The Replacements

by David Putnam

  My voice cracked, “That’s right.”

  “Gold will work. I’ll call you back in an hour to tell you where to bring it.”

  “No, wait, don’t hang up.”

  “What?”

  “I’m calling because we don’t have it. I know where to get it, but we need a little more time.”

  “Deputy Johnson, you don’t know me, not at all. I don’t play games, never have. I lost my childhood. It was stolen from me by you. But you know all about that, don’t you, Deputy Bruno Johnson? I told you the time frame.”

  “I’m going to get the gold, I promise you that, and if you wait you can have an additional one hundred and twenty thousand. Hello? Hello.”

  Damn, he hung up.

  I waited for him to call back. He’d only hung up to mess with my mind, and he was doing a great job.

  “Yep, he’s a punk ass for sure,” Drago said. “I didn’t really believe your bullshit story about the kidnapped kids. Now I do.”

  The phone rang, I answered.

  “You can have twelve more hours,” Jonas said.

  “I need until Saturday night, that’s forty-eight hours total. Twelve more hours in addition to what you just offered. That’s not a lot, not really, not when you consider what’s at stake.” I hated to beg a criminal, any criminal.

  Silence on the phone. He was thinking about the new offer. I said, “Gold works better for you, anyway, think about it. You can take gold into any jewelry store, a little at a time, and trade it for folding money. If I gave you cash, there would always be the threat of marked bills or wafer-thin tracking devices.”

  More silence.

  I continued on, talking faster. “This is a good deal, much better than what you wanted.”

  Silence. Then, “How do I know this isn’t some sort of game you’re running on me?”

  “I can prove it.”

  “How? What store or bank are you going to hit?”

  I really didn’t want to tell him the where and the how. “I have with me a guy who just got out on parole after twenty-five years. He did an armored car job twenty-five years ago and hid the proceeds after converting it to gold.”

  “Right. And he’s going to just hand over the money to you, just like that?”

  “No, not just like that, I had to persuade him.”

  “Like you persuaded me?”

  “Yes, but I was more successful with this guy.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No.”

  “Bring him to me. I want to confirm it with him. I don’t want you running some kind of stupid little game on me, Deputy Johnson.”

  “Fine—when and where?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Marie came across the parking lot pushing a shopping cart. Items in the cart came up to the top rim. What had she purchased? I got out and checked around to see if anyone took particular notice. The cell in my pocket buzzed. I answered.

  “Bruno?” Mack sounded peeved, as though speaking through clenched teeth to suppress his anger.

  “Yeah, Mack, how’s it going?” As I spoke, I opened the back of the van and helped Marie pile in her purchases, which, besides what she’d gone in for, included an empty five-gallon bucket, some tie-down straps, white grocery bags filled with different types of snacks, and other not readily identifiable items.

  “You took Drago?” asked Mack. “Why’d you take Drago, Bruno?”

  Mack wanted me on the phone to keep me talking, to ping the signal and home in on us. “I wanted to talk to Drago. When I saw him on the surveillance video, he seemed like a man in need of rehabilitation, and I thought that with my background I could—”

  “Cut the bullshit. Why’d you take him?”

  I closed up the back of the van with Marie inside, moved to the front driver’s door and got in, scanning for cops the entire time. “I think you know why.”

  Mack lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have the money anymore, and if he tells you he does, he’s running a scam. He’s making a chump out of you. Bring him back. It’s more important than you know. There are other things in play here, Bruno, trust me on this. Think about it, even if you had the money, you can’t trade it for the kids. It won’t work. You know better. I know you know better. You don’t have the resources to back your play. Come on in, Bruno, please.”

  I started up and drove slowly to the exit, pulled out onto the street, and headed east back to the desert. Drago might be one of the lowest forms of animal, but he didn’t deserve to be staked out as bait and killed for no other purpose than to bring down a criminal organization. “I can’t do that and you know why,” I said.

  “This is going to put us on the opposite sides of the fence.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I value you as a good friend.”

  “As a friend, I’m telling you, you’re wrong going down this path. You’re putting too much at stake. Way too much.”

  “What more can there be at stake than the lives of three children? I have to go, John, I know you’re trying to keep me on the phone.”

  “No, not this time. This time was a free one.”

  “Tell Barbara I’m sorry it has to be this way, that when all this goes down, I’ll try and call to give her a heads up. She’ll be my first call. Tell her that. Good-bye, John.” I handed the phone to Drago. He didn’t need instruction. He broke it in half, stuck his hand out the window, and let the pieces drop to the passing concrete, to be run over and over again by freeway cars and trucks.

  From behind, Marie put her hand on my shoulder. I turned to look. She’d turned the white bucket upside down to sit on it. She’d taken a thick, nylon tie-down strap and hooked it from one side of the van wall across to the other, and held on to help stabilize her ride. Smart girl. I didn’t want her sitting in the back with all the garbage, but she’d said Drago couldn’t, not with his open wound, her medical background overpowering her disgust for him.

  We rode in silence for another thirty minutes. Fatigue crept in—the thick, heavy kind—the kind with wispy apparitions that appeared and disappeared at random, my body telling me I needed to sleep or it would sleep without permission from control central. I took the Whitewater offramp, stopped at the bottom, made a right, and continued on into empty darkness. Out here, headlights could be seen for miles and miles. I watched the odometer. Asphalt turned to dirt. And still I continued on. I stopped at seven miles, exactly as directed, the terrain at the edge too rough to continue. This place looked a lot like the one I’d chosen in the foothills to speak first with Jonas, then with Drago. If something violent occurred, nobody would find our bodies for days, or maybe not at all with all the coyotes and other scavengers.

  The desolation and darkness worked in our favor. We’d see Jonas coming a long way off.

  Marie slid open the side door, got out with her Walmart bag, and opened the passenger door. “Swing around, let me fix that leg. Bruno, come around and hold this flashlight.” She’d also thought far enough ahead to purchase a flashlight. Drago and I both followed directions. For the last forty-five minutes of the drive, Drago had gone quiet. In the weak flashlight beam his skin reflected pale, pastier than before. His plain black tattoos were darker now in contrast, and more menacing. His eyelids drooped and his facial muscles didn’t have the strength to hold up any sort of expression.

  Marie took a bottle of Pedialyte from the bag, opened it, and handed it to him. “Here, drink this.”

  His hand came out of the dark in slow motion and took the bottle. “What is it?”

  “Shut up and drink it.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” I asked.

  “Blood loss. Here, look.”

  I shined the light on her hand and followed where she pointed. Drago’s gunshot wound had continued to leak. The bumpy road had not helped. Blood soaked the side of the seat and pooled at his feet in what might qualify as a small pond. She snapped on rubber gloves.

  “He going to make it?”

  She stopped and looked up at me.
“What do you think? Wasn’t it you who told me that, with these guys, you had to cut the head off and bury it ten feet from the body in order to kill ’em?”

  Drago’s ashen face cracked a smile. “Hey, that’s a good one.”

  She took out a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide, screwed off the top, and punched a hole in the foil seal with her nail. She dumped some on the wound. Pink and red foamed up and rolled off down his calf. She looked up, waiting for his reaction. He didn’t move and stared at her. She waited until the foaming stopped, then did the same procedure again and again until the quart bottle emptied. Next, she took out a fat package of feminine sanitary napkins, daubed and dried, tossing the used ones into the back of the van. The wound looked like an angry eye socket minus the eye, with purple, puckered edges. I couldn’t help thinking I was glad that wasn’t on my leg.

  Drago finished the electrolytes, burped, and tossed the bottle out on the ground. Marie stopped, went and picked up the bottle, and tossed it in the back of the van. “Pig.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “You two need to play nice,” I said.

  She took out a large bottle of iodine. “This might sting a little.” In the dim light she poured the red-black liquid and jumped back.

  “Yaaaaa. Jesus, Keeyrist!” Drago bounced and jumped around in the seat, his eyes wide, his mouth a cavernous O.

  “You shouldn’t litter like that,” she said.

  “You’re nothing but a cu—”

  I leaned in and with one hand clamped his throat. “Don’t you say it.”

  His words choked off. He gagged.

  Marie and I jumped back as he projectile vomited all the liquid he’d just ingested. When finished, he groaned, put his head back on the seat, and closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Marie said. I put the light on her face, her expression one of true sorrow and pain. She took out a second bottle and opened it. “Here, drink this.”

  Drago waved his hand. “Can’t, my stomach, I’m nauseous.”

  “You’re going to have to sip this and keep it down, or we’re going to the hospital. You understand?”

  “Try to get me into a hospital, lady, just try it.”

  “It’ll be easy once you’re unconscious. And believe me when I say that I don’t know why you’re not already.”

  He hesitated, glaring at her. The large bottle looked tiny in his huge paw. He put it to his lips and took a drink.

  “This time sip it, and keep sipping it. Don’t stop.”

  She took out two more napkins and put one on each side, at the entrance and the exit. “Here, press firmly.” Drago leaned over and would have kept going had I not put both hands on his shoulders and pushed him back in. He managed to hold onto the bottle and the napkin as Marie wrapped his leg again and again with a gauze roll. Next, she took out an elastic bandage, the kind for knee injuries, and tightly bound the wound. She handed him a bundle of bananas. “When you feel like it, eat these.”

  “I ain’t no—”

  She held up a gloved finger. He shut up. She took off the gloves and tossed them in the back. “We’re going to have to torch this van when we’re done. It’s turned into a hazardous waste nightmare.” She took something else out of her bag of tricks and handed the small package to Drago.

  “What’s this?”

  “Breath mints. Do me the favor, would you?”

  He smiled.

  Bright light lit up the van from the side, blinding us.

  “What a touching scene,” Jonas Mabry said from afar.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Jonas’ car was backed into the sage. We hadn’t seen him pull up, or more likely he’d been there waiting the entire time. He’d seen us doctoring Drago. I had one of the guns in my waistband. He had to have seen it by now. His bright lights washed out any possible target and worse, it illuminated and exposed my vulnerability.

  Long shadows crossed the bright light as Jonas approached. His limp on a shot-up foot made his shadow dance. I turned away to let my eyes readjust. Drago sat in the van seat, head back, eyes closed, his pallor as waxy and gray as a cadaver. Had he gotten worse? We needed him.

  Jonas stopped. His body blocked the light and, at the same time, kept him in a darkened relief. “You shot him like you shot me, only higher up. He doesn’t look well, Deputy Johnson.”

  Marie stood tensely at my side.

  “I want proof of life,” I said.

  “I knew you only wanted this meet for something like this.”

  “You asked for this meeting, not me. But while we’re here, I need to know we’re not going through all this for nothing.”

  He came closer, his diminishing shadow restoring the bright light. From behind, Drago said, “Man, he doesn’t even have a gun. He ain’t any bigger than my old dog Bo. Grab him, I’ll make him talk.”

  “Shut up.”

  Jonas laughed. “You’ll be lucky to live out the night with as much blood as you’ve lost. Here.” He tossed me a bottle.

  The burnt-orange prescription bottle no doubt contained pain pills. Jonas wanted his gold, and the pain drugs might help keep the shock from creeping in on Drago.

  I looked back at Drago. His eyes were fierce little beads as he obeyed Marie and sipped his life-replenishing drink. Jonas had given him the motivation to live. To crush, kill, and destroy another day.

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Jonas. “I can see he’s been shot. I don’t think you went out and found some random person to shoot and bring here, so let’s hear the rest of the story. How are you going to get the gold?”

  Marie took a step forward. “No, not until you show us the children.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and kept her from taking another step. I whispered, “It’s better if you let me handle this.”

  “Is this the little woman? You did all right for yourself, Deputy Johnson. Little young for you but—”

  I cut him off. “We didn’t come here for small talk.”

  “No, we didn’t.” He stepped up the rest of the way, close, and held out a smart phone. “Here, see for yourself.”

  Someone on the other end had held up another phone and panned two little girls, about six or seven years old, and sent the video. They cuddled next to each other asleep in a nest of soft clean blankets. He took the phone back. “That’s enough.”

  They were all right. The children were all right.

  “How do we know that’s their current situation?” I asked.

  “I guess you’ll have to take my word.”

  “Where’s the boy?” asked Marie. “Where’s little Eddie Crane?”

  Jonas feigned surprise, and not very well. “What? He wasn’t there? Well, I don’t know what’s happened to him.” Jonas now stood close enough for me to see his ugly black-holed smile as he waved his hand. “You know, as it turns out, I wanted to give you a little bonus, a little motivator.”

  “That right?” I said. “We need to see Eddie.”

  “Yeah, the extra motivator is that I didn’t take kids from good homes. I took them from homes where they were being molested and abused, just like you did before you fled the country.”

  Marie gasped and brought her hand up to her mouth.

  “That’s right,” Jonas said. “I did my research, and knew you’d be even more likely to play along if the children were of a certain ilk. I thought you’d have found this out by now. Anyway, I need to help you along.”

  Certain ilk. That was not his vocabulary. He mimicked words someone had told him. They came out in rote. I didn’t know if I believed him, but sensed he now told the truth. “Jonas, where’s Eddie Crane?” I asked.

  “That’s all you get for now. Let’s hear about this gold.”

  If the phone call wasn’t recorded, and someone had just sent it to him, then Jonas had someone helping him for sure. Getting the kids back during the exchange just became that much more difficult.

  I turned to the side. “T
his is Karl Drago.”

  Drago had put his back against the headrest, his eyes closed. He brought his hand up to sip from the plastic bottle, as if he couldn’t care less about what went on in his world or anyone else’s.

  Jonas stood his ground. “I’ve heard of him. Aren’t the Sons of Satan out to cut his nuts off? He’s got a green light on him by everyone, including parolees and members or associates with the SS. It’s not too healthy to stand close to this man, Deputy Johnson.”

  “I’d forgotten that you’ve been in the joint. So you know about the armored car robbery, then?”

  “No, not the robbery. Where’s this gold, and why is it going to take you until Saturday?”

  “Drago took the money, converted it to gold, and hid it in the Sons of Satan clubhouse. All the Satans are going to be busy Saturday on the Toys for Tots run.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one, absolutely priceless. The Sons of Satan clubhouse. Which one?”

  “The international headquarters in San Bernardino. You going to give us the extra time?”

  “I believe you now. You have until Saturday night, eight o’clock. That’ll be right around sundown.”

  “Eddie Crane,” Marie said. “We’re not moving one inch until we know Eddie Crane’s safe.”

  Jonas turned his head slowly to look at her. “Does she speak for you, Deputy Johnson?”

  “That’s right, she does.”

  “Heh, heh.” He turned and headed back into the light. He said over his shoulder, “Little Eddie Crane, as you call him, was already medically compromised when I grabbed him. Remember that. I had nothing to do with his injuries.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Marie said. I took hold of her shoulders as she made for Jonas. Jonas didn’t turn around and kept walking.

  “Let me go, let me go, I want a piece of that animal.”

  A loud explosion made us both jump out of the way. One of the headlights of Jonas’ car winked out from the pistol shot. I turned and jerked the gun out of Drago’s hand. I wanted to slug him in the mouth, but didn’t.