Desperate

by Daniel Palmer

  “And where is your . . . car?” Lucas said without standing, delaying the word car, for effect.

  “I parked it at the end of the alley,” Roy said. “It’s a Camaro.”

  “Good,” Lucas said, rising, using his hands to brush clean his suit pants. “Jorge, kill this son of a bitch.”

  Roy looked up at Lucas, confused and terrorized. He thought he’d bought himself more time.

  “I don’t care if you’re lying to me,” Lucas said. “Either we find the pills you took or we don’t. Figured I’d at least give it a shot to get back what you stole. But Nicky, Nicky Stacks needs to be sent a message: he needs to hire better help, and you will be a very bloody telegram.”

  Lucas nodded to Jorge, who stepped back to take better aim. Roy cowered, hands clasped over his head.

  My eyes went wide. This was going to happen. I was about to witness an execution-style murder. Everything slowed down. Jorge raised his gun higher. He widened his stance as he readied his hand. Lucas gave Roy a look of resigned remorse.

  I don’t remember taking those first few steps, coming out of my hiding place, but that’s what I did, and I wasn’t empty-handed. The gun, all nine hundred and ten grams of it, had the weight of an anvil.

  I heard myself shout, “No! Don’t!” The echo of my voice carried across the river in the stillness of the early morning hour.

  Lucas turned to look at me, his brown eyes cooking with rage.

  Jorge looked at me, too, but that wasn’t all he did. He moved the barrel of his weapon away from Roy’s head and aimed it directly at me. Inch by inch, Jorge raised the gun higher until it became level with my face. Then he came toward me, gun hand outstretched, closing the distance between us with long, quick strides.

  Instead of retreating, which my instincts begged me to do, I came out a bit farther, abandoning the relative safety of the shed for the zero safety of the open area. If I turned, if I ran, Jorge would shoot me in the back. At least this way I had a fighting chance, a little sprig of hope I might see my way out of this calamity alive.

  In my peripheral vision I caught sight of Lucas reaching inside his jacket, presumably for his gun. Jorge continued to close the gap, but he wasn’t firing. Maybe he couldn’t make a kill shot from a distance, or perhaps he was just waiting for Lucas to give the command.

  In the meantime we were both on the move, two ships on a collision course. Jorge’s steps were assured and practiced, while mine were tentative, like a man walking the ledge of a high-rise building. We got to within twenty feet or so of each other. My gun was pointed at Jorge’s chest, but then, because my hand kept shaking so badly, it was pointed at his arm, and then it was his other arm, and then maybe the bullet would have struck him in the leg.

  Meanwhile, Jorge’s gun was pointed at my face and only my face. I figured I had a breath or two between Jorge firing and me dying.

  In that instant, Roy fell sideways, reaching for something as he dropped to the ground. The movement must have caught Jorge’s attention. He turned his body to look at Roy. I heard Lucas shout, “Shoot him!” but I didn’t know if him meant me or Roy.

  That answer came quick. To my wide and increasingly horrified eyes, the whole series of movements happened like a scene from a Sam Peckinpah western. Jorge’s waist pivoted in super-slow motion as his torso swung back in my direction. His left arm rose above his shoulder to help stabilize his right arm and, more important, the gun in his right hand. I watched the barrel of the weapon travel from my navel, up to my ribs, next to my throat, until it came to a stop between my eyes.

  I had one instant to react. One second left to breathe. Five-point-five pounds of pressure needed to save my life.

  I didn’t think. I reacted. It was fear, the survival instinct kicking in. My finger pulled the trigger mechanism. A flash, bright and blinding, a flare in the dark erupted from the barrel of the gun. My hand lifted skyward from the recoil. The echo of gunfire rang out, creating a fading ghost of what I’d done.

  A small hole opened in Jorge’s chest right where his heart would be. Blood exploded out from the wound in a quick and violent burst. Jorge’s eyes rolled into his head as he fell. The bullet’s impact pushed his body backward, but then he came forward again as his weight shifted. The gun dropped from his hand as he crumpled to the ground.

  Lucas screamed, “Jorge!”

  As this was happening, Roy had reached into his boot and his hand came out wielding a six-inch knife. Lucas didn’t see this new threat. He was too busy gaping wide-eyed and horrified at his fallen brother.

  Even with my hand shaking—I’d probably just killed this man—somehow I managed to hold onto the weapon. But I wasn’t thinking about using it again. Cemented where I stood, my body was frozen except for my quaking hand.

  Lucas didn’t waste time profiting from my momentary paralysis. He took careful aim with his gun, but never got a chance to set his sights on me. Roy lunged at Lucas like a coiled-up snake making a fast strike. The blade tore through the fabric of Lucas’s suit, buried to the hilt at midthigh. The shriek of pain that followed may have echoed at the same decibel level as my gunshot.

  Lucas, holding onto his leg and yelping, dropped to his knees at the same instant Roy scrambled back to his feet. The danger wasn’t over. Far from it. Lucas still had a gun. He could still shoot me, and that seemed to be his intention as he re-aimed the weapon in my direction. Jorge was no longer a threat, judging by the large swath of crimson spreading from the hole in his chest, but I thought for sure Lucas would get off a shot if he could.

  I dropped into a crouch and covered my head with my hands. Obviously, I hadn’t done much military training, or I would have known the maneuver wasn’t going to stop a bullet from burrowing into my skull.

  Before Lucas could fire his weapon, Roy kicked him in the side of the head with his big, heavy boot. Lucas fell sideways and landed hard. I heard a clatter as the gun dropped from his hand and skidded a good distance across the blacktop. The contact created a small opening for Roy to make a dash for the duffel bag of cash, but Lucas was able to move with surprising speed considering his injured leg. He grabbed his gun in a movement best described as a slide into first. Flipping onto his back, Lucas got off three shots at Roy, all in quick succession. Bullets sparked against the blacktop, landing near enough to force Roy into a change of direction.

  Lucas was on his feet, charging at Roy, putting himself between the duffel bag of money and the other bag of drugs. If Roy went for either, Lucas would have a clean and easy shot. Roy must have known it, too, because he broke for the alley and screamed at me to run while he sprinted past.

  I didn’t hesitate. I sprung up from my crouch, still holding the gun, and made a frantic sprint for the alley entrance falling into step behind Roy, who was maybe ten feet in front of me. My arms were flailing and my spindly legs kicked out like a deer venturing onto an ice-covered pond before I finally got some traction. I heard a pop—no, make that two—but didn’t feel the sting of any bullets.

  Roy gave one last look over his shoulder, and I saw him hesitate. Did he want to go back? He thought about it, but Lucas and his gun must have made him think otherwise.

  Sprinting, my arms pumping, I wouldn’t dare risk looking behind me as Roy had done. I imagined Lucas on approach, his suit jacket flapping like a cape, his gun hand extended out in front of him and pointed at my back like death’s long finger. I raced by the wood pallets and stacked crates and soon I was at the opening to the alley. Roy had already vanished into the darkness in front of me.

  I listened for the footfalls, for another pop of gunfire, but everything was silent now. Where had Lucas gone? Did he decide to give up the chase? Was he back trying to triage his brother?

  I spilled out of the alley just as Roy was pulling the Camaro away from the curb. I caught up to him in time to slam my hand against the car in frantic, rapid succession. Don’t leave me! My hand was saying. Then I did the strangest thing. I pointed the gun at the windshield because I worr
ied Roy wasn’t going to let me in. But he did. He even leaned over and opened my door.

  “Get in!” he yelled.

  I clambered into the front seat as Roy pulled away from the curb. The squelch of tires gave off an angry hiss and the sour odor of burning rubber. Roy was looking down the alley as we sped by. His eyes were distant, vacant even. It was as though he could see all the way to the dock, where a duffel bag full of money and another bag full of Oxycodone would be found, along with a dead man I had just murdered.

  CHAPTER 43

  We drove in silence with Roy going through toothpicks like they were M&M’s. He wove in and out of Boston streets, his eyes darting about in a predatory way, clearly on the lookout for the police. This was the quietest hour of the day, two o’clock in the morning. The bars were closed, the commuters were sleeping, no reason to be out on the road.

  Unless, of course, you were involved in a drug deal gone wrong.

  “Why’d you do it, Roy?” I said. My voice came out shaky, like a kid who had fallen and was doing his best not to cry in front of his friends. “Why didn’t you just do the deal straight-up?”

  Roy’s face turned cherry red. “Because I needed more money!” he screamed, smacking his hand against the steering wheel. “Because you didn’t have enough. I never wanted to double-cross the Moreno brothers, but what choice did I have? Your wife and kid got killed by a drunk driver! Didn’t you get more money? How could you not have gotten more money from that?” Roy was seething, his face in a snarl.

  “So this is my fault?” I shouted back at him. “You set up some crackerjack blackmail scheme but you didn’t even know if I had what you needed? That’s insane, Roy! And now I’ve got blood on my hands! I killed a man tonight. I killed him. Do you get that? I shot him.”

  I was saying this to myself as much as I was saying it to Roy. The reality was sinking in. I was a murderer, forever and always.

  Somehow my ire soothed Roy’s. He looked at me with a different kind of understanding. We were brothers.

  “He was going to kill you. You did what you had to do.”

  My hands were trembling as we drove past a shuttered pizza joint. Looking at those darkened windows, I couldn’t imagine ever eating food again. My guts were twisted and knotted. I imagined they’d stay that way forever. As we drove aimlessly around the quiet streets of Boston, past empty office buildings and darkened storefronts, I kept seeing Jorge, a bloody corpse flat on his back on the ground only a few feet away from where my gun had discharged. He was the stuff of my new nightmares. My head felt full of sorrow and gloom. This couldn’t be undone. There was no going back or making a different choice. I did what I did and would forever live with the consequences of my actions. And I hated myself for it.

  “How much product did you siphon off?” I asked Roy. “How much?”

  “Enough to cover my debts and get me out of town for a while.”

  “You didn’t think they’d eventually figure it out?”

  “I wasn’t solving my problem, Gage. I was buying myself some time.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now I’ve got to drop you off and go see Nicky.”

  My stomach lurched at the mention of Nicky’s name. I thought back to our meeting and cringed at the memory of those hateful eyes. And then it dawned on me. We had just lost half a million dollars of Nicky’s money. Gone. Left on a dock for Lucas to carry away in his Boston Whaler, along with his dead brother.

  “What the hell are you going to say to him?” My heart was hammering. I felt cold and hot all at the same time, grossly uncomfortable in my own skin. All I wanted to do was go home. I wanted to crawl into bed with Anna, inhale the familiar scent of her sleep, and feel the cottony fabric of her pajamas pressed against my skin. I wondered if Max and Karen were watching from wherever they could watch. Did they know what I had done? Were their spirits at the dock when I pulled the trigger? Was it Max who’d given me five-point-five pounds of courage to do what had to be done?

  “I’m going to lie,” Roy said. “I’m going to tell him we were ambushed. That Lucas tried to kill us and so we killed Jorge in self-defense. I’m going to lie to him.”

  “Will that work?” I asked.

  “Will Nicky Stacks forget I owe him half a million dollars?” Roy gave me a sidelong glance. “You have a better chance of being a daddy to Lily’s baby than you do of Nicky forgetting his money.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Let me handle it.”

  “And the police?”

  Roy laughed, but not in a way that said I amused him. It was more like he couldn’t fathom how little of the underground life I understood.

  “There won’t be any cops,” he said, snapping a toothpick in half. “There’s not going to be any reports of a shooting, either. They didn’t have any video surveillance back there. Nothing. What happened on the dock never happened. Jorge is going to drop off the face of the earth, and Lucas is going to look for retribution, either in cash or blood. That’s how this is going to go down.”

  “So we go to Nicky for protection?” I couldn’t wrap my head around being a part of his world, teammates with Roy, but the blood on my hands was as binding as any legal document.

  “I go to Nicky and we take it from there,” Roy said. “You lay low. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “What, like going to the cops?”

  Roy took his eyes off the road so he could fix me with a baleful look. “Don’t even say that.” He wagged a finger. “You do that and we’re both good as dead. Is that clear?”

  “Yeah,” I said, breaking away from his angry stare to look at whatever was zooming past my window.

  Roy grabbed my shirt and pulled me toward him. The sudden movement caused the Camaro to weave a bit, but nobody was on the road. “I’m not kidding. Don’t you get any whistle-blowing ideas. I’ll take you down myself. You’re a murderer now. Don’t forget that.”

  “No body,” I said. “No cameras. No crime.”

  “Trust me, if you bring the heat on Lucas Moreno or any of his associates, or me, or Nicky Stacks, we’ll produce a body and it’ll be yours. Trust me on this. Now where am I dropping you off?”

  I gave Roy the address for the Hyatt Harborside hotel, about half a mile from Logan, which I had reserved in advance. Roy didn’t speak for the remainder of the drive. He was busy chewing on toothpicks, probably thinking about his next move, what he was going to say to Nicky Stacks. He just stopped talking, turned up the radio—we were listening to classic rock—and followed my directions.

  When we reached our destination, Roy followed the curved driveway and pulled to a stop in front of the hotel entrance. He left the car idling while I grabbed the bag I’d packed from the back seat of the Camaro. I headed to the glass doors, but before I got there, Roy rolled down the window and whistled for me.

  “Not a word,” he said. “I’ll be in touch. Just lay low and we’ll get through this together.”

  We. Together. Like we were a pack now. Roy the alpha dog, and me his bitch.

  I nodded, trying to ignore the rush of blood to my head.

  We. Yes, Roy. I’ll be a good boy. I’ll be quiet. I turned my back to Roy and his Camaro, leaving the murder weapon in his possession.

  I gave the surprisingly chipper attendant my real name and my real credit card. I wasn’t in hiding. The police weren’t after me. Following the directions, I took the elevator to the eighth floor, found my room, and went inside. My clothes started to itch and burn. I pulled them off of me, and before I knew it I was naked in the shower, with beads of warm water cascading down my back. But I couldn’t stand, my legs wouldn’t hold me up, so I sat in the tub, curled in a ball with my back to the water, letting it rain on me, washing my guilt down the drain.

  CHAPTER 44

  The phone woke me. It took a moment to figure out where I was, and for a second I thought I was in bed with Anna. Then the strange and musty smell of an unfamiliar room hit my senses, along with the feeling
of too-tight sheets and a comforter about as comforting as an X-ray room’s lead apron.

  I was in a hotel room in Boston. It wasn’t a dream, and neither was the man I’d gunned down at the waterfront. The last time I’d woken up I wasn’t a murderer. It was something I could never say again.

  The curtains in my room were drawn, so I couldn’t tell if the sun had risen. My eyelids, heavy with the kind of sleep only coming down from a double dose of Adderall can provide, came open with the ease of two rusted hinges. My head throbbed in a hangover way, while my body felt as depleted as my spirit.

  8:45 A.M.

  Had I scheduled a wake-up call?

  The phone kept ringing. I picked up the receiver and said, “Yeah.” That syllable encapsulated the extent of my conversational ability. I didn’t bother to think about who would be calling, or why.

  “Gage, it’s Roy. We gotta talk. Can I come up?”

  Roy’s nervous voice jolted me awake with all the gentleness of a slap across my face. I wanted him to be a bad dream, too, but here we were, the blackmailer and the quality assurance engineer-cum-killer tethered to each other like Siamese twins. His anxiety was my anxiety. His terror was my terror. As far as Nicky Stacks was concerned, we were both involved, a couple of partners in crime, literally, and there was not a thing for me to do but let Roy come on up and tell me about our shared fates.

  I gave Roy my room number, something the front desk attendant would not have done. I had just enough time before Roy knocked on my door to rip open one of those complimentary in-room coffee packets using my teeth (a habit I’d sworn to both Karen and Anna I was going to break, knowing I’d continue to break that promise), fill the little coffeepot that probably never got properly washed, and get the brew switch flicked on.

  When I heard the knock I checked the peephole first, instinctively, even though I knew who was there. It was the way a murderer might act.