Cutter

by Laird, Thomas

  Fortuna sat with his lawyer inside the box with Doc and me. Jack was out on the street with a new case and a new partner.

  ‘You have anything you want to share about the death of Marco Karrios?’ Doc asked.

  ‘Only that I wish I’d tossed the match that burned him to dust and charcoal.’

  His lawyer, Tony Amonte, tugged at Jackie Morocco’s sleeve.

  ‘I don’t give a shit. The motherfucker was a piece of crap and I wish I done him myself, but I didn’t ... Is this why you dragged me all the way down here? Because I thought I was being cooperative in the investigation of my sister’s murder.’

  Doc looked at me. He knew this was a waste of time. Big John Fortuna now belonged to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  *

  I still had trouble sleeping. I had a prescription my family doctor gave me to help me out, but those damn’ pills made me woozy in the morning. I didn’t think they mixed well with my b.p. prescription.

  It was Saturday morning. My kids and mother were going off to the beach. They were leaving early — about nine. I was going in late because I was planning on working late. Natalie was staying home. It was her day off, and she was planning on cleaning the house from top to bottom. It was about 8.45 already. My mother had the two kids in tow and they were on their way out the door. They were using the van. I’d taken Doc home in the Taurus and I’d kept it at my place so I didn’t have to bum a ride into work.

  The kids and Eleanor told Natalie and me goodbye. They scurried toward the Plymouth in the driveway, and they were gone. I walked back into the bedroom because I knew I’d forgotten something. I couldn’t scratch it back into my memory. Natalie said it was the onset of senior citizenship, and then she kissed me as I left the house.

  The Taurus awaited. Doc and I still had four outstanding cases to turn to black.

  It was sunny, hot, and humid. Just what you expected of the end of summer. The heat’d die hard.

  I looked out at my front lawn and saw that it needed a serious watering. I didn’t have much grass, but I liked taking care of the front and back of the house.

  Looking down the street, I saw that the neighbors’ lawns were in scraggly straits, too. The outside was deserted. It was only nine a.m. and it was already eighty-two degrees and sweltering. The only life on the block was some tall female who was apparently selling ‘Katie Ann Kosmetics’. I saw her violet-colored company car at the very end of the far block. She had a straw hat covering what looked like yellow-blonde hair.

  I got into the company car and I backed out of the driveway, thinking I should’ve gone with the kids and Eleanor to the Lake. I hadn’t been to the beach a single time this summer. Too many dead bodies to deal with.

  I drove the mile and a half to the Stevenson in-bound exit. When I got on, I saw I had been gulled into believing that this Saturday traffic would be light. After I’d gone a half-mile along 1-55, I was in the middle of a jam. I saw helicopters hovering over the eastbound lanes, about a mile ahead of us. I turned on the talk-radio station and a DJ finally revealed that there’d been a massive accident up ahead. Just my luck. Heat, humidity, a poorly working, inefficient car air-conditioner, and a wreck that could hold me up for an hour and a half.

  But I was coming in on my own to work this Saturday. It originally was one of my days off. I started to daydream about Natalie, naturally, wondering if she was pregnant. Then my mind wandered to changing my wife’s hair color. What would I like to see her change to? Brunette? Black-haired? Blonde?

  Blonde. A tall, statuesque, yellow-haired beauty. Just like the blonde on the street, selling the cosmetics.

  Tall, she’d been. Very tall. She’d been far down the block, but even from that distance she’d looked a little ...

  The heat rose to my temples. I looked ahead and found the traffic still moving inch by inch. There was no getting anywhere in this mess. Even if they’d cleared the wreck, there’d be a half-hour gapers’ block. I couldn’t get to the next exit by sitting here. So I pulled over onto the shoulder just as the anxiety level inside me exploded to critical.

  It was him. It was Karrios. That son of a bitch was working his way down to my house. He was working his way toward Natalie. The golden hair, the yellow topknot. It was the color he would pick ...

  I got on the radio to downtown and I ordered up a small army to get to my place. But I was still the cop closest to Natalie and my house — and I was headed in the wrong fucking direction.

  I was able to zoom up the shoulder for about three blocks. Then I came to a stalled car and I was stuck again. Three lanes creeping at about an inch every five minutes and a blocked shoulder.

  I tried to patch in a call to my wife via the radio in the Ford, but when they connected me, she didn’t pick up. She liked to play the stereo full blast while she vacuumed. I’d already bitched at her about the noise this morning.

  It would take me too long to run back home. It was a couple of miles.

  So I got out of the car and left it sitting behind the stranded VW Bug that was spouting steam from beneath its upraised hood. I ran across the three lanes of creeping traffic, climbed over the rail, ran down the ditch that separated the eastbound traffic from the westbound, and stepped onto the westbound outside lane. These guys were going medium speed, perhaps forty. The traffic had become sluggish because of the show they’d just passed on the opposite side. The gapers hadn’t decided it was time to resume normal speed.

  I tried to step out onto the lane and tried to flag someone down, but no one would halt in front of me and my flapping arms. Marco was down the block by now. Maybe he’d gone directly for Natalie after he’d seen me leave the house. He could count. He knew four of us had left the premises, and he’d know my wife was still there. You could bet he’d done a surveillance on the house, now that the police watch on my place had ended.

  I finally stepped out into the middle of the road. There was about a two-block gap between me and the late-model red Corvette that was headed directly at me. The inside two lanes were clogged with traffic, so the guy in the Vette had nowhere to go but right at me. He was travelling at the speed limit or thereabouts, and it was not certain that he’d be able to avoid hitting me, but he jammed on his brakes so fast that the car began to fishtail and screech. The other two lanes heard him hitting the brakes and they thought there was an accident ahead that they somehow hadn’t seen yet, and they started screeching to a halt as well.

  The driver was a young kid, I saw, as he came to rest about ten yards in front of me.

  ‘You fuckin’ nuts?’ he screamed at me in a rage.

  ‘Get out of the car. Police emergency!’ I shouted. I showed him the ID, but I kept myself planted right in front of him.

  ‘Fuck you! I ain’t gettin’ out!’ he raged back at me.

  I removed the Nine from my shoulder holster.

  ‘Get out of the car, Junior.’

  I could see his face blanch immediately, and he hurried out the driver’s side.

  ‘Are you really a cop?’ he wanted to know as I walked past him and got into the Corvette. I showed him the badge once again, and then I laid rubber.

  The traffic ahead was still thick. It was as if everyone’d gone slow-motion after witnessing the carnage back toward the Lake on the eastbound lanes. Everyone seemed to love a good accident.

  It was two miles to the exit where I got off for my house. I cut two angry drivers off, making my way to the left lane, and I caught sight of two raised middle fingers as I went by. Road rage, they called it.

  I placed the nine-millimeter on the passenger’s seat.

  My wife.Oh God oh Jesus,my wife.My possibly pregnant wife.Natalie.

  He couldn’t have taken very long to get down to my door. No one would be on the street to see him skip all those other homes. He’d make a beeline toward Natalie.

  Was he carrying a bag? Christ, I couldn’t remember.

  I didn’t have a radio in here so I couldn’t try calling her again. And now
the inane thought reentered my head that I’d forgotten something in my haste to get out of the house. Why I remembered something as stupid as —

  I hit another snag in traffic just as I was six blocks from my exit. I yanked the Vette over into the right lane and cut off some more unhappy motorists. I got over onto the

  shoulder and I was sailing until I saw another guy with his hood up in front of me, a hundred feet away.

  I screeched the Corvette back into the inside right lane and sideswiped a Chevy Blazer. The Blazer jammed on its brakes, but I kept going. I swung to the shoulder once more and it was clear, finally, all the way to my exit ramp. When I saw the traffic backed up on the ramp, I swerved around to the right shoulder on the exit and I passed by a number of honking, angry drivers.

  Finally I was into city traffic, a mile and a half from home. I bobbed and weaved and blew through a stoplight and then a second stoplight. When I tried to whip through a third red light, someone nailed the rear end of the sports car and I did a 180 in the middle of the intersection. I straightened the expensive hot rod out, aimed myself in the right direction, and took off again. I was still alive and untouched, but the Vette had taken a good pounding. The young man I’d left behind on the Stevenson was going to be mightily pissed off.

  Natalie.Jesus,Natalie.Don’t answer the fucking door!

  Halfway down the block, a pickup truck pulled in front of me and I thumped into his ass end because I had no time to evade him. Smoke billowed from the Vette’s engine. I thought it was on fire, but no flames erupted from under the hood.

  Then I couldn’t get the car into gear. I shifted into first and then second and then third, but nothing happened. I couldn’t get the Corvette to budge.

  Natalie,don’t open the door!

  The only gear that worked was reverse, so I pulled the car around and headed down the block backwards. When I reached the next comer, a bus slowly pulled out in front of me and I had to literally jump on the brakes to avoid losing any kind of mobility.

  The passengers in the back of the bus were staring out the back window watching an idiot in a red Corvette squealing his tires and tearing down the street in reverse right behind them. My neck was becoming very tired, as I had to turn sideways and look over my shoulder. I couldn’t just use the rearview mirror. It was dangerous enough doing it this way.

  Then the bus driver must have noticed the clown in the red car speeding up behind him in reverse, so he stopped the bus. I jerked the vehicle to a halt, tore the steering wheel to a 180, and then managed to work my way backwards around to the side of the bus. I looked out my driver’s side window as I passed the stunned bus driver and his fares.

  There was an open street in front of me — or behind me — as I continued peeling backwards in reverse. Another pickup pulled deliberately out from the comer in front of me and again I wasn’t able to swerve quickly enough because of the awkwardness of the steering. But after I thumped violently into the Chevy pickup’s rear with the tail end of the obliterated Vette, I thought I’d somehow managed to loosen up the transmission of the red wreck. When I came to a stop, I tried to force it into first gear, and miraculously the Vette lunged forward. I went through second and third as if the vehicle had never been damaged, and finally I was driving the smoking car the right way down the block. When I reached eighty m.p.h., traffic increased and I had to slow down. But I wasn’t going slowly enough to avoid another rear-end crash, so I attempted to slide the Corvette between two cars in this four-lane traffic. It didn’t look like there was enough room, but there was open street in front of the two poke-asses in front of me. I hit the accelerator hard and tore between a new Cadillac and a beater Mercedes. There was the terrible sound of screeching metal as I simultaneously sideswiped both vehicles. I was nearly stuck between them, but the Vette had enough guts to shear itself away from these two outraged drivers who were shouting several kinds of obscenity at me. I didn’t have time to respond.

  More smoke was pouring out from beneath the red hood.

  Don’t open the door,Natalie!

  I could hear grinding coming from the guts of the automobile. This beautiful ex-sports car was about to give up its ghost and I was still too far from home to run for it.

  Third gear gave out, and I was chugging along at a greatly reduced speed. I tried ramming it into second gear, and it worked, but I couldn’t get it going past 40 m.p.h.

  Yet one more hillbilly with a pickup pulled out from a comer and cut me off. I thought they must have had some kind of obligation not to know about right of way, but I had no time to change myself into a traffic copper.

  When I tried to pull around this latest stumpjumper and his Ford pickup, the driver, with full beard and John Deere ballcap, looked over at me with a brown smile full of fixings from a mouthful of chewing tobacco — and proceeded to try and run me into oncoming traffic in the lane to the left of mine. He brought his much-dented truck over and made a hit on my passenger’s door. I couldn’t believe this asshole was trying to push me into a head-on collision!

  Reflex kicked in and I pulled the Nine from its resting place on the seat next to me. I aimed it at the billy-boy in the beater Ford. We were both doing forty-five, and it was fortunate the street was clear ahead of us. When he saw the aimed piece, he literally stood up in his cab and jammed on the brakes. So I sped away from him.

  Now second gear was grinding away, just blocks from my house. More smoke billowed up in front of me and it was becoming more difficult to see anything. I had to hang my head out the window to get any kind of decent visibility.

  Second gear gave out, and I downshifted into first. The best I could get out of the damn’ thing was twenty m.p.h. It felt like I was moving in slow motion, as though the car was trapped in amber.

  Then I tried third again, bypassing second, and the car lurched up to speed once more. It was a miracle. I thought maybe these toys really were worth their high price tags, after all.

  I got it up to fifty-five in this thirty-five m.p.h. speed zone and again I hit traffic. There was no way around or between this gaggle of cars, however — until I saw that the sidewalk was unobstructed with pedestrians. So I swerved over to the right and tried to jerk my way onto the sidewalk. As I did, something went loony with the steering. I felt the steering wheel give just slightly, and suddenly the Vette had tipped to the right and I was driving on two wheels — the right front and back. It was like in one of those Demolition Derby stunt shows. But I had never performed in an automobile before, and I thought my bowels had finally loosened sufficiently for me to dirty my underwear. I sped down that unoccupied sidewalk, tilted precariously on those two wheels for the better part of a block. Then I decided I was going to be killed or kill some unwary pedestrians anyway, so I rammed my shoulder toward the driver’s door and I was able to bring the Corvette back down on all four pegs.

  I was beyond the logjam on the street now, so I veered the car off the sidewalk just as three women appeared in front of me. They screamed as I screeched the red, boiling-over Vette back onto the street surface. I had missed the three middle-aged females by about twenty feet, I reckoned.

  Third gear was grinding again and I understood my luck was about to vanish like the smoke in front of me that was swept aside by the slipstream of the Vette’s motion. Amazingly, there were no police cars in pursuit of this maniac in a stolen red Corvette that was accordioned on both sides, flattened front and back, and driven by a gun-waving lunatic who’d aimed his handgun at a civilian in a pickup truck.

  Don’t open the door,Natalie.Don’t open the door.

  As this vehicle lurched and shuddered toward my home I thought about my wife being pregnant. I thought about her finally recognizing Karrios as she opened the door for him. She would think it was just a blonde woman selling perfume. Just a summer day with a door-to-door female peddling her wares.

  The road was open ahead of me. People weren’t on the streets. They were at jobs, at their workplaces. Life was going on in a normal way for eve
ryone but Natalie and me. No one else had a mad savage waiting at his or her front door. Just me. Just Natalie. If I were in any other profession, I’d be biding my time until my vacation at the Wisconsin Dells. You spent two weeks in the water and watched the waterskiers perform.

  I thought I saw a flame erupt from the hood.

  It was just a matter of blocks now. Just feet and inches.

  Don’t open the door,Natalie.

  My beautiful red-headed wife. This would make three losses consecutively for me. Then I thought what a selfish notion that was, coming at that moment.

  He would hit her with a mouthful of ether. That was how The Farmer operated. He would neutralize her with a cloth soaked in the stuff, and then he would strip her and ...

  When he was through, when he was spent, if indeed he could have an orgasm ...

  Jesus,Natalie,don’t open the door!

  He would take his time with her. There would be no rush. She would be unconscious, so he would begin to do the things he did with all of his victims. Yes, he would work slowly.

  I slammed my hands three times on the steering wheel. I could muster no more speed out of the red car, but my luck was holding with the still-empty street before me.

  Then I definitely saw a slight flame from beneath the crumpled hood. This ride was about to explode. And then The Farmer would have an open field ahead of him. I wondered if he sensed I was onto him. He probably hoped I was, just so I could speed home as I was, just so I could see his signature and Natalie’s mutilated body.

  That beautiful body that had lain with me just hours ago. That body that contained my seed and my offspring too, I thought. That would be the final coup for Karrios. To kill our child.

  My street’s comer finally appeared ahead of me. An old man in a large Crown Victoria was in front of me just before I turned onto our street. He was dragging his ass, so I swerved around him and passed him.