by Adam Hamdy
The scream was deafening. Wallace opened his eyes to see Smokie on the floor, convulsing violently. Two thin wires ran from his back to a Taser in unit supervisor Grover’s hands.
‘Let him go!’ Grover ordered, and the two men holding Wallace released their grip. Grover turned his attention to Wallace. ‘You OK to walk?’
Wallace nodded uncertainly, his whole body palpitating in time with his racing heart.
‘Good,’ Grover said quietly as he stood aside to let two guards into the room. The men grabbed Wallace and hauled him towards the door.
33
Pain plagued Wallace as he was pulled through the building. He knew that the confines of the infirmary were even more dangerous than the block and that Smokie and his people could easily reach him there, so he tried to give no hint of his injuries. When they reached the grille gate, one of the guards misjudged the distance and Wallace collided with the frame as he was pushed through. His ribs shrieked, his head throbbed, and tears welled in his eyes, but, as the world warped and wavered and his mind grappled with the onslaught of agony, Wallace resisted the urge to double over. The guards led him along whitewashed corridors, as pain pushed fearful thoughts into his mind. Maybe these men were taking him to his death? Somewhere quiet where Smokie could finish the job? The whispered legends and his own tormented experience of Rikers had convinced Wallace that it was a savage place where hope was suffocated by cruel reality. Sudden awareness cut through the bewildering pain and Wallace realised that he was in an unfamiliar part of the block. With no other prisoners or guards in sight, this windowless section was unusually quiet. On one side of the corridor, every twelve feet or so, a grey door broke the dirty white wall. The guards led Wallace to a door at the very end and by the time they stopped outside, he was utterly overwhelmed by pain and fear. He could see the door, he could feel his heart pounding and his chest heaving with shallow, rapid breaths, he could smell the guards’ sweat as it overpowered their cheap cologne, and he could hear the sound of the door opening, but the sensations seemed as though they were being experienced by someone else. He felt his mind disconnecting from reality, adrift in a furious ocean of despair, as the guards led him through the doorway.
Holy fuck. The words flared in Ash’s mind the moment she saw the Englishman being ushered into the room. She looked across at Parker, who was seated at the table in the centre of the deposition room, and saw that she was not the only one shocked by Wallace’s appearance. His skin was stretched taut over his skull, giving his face deathly definition. Dark shadows circled his sunken eyes. Ash tried to catch his gaze, but he walked blankly into the room and slumped in the chair opposite Parker. Ash had encountered that blankness before and recognised that Wallace was broken. She moved away from the wall and took a seat at the table, as the Department of Corrections guards left the room.
‘Mr Wallace.’ Ash paused. Wallace hadn’t acknowledged her or Parker. Instead, his attention was focused on blood splatters that covered the front of his white sweatshirt. His eyelids fluttered erratically, and Ash could see him straining to focus.
‘Mr Wallace,’ Ash tried again. This time Wallace looked up, but his gaze was unfocused and distant. ‘The information your attorney gave me checked out.’
Wallace looked directly at Ash and gave a weak, twisted smile.
‘I’m sorry it took so long,’ Ash offered apologetically.
Wallace’s smile fell, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Neither Ash nor Parker had the chance to react as Wallace’s unconscious body tumbled out of the chair and his head hit the floor with an emphatic thud.
34
Bonnie Mann looked down at the faded green baize and tapped her cards with her bitten, stubby fingers. The king of spades and the nine of clubs. No room for manoeuvre, but the dealer’s face card was the five of hearts. The odds were on her side, Bonnie thought as she waited for her neighbour to make his play. He was a drunk, fat cowboy whose face looked as though it had been carved by years of degeneracy, and he was showing a double deuce. As he split his hand, Bonnie looked around the rotten old casino, and caught sight of her reflection in the huge gilt mirror hanging beside the blackjack tables. She couldn’t kid herself any longer; the life she’d lived had taken a heavy toll. Her skin was puffy and pale, possibly a side effect of the anti-depressants she’d been prescribed. She mixed the pills with alcohol in an attempt to silence her worries, but the regime hadn’t succeeded and she spent most working days troubled by her financial woes and obsessing over strategies to win back the money she’d lost. Bonnie’s once formidable cascading golden hair had been cut into a short crop on the advice of a twenty-buck stylist, who had said it was the only way to minimise the patchy hair loss. Gone were the thousand-dollar dresses. Instead, she was wearing a pair of Walmart jeans and an old Stussy top she’d found in a Goodwill store. She thought of what she’d done to herself, the relationships she’d wrecked and the money she’d lost, and turned away from the mirror. She felt fiery shame engulf her and stared at her cards in a studious effort to get her emotions under control.
She regretted the day when her colleague, Lilly Ashby, introduced her to 808. Bonnie had started slow, making light, manageable bets with the online casino, but then a terrible thing happened; Bonnie won. A spin of a digital roulette wheel and one hundred and fifty bucks on number seventeen had become four thousand five hundred dollars. Working in tech, Bonnie was making good money, but there was something instantly addictive about the thrill of winning. She upped her stakes and started playing more frequently. She branched out from roulette to blackjack and at one point was more than fifty thousand dollars up. Whenever she recalled that flawless run of wins, she felt aggrieved at her stupidity. If only she’d banked the money and quit, she wouldn’t be stuck hustling in the only casino in Vegas desperate enough to give her a marker. But she hadn’t quit. Instead, she started losing, and, in chasing her losses, she’d squandered her home, her husband, her job, her pension, her savings – everything that she ever gave a shit about.
When she could no longer get credit online, she’d come to Vegas and started gambling in the real world, desperate to try to recover something. She only ever lost more. She knew she was sick, but she couldn’t stop herself. Work had faded into insignificance, and she’d been fired for gross negligence when they’d discovered the three-thousand-case backlog she’d concealed. Bonnie called it a backlog, but the truth was that she knew she’d never deal with any of those cases; gaming had taken over her life. She knew she should be ashamed, but she didn’t care, she only wanted to beat the ugly monster that had stolen so much from her. She looked in the mirror, well aware of the true identity of the monster, but it was one that she couldn’t face. Instead, she blamed bad luck, and so she sold all her things, dresses, jewellery, shoes – anything and everything that could raise more than a dime. She borrowed money from friends and family, telling herself that it wasn’t stealing because she would pay it back when her luck turned, but she lost it all.
As the cash dried up, the reputable casinos started turning her away, and Bonnie worked her way down the Strip, until only the Element would give her credit. She was at the marker’s limit and knew that she had only one way of paying out if she didn’t win tonight. The last of her chips, some five hundred bucks, lay scattered in front of her cards. All her desperate dreams rested on the king of spades and the nine of clubs. Even as the light of false hope crept into her mind, Bonnie knew the outcome was inevitable. She wondered whether she’d known it the day she’d taken her first spin of the wheel.
The cowboy bust both hands and the dealer flipped his hole card to reveal the six of diamonds. Bonnie knew what was coming, and had started to turn away before the ten of clubs hit the baize. She walked quickly, aiming straight for the gleaming lights of the Strip which glowed brightly beyond the Element’s gloomy and decrepit lobby.
‘Miss Mann,’ Rusty said, stepping out from behind a gaudy Wild Streak slot machine. A tall, muscular man with a cruel face, Ru
sty was one of the Element’s senior pit bosses. ‘We need to talk.’
Bonnie turned away from Rusty and almost ran into two heavyset men in dark suits. She’d seen them eject a few troublemakers from the casino and had the feeling that providing additional security was only the start of their duties. Her shoulders sagged as she faced Rusty, and the last spark of hope flickered and died. She wasn’t going to escape her marker.
‘Sure,’ she said sadly.
As the two men steered her through the casino, Bonnie looked down at the worn carpet and wondered how a life that had once held such promise could end in such failure. The penalty for a dishonoured marker had been made very clear to her when she’d taken out the credit. Rusty swiped a key card and opened a door marked ‘employees only’. Once they were out of the lobby, the two men took hold of Bonnie’s arms and the pace quickened. She thought about screaming or trying to break free, but she knew that would only result in a more painful punishment.
The men led her down a long corridor, past the quiet casino kitchen and through another set of double doors to a loading area, where a black Buick waited in one of the bays. The men dragged her to the rear of the car and pulled her round to face Rusty.
‘You owe us ten grand.’ Rusty leaned in, full of menace.
‘I can get the money,’ Bonnie pleaded. ‘It’ll just take me a couple of days.’
Rusty shook his head. ‘You know there’s only one way you can pay us back.’
‘Please don’t.’ Bonnie started weeping. ‘Please. I’ll find the money. You don’t have to do this.’
Rusty nodded at the man to Bonnie’s left. ‘Leo, why don’t you and Eli take Bonnie for a ride?’ he suggested as he opened the Buick’s trunk.
Leo and Eli forced a struggling Bonnie inside.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘I’ll do anything.’
‘Fucking dumbass,’ Rusty muttered as he slammed the trunk shut.
‘Do it in the desert,’ Bonnie heard Rusty say. She pounded on the trunk, and was rewarded with two hard thumps in reply.
‘Make all the noise you want,’ Rusty said through millimetres of metal. ‘Ain’t nobody gonna hear you.’
Bonnie sobbed as she heard two doors open and close. Moments later the engine rumbled to life and the car started moving. As she whimpered in the darkness, she heard odd snatches of conversation between her two captors, but for the most part they were silent as they drove out of town, and Bonnie spent the long journey lamenting the dark desperation that had driven her to sign over her life insurance policy to a nominee of the Element Casino. This was how the rancid casino stayed in business; it loaned money to people who were prepared to sign away their lives. Bonnie had life cover worth a quarter of a million bucks. The Element was actually going to profit from her death.
‘We got a tail,’ Bonnie heard the muffled voice of one of the men through the rear seats.
‘Pull over,’ the other man instructed. ‘See if it passes.’
Bonnie felt the car slow. Please let it be a cop, she prayed.
‘It’s slowing down,’ said the first voice.
‘Shit! You think it’s a cop?’ asked the second man.
Hope burst like a firework and lit up Bonnie’s heart. She heard the sound of a vehicle pulling to a halt behind the Buick. A door slammed and there was the sound of approaching footsteps.
‘Get ready,’ said the first man.
The footsteps passed the trunk and moved along the driver’s side of the vehicle.
‘What the fuck!’ the first man yelled. His cry was quickly followed by the sound of two gunshots. Then there was silence. Bonnie wept with relief when she heard footsteps by the side of the car.
‘In here! Please! Help!’ she cried, smacking the roof of the trunk with her palm.
She heard the latch pop and the trunk opened. It took a moment for Bonnie’s eyes to become accustomed to the moonless desert night, but when they focused, what she saw filled her with horror. A man in dark goggles and a face mask loomed over her. He whipped a gloved hand forward and sprayed something in her face. She felt him start to lift her out of the trunk, as darkness overcame her.
Cool wind caressed her face. She felt rumbling vibration all around her. Bonnie opened her eyes and immediately screamed. Starlight illuminated the outline of a rock that she recognised as Fort Point, which meant the expansive body of water that stretched out far beneath her was the Presidio. Bonnie felt heavy, but her muscle control was slowly returning and she looked around. She was surrounded by red metal struts with a long, wide roof above her. Bonnie realised she was on the lower service level of the Golden Gate Bridge, next to the western safety barrier. She sensed movement next to her and turned to see her masked abductor approaching. He had a thick noose in his hands. The other end was attached to a nearby strut. Bonnie recoiled as the man slipped the noose over her neck. She lashed out, but her fist struck the hard surface of the body armour that covered his chest. She tried to tear at his goggles, but he struck her in the face, knocking her head against the hard metal barrier.
As night-time traffic rolled overhead, the masked man lifted her over the barrier. She came to her senses as he began to lower her over the other side, and she clawed at the barrier, desperately trying to grab the metal lip. Her assailant lashed out, knocking her backwards with a punch to the side of the head. Bonnie felt herself falling, but the masked man grabbed the other end of the rope, and her descent was suddenly arrested by the noose closing around her throat. For a moment they were completely still. Bonnie’s feet were precariously perched on the edge of the red girder that ran along the bottom of the safety rail, her body leaning away from the bridge at a perilous forty-five-degree angle. The only thing that prevented her from falling was the opposing force of the noose around her neck.
‘Please!’ she begged, her throat straining to expel the word.
The mask and opaque goggles offered no hint of the man’s emotions as he fed out some slack. Deprived of tension, Bonnie’s legs slipped off the girder and she swung free. She pawed at the rope and thrashed her legs violently as she was lowered below the bridge. Her eyes streamed and the pain in her lungs was unbearable, as was the stark realisation that this was the end.
This is what it feels like when hope truly dies, Bonnie thought as she reached the end of her drop. Swinging beneath the bridge, she looked up and saw the blurred silhouette of her killer. He leaned over the guardrail and watched impassively as she took her final few breaths.
Why? Bonnie wondered, but it was a thought that was never answered.
35
A powerful staccato of vivid dreams flashed through his mind. Strip lights flying overhead. Unfamiliar faces looming over him, judging him. Hands touching him. Dragging him. Connie. Beautiful Connie, smiling up at him. Then suddenly lost to darkness. Flashing lights. Movement. Faces close to him. A man listening to his chest. Travel, as though he was floating. A long tunnel. A deep hum. Distant voices. Commands. Beeps. Bells. Buzzers. More hands touching him, pulling at his body. The killer standing beside him like a dark monolith. Huvane hanging in his barn. His eyes open, his gaze rich with accusation. Concerned whispers. A woman he recognised but couldn’t name. Then darkness. Long, untroubled oblivion.
A breath. Sensation. His head was enveloped by soft warmth. His skin felt smooth and clean, pressed against crisp sheets. Wallace opened his eyes to find himself in a bedroom, his head resting on a pair of thick pillows at the top of a king-size bed. Grey light circumscribed a set of heavy drapes that hung over a large window.
‘Hey,’ a woman’s voice said. Wallace looked across the room. His eyes took a moment to focus on the figure in the armchair; it was Christine Ash. She rose and crossed the room.
‘We took you to hospital,’ she said as she took a seat on the edge of the bed. ‘You were pretty out of it. Docs said there was no permanent damage. How are you feeling?’
‘OK,’ Wallace croaked.
Ash reached for a glass of water that rested on the
bedside table and passed it to him. He raised himself on to his elbows, and the movement incited bursts of pain all over his body. Wallace guessed he’d been given pain relief because the discomfort seemed dull and distant, but it was still sufficient to make him wince.
‘You’ve got a couple of cracked ribs,’ Ash explained. ‘As bad as it looks, the rest is just bruising. The doc says you’ve got a few bullet wounds, one old, two new.’
‘I got the old one outside Kandahar,’ Wallace said. ‘The other two came from the guy who’s trying to kill me.’
‘I read your background,’ Ash said. ‘Sounds like you went through hell in Afghanistan. Were you telling the truth? About those soldiers?’
Wallace nodded.
‘I’m sorry,’ she offered.
‘Don’t be. I was lucky.’
Wallace took a sip of water, before handing the glass back to Ash. He held his hand behind his head as he lowered it on to the pillows. The tendons in his neck were tender with whiplash.
‘No, I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously,’ Ash continued earnestly. ‘I should have listened. It would have spared you a lot of pain. It’s supposed to be a pre-trial jail, but Rikers is no place for the innocent. I’m sorry you were ever there.’
Wallace felt a potent surge of relief that choked any reply, so he simply tilted his head in acknowledgement.
‘I had the local field office send an agent down to canvas Malibu beach,’ Ash explained. ‘He found a man named Bruce Morton, who claimed to have been on the beach the night of Pallo’s murder. He says he saw your killer. Didn’t get a good look, but he says there was a guy in a long coat and mask underneath Malibu Pier. Morton’s homeless, and a little unstable, so he didn’t come forward because he was afraid the cops would think he had something to do with the murder.’
‘Thank you,’ Wallace said gratefully, struggling to control his emotions.
