Penance

by Rick R. Reed

  There was something not right in his pale eyes, almost devoid of color. Something alien in his gaze, which was more intense than any Avery had ever seen.

  “That guy looks familiar,” Morris said.

  Avery was startled by the sound of Morris’s voice and looked up to see a grey-haired man, hunched down into a navy-blue coat, hurrying north up Kenmore.

  “You know him?” Morris asked.

  “Never seen him,” Avery said.

  Morris shook his head. “I know I’ve seen him somewhere before. It almost seems as if he could have been coming from your building.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Morris.”

  “You think he could be one of your pal’s tricks?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Morris switched off the ignition of the car. Avery listened to the motor die, not wanting to get out of the truck. He prayed to himself that Jimmy would not be inside.

  “Yeah, kid, anything’s possible.” Morris turned to Avery. “Like it’s possible you lied to me.”

  Avery swallowed hard. Had the guy figured something out? “Oh, no, sir, I wouldn’t lie. There’s hardly anyplace else Jimmy could be.”

  “Yeah, well you’d better be right.” Morris got out of the truck and Avery was tempted then to push down the locks and just lay on the horn, letting it resound until someone came along and put an end to this nightmare.

  But the bulge of the gun showed clearly in Morris’s sweats, if you knew where to look. And the man was insane.

  Insane men didn’t do rational things like think about the consequences of shooting an unarmed teenage boy in a truck, on a city street, in daylight. Avery imagined his blood splattered on the windshield. In an instant, he saw Morris being led away by the police. They would search his house, find all the others, everyone would be rescued.

  And he would have saved them.

  Morris opened the door on his side before he had a chance to think any further. “Get out, kid. And remember, you make one false move and you die. Got that?”

  “Yes.” Avery stepped from the car. The threat was kind of futile, in light of the fact that he assumed Morris planned to kill them all anyway.

  It was then he realized that Morris was not as gullible as he believed: he had to know that Avery’s motivations lay in getting away. Why else would he be doing this?

  *

  Dwight strode up to the dilapidated building, the fat boy in tow. Aunt Adele had better be right this time. He was walking along this urban street in broad daylight with a minor he’d kidnapped. My God, the risk! What about the risk?

  But he needed the fat kid to help trap Jimmy Fels. Oh, sure, he could find the boy by himself. Little T had already supplied him with the information he needed for that. But getting Fels out of the apartment building might be difficult. The boy would be waiting for him, terrified.

  No telling what he might do.

  No, Avery would help him. Help him willingly. (“He’s just like you,” his aunt’s voice echoed.) He could trap Fels, get him to come with him.

  And then, it would be all over.

  Dwight stopped at the door and turned to Avery. “Go in first.”

  “What?”

  The boy looked scared. Dwight knew he needed to be firm: Don’t let this get out of control.

  Dwight took a breath and spoke slowly, making sure even this bright boy had no doubt about his intentions. “I want you to go in first.”

  Avery nodded and stepped in front of Dwight. He opened the door and headed into the darkness. Dwight followed, and once they were in the vestibule, he grabbed the boy’s shoulder and squeezed it. Squeezed so tight he knew it hurt. The boy moved away from his grip, but Dwight didn’t fail to notice he did it with care. Good, very good. In the shadows, the two stopped and Dwight began to whisper to Avery, whose eyes looked big and frightened in the half-light leaking in from the crooked door. “You remember now, I’ll have no qualms about killing either of you if anything funny happens.”

  “I know that,” Avery said. “And I respect it.”

  “Good. Now I want you to go in there alone. I’ll wait out here.”

  Avery nodded.

  “You talk to Fels, tell him everything that’s going on.” Dwight grinned. “Tell him all about Randy, War Zone, Miranda, Little T, Julie…the whole bit. Tell him about the boxes and the expert way I’ve got them all captive in my basement.”

  “But why?” Avery looked confused…and sick.

  “Just shut up and listen.” Dwight’s voice was a frantic whisper. “I want him to know all that. If you’re too stupid to figure things, then that’s your problem. Listen to the rest of the plan and I’m sure it’ll all come clear.” Dwight paused for a moment, thinking about where he’d left off before the fat one interrupted. “I want you to tell him that you managed to get away.” He grinned at Avery. “Tell him you managed to outsmart me. You’ll think of something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then you gotta get him to come back to the house with you…to save the others. You tell him I plan to torture and burn them.” Dwight smiled for a moment at the thought of it.

  “Okay,” Avery said, a little too eagerly. “What do I tell him for an address? I mean, this has to be authentic.”

  Dwight wiggled his finger in Avery’s face. “Not that authentic. I’m going to be right outside the door with the gun. All you have to do is get him out the door, not to my house.” Dwight pulled out his gun and poked the boy in the stomach with it, to make sure he understood. “That wasn’t too smart, kid, if you’re tryin’ to gain my trust.”

  Avery looked down.

  “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get this going.” Dwight leaned back into the shadows, whispering, “Get busy.”

  *

  Avery placed his hand on the doorknob. He tried tightening and loosening the muscles in his hands, hoping to quell the trembling that seemed to get worse with each passing moment. The action helped enough for him to turn the knob.

  He swung the door open, a prayer on his lips that Jimmy would not be inside. And a quick glance around the room showed that he wasn’t. The pile of blankets and coats they used for bedding was thrown back from the mattress, and that was about the only place Jimmy could have been where Avery wouldn’t have immediately seen him.

  The room made his stomach turn with memories. He saw all of them once again: a Saturday night and they were all getting ready to go out. It was easy to forget that their purpose was prostitution. They were just a bunch of kids. Teasing each other, laughing. Miranda trying on different clothes, each outfit weirder than the last: white eyelet dresses and army boots; a black, sequined gown gleaned from Goodwill. The clothes would become bedding as they usually did, when the cold outweighed Miranda’s need for fashion. Little T ran his fingers through his hair and made faces at himself in Miranda’s compact mirror. War Zone passed him a joint, urging him to take it. Jimmy, standing in the corner, a cigarette clamped between his lips, watched it all, amused.

  Would any of them ever return here?

  He stopped for just a moment, his hands at his sides.

  And then it hit him.

  The window! The apartment was ground floor! With its myriad cracks and splinters, he could crash through. He knew the back alleys well enough to elude Morris long enough to find a sympathetic ear.

  With one motion Avery rushed to the half-open door of the apartment and slammed it shut, wishing there were still a lock instead of a hole where the dead bolt used to be. He then rushed to the window, bracing himself for the impact of flinging himself through it.

  No stopping now. Avery leapt into the air. The glass shattered as he went through it, making a tinkling sound that accompanied the bone-jarring grunt of his impact with the ground. Avery lost his balance and fell, skinning his hands as he reached out to cushion the fall. His hands burned and his ankles hurt, but it seemed there was nothing worse than those things. Avery stood on quivering le
gs and began to run down the alley. Behind him, he could hear Morris coming through the window: the remaining glass being kicked out, the sound of his feet making impact with the alley.

  “Hold it right there, you fat slug!”

  Avery froze at the sound of the man’s voice. His eyes slammed shut, waiting for the report of the gun. He wondered what it would feel like when the bullet ripped a hole in his body.

  He’d really done it, now.

  “I should have known better. I should have known not to trust you.” The man’s voice was shrill, loud. Avery hoped that someone on the street just around the corner could hear it.

  Morris came up behind him, his hand clamping down on Avery’s shoulder like a vise. Avery gritted his teeth against the pain.

  “You little asshole. What were you thinking of?”

  “Nothing.” Avery turned to Morris, swallowed hard. He looked beyond the man, at the broken out window that looked like a gaping, dark eye socket in the pale brick.

  “Look at me.”

  Morris’s eyes were alive with rage. His face was red. But he was smiling and a line of drool dribbled from the left side of his mouth. He seemed unaware of it.

  The butt of the gun came up fast and connected hard with his jaw. Avery reeled and fell. Bright flecks of light swam before his eyes. His skinned hands slammed once more into the cold, gritty concrete; they were on fire. He waited for more pain.

  Morris stood above him, looking huge. “I should have known.” He issued a savage kick to Avery’s stomach.

  Avery groaned, trying to hold down what was coming. But it was futile. An acidic stream of yellow bile burned as it exited through his mouth and nostrils.

  “You’re a disgusting piece of shit. You know that?”

  Avery nodded, his eyes watering.

  Morris stooped down and put the gun to Avery’s head. He cocked it. Just make it be over quick. He closed his eyes.

  *

  “We have to get out of here, Carla.” “But why, Jimmy? Why?”

  Jimmy looked at his mother, exasperated. He was standing by the window, imagining what a black pickup would look like making its way up this very street.

  He knew it was coming.

  He had tried to explain the situation to his mother, told her everything he could remember from the night he met this Dwight guy up until everyone started disappearing. Even told her about the murder of Carlos Garcia.

  And he had told her, in detail, what the letter had said.

  None of it seemed to sink in.

  “Because.” Jimmy crossed the room to kneel at her feet and take her hands in his. “Because this man is psycho, you know? He could fuckin’ kill you.”

  “Why would he want to hurt me? It’s you he’s after.”

  Jimmy never realized, until this moment, how stupid his mother was. He pushed himself away from her angrily and lit a cigarette.

  “Jimmy, you gotta go to the cops with this.”

  “What would the cops do for someone like me, Carla? You think they give a shit about kids like me? Probably wouldn’t even believe it.” Jimmy thought of a time when War Zone had been beaten up by a trick and left lying in an alley, bleeding. The cops had stopped to look at him. When they were sure no one had seen them with the boy, they moved on. War Zone could have died. We take care of our own.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Jimmy exhaled smoke angrily through his nose. “Right. You stand an even worse chance. We just need to get the hell out of Chicago for a while. Hide, until this blows over.”

  “Jimmy!” His mother stood and he was amazed to see tears in her eyes. “You gotta go to the cops. No ifs, ands, or buts. What about those friends of yours? Don’t you wanna help them?” Jimmy remembered that kid in Milwaukee with Dahmer, how he ran naked and bleeding from that fuckin’ creep’s apartment. The cops took him back to Dahmer, practically gift-wrapped, so Dahmer could finish the job. Yeah, Ma, let’s go to the cops.

  “You help them. I don’t know what to do for them. I gotta save my own ass, just like always.” He looked straight at his mother and she turned away.

  “What do I gotta do with you?” she asked.

  “Nothin”, Carla, nothin’. That’s what you’re best at.”

  Jimmy headed for the door. Behind him, his mother sobbed. He waited for a second and the familiar sounds began: the vodka being taken out of the hutch, the top being unscrewed, the splash as it hit the glass.

  He turned to see his mother lifting the tumbler of clear liquid to her mouth, her hand shaking so much it was splashing down the front of her pink robe. He shook his head. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “There’s only one thing I could ever depend on you to do. Drink.”

  Carla took one long swallow, draining the glass, then set it on an end table. “I’m going to go in that bedroom now, and I am going to get dressed.”

  “Big deal.”

  “When I come out, you and I are going to go and get that priest friend you told me about—”

  “He ain’t no friend. I told you that. He’s a fuckin’—”

  “Just shut up, Jimmy.” Carla pulled her robe tight around her neck, like she was cold. “We’re gonna go get him and then all three of us are goin’ down to the police station.” She almost looked afraid of him as she said, “Now you sit down there on the couch. I’ll be right back.”

  Jimmy watched his mother leave, listened for a moment to the creak of her closet door opening, the slap of her slippers as she moved across her bedroom floor.

  And wondered if she really believed he would be there when she returned.

  He closed the door softly behind him.

  Jimmy leaned against the door after he shut it, closing his eyes against tension that was making his heart race, making him sweat.

  How could he just leave her in there when the creep knew where she lived? Wasn’t it the same as sentencing his own mother to death?

  He turned and went back inside.

  His mother stood in her bedroom, the glass of vodka lifted to her mouth.

  Jimmy, with trembling fingers, took out another cigarette and lit it. “You can’t do this. I won’t go alone. You stay here and you could die. It’s that simple.”

  Her eyes were glassy. Their green irises were surrounded by broken blood vessels. “Nobody’s gonna die,” she whispered.

  “You don’t sound too convinced.”

  Tears crept into her yellow eyes and with the back of her hand she wiped them away before they had a chance to fall. “The cops will help us, Jimmy. Please.”

  “No.”

  “You got to.”

  “Just come with me, Carla. We’ll take a bus trip. Didn’t you tell me we got some relatives in Indiana? Fort Wayne?”

  Carla snorted. “Yeah, they’d be just thrilled to see us.” Carla gulped down the rest of her drink and stared at the floor.

  Jimmy backed toward the door. “C’mon, we’ll figure somethin’ out.”

  Carla didn’t say anything for a long time. She sat down on the edge of her bed and examined her nails. Without looking at him, she said, “I’m the parent here and we’re going to the police, do you understand, young man?” Her voice trembled and when she looked up at him for a response, he could see she was afraid of him.

  “You comin’ with me or not?” he asked.

  “I’m going to the police.”

  What was he going to do? Pull her behind him? Jimmy threw up his hands in resignation. “Have it your way. Just get the hell out of here quick. It ain’t safe, Ma.”

  He watched as she began to dress.

  She stopped suddenly and looked at him. “How ’bout a little privacy?”

  “You gonna be out of here? I mean, right out of here?”

  “Soon as I get this dress on.”

  “Good.”

  Jimmy went into the living room. He stubbed out his cigarette and began biting his nails.

  In minutes, Carla came out.
The navy-blue dress she wore made her look older, more worn. It emphasized the unhealthy paleness of her skin and her dirty hair.

  She clutched a dark blue patent leather purse in her hands, holding it in front of her like a shield.

  She looked scared.

  “You goin’?” he asked.

  “Yes, Jimmy. I wish you’d come—”

  “No, Ma. I’m tellin’ you, it won’t do any good. But at least it’ll get you outta here.” He went over to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t come back here for a while, okay?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll tell the cops. I’ll be safe. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” She recited her words with no emotion.

  “Yeah, keep tellin’ yourself.”

  “Where did you learn to be such a sarcastic little shit?”

  Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. “You’re goin’ right now?”

  Carla was looking out the window. “I’ll be right behind you. Just gimme a sec to put on my shoes.”

  Jimmy listened for the close of her bedroom door and left, closing the door behind him. If I wait for her, she’ll just argue more with me about coming with her and I can’t handle it. She’ll be all right, he told himself over and over.

  But he wasn’t convinced, and guilt pricked him as he started down the red and black carpeted hallway.

  Chapter 28

  Carla slipped back into the bedroom and regarded herself in the mirror. Could she really have just turned thirty last September? The navy-blue dress hung on her, emphasizing a thinness that was neither glamorous nor fashionable, but unhealthy. Her legs had no definition; her stockings had runs. Even though she’d applied mascara, blush, and lipstick, the yellowish-white pallor of her skin was apparent. She had thought that pulling back her oily dark hair would help hide the lack of shampoo and attention, but now, looking in the mirror closely, she realized she was wrong.

  She lit another Virginia Slim and exhaled the smoke at her reflection, obscuring it. I’m not going on a goddamn date, for chrissakes…just a trip to the friendly police station.

  And with that thought, she shivered. Had all her son blurted out to her been the truth? There was little doubt in her mind that he was telling the truth. Jimmy had always told her the truth, never hiding what he did to make money.