Devil's Hand

by M. E. Patterson

  “Why are you doing this? Who are you?”

  Without turning, the man in the hood replied, “Just a messenger.” And then he rounded the corner beyond the alley and disappeared from Salvatore’s view, leaving him standing in the rain in a dark alley, feet covered with ruined tomato sauce and bits of soggy bread, leg soaked in urine, clutching a manila envelope in both hands. Police sirens screamed in the distance, growing closer by the second. Salvatore stood there wondering just what the Hell was going on.

  3

  THOUGH SHE GASPED AND GASPED for breath, Celia found each tortured intake shorter and tighter than the last. She felt as though she were drowning, as though a thick fluid had infiltrated her lungs. The lack of oxygen made her head pound with pain. The headache flowed with each gasp of air and then ebbed again as she exhaled. Tears dribbled down her cheeks.

  She felt stupid for crying. Thirteen year-olds don’t cry, she thought. I can get through this. It happens, like, every month.

  But it had not happened before, not like this. Celia had been hospitalized on several occasions for anaphylactic shock, brought on by severe allergies. Once it had happened outside, during the summer, while playing in the sprinkler with her younger sister, Haley. The doctors had decided a bee had stung her, though she had insisted otherwise. Then, one time, it had happened at school, after lunch, and some of the kids still shied away from her.

  She now carried an epinephrine pen everywhere she went. She could feel it in her hand still, and she knew she must use it. She hated the thing, hated the idea of stabbing herself with a needle. She tried another breath, but her throat felt even tighter than before. Her eyes had already swollen shut. Her ears felt like they were filled with a thousand tiny insects, moving and tickling and making her flesh itch and burn. No, this was not like the other times. This was far worse.

  She squeezed her eyes against the pain and the drowning sensation and the burning in her chest. She whimpered quietly between gasps, as the fingers of one hand gripped the upholstery, white-knuckled. With the other, she raised the epinephrine pen, and then jabbed it into her thigh.

  She whimpered again with the new pain.

  From the front seat of the car, her father kept repeating, “it’s okay, honey, just relax. Just relax.” But she had long since passed the point of relaxation. Panic had taken over. Her skin felt ice-cold. The tips of her fingers, buried in the car seat fabric, burned as if she pressed them against frozen metal. In the darkness behind her swollen eyelids, she thought she could almost see the fluid filling up her lungs, sloshing around, killing her from the inside.

  “Please, Daddy, help,” she moaned. “Please!”

  “We’re almost there. Just relax, okay?” The car tires squealed as her father cornered into the hospital parking lot. “Just hold on, Cee.”

  Celia opened her eyes to watch the glowing lights of the University Medical Center advancing on them. The lighted sign of the Children’s Center wing was familiar to her, and a part of her wanted to protest that she was too old now to be in the Children’s wing; her thirteenth birthday had passed a week ago.

  Another wave of chest-tightening pain hit, buckling her spine and sending panic-induced nausea raging through her. She closed her eyes and felt sweat beading on her forehead. The sweat was freezing cold and it stung and burned her skin.

  “We’re here, Cee, it’s gonna be okay.” Her father opened the car door and began to yell, “Help! Help!”

  A multitude of voices rang out, punctuated by the sudden noise of heavy rainfall as the door next to her was pulled open. She felt hands grip her shoulders and legs and then they lifted her from the seat.

  “Why is her forehead bloody?” A deep voice with a street accent.

  Her father’s voice answered, muffled by the sound of the rain. “She’s anaphylactic. I don’t know, maybe she hit her head in the car. She was sleeping and woke up like this. Call Doctor Marcus! She’s seen him before for this–”

  Celia felt the strong hands lay her out on a gurney and then some bumps as she started rolling across the pavement. She heard the hydraulic hiss of the emergency doors opening.

  “Dammit, where is everyone?” asked her father.

  She could hear their voices amidst the metallic rattle of the gurney and shoes slapping against the tile floor of the hospital hallway, and she focused on their conversation to keep herself from screaming in fear. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the blazing glare of fluorescent lights zipping past her. Cold swept into every part of her body. Her stomach convulsed.

  “Short-staffed,” said the deep voice. Then, to someone else, “She’s gonna vomit. Get ready to intubate if she needs it.”

  Someone nearby, a woman’s voice, assented. Celia could barely hear anything now beyond the squeaking of the gurney wheels and a high-pitched ringing in her ears. She struggled to hear the deep-voiced man, to hold on to something mundane and comforting.

  “Lot of turnover this week. Please, just get out of the way.”

  Celia could hear a crash cart roll up next to the bed with a jingle of metal and plastic.

  “In here!” yelled the deep voice. “Give her the epinephrine and antihistamines.”

  Celia felt the bed swing around, stop, and then hands gripped her arm and several needles went in and then came back out.

  A softer, woman’s voice said, “BP is dropping.”

  Celia’s back seized then, and a peristaltic shockwave ripped through her abdomen. She vomited. It felt like gallons of water were pouring from her stomach, but none of it relieved the pressure in her chest. Panic welled up even stronger than before and the voices around her dropped in pitch and became unintelligible. The ringing sound filled her mind. She was going to die. She tried to open her eyes but saw only blinding white.

  “Throat’s closing up. Let’s intubate.”

  She felt hands grab her head and neck and mouth and suddenly there was something choking her, something sliding painfully down her throat. Her body convulsed again and she was dimly aware of fluid splashing onto her face and neck.

  “Do the hydrocortisone. And get a line of dopamine to keep the BP up. She’s gonna be fine...” The voice faded beneath the screaming in her ears. She vomited again. It felt even longer this time.

  Before she blacked out, she heard someone close-by say, “Jesus Christ, how much water did she drink?”

  4

  SUSAN GROANED AT THE TINY alarm clock and its incessant buzzing. She rolled over, wondering why her back was hurting, and then her fingers touched the carpet and she understood.

  They had arrived at the apartment complex at three in the morning and had promptly gone to bed, bringing in from the van only an old inflatable mattress, the irritating alarm clock, and their gym bags with some clothes. Trent would unload the rest in the morning. Susan needed sleep.

  The first day of her new job at the hospital was tomorrow, working with Dr. James Marcus, an old friend from college who had constantly berated her about getting an education degree. James had insisted that she had the chops for medicine, but Susan had never shared his confidence. Now here she was in Las Vegas, nursing degree in hand, with an offer to work in the Children’s Center at University Medical. James had offered her a better salary than usually given to green nurses, in part, she suspected, because he had always had a thing for her, feelings she did not share.

  She looked over at Trent, sleeping soundly on his side of the air mattress. His side was still inflated. Hers was flush with the carpet. She rubbed at her aching back as she sat up. Of course, Trent’s side had not changed. Living with the ‘luckiest man alive,’ she never expected less. She shook her head and sighed. She loved him for his idiosyncrasies, for his warm smile and the glint in his eye when he was determined. She adored him for his attempts to look tough when she knew he was as worried about something as her. But the ‘lucky’ thing? That sometimes got old.

  Another thought lingered there, too; a thought she often tried to dismiss, but still it waited f
or her, festering. She felt angry at Trent, angry that he made her feel guilty for coming to Las Vegas, even though she knew he did not do it on purpose. She was angry at the world for the plane crash, and for Trent’s crazy luck that had somehow soured her own achievement, her one big career moment. But most of all, she was angry for feeling angry, and the guilt chased its tail and reminded her constantly of the sore spot in their relationship, the thing that was always better left unsaid.

  She stood and stretched, taking in a deep breath to clear her thoughts. Her long nightshirt felt cold against her skin; the apartment’s heat had cut off overnight. Even with her increased pay, they had a small budget and the rent was cheap in the rougher parts of town.

  She watched Trent sleeping and wondered what he dreamed about. She worried that his nights were filled with fire and wind, nightmares from the singular tragedy that defined their lives together: the plane crash Trent had only barely survived.

  Going in and out of a coma dream for weeks, Trent had mumbled something about ‘monsters’ and ‘his hat,’ which the nursing staff at the hospital in Nebraska had eventually found amidst the wreckage. Susan had never seen the hat before. The crash had been well over a year past, but she remembered those weeks of grief and worry as though they had happened yesterday.

  After recovering, Trent had promised to start looking for work, but fell into pro gambling instead. A year of unbeatable wins and the Board put a black mark on his name and all the money–the millions of dollars–went down the drain in an instant, burned away paying off furious casino owners and other, less reputable individuals, all of whom felt cheated.

  Susan looked around at the empty apartment and out the balcony window toward some of the boarded-up apartment buildings a few blocks away–grimy, unwashed, uninhabited. And now, here we are.

  She felt guilty. She knew Trent did not want to be back here. This place–the casinos, the porn-littered streets, everything–held a lot of bad memories for Trent. It made Susan’s heart sink whenever he told her things were ‘fine.’.

  She padded to the small bathroom as she listened to Trent’s quiet snoring. Sometimes she wished he could get up with her and have a real breakfast like those families on TV. But then, they had tried for a family without much success. She frowned and looked at herself in the smudged bathroom mirror, one hand on her lower stomach. She thought about the kids that she would get to work with in her new job. Kids that needed help. Kids that needed a lot of love.

  “Ugh,” she said out loud, still feeling groggy and dim and just a bit dizzy from the rough couple hours of sleep and the wave of thoughts that had assailed her upon waking. She always over-thought things when she was nervous.

  She frowned and stumbled back into the bedroom and looked at the clock and wondered why she had thought it said 5:00 AM because now it said 6:30 AM and that meant she was–

  “Oh, dammit!”

  Trent snorted. “Wha–?”

  “Back to sleep, hon,” she whispered. “I’m just late.” She leaned over and kissed him. He had morning breath but that didn’t stop her. “I love you. I’ll see you later, okay? Don’t hurt yourself unloading.”

  Trent mumbled something unintelligible and rolled back over.

  She pulled a pair of turquoise scrubs and a white nurse’s blouse with a repeating sports pattern from her gym bag. She dressed quickly, threw on her shoes, and practically flew out of the apartment.

  She had checked the schedule before going to sleep and knew that the bus came at 6:45 and if she was late, she would have to catch the next one thirty minutes later, fifteen minutes after her shift at the hospital started. By the time she had reached the bottom step of their apartment stairwell, she could already see the bus coming down the street toward the stop. She only gave a moment’s thought to the unusual chill in the air and the light rain that felt cold against her skin. She wished she had grabbed a jacket, but the jacket box was buried somewhere in the van. No time to go back now. Sprinting, she reached the bus stop just in time.

  The doors opened and she climbed in, frazzled and breathless. The driver gave her an expectant look and pointed at the fare canister on the dash.

  She was confused at first, and then said, “Oh– Oh, shit. I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “I forgot my purse. I’m gonna be late, please, just this once...”

  The driver, an old black man with a thick white mustache, rolled his eyes and frowned, then jerked a thumb backwards.

  She thanked him repeatedly and took the nearest seat. The bus rumbled away from the curb and headed southwest across the city.

  5

  TRENT PADDED AROUND THE EMPTY apartment, bleary-eyed and still exhausted from the night’s events. Outside, a light morning rain fell on the mist-shrouded city. The cold front that had swept into the city overnight had forced Trent to turn on the apartment’s heat, and while the heater clanked and hummed along, he opened the sliding door and stepped outside, a lit cigarette in his mouth.

  He had spent a year living in Las Vegas after the airplane crash, after his long weeks of recovery, but he could not remember an autumn day this cold. Even in the dead of winter, Las Vegas barely dropped below the mid-40s. The weather outside now, in early November, felt more like Chicago–rainy, lower-40s, chilly breeze. It almost felt like winter coming.

  After the cigarette had burned down to a stub, he flicked the remains over the balcony, then turned and went back inside the apartment, which was now heated and comfortable. He looked around for a place to sit and then realized that he had not yet brought in any of the furniture from the van. Trent sighed and thought about lighting up a second cigarette.

  He had promised Susan that he would return to Las Vegas with her in order to support her career. But he had never promised to be totally happy about it. He hated it here. He hated what Las Vegas represented, what it claimed to be, and what it really was, deep below the surface, under the makeup and the colorful, backlit veneer. But, like it or not, here he was again, back after a year away, jobless and mostly broke. He knew that fixing the former could help with the latter. He had to get started on the job hunt. Now was as good a time as any.

  But Trent had a problem. The Gaming Control Board had put his info in the black book, and that meant that not only was Trent barred from gambling in any of the casinos in the city, but he wasn’t even allowed to enter them in the first place. So jobs in hotels and tourism were mostly out of the question, and that cut down his options in Las Vegas significantly. Construction jobs–another huge part of the local workforce–would probably be a tough sell, too. Much of the construction revolved around the casinos, and no one would hire a blacklisted gambler of Trent’s visibility.

  They made a TV special about me, for God’s sake, he thought. No one wants a cheater putting up the drywall in their new casino’s basement and security rooms.

  He paced around the empty apartment, trying to come up with some other industry sector that might find him employment. High-tech? Half of it was computerized security, and they’d be more hostile to him than the construction companies. Bartending? Maybe at the seedier, off-the-Strip joints, and he wasn’t much of a bartender, nor did he really like spending that much time with strangers. He shook his head. The ideas were not coming quickly. Who did he know that could help him out?

  For the year that he had spent in Las Vegas, making money hand-over-fist, his social circle had been mostly in the world of gambling. He had been on a first-name basis with the big casino bosses, but none of them would talk to him now. The GCB had put on a stink on him that would never wash off. He knew a lot of more minor characters too, but still, all of them in the casinos. And then he thought of the one person that was different.

  Charlie V.

  Charlie was a diminutive Russian fellow–with an unpronounceable last name–who ran a successful pawnshop in the less-glamorous downtown area. It was the kind of place that never called attention to itself; the kind of place you might not even know about unless someone took you there. It was a sor
t of local secret, and the best place to pawn something in Las Vegas, bar none.

  Trent and Susan had unloaded a lot of Trent’s fancier stuff on Charlie V after the blacklist, even things other pawnshops might have refused to take. But not Charlie. He had taken it all in with a smile, and gave them top dollar to boot. Rumor had it that Charlie could resell anything, and always made a profit. The Russian’s flexibility had kept Trent and Susan afloat during their transition from high-wealth to low-income.

  Over the final few months before they’d left for Chicago, Trent and Charlie had become friends, of a sort. The thickly-accented, wry little man always made Trent smile, even when things had taken turns for the worst, even while Trent was handing over things he could hardly bear to part with. He had even sold Charlie his custom, black, Ducati motorcycle, albeit with more than a few tears in his eyes. If there was anyone in the city who would give Trent the low-down, and maybe a few clues on where to start his job search, it would be Charlie V.

  With a smile at the thought of seeing the old Russian again, Trent grabbed his keys and gray Stetson hat off the kitchen counter, made his way to the front of the apartment, and headed out into the unusually cold morning. He was so flush with renewed purpose that he even forgot to grab his jacket.

  Charlie’s shop was called City Pawn, and it occupied the dead-end of a half street on the edge of downtown, near a mostly-abandoned industrial park. City Pawn’s only neighbors were a barred-window liquor store, a miniscule storefront that had hosted a For Lease sign for as long as Trent could remember, and a sleazy convenience store on the corner that sold mostly cigarettes and pornography. Unlike The Strip, there were no street vendors to be found here; no men in lines on the sidewalks handing out advertisements for escort services; no Metro cops on bicycles chatting amidst the throngs of tourists. The dusty little half street reminded Trent of the old West, of the main street of a ghost town, now turned from wood and tumbleweeds to concrete and tumbling scraps of newspapers and plastic bags.