Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  I fell forward and he jumped on top of me and got me by the neck again and I couldn’t get my jaw down to bite and then somebody kicked me in the buttocks, the side, and I was sprawled with my face up just enough to see the driver run past me and out to the street without looking back.

  “Get him back in,” Leaman snarled, and I started screaming again and the blond guy hesitated. Then Leaman got me under the arms and dragged me along the ground, the blond guy following behind us, as I screamed like a banshee.

  “We gotta get outta here,” the blond guy said, but he was closing the doors and Leaman threw me up against the side of the car. He swung once and hit me in the mouth, the punch exploding in my head. I felt myself start to fold and the blond guy was saying, “We gotta get outta here, man,” and then Leaman stuffed a bandanna into my mouth, opened the door, and shoved me in, bouncing my wallet off my chest. I was on my back on the floor in the backseat, and he leaned in and snatched his own belt off.

  “You friggin’ son of a bitch,” Leaman breathed as he wrapped the belt around my ankles. “You friggin’ son of a bitch.”

  Then he leaned over my face and spat once. I winced and he was out of the car, then back in, leaning over the driver’s seat. He turned the key and the motor rumbled to life, but then he got out again and went around to all four doors, shoving the lock buttons down and slamming the doors shut.

  One, two, three, four.

  20

  The light flooded in, but only for a moment, and then it was dark. I lay there on the floor and listened to the motor throb. How long did I have? When people put a hose in the window, how long did that take? I didn’t have a hose, but the garage would be filled soon. How long?

  Claustrophobia came over me in a choking wave, and I writhed and tried to scream behind the bandanna. There was no sound, just my gasps and the rumble from underneath me. I lay back and tried to think. I had to get the doors open. I had to get the bandanna out. I had to breathe.

  I worked my tongue against the bottom of the ball of cloth, over and over like I was trying to get peanut butter off the roof of my mouth. The cloth didn’t move, and then it seemed to be sliding farther back toward my throat and I gagged.

  I forced myself to breathe through my nose.

  Slowly.

  Calmly.

  I began working with my tongue again and gagged again. Worked some more and gagged again. Then I got my tongue farther behind the cloth, which was saturated now, and the bandanna pushed forward. Forward a little more. I could hear the exhaust rumbling underneath me and it was getting hotter in the car. I breathed deeply, in through my nose and out through my mouth, as if I were blowing out a candle.

  The bandanna moved. I blew again. It moved some more. I blew again and again and again and the ball of cloth unfolded over my chin and I gasped for air.

  But it wasn’t air that I was breathing. The smell was noxious and the air already was burning. I threw my feet up onto the vinyl seat and used them to pull me up toward the door. When I was close enough, I kicked the door hard with both feet, like a mule. It didn’t budge.

  I kicked at the handles and the window crank broke off and fell onto the floor under my feet. I inched closer and kicked up under the door handle, but the door didn’t open. I’d have to push with one foot and kick with the other, but they were strapped together. I slid the handle between my sneakers and pushed up and out. Up and out again. The door didn’t open.

  It was one of those doors that has to be unlocked to open. I rested for a moment, with the motor still thumping away, and then inched toward the door some more. When I was close enough, I heaved my feet up onto the bottom of the window. Inched them to the right until I felt the lock. Tried to squeeze it between my heels.

  I missed. I missed again. I was beginning to feel weak. Nauseated. My face was throbbing. My feet felt leaden. I hefted them up again and worked them over until I felt the knob. Worked it between my sneakers. Pulled.

  It slipped.

  I was panicking. Why didn’t the cops come? Why didn’t somebody call them? Did they report that somebody was screaming and then the cops rolled through the neighborhood and found everything quiet? Deadly quiet?

  I had to get out. I tried the knob again, but it slipped again. If I had more room behind it . . . If I could get the window down. Or out.

  It was what prisoners did to police cruisers. The first kick sent jabbing pains through my heels and up my legs. The second did the same, and then the window cracked and then crumpled, folding over my feet. I pulled my feet back in and tiny cubes of glass sprinkled my face. Closing my eyes, I kicked one more time, then worked my feet around the lock button. Pulled and slipped. Pulled and slipped. Pulled and . . .

  Click.

  The door handle hooked between my feet. I inched it up until it wouldn’t go up anymore and then pushed as hard as I could.

  The door swung open.

  But I was tired. I wanted to lie back and go to sleep. I wanted to take a rest. The fumes were working into my bloodstream. They were telling my brain to give up, to go to sleep forever.

  I shouted, “No,” but it came out a croak. I hooked my legs over the bottom of the door frame and pulled myself toward the opening. The motor coughed, then resumed its rhythmic rumble. Blub, blub, blub, blub. I had my legs out, then my feet on the floor of the garage. But my hands still were behind my back. I pushed up, but my torso only rose six inches. I fell back. Pushed again. Fell back again.

  Finally, I gouged at the floor with my heels, dragging them along the concrete. I inched forward, literally. I was too groggy, too tired, but I dragged my feet again and again. And then my heel caught in a hole. A deep hole. It was as though I had hooked a winch cable to a tree. I pulled and my buttocks edged over the door frame, over and over some more, and I fell out of the car and onto the floor.

  I got up and stagger-hopped toward the door, aiming for the crack of light. The doors opened in a blinding bang and I fell to my knees in the gravel and weeds, sucking deeply at the air like a gasping pump.

  A white-haired man came by with a beagle on a leash. He walked over and the dog sniffed me as I lay there on the ground drinking in the air, my wrists and ankles still bound by the belts, the car still idling in the garage.

  “You all right?” the man said.

  “Just dandy,” I said, raising myself to my knees. “Would you mind undoing—”

  “This one of them kinky sex things?” the man asked.

  “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s—”

  “ ’Cause there’s kids in this neighborhood, you know what I’m saying? Bad enough with television. Don’t need no weirdos tying each other up. How’d you get that blood all over your face?”

  “Cut myself shaving,” I said. “You mind undoing my hands here?”

  “How do I know you don’t have a gun?”

  I looked at him. The beagle looked at me suspiciously.

  “I don’t have a gun,” I said. “I’m not a weirdo. I’m a guy who’s been abducted and robbed and left in this garage to die of asphyxiation. Didn’t you hear me screaming?”

  “Yeah, I heard that god-awful screeching.”

  “Did you call the cops?”

  “Hell, no. If I called the cops every time I heard some crazy yelling in this neighborhood, I’d be on the phone half the day and most of the night. You wouldn’t believe the goings-on.”

  “Sure I would,” I said, still on my knees. “How ’bout you call the cops now.”

  “What should I tell ’em?”

  “That there’s a guy here who says he’ll kill you if you don’t call the cops. He’ll take you by the throat and throttle you. He’ll kill your dog and all its relatives.”

  “Easy there,” the man said.

  Just then, a window slid up on the second floor of the building to my right.

  “What’s going on, Marty?” an older woman called.

  “Better call the cops,” the man said. “One of them sex weirdos.”

&nbs
p; “You okay?” she asked him.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. And I’ll keep an eye on this character.”

  “Don’t get too close to him,” the woman said. “Let the cops handle it.”

  And they did.

  The first cruiser pulled up and a young woman got out. I told her I’d been robbed and she asked me for my ID. I said it was in the car in the garage, the one that was running. She went and shut off the car and came back with my wallet. I asked her if there was any money in it and she said no. Then I was robbed of seven dollars, I said.

  She asked when this was. I said it was twenty minutes ago and she asked if I knew the assailants. I said I knew one, Alphonse Danny Leaman, and she got on her radio and requested an ambulance and reported an assault and robbery and said it might involve Leaman.

  “You familiar with that subject?” someone radioed back.

  “Negative,” the young woman said.

  “Just got out of Thomaston,” the voice said. “Six foot two, over two hundred. Brownish, grayish hair with ponytail. Approach with caution. Known to be 10-32 with a knife. Got a name on the victim?”

  “Last name, McMorrow,” the young woman said. “First name, Jack.”

  “I’ll be right there, drive time from Elm.”

  “Should I untie this guy?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Lenny said. “Cut him loose.”

  He was there in two minutes, sliding his cruiser in the gravel as he pulled in. The ambulance was right behind him, and soon the lot was filled with neighbors and kids. The kids sat on their bikes and watched as the paramedics washed my cheek.

  “Oh, yes,” one of them said, dabbing at my cheek. “A nice deep slice. This a knife wound?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe a piece of glass. I’m not sure.”

  “Gonna need some stitches. How ’bout a ride in?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I just need a ride back to my car.”

  “I’ll take him,” Lenny said.

  “I’d get him in now,” the paramedic said. “The sooner you get that stitched up, the less scarring you’re gonna have. You might want to consider a plastic surgeon, because of the location.”

  “And maybe I’ll have my tummy tucked, too,” I said.

  He smiled and finished taping a dressing over my face.

  “All yours, Officer,” he said.

  “Let’s roll,” Lenny said.

  He opened the back door and I climbed in. The cruiser eased out of the lot and we headed up the street, coming out on River Street, south of the downtown. As we pulled out, a red Toyota slowed and turned in.

  Archambault.

  “One of your colleagues,” Lenny said. “You want to go back and talk to him?”

  “No,” I said. “Drive.”

  He did and, after a minute of polite silence, started in.

  “So Leaman caught up with you, huh?”

  “I was set up. Tate announced my arrival outside the courtroom with a megaphone. When I started out the door, these three guys hustled me around the corner and into that car. It was like Beirut.”

  “What’d they want?”

  “Money. For booze and coke.”

  “How much they get?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Enough for a twelve-pack. They wanted to go to a bank machine, but we never got there.”

  “Why not?” Lenny said.

  “I couldn’t remember my number.”

  “And they took you to that garage to try to persuade you?”

  “Yup.”

  “But they couldn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Leaman shoved me in the backseat all strapped up and left the motor running and the garage doors closed.”

  “Attempted murder?”

  “Plea down to aggravated assault, maybe. That is, if Tate will prosecute it at all.”

  “She’ll have to,” Lenny said.

  “From what I can tell, she doesn’t have to do anything.”

  “There are limits.”

  “I used to think so,” I said.

  We pulled into the emergency entrance at Kennebec Regional Medical Center and parked beside an ambulance. Lenny opened the door for me and we went inside and I sat at a counter and told the reception person all about myself. He put this information into a computer so it could be called up next time I was abducted.

  The cut took thirteen stitches. The doctor, a pleasant and efficient woman in her late forties, told me she’d done a tour as a medic in Vietnam. She asked if I wanted a plastic surgeon, and I said no. If she could sew soldiers back together, she could stitch me up, too.

  “There will be some scarring,” the doctor said, peering down at my face.

  “Life is like that,” I said. “This just happens to be on the outside.”

  She looked at me curiously.

  “The police officer who brought me in here,” I said. “Could you have somebody bring him in?”

  “Are you in custody?” the doctor said.

  “No, I just need to talk to him.”

  She looked at me again and then slipped through the curtain. A minute later, the curtain parted.

  “Good as new,” Lenny said.

  “Archambault out there?”

  “With his pencil sharpened.”

  “You tell him anything?”

  “Said I hadn’t completed my investigation.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him. Is there another way out of this place?”

  Lenny looked down the hall, away from the entrance.

  “There’s a sign way down there that says ‘Exit.’ ”

  “I’ll meet you at the far end of the building,” I said.

  “You’ll be the one with the bandage on his face, right?”

  “But still smiling,” I said.

  “Attaboy,” Lenny said, and then he was gone.

  He picked me up and we drove back downtown. Lenny parked the cruiser behind the American Legion Hall and I gave him my statement. He wrote slowly and carefully.

  “You know this will put Leaman away for a long time,” Lenny said.

  “If you can find him.”

  “Guy never should have been able to bail.”

  “That was no accident,” I said. “It was a setup.”

  “Good luck proving it.”

  “She shouldn’t be prosecuting this case. It really should be bumped into Superior Court.”

  “In a perfect world,” Lenny said.

  “Which this isn’t,” I said. “Not by a long shot.”

  “I’ll need to talk to you.”

  “Likewise, I’m sure.”

  “About what?” Lenny said.

  “About Donna. What’s the latest?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Of course. Listen. Everything’s off the record between us unless we agree otherwise.”

  “Okay,” Lenny said. “Latest is that Jeff is headed for grand jury. Word I got is that she was asphyxiated and he admits to half-choking her.”

  “He told them that?”

  “I guess he isn’t much of a liar. It’s too complex a process for his brain.”

  I thought for a moment. The old woman. Jeff leaving. Sounds of dishes.

  “He still out?”

  “Haven’t arrested him yet. At least not as of this morning. You see the paper this morning?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Your buddy there did an article on Donna. Made her out to be some kind of slut.”

  “That isn’t true,” I said.

  “I know that,” Lenny said.

  “And this isn’t much of an investigation.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure. But they’re not getting deep enough. They’re just not getting at it.”

  “Well, I’m gonna need you about this little matter.”

  “Call my house in Prosperity and leave a message. I won’t be hanging aroun
d the house a lot.”

  “Gonna be doing more reporting for the paper?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not going to be doing that a lot either,” I said.

  Lenny gave me a ride back to my car. I drove around the block to Main Street and went through the drive-through at the bank for some cash. A lot of cash. The number was not one, two, three, four.

  From there, I went up the block and stopped at the newsstand for a paper. I read it in the car, one eye squinting because of the bandage. The anesthetic was wearing off, and my face hurt. The story hurt more.

  It was a profile of Donna, played high on page one, on the right side above the fold. There was no photo. Archambault had talked to Tate and the state police detectives. The rest was attributed to unnamed sources, “neighbors,” and “longtime residents of the Peavey Street neighborhood.”

  You couldn’t libel the dead, but this was close. Archambault implied that Donna was promiscuous, quoting an unnamed neighbor who was supposed to have said that men came and went at the apartment at all hours. The story said she’d had a series of relationships but didn’t say she’d ever been married. It said Donna lived alone with her daughter and collected welfare and food stamps.

  This was linked to a “longtime resident” who was quoted as saying the neighborhood had gone to hell when “people like her” moved in. The story implied that Donna’s apartment was dirty. It said she often left her daughter with her sister. It said Donna “pulled off her blouse” in the courtroom at District Court. Tate said this had never happened before in all her years as a prosecutor.

  It added up to a portrait of a woman who was sleazy, lazy, a drunk, and a lousy mother. It implied that she was morally corrupt and ethically loose. There was not one word in the story that showed any sympathy for Donna Marchant, any compassion, any attempt to get to know her.

  The story was supercilious and disapproving. It said Donna Marchant deserved what she got.

  And that wasn’t true.

  I put the paper down and sat there for a minute and stewed. Started the car and drove. Two blocks up, I pulled over and parked. Grabbed the laptop and went in the door at the Observer and up the stairs two at a time.