Afterburn: A Novel

by Colin Harrison

  Ted chuckled. “You’re always a gambler there, Charlie. We’ll get the letter delivered and then wire the funds after they call.”

  “Great,” he breathed, barely able to keep energy in his voice. “Thanks, Ted. Thanks a bunch. She’ll—Sally—will call. Thanks.”

  Tony was shaking his head. “No way is that girl going to show up with a bill of lading here that’s worth five million dollars. All she has to do is have them change the name to her and then she’s got it and then she can sell it to someone else. I been down there in those freight warehouses. They can do some funny stuff down there.”

  “So?” asked Morris.

  “So we find out from Charles what the hell she just told him. We watch the place and get her right as she comes out.”

  Charlie’s phone rang again. Tony answered it. “Yes, sweetheart, he’s still here. He’s fine. Now, when you get the bill of lading, I don’t want you to call this number, I want you to call this other one.” He read from a piece of paper. “That one. Then we’ll work out the pickup. Don’t try any of your little tricks, either.” He hung up. “This is my backup. She calls that number, Peck’s guys have her location in under ten seconds, even if it’s a cell phone. Then they call us, and we go and they try to keep her on the line.” He leaned forward and put his hand on the epidural drip, pinching the tube experimentally. “That’s our backup if Charles here doesn’t do something nice for us now.”

  Morris turned to Charlie. “You going to tell us?”

  “What?”

  “The name of the guy that’s selling the cameras.”

  “I don’t know it.” They wanted the location, he understood. “She just gave me the phone number.”

  “What’s the number, then?”

  He looked at his scribbled piece of paper and stiffened. “She told me to cross it out.”

  Tony and Morris looked at each other in silence. Then Morris shook his head in disgust. “This girl is slick.”

  Now I’m expendable, Charlie realized. They can kill me right now and they lose nothing.

  “No disrespect, Tony,” said Morris, “but your backup plan won’t work if she doesn’t call that other number.”

  “She’ll call it,” Tony said. “If she wants her mother to be—”

  “Wait,” Morris said.

  “What?” asked Tony.

  “He remembers the fucking number!” said Morris, eager now, pointing at Charlie. “Look at him!”

  He didn’t—not for the life of him did he remember the number. But if he pretended to remember it, he realized with sudden clarity, then they’d torture him for it, they’d keep him alive. Maybe long enough to get out of this, go kiss Ellie.

  “He knows the number,” Morris yelled, lips wet. “I can see it in his face!”

  “He’s protecting her,” said Tommy.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” warned Morris. “Why would you do that?”

  “Why anything?” Charlie said.

  “Is that your explanation?” screamed Morris. “Is that all you can say?”

  He took a deep breath. What could they do to him in a few hours? He’d lasted three months in the hands of the North Vietnamese.

  “You going to tell us?”

  “No.”

  Morris looked disbelievingly at the other men, happy to be insulted, then back at Charlie. “You understand that I have exposed your spinal nerve back here?”

  “I understand that,” Charlie answered. “I understand the whole situation.”

  Now Tony rose out of his chair slowly, like a man being called to dinner, and stepped forward, concern in his eyes. “Tell us the phone number, Mr. Ravich. It’d be better, you know?”

  “I can’t,” Charlie said.

  “You’re saying we have to torture it out of you?” asked Tony.

  Every minute longer that I live, Charlie thought, gives me a chance for another. He turned his head as far as he could and looked Morris in the eye, confident of his hatred for the man. “I’m saying that, yes.”

  Morris nodded coldly. “Then it’s showtime,” he said.

  He yanked the needle out of Charlie’s back.

  He felt nothing. No one spoke. Morris checked his watch. Still nothing. I’m okay, thought Charlie.

  Then, flaming up his spine, came a red ganglion of pain that frayed outward in searing, incomprehensible complexity—and when he arched his back in shocked torment, the pulsing hot bud at the base of his spine bloomed again while simultaneously reappearing within itself, detonation within florid detonation. “Oh, God,” he screamed, “God, God, God.”

  The men held him down and Morris took a pair of pliers from the toolbox. He ripped something from Charlie’s spinal column. The pain became hallucinatory—icy worms writhed in one foot, his anus spasmed. “Jesus,” he screamed. “Jesus, please!”

  Someone grabbed his hand. He opened his eyes.

  Morris, smiling at the great good humor of life, pressed a bloody steel screw into Charlie’s quivering palm. “Bone atrophy,” he explained. “This was getting loose.”

  “Oh, please,” Charlie cried hoarsely. “Just let me call my wife.” He dropped the screw and fell flat upon the table, the pain sparking and crackling brightly. “Just give me the phone … and let me—” But the pain rode up his back again, like the wheel of a freight car, and he had to tuck into himself, let it go past. I can ride this, he thought, I know I can. He noticed Morris examining a steel clamp. I’m stronger than they are, Ellie, don’t worry. I’ve done this before. Now his back jerked in convulsions, the nerves and muscles confused, red lights popping before his eyes. They can’t kill me, sweetie, I promise. He was going to hold and hold and hold. Stay conscious. It’s fine, Ellie! Tell Julia. Tell Ben.

  BROOKLYN-QUEENS EXPRESSWAY, BROOKLYN

  SEPTEMBER 28, 1999

  IF HE WAS THE COWARD he suspected himself to be, he’d get the truck and drive back out to Orient Point, using his right hand for the steering as well as the shifting. Stay in the slow lane. Not so hard. Then bump along past the farms and the pumpkin stands, past the ice cream shops and gas stations and public beaches, until he found his hidden dirt lane. He’d get out and with one arm patiently cut the scrub oak he’d dropped before he’d left, then park the truck next to the cottage. And look at the tomatoes and the corn. Look at the purple honeysuckle on the near side of the barn. He’d feel good. The grass would be tall and wet. He’d pick up his key under the oyster shell and poke around the cottage, then get hungry and drive out on the main road, avoiding the farm tractors, to the diner with the school bus in back full of firewood. He could go in, coward that he was, and sit down and of course they’d stare at his stump and maybe ask what happened and maybe they wouldn’t and he wouldn’t care either way. Just give me the chicken dinner, please. After a few days no one would care anymore and he could be alone. He’d sit by the window of the cottage and watch the day and the night move over the ocean, and conclude that, as a coward, he’d left the thing unfinished. He’d decided to come back into the city because of Christina, and so far as he understood, she was in more trouble than ever now—a problem with some money—and here he had not yet talked to her, not yet helped her. He could argue to himself that he’d had his goddamn arm cut off and one foot almost ruined and lost a tooth, and that meant he didn’t have to help her. That he’d made a valiant attempt and failed. Lost all his cash but gotten out before it’d cost him too much. Gotten out with enough to go on. He could tell all these nice things to himself and they would be lies.

  AN HOUR LATER, at seven in the morning, he looked at the stump while the nurse changed the dressing. They’d cut a couple of pieces of skin off his ass and used them to make a little flap that they sewed across the wet part of the slice.

  “It’s healing well,” the nurse said.

  “When do the stitches come out?” Rick asked, his cheek still hurting.

  “Two weeks. No sooner than that. There are a lot of dissolving stitches inside, too.”

 
“There’s nothing else that happens here, right?”

  She looked at him, not unkindly. “They have new prosthetic arms that respond to the nerve impulses in the stump,” she said. “That requires some physical therapy to—”

  “No, no,” Rick muttered. “I’m just asking if it’s all set to go.”

  She understood. “The doctors fixed the artery so that the blood turns around and goes back,” she explained. “Once they do that, the tissue normalizes pretty quickly. It’s the nerves that take a while.” She pulled off the mesh booty they’d put on his left foot and inspected the small dark scabs left from the drill. The flesh around the punctures remained puffy and sensitive, but there’d been no infection. The ankle and foot would need bone surgery, of course. The doctors and nurses had asked him how he’d been injured, but he explained that it’d be better if he didn’t explain. Should we call the police? No, he’d said.

  After the nurse left, he reached over to the table next to the bed with his right hand, opened the drawer, and pulled out the Bible. It seemed heavy enough. He whacked the stump a couple of times just to see how it felt. Not too bad. He hit it hard a few times more, at different angles. It hurt, but no bleeding.

  BY TEN O’CLOCK, he had checked out of the hospital and reached his truck. There he found they’d spent a few minutes tearing up the seats and glove compartment looking for Easter Bunny gifts and Cracker Jack prizes. The money and traveler’s checks were gone, as he expected. He slipped in the key, wondering if they’d fucked with the engine. Started right up. He drove to Macy’s, where his mother used to take him each fall before school began. He used his brother’s American Express card to buy shoes, socks, underwear, a dress shirt, a suit, and a tie. He put on all these things in the Macy’s dressing room, hobbling on his sore foot. The saleslady who was helping him was very nice, stared at his bandage but didn’t ask. Wearing the new clothes, he walked gingerly up Broadway through the New Jersey shoppers and black kids from Harlem looking for action. I need cash, he thought. Or something I can trade, no questions asked. He stepped into an electronics store run by some Iranians. They noticed his good clothes and called him “my friend.” He told them his father had just retired and he, Rick, wanted to give him something special, something that would last forever. How much are you looking to spend? they asked, rubbing the chests of their silky European shirts. Rick said he didn’t care about the cost, he just wanted the best. Nothing but the best for my father. They started him off on a three-thousand-dollar wide-screen television, and he announced that he wanted only the best, and they said, I strongly agree, my friend. Very good television, the best. I’ll pay Paul back later somehow, he told himself. He spent ten minutes pretending to choose between the eight-thousand-dollar television and the eleven-thousand-dollar television. Both excellent price, my friend. For you we make very good price, first time you buy with us. You are happy, you come back. This we know. My family, they have been selling for two hundred years. He chose the eleven-thousand-dollar television and asked them if they thought it was a good choice. Very good. They carried it to the truck for him. You have very good taste, they said.

  By noon, he was sitting in a bar in Queens, where he exchanged the television for lunch, three thousand dollars in cash, a Ruger .22 pistol, a new 12-gauge Winchester shotgun, and a box of shells for each gun. Then he purchased several other items: a stylish long winter coat, a pair of leather gloves, a stapler, an electric razor, an AC/DC adapter that ran off his truck’s cigarette lighter, a box of cotton wadding, a roll of duct tape, a Swiss Army knife, and a hacksaw. Sitting in his truck under the FDR, not far from a man throwing bags of construction debris into the East River, he measured the shotgun carefully against his stump. Then he opened the door of the truck, wedged the gun under his boot, and cut about a foot off the barrel. Then he put the gun in the left arm of the coat, stuffing it with the wadding, and stapled the left glove, also stuffed, to the cuff. Using the knife, he slit the arm of the coat, so that he could reach it with his right hand. Last, he awkwardly taped the butt of the gun to the end of his stump and pulled the coat on over it. The gun was hidden. Using his right hand, he set the stuffed gun-arm into the deep left pocket. He loaded the pistol and put it in the right. Rick Bocca, he whispered, botta-bing, botta-boom.

  Next he tilted the rearview mirror toward himself and shaved his head and beard, being careful around the gouge in his cheek, the hair falling on his shirt and pants. Just like the old days, before a bodybuilding contest. It took longer than he expected. No hair, one arm—he looked like a fucking old man. He’d go find Paul and Paul would help him with the next move. He punched the stump again to test the pain. It was all right. So they had cut off his fucking arm. All right. They should have killed me, he thought, they really should have done that.

  HE LEFT THE TRUCK in yet another parking garage and boarded the ferry to Staten Island. On the boat he stood at the rail thinking about Mary, Paul’s wife. She was a good woman, a good mother of two sons. She probably knew what Paulie did. How could she not? One of those women who’d made their deals. The world was full of them, and sometimes things worked out fine. The shopping and the birthday parties and the underwear folded in Paul’s drawer. The dog food, the lunch boxes, the bags of groceries. The particular kind of beer in the refrigerator. The stack of household bills on the little table next to the television so Paul could pay them while he watched football on Monday nights. She did this, she did everything.

  Thinking of Mary made him think of Christina, who had insisted that she would never get married, that she could never be faithful to one man indefinitely, not even Rick. He’d had enough sense just to nod appreciatively. A lot of women had said this to him, just so he wouldn’t make any assumptions. They wanted to be sure he didn’t think he had power over them. So, no assumptions. That was fine. You assumed that women could leave you at any time. If you remembered that, you paid attention. And maybe they left you anyway. Like his mother. He had adored her and she’d died.

  On Staten Island, he had the taxi drop him a few blocks from Paul’s house. The shotgun stuffed in the arm of his coat felt heavier than he expected, either that or his left shoulder was weaker now, and he walked awkwardly. He covered the distance slowly, a man in no hurry, stopped in front of Paul’s tall hedge, which looked trimmed five minutes prior, and turned to see if anyone might notice him slip down the driveway. A bicycle lay on the asphalt. He eased around the corner of the garage and looked in the window. No Town Car; Paul wasn’t home yet. He pissed in the bushes, then inspected the garage window for security system contacts and noticed, a tiny set on the inside middle pane, one for movement of the window itself, the other for breakage of the glass. A good system, the kind Paul would have.

  Just then, the interior door from the kitchen to the garage opened, and ten-year-old Paul Jr., already home from school, appeared. He slapped a button next to the kitchen door, making the garage door rumble up. He dragged the bicycle into the garage.

  Mary’s head appeared in the kitchen doorway. “If you leave it there, Dad’ll hit it with the car.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  “He could easily run over it.”

  “Dad is a good driver,” the boy protested.

  “Dad is a very good driver, but he’s tired at the end of the day and he expects that the bike will be against the inside of the garage, not thrown in the middle of it.”

  The kitchen door closed. The kid moved the bike as instructed and hit the garage door button. The door clunked downward. Inside the garage, as Rick watched through the window, the boy picked up a garden hoe and swung it like a baseball bat. “McGwire drives it … into … the second deck!” He took a cut through the air, admiring his own strength. Then he spied an unopened thirty-pound bag of peat moss and swung the hoe viciously, sinking its blade into the plastic packaging. A puff of dried moss smoked up at the impact. This simulacrum of violence thrilled the boy, and he abandoned himself to a series of deadly swings of the garden hoe into the pe
at moss, gutting the bag so that it bled dried brown moss from half a dozen wounds.

  “Paulie!” came his mother’s exasperated voice.

  “All right, all right!” The boy took one last cut at the bag, missing, instead clanging the hoe off the lawn mower. He threw the tool into the corner of the garage and dashed into the kitchen.

  Paul, Rick thought, smiling to himself, would pull in and see the peat moss all over the floor, and there’d be hell to pay. That was just who Paul was, maybe because of the chaos of their family growing up. Two mothers dying, the old man irritable and unpredictable, drinking too much, unable to get out of bed for weeks sometimes, pissing in a cup he left by his bedroom door. I get my depression from him, Rick thought. Paul had just sucked it up. You had to hand it to him, starting to run their father’s business while still in college, making sure Rick had enough money for baseball cleats, movies, whatever. Made the right career decisions, the right woman decision. I’ll never be that good, Rick told himself.

  He hunched against the garage for an hour. He didn’t want to present himself at the front door, in case the boys saw his arm and cheek and got scared. He wondered if Tony had found Christina yet.

  He heard the car pull into the driveway, pause, then proceed as the garage door opened. Coming home early—maybe the other boy has a school football game, he thought. He stepped around the corner of the garage as Paul switched off the car.

  “Paul.”

  Paul looked up, eyes scared. “Rick?”

  “You got to help me, Paulie.”

  Paul stared at him, assessing the situation. “Rick, hey, I’m—What happened to your face? And your arm looks—?”

  Rick pulled his coat back and showed Paul the bandaged stump. “I’m in a lot of trouble here, Paulie.”