The Replacements

by David Putnam

  The answer came to me as to what had happened. That the night before out in Whitewater, Jonas hadn’t given up Eddie because he was injured or because Eddie wouldn’t talk. Jonas had used Eddie as bait. Jonas must have put a small GPS in Eddie’s shoe. Who would have thought to look? I should have. Jonas had lain back and taken Marie and Eddie at his leisure. Now getting free was the only thing that mattered.

  They left me in the truck and went back for Mack. My hands were still in front of me. I floundered around looking for anything to get the flex-ties off. Then I remembered training from long ago. Friction. Heat. I fumbled with swollen hands, undid my shoelace, and tied one end to the inside support to the truck’s metal shell. I threaded the lace through the flex cuff binding my hands. I tied the lace to another bulkhead brace below the first one, making a bow. I pulled the lace taut and worked the lace back and forth in a rapid manner like the pioneers did to make fire.

  Less than ten feet away, back at the entry to the house, Roy Boy said, “Look at all that blood. I didn’t think one body could have that much blood.” He was talking about Drago.

  I seesawed away at a furious rate. The friction sliced through the flex cuff. I was free just as the group returned dragging Mack. I laid down where they had left me and didn’t move. I looked up. I’d left the lace. They wouldn’t know what it was for. I fought down my anger and the urge to jump them, right then. Beat them all to a bloody pulp for what they did, and for keeping me from my Marie.

  They tossed Mack in next to me. He grunted and groaned and went silent. His face was unrecognizable. His eyes were welded together with purple and red. His nose bled and his lips were split. Blood trickled out of his mouth and down to his neck. I hoped like hell he didn’t have internal injuries. I’d worked the street too long, seen too many beatings. I knew. My gut ached at the pain I had caused him.

  Roy Boy and Slim Jim had stayed at the open back end of the truck. Roy Boy said, “How we going to get fatass all the way over here and into the truck?”

  In the distance, Clay yelled, “Don’t be a bunch of pussies. All five of you get on that pig and get him in the truck. Quit dickin’ around and get it done.”

  “Hey buddy, you okay?” I asked Mack.

  No reply. I nudged him. He didn’t even groan. He needed immediate medical attention. I looked back. The three bikers and the two prospects, with great effort, were hauling Drago along the trash-laden floor of the club. I leaned up far enough to check the ignition. The keys were gone.

  The truck was a one-ton with lots of floor space. The bikers grunted and cussed, lifting Drago to the back edge. They paused, huffing.

  “You two assholes get up there in the truck and pull,” said Clay. “You three stay down here and push.”

  With great effort, they hauled Drago over the edge and into the truck. Roy Boy stumbled over me and stepped on my hand. Bones crunched. I yelled.

  Roy Boy said, “Hey, this asshole’s cut his flex cuffs off.”

  Shit.

  Everyone stopped. A welcome diversion to rest.

  Clay stood at the end of the truck. “Dumbass, what do you think you should do about it?”

  Roy Boy kicked me.

  “No, dipshit,” Clay said. “Cuff him up again.” He tossed in more flex cuffs.

  My only chance was gone. Without my hands free, what could I do? I fought the urge to make a play before they recuffed me. A stupid move that wouldn’t work anyway. But if they succeeded in getting us to that warehouse, all was lost.

  Roy Boy put the flex cuffs on too tight. My blood flow was cut off. If I didn’t get the cuffs off soon, I’d lose my hands for sure.

  They pulled Drago in the rest of the way. His dead weight leaned in on Mack. I fought to keep Drago from flopping over. In Mack’s condition, he’d be smothered.

  Clay closed one back door. “You think you two dipshits can haul this load of garbage to the warehouse?”

  Roy Boy answered. “Yeah, sure boss, no problem.” Clay closed the other door.

  I fought to keep from leaning on Mack. I couldn’t feel my hands already. I couldn’t reach the derringer if I wanted to. Short of a miracle, I had no idea how we could escape.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Drago groaned.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. “How are you doing?”

  “Not too good. If it were raining pussies, I’d get hit in the head with a dick. I’ve been shot twice, kicked, and drug across a sea of trash like a slab of meat. And to top it off, I’m tossed in the back of a truck with a cop and a—”

  He hesitated, waiting for me to tell him not to say it. I didn’t have the energy.

  “A darkie.”

  An improvement, however minor.

  “Thanks for that, I think.”

  He chuckled. “Man, you’re all right.”

  “For a darkie.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” He laughed some more.

  “How can you laugh when these white trash, cracker assholes are going to torture and kill us and bury us out in the desert, where no one will ever know what happened to us?”

  “I got no one who cares, so that last part is no big whoop.”

  “I care.”

  Drago laughed again. “Yeah, thanks for that.”

  “Mack’s in a bad way.”

  Drago stopped laughing. “He’s a friend of yours?”

  “Yeah, a good friend, a great friend.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to get him to a doctor.”

  He said this so casually, with so much confidence, I chuckled at the irony.

  His big paw came up and rested on my shoulder. I took a full second to realize the implication. He had freed himself with the knife.

  Roy Boy and Slim Jim jumped in the truck and started it up. The engine roared up in the cab. We were off to the warehouse.

  I chuckled.

  “What’s funny?” whispered Drago.

  “You.”

  “That right?”

  “Yeah, because you’re touching a darkie.”

  We both laughed out loud. He jerked his hand back out of sight.

  “What’s going on back there?” asked Roy Boy. Then to Slim Jim, he said, “You better check ’em. We screw this up and we’re gonna be the ones takin’ a cold dirt nap.”

  Slim Jim couldn’t talk with his broken jaw. He had to be in enormous pain and hating me for it. He leaned over as Roy Boy steered the truck down the driveway ramp and bounced into the street. Drago’s weight pressed into me, as I craned my neck to see into the driver’s compartment, all while trying to keep us off Mack. I caught Slim Jim’s eyes. After a long hateful look, he turned back and nodded to Roy Boy. He hadn’t seen Drago’s free hands.

  Sunlight came in through the windshield. I figured the time to be about noon. Eight hours to get away and find Marie and Eddie. Who was I kidding? Nothing would keep them alive until eight o’clock.

  Drago’s hand found mine behind my back. He cut the flex cuffs and the feeling rushed back in my hands. He’d used the dirk that the biker had failed to find on him when they searched us. The same biker who was too homophobic to check my crotch when he searched me. I had depended on that. The derringer was safe.

  “You got a plan?” whispered Drago.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “You don’t have much time.”

  “Do you know where this warehouse is?”

  “Twenty minutes or so, up in Cajon Pass, at the dead end of a dirt road called Whitehall.”

  Out the window, buildings and treetops flashed by. Roy Boy drove us up to Baseline, then went west. He took us in and out of side streets, avoiding the freeway and on up into the Cajon Pass. I couldn’t wait much longer to make a move. If we made it to the warehouse all would be lost. I’d waited too long already for Mack. He needed a hospital now.

  The derringer had only two shots, against two prospects with large guns. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I couldn’t, in cold blood, just shoot them both in the
back. I couldn’t do it. And if I threw down on them, I would only give them a chance to overpower me. I’d get one shot off, and if the other held his mud, he’d have time to shoot me.

  My only option was to shoot Roy Boy without warning. Shoot him right in the back of the head instead of his back. He’d crash the van. If we survived, I would have one shot to hit Slim Jim. I had to do it. Too many lives depended on it.

  I wiggled around until I had my hand down the front of my pants. Drago whispered in my ear, “Hey, buddy, now’s not the time or the place.”

  He must have been giddy from blood loss.

  “You ready?” he asked. “We’re gonna have to jump them in the next couple of minutes or it’ll be too late, we’ll already be there. And to tell you the truth, I don’t feel so hot right now.”

  “We’re not going to jump them. I have a gun. Just gimme a minute, would ya?”

  “We don’t have that kinda time. Gimme the gun, I’ll do it.”

  “No, I got this—”

  Drago reached around and, before I could react, he smothered my hand with his big mitts and snatched away the gun. He didn’t hesitate like I would have. He rolled to one side, extended the derringer, and fired right through Roy Boy’s backseat.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The explosion in the confined space sounded like we were in a church bell tower. Slim Jim whipped his head around too fast, banging his broken jaw on the seat’s back headrest. His eyes rolled up and he fell back out of view into the footwell.

  The van didn’t waver; we kept on a steady path. Roy Boy didn’t seem affected at all. He hadn’t even acknowledged the gunshot. Maybe the bullet had not penetrated the seat. Robby Wicks and I had been in a shooting where that had happened. The seats, to cut back on the weight, weren’t solid, and had a mesh frame for support made out of cheap steel.

  Drago struggled up on his knees. I did the same. He extended his arm, cocked the hammer back a second time, and aimed at the back of Roy Boy’s head. I put my hand on the gun. He lowered it.

  Roy Boy looked up in the rearview mirror at us without expression. “You gone and killed me for sure.” A bit of blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth. He fell forward and his head hit the steering wheel. The truck veered out of control. I wiggled between the seats.

  Too late. The truck went over the curb, peeling off some speed with the minor impact. We crossed two front yards, disrupting shrubs, flowerbeds, and a hedge that all spit out the back behind the truck. We plowed broadside into a lime green Volkswagen Jetta in someone’s driveway and shoved the heap perpendicular.

  The crash threw me forward, and then I tumbled backwards and was shoved up against the back doors.

  I scrambled like a spider. “Mack? Mack, are you okay?” A light trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. I checked his pulse, thready, barely there. I crawled to the back doors and opened them to bright sunlight.

  A large woman in a muu-muu with frizzy red hair came out the front door at a fast waddle. “What the hell? You crashed into my car. Are you kidding me? My car was parked in my driveway. You totaled my car. My God, you totaled my baby.”

  Bold as a biker prospect, she came up and took hold of my arm. I shrugged her away and stumbled to the front driver’s door, opened it, and dragged out Roy Boy. He plopped onto the driveway. I dragged him farther into the yard, out of the path I’d need to extricate the truck from the yard.

  The muu-muu woman screamed, “What are you doing? Get him out of my yard. You can’t leave some dead biker in my yard. I’m calling the police.” She put a cordless phone to her ear.

  Drago hadn’t killed Roy Boy, like Roy Boy had thought. His chest rose and fell uninhibited. He was far better off than my friend Mack.

  The smart move would be to walk away. Muu-muu would have the cops and paramedics here in no time. “In no time” could take too long. I couldn’t risk it. Mack meant too much to me. I had to see this through. By the time the police arrived and then they called paramedics, I could already have him in the hospital being treated.

  I got back into the truck, shoved the gearshift into reverse, and gunned the accelerator. The back wheels dug in, spinning up sod and azaleas. Muu-muu woman screamed into the phone. “Now he’s leaving. It’s a hit and run. Hurry. No, wait, okay, I got it. The license plate is—”

  I shoved the truck into drive and bounced over the curb into the street. “Drago, are you still with me?”

  “I’m here, but I got nothing left, partner. I think I broke my leg.”

  “Which way to the closest hospital?”

  His voice faded. “I’m not sure exactly where we are—”

  “Drago, what’s the name of the hospital?”

  “St. Bernadine’s.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Man…you can’t take me to a hospital. They’ll call the police, they’ll violate my parole. I’ll go back in on…on a violation. I gotta get that gold, I gotta get—”

  He went silent.

  He’d slipped into shock from the multiple gunshot wounds, the beating, all the blood loss, and now the crash where he broke his leg. Even men like Drago had a vulnerability threshold.

  I headed south and typed in the hospital’s name on the dashboard GPS. The route popped up and the woman with a calm voice told me what turns to make, told me we had a seven-minute ETA. I planned to cut that in half.

  I’d pull into the hospital’s emergency entrance, get a nurse or orderly to come out, and I’d be gone. I’d take off right then. I wanted to stay with Mack, but hospitals attracted cops, and I needed to find Marie. There was too little time.

  I fought with the speed. My foot pushed harder on the accelerator, my hand tapped on the steering wheel. I had to continually correct by slowly easing off my foot. Slim Jim groaned and struggled to climb out of the foot well. I stopped for a red signal. I wanted to move. I impatiently tapped faster on the steering wheel.

  Slim Jim managed to almost crawl back up in the seat. I leaned over and slugged him right in his broken jaw. He wilted back to whence he had come. The light changed. I hit the gas.

  I turned into St. Bernadine’s and followed the signs around to the emergency entrance and stopped.

  A black-and-white San Bernardino police patrol unit sat in the slot next to an ambulance. Another unoccupied police unit was parked farther down. No time to consider possible consequences; everyone in the truck needed emergency medical care. I pulled around and backed into the only slot open, ‘Ambulance Only.’ I got out and came around the back. Two cops stood at the back door talking. I said, “Please help me. I have an officer down.” Words that never failed to send chills through any cop who heard it. They ran over. One said, “What happened, who is it?” while the other climbed in.

  I took a step back, a little farther away from the truck. “Please hurry,” I said. “The guy on the left is Detective John Mack with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The guy in the front seat is one of the Sons of Satan who beat him.”

  “This detective is in a bad way—get some help!” the officer inside said.

  I took another tentative step backward.

  The cop outside reached up to his lapel mic. “Two-Paul-Three, we have an 1199 at the back of St. Bee’s, officer down. We are code four.” He ran into the hospital to get a doctor.

  Distant sirens came from all over the city. When an “officer down” went out, everyone dropped what they were doing, no matter what it was, and responded. Nurses and doctors rushed out with gurneys. More cops.

  I backed up more and kept going. I’d almost made it to the front end of the truck where I intended to turn and casually walk away, when one of the cops who’d been inside came out said, “Hey, it’s Leon Johnson.”

  He was one of the cops who’d stopped me outside the Quick Stop store my first night here. I turned and ran.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The two cops behind me took chase. Their feet slapped pavement. One yelled into his radio, “Four-Paul-Five, foot pursuit behind
St. Bee’s, a 187 suspect.”

  I ran with everything I had left. My body ached all over from the beating and didn’t want to cooperate. I pushed hard and couldn’t kick it into gear. The air felt too thick to run in.

  Dispatch said, “Any officer to assist in Four-Paul-Five’s foot pursuit behind St. Bee.”

  The radio behind me came back jammed with cops responding. They had to believe I was the suspect in the officer-down call. The asshole responsible. I had awakened the brotherhood of cops. Every cop in a twenty-five mile radius would be coming: adjoining cities, California Highway Patrol, University Police, and the Sheriff’s Department. They would coordinate and seal off the entire area. I didn’t have one chance in hell.

  I rounded the first corner to a long driveway leading down the side of the hospital that dumped out into the street. Halfway down the block was a park. If I could make it to the park, I’d have a chance to get lost in all the trees and bushes. I put on a burst of speed. The two cops behind came around the corner with their cop noise, running boots, creaking leather, jangling equipment.

  Up ahead a cop car bounced into the driveway from the street, red lights and siren blaring, cutting off my escape route. In a last-ditch effort, I turned, hit the eight foot chain-link fence, and started up, fingers clawing for purchase.

  A hand grabbed my ankle. “Got you, asshole.”

  They pulled me down and jumped on top. The cop car stopped with the bumper right at my head. They kicked and slugged and hit me with batons. They cuffed me and shoved me into the back of the car.

  Tears of frustration filled my eyes. No way would I get out of this. Mack would not be there this time to rescue me. I didn’t care about me. Now Marie didn’t have a chance. Who would look for her?

  The driver headed onto the San Bernardino Freeway. They’d transport me to the jail to book me in on the murder charge. A tick-tock pounded in my head. Time was against me. An evil, unstoppable enemy who sped along unabated.