No Man's Land

by G. M. Ford

  “And nobody’s got this but us?”

  “Nope.”

  “And we can prove this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Cause I don’t want to be doing a Dan Rather here, Marty.”

  “We’ve got everything. All the paperwork. Everything.”

  “And the source?”

  “The source’s got enough money to disappear. I spent damn near the whole fall budget on this and the video.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re hot right now.” The twinkle returned to his eye. “You heard the numbers?”

  She shook her head.

  “We pulled a seventeen share last night. Third highest rating of the year. Only the Super Bowl and the Survivor finale had a bigger number. They’ll find us some more money, believe you me they will.”

  “That explains the calls I’ve been getting from network all morning. People I’ve been trying to get ahold of for a month.”

  “We’ve been reborn,” Marty announced. “I’m going to ask for a ‘Special Edition’ to go on tomorrow night.”

  “Think they’ll go for it?”

  “They’ll wet their pants.”

  “We can reuse a lot of the stock prison stuff.”

  “Plus whatever we get from the press conference this afternoon.”

  Marty moved quickly forward, slipping into the driver’s seat and starting the engine.

  “Let’s get it on tape,” he said.

  Somehow, she couldn’t get the sound of Christmas music to leave her head.

  23

  Elias Romero was late and greatly agitated. On his way home to change his suit, he’d found Iris Cruz sitting in her red Toyota Camry . . . parked diagonally across the street from his driveway . . . sitting there big as life for all the world to see. With his hands shaking and his pulse pounding in his ears, he’d stepped on the accelerator and sped all the way to the end of the street and turned right. Iris stayed a semidiscreet block behind him as they ran all the way to the end of Linda Vista Boulevard, out past the last of the houses, out to where they’d paved it and put in sidewalks and driveways, in case, sometime in the future, they needed to build more houses. It was nothing but desert with driveways. Kinda eerie like some sci-fi flick or something. Like the giant ants had eaten up everything and moved on.

  Reaching the back of the cul-de-sac, Elias Romero swung his Lincoln Town Car in a wide arc and stopped, facing back the way he’d come. Iris pulled up alongside. Their windows slid down simultaneously.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” Romero growled.

  “You come to my house? You—”

  She cut him off. “I need to talk to you,” she said. G.M. Ford “We got ways. You got no cause to be coming to my house.”

  Iris’s eyes narrowed. She could feel her anger and indignation rising in her throat like molten metal. “What? You afraid that skinny wife of yours gonna find out. Afraid she gonna find out you been droppin’ your pants on my bedroom floor.”

  “Hey now . . . don’t be startin’ that stuff with me. What we did is between you and me. We agreed.”

  “What we agreed was that you was leaving that bitch and we was gonna be together.” When he didn’t reply, she prodded. “Well didn’t we?”

  Romero started to bluster but changed his mind. He lowered his voice. Started talking like he did in bed. “Hey now,” he soothed. “They’s a lotta things goin’ on right now. We get past all of this . . . you know, back to normal—”

  “Don’t you dare,” Iris interrupted. “Don’t you dare start that shit with me, Elias Romero. Don’t you dare dis me like that. Bad enough I listened to that shit once. Now you tryin’ to feed it to me again. What kind of idiot you think I am?”

  Romero sat for a moment. The breeze soothed his overheated cheeks.

  “What do you want?” he said finally.

  “I’m taking my sick leave, my comp time and my unused vacation days . . . I’m going back home for a while.”

  “Mexico?”

  She nodded.

  “Chasin’ that husband of yours.”

  “Got nothing to do with Esteban,” she said. “Esteban’s a weakling and a loser. Couldn’t take being dishonored by the gringos. I don’t need him no more neither. I just had enough of all of this. I need to get away for a while.”

  “Don’t matter anyway,” he said. “All that’s going on here . . . there’s no way I can cut you that much slack. Hell, Randall would lose their minds if I . . .”

  She raised her voice. “The paperwork is on your desk. Sign it. You don’t want me and your precious wife having a little conversation, you just sign those damn papers.”

  “Don’t be threatening me, woman,” he said.

  “You didn’t fool me for a minute, Elias Romero. I knew what you was coming round for. You just like all the rest of them.”

  “If you knew, baby,” he mocked, “how come you so pissed off?”

  “I’m pissed off ’cause you let me believe it. ’Cause you know a woman is ruled by her heart and you watched me forget myself and you didn’t say nothing. My heart wasn’t as important to you as your dick was.”

  “Ain’t nothing is,” he said with a wicked smile.

  “That’s the sad part, Mr. Elias Romero. Hearts don’t matter to you ’cause your sorry ass isn’t even got two percent of the milk of human kindness. You’re pathetic, that’s what you are.”

  Before he could reply, her window slid closed. He began to sputter at the tinted glass, but by that time, she’d dropped it in reverse, backed up, swung past his fender and roared back they way they’d come in a cloud of dust.

  Elias Romero spent a minute and a half cursing and strangling his steering wheel. With a sigh, he checked his watch, swore again and put the car in gear, headed for town.

  The parking lot for the Musket Community Center was overflowing. Seemed like every remote satellite truck in the country was sitting out there with its blind white eye pointing at the heavens. Inside, the place was jammed to the rafters with reporters. With the prison’s administration building little more than a pile of rubble, the community center was now the only place within fifty miles big enough to hold a press conference. He’d had to park at the far end of town and walk down.

  By the time he slid into position on the dais, Asuega was already finished offering the Randall Corporation’s deep, abiding sorrow to the loved ones of those killed in the riot and the corporation’s sincere regrets that an incident such as this had taken place at all. He was now assuring the audience that all practices and procedures would be reviewed with an eye for strengthening security at what was already America’s premier maximum security prison. He paused for a moment, shuffled his note cards and began again.

  “As of this time, a total of three people remain unaccounted for.” A buzz of anticipation rose from the crowd. “Two inmates and one civilian.” The buzz got louder. “Inmate number nine nine three six four. Clarence Albert Kehoe. Imprisoned in the State of Mississippi in nineteen seventy-eight for killing three people in a bar fight. Found guilty in nineteen eighty of killing another prisoner and sent to a maximum security prison in Walla Walla, Washington, where he again killed a fellow inmate. Suspected in the deaths of four other inmates and deemed a habitual offender, Mr. Kehoe was finally sent to Meza Azul Correctional Facility in nineteen ninety-seven and housed in the Special Containment wing.” Asuega looked up at the sea of cameras. “Mr. Kehoe is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous.” Asuega waited until the volley of shouted questions subsided and continued. “Inmate number one o nine five six three. Timothy Haynes Driver. Found guilty in King County, Washington, of two counts of aggravated murder. Serving two concurrent sentences of life without the possibility of parole. Assigned to Walla Walla Penitentiary, Mr. Driver assaulted and blinded another inmate during his first week of incarceration. During the course of the incident, Mr. Driver also seriously wounded a correctional officer. In nineteen ni
nety-eight, Mr. Driver was sent to Meza Azul and contained in the Extreme Punishment section of the Special Containment wing. Mr. Driver is considered to be armed and extremely dangerous.”

  This time he kept talking, forcing the reporters to keep it down if they wanted to hear. “As many of you recall, Mr. Driver’s chief demand was the appearance of one Frank Corso. No middle name. Mr. Corso wrote a best-selling novel about Mr. Driver. Unfortunately, Mr. Driver made good on his threat to murder a correctional officer every six hours until Frank Corso was delivered to him. Mr. Corso entered the facility at midnight on the day before last and has not been in any type of communication with the outside world since that time, at least not to our knowledge. Mr. Corso’s role in this incident is unknown at this time.” Asuega neatened up his file cards and half turned to the row of dignitaries lined up behind him. “At this time I’d like to introduce Special Agent Ronald Rosen from the Phoenix office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Special Agent Rosen will fill you in on the current state of the search for these three . . .” For the first time he fumbled for a word. “. . . for the missing,” he finally blurted.

  Rosen was a stocky specimen in the standard FBI gray suit. His thick black hair was cropped close to his head. His eyebrows joined each other on the bridge of his nose. He thanked the crowd for nothing in particular and began. “I’m going to keep this brief,”

  he said. “In conjunction with police departments in a seven-state area, the Bureau is now conducting an all-out manhunt for the three fugitives. Although our investigation is in its initial stages, we have reason to believe the three escaped Meza Azul Correctional Facility in the back of a delivery vehicle.” When the buzz in the room threatened to swallow his statement, Rosen waited calmly for it to subside. “At this stage of the investigation, it would be counterproductive to provide specific details. Suffice it to say we have strong reason to believe that this was their method of egress from the prison.”

  Rosen gave the crowd a minute to chew on the information, then continued. “We have further reason to believe these fugitives were responsible for a double homicide that took place this morning in Phoenix.” He held up a quieting hand. “At this time, we wish to strongly caution the public not to interfere with these fugitives in any way. Mr. Driver and Mr. Kehoe are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. They have absolutely nothing to lose by any of their actions whatsoever. Anyone who thinks they may have spotted these fugitives . . . please dial the number at the bottom of the screen. We have set up a special hotline for the purpose of dealing with leads in this matter.”

  He paused. Shouted questions filled the air. He pointed at the AP reporter.

  “Yes sir,” he said.

  24

  Driver rose from the bed, walked to the adjoining door and knocked three times. The stream of grunts and squeals and groans that had been leaking through the wall for the past twelve hours finally stopped. After a minute the door opened wide enough for Kehoe’s head to pop through the crack. Driver pointed to the TV, where three mug shots and the phone number for the FBI hotline filled the screen.

  “I think we better get out of here,” Driver said. Took Kehoe a while to realize what he was looking at. Once he zoned in on the screen a crooked smile crossed his face. “I expect you’re right,” he said. “Gimme a few minutes.” He turned to the other room. “Best find your drawers, darlin’. This here party is definitely over.”

  “Aw sweetie,” she could be heard to coo.

  Whatever she said next was lost among the rustling of bedclothes.

  Driver turned to Corso. “Get your stuff together. You can stow it in the ammo bag.” He disappeared into the bathroom for an instant and reappeared with an armload of towels. In a matter of two minutes he’d broken both guns down, wrapped the vari-G.M. Ford ous component pieces in towels and packed them in the larger of the two Nike gym bags. By the time he got the ammo arranged in the other bag, Corso was ready. He handed Driver everything except the bottle of Aleve, which he emptied into the inside pocket of his jacket before tossing the empty bottle into the trash can. Kehoe came bursting back through the door. “What’d they say on the tube?”

  Driver told him.

  “Shit,” said Kehoe. “I figured it’d take ’em a whole ’nother day.”

  “Me too,” said Driver.

  “Probably means they made the truck.”

  “Yes. It does.”

  “We gonna have to do somethin’ about that.”

  “Yes. We are.”

  Kehoe cast a glance at Corso. “Let’s kill this faggot motherfucker and be done with that shit.”

  Driver steeled himself. “I need him,” he said.

  “I’m sicka draggin’ him around. His ass is dead.”

  His hand plucked the boning knife from his pants pocket. Driver jumped between the two men and grabbed Kehoe by the wrist with his left hand. His right jammed the barrel of the automatic hard against the underside of Kehoe’s chin. They stood, hip to hip, arms aloft shaking like crazy, gazing into each other’s feral eyes. “I need him,” Driver said again. “Either that or it all ends right here in this room.”

  For a second, everything was in doubt. Who was going to live and who was going to die was settled in silence, as gleaming silver dust motes floated through the shaft of sunshine coming through the parted curtains. Tendon by tendon the death grip relaxed, until each man took a hasty step back. Driver dropped his right hand, stuck the automatic in his belt. Kehoe kept the knife steady at waist level. Both men were gulping air.

  The hot blood filling his cheeks reminded Corso of a day when he was sixteen years old. The day when everything changed forever. Long and lean, he’d nearly attained his adult height of sixfoot-six, when his father, angry that they were out of beer, reached out with those claws he called hands, grabbed the young Corso by the throat and pinned him against the wall, in just another angry outburst in a steadily increasing series of such acts of violence aimed at both Frank and his mother.

  Looking back, as Corso had so many times, the day was like any other day. Nothing special, except that something broke inside of Frank Corso that morning, and without thinking, he grabbed the gnarled, nicotine-stained fingers clutching at his throat and bent them all the way back until they made a noise like snapping twigs.

  A great roar erupted from his father’s innards as he staggered backward, cradling the maimed hand against his chest. His bloodshot eyes looked up just in time to see his son’s fist on its way toward his face. The impact drove him to his knees on the kitchen floor, where his broken nose steadily dripped blood onto the worn linoleum.

  Frank and his father never spoke another word.

  “I need him for closure,” Driver said. “It’s the only way I can bring it all the way around. The only way the journey matters is if the story is told.”

  Kehoe shook his head in disgust. “You was in that punishment cell too long, Captainman. They done fried your brain in there, you know that. You don’t make no goddamn sense sometimes.”

  Driver flinched at the words. His eyes rolled farther back into his head than anatomy suggested was possible. He suffered a brief fit of shaking before coming to grips again.

  He rubbed his eyes like a man waking from a deep sleep, pointed at the two black bags on the bed. “Take the little one,” he said. “We’ll keep Corso here between us and just mosey right out the front door.”

  “We can’t be drivin’ that truck no more.”

  “No shortage of cars out there. We’ll just requisition one.”

  The plan seemed to satisfy Kehoe. “Let’s go,” he said. “We get the fuck outta here, we’ll talk about his ass again.”

  Driver pulled open the door. Kehoe strode out carrying the ammo bag in his left hand. Corso fell in behind Kehoe with Driver bringing up the rear. The carpet was so bright and busy with color, you could have slaughtered a hog on it and nobody would have noticed. They marched to the trio of elevators at the end of the hall.

&nb
sp; The clang and clamor of the casino assaulted their ears as they stepped from the elevator car. The Dollar Drinks Promotion was working. The casino was jammed full of low rollers, senior citizens and the kind of sad sacks indigenous only to Vegas, sitting there on their wrinkled asses, one-pound coffee cans in their laps, sitting in front of slot machines pulling those handles for all they were worth, counting their lives in quarters through a thick, blue haze of cigarette smoke.

  The bells and the whistles, the flashing lights, the shouts of the winners and the curses of the losers followed them down the long central aisle toward the front door in the distance. Corso began to slow. Driver nudged him forward.

  The crowd in front of them began to part like the Red Sea as one of the casino cash carts was being wheeled up the aisle by a pair of security guards. God knows how much money was on its way to the counting room and the vaults beyond. Another pair of guards trailed along behind, making no bones about their intent, hands on their gun butts, narrow eyes sweeping back and forth across the room, looking for any poor soul sufficiently desperate as to impede their progress. Corso stepped aside to allow them to pass. Driver had the automatic pressed against Corso’s side as they leaned against a slot machine to make room for the gleaming steel cart. As the cart drew parallel, Corso stepped out into the gap between the cart and the pair of guards trailing along behind. Driver grabbed at his jacket but Corso backpedaled away. Their eyes met.

  “Half an hour,” Corso said. “I’ll give you half an hour.”

  Driver growled with rage and reached for his belt. Corso cringed. Seemed like the scene would surely end right there and then. Like the last sound he was ever going to hear was going to be the flat crack of gunfire. The last sight muzzle flashes. The last smell gun smoke.

  Corso snapped a glance to the right, looking for a place to dive. Nothing but a little alcove barely big enough for the slot machine and the ancient woman pulling the handle. When he switched his attention back to Driver, Kehoe had stepped into the breach, putting his back between Driver and the passing parade. The nearest of the rear guard started for Corso. He’d unsnapped the safety strap on his holster. “Move it, buddy,” the guy said. Corso showed him both hands and stepped into the alcove, tripping over a purse and nearly losing his balance. The woman smelled of lilacs.