that drew his eyes to her face. Years on the force had inoculated him against the contagion of pity, but all that proximity to corruption and cynicism never quite rubbed off. Never quite took. And looking at that serene, stubborn, reconciled face, looking through it, past it, into the pools of darkness of her disaster-struck life, he seemed to see, telescoped there, a time-crumbled album of all the faces of all the victims of all the world’s pitiless crimes, and he felt as though he’d stumbled, quite by chance, upon something in himself long ago mislaid, long forgotten. “Okay,” he said, “but you got to do exactly what I tell you.”
“I will, Sergeant.”
“Start by stickin’ close.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Let me do the talkin’.”
“Of course.”
“I say you go back, you go.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
“Mrs. Quinn?”
“Yes.”
“Could be nothin’ here. With your husband, I mean.”
“We’ll see.”
He elbowed a path for them through the buzzing crowd, sidled up to a Cicero badge, a squat, doughy man planted like a roadblock at the front of the ambulance. Wilcox presented his ID. The officer gave it a thorough inspection, fastened an insolent stare on him, and drawled, “Kinda off your turf, ain’t you, Sergeant?” The suburban cop’s natural resentment of a downtowner.
“Was in the neighborhood,” Wilcox said. “Thought you could maybe use some help.” Mi
ght as well start off diplomatic.
“Takin’ in the Cicero sights, was you?”
“Something like that.”
“Sure do appreciate the offer, but we’re gettin’ it secured. More cars on the way.”
“What went down?”
“Looks like a couple waxings. Maybe more.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Why you ask?”
“Because I’m lookin’ for a fella might of been involved.”
“So you moonlightin’ today?”
“How about you just tell me?” Wilcox growled, putting some squad room steel in his voice. Enough with the diplomacy.
It got results. “Was one,” the badge said. “Got cut up pretty bad. They’re workin’ on him right now.” A thumb wag at the ambulance specified where.
“He in a condition to talk?”
“Was when they brought him out.”
“You got any objection, me havin’ a word with him? Got any pro’lum with that?”
The officer grudged him a lippy smile just short of a sneer. “S’pose it couldn’t hurt,” he allowed, adding with a meaningful glance at the woman standing there, taking it all in, “Long as it’s just yourself.”
“She’s with me,” Wilcox told him, to spare her any hassling, but to her he said, “Here’s where you wait.”
She responded wordlessly, a small compliant nod.
He strode to the back of the vehicle. Its door was wide open, a flurry of activity going on in its cramped interior: scurrying medics, sobbing female stooped over an ashen-faced vic laid out on a stretcher, wicked gouge in him. But he wasn’t who Wilcox fully expected to see. Wasn’t Marshall Quinn.
He identified himself, climbed in, and knelt by the stretcher. A medic scowled at him. “This man’s in shock, Officer.”
“Just a couple quick questions here.”
“This is not a good time.”
Wilcox tuned him out. To the vic he said, very gently, “Sir, can you tell me what happened?”
Got only a hollow-eyed gaze for reply.
“I’ll tell ya who done this to him,” the woman wailed, her voice full of the hysteric music of anger and grief.
Another voice, faint, slurry, rose from the stretcher. “Shut up, Della.”
