Counting to Infinity

by J. L. Abramo

  NEWS BULLETIN

  September 21—In near-record time Judge Dearborn handed down a sentence of 25 years to Midland bank robbers Bo Marcus and Eddie Himes.

  After much plea bargaining by the defense the charges were reduced to a point where a life sentence was not in the Judges’ power, but in his remarks Dearborn expressed regret at the rules that kept him from sending the boys up for good.

  The money, $642,000 at final count, has yet to be recovered.

  NEWS BULLETIN

  September 22—Hurricane Esmeralda is slated to hit the county head-on overnight and well into tomorrow. The governor has expressed his intention to declare a state of emergency as soon as needed to deploy rescue and cleanup vehicles.

  CHAPTER 1

  Rain hit the roof of the van, filling it with the frantic sound of someone trapped in a coffin.

  The two-lane country highway out to the penitentiary swirled with leaves and fallen branches dancing a dervish across the narrow strip of blacktop cutting through the woods.

  Behind the wheel, Officer Nuñez inched ever closer to the windshield trying in vain to get a better look between the intervals of the wipers fighting a losing battle against the ass end of a hurricane. The inky tarmac reflected headlights and lightning flashes barely enough to keep the road in view. Beside Nuñez sat Holt, a three-year veteran still thought of as a rookie. He gripped the shotgun upright and white-knuckled it tight to his chest wishing to God it was a steering wheel and that Nuñez would slow the fuck down instead of trying to race the storm to make it there on time. Eight o’clock, eight-fifteen—midnight for that matter—what’s the difference? The two jerks in back sure weren’t in any rush to start their twenty-five year stay up at Wharton State pen.

  Two prisoners in the holding area of the van glared at each other from opposite steel benches. Rain whipped the metal shell of the van like a dominatrix. Above the din Eddie “Slick” Himes’ ragged breathing still stood out. Slick sat with his head turned low, but his eyes angled up staring directly across from him into the face of Bo, his ex-partner in crime. Slick could stare down a rabid grizzly bear with a tack in its ass and still send the bear running. His face was long, like an exaggerated mask. His ears dangled low lobes with empty holes where the man took away his earrings, set aside in a manila envelope to be retrieved when his twenty-five years were up. His eyes were deep-set and ringed permanently in black giving him the look of someone who always recently woke up and wasn’t happy about it. The perpetual stubble on his face did little to hide the scar that ran from his right ear down to the point of his chin. How he got his scar was a long story, but he never saw a doctor, never got it stitched like he should have. Now it grew high like a speed bump on his face and it acted like a mood ring, darkening with blood the madder he got. Anyone on the wrong side of Slick watched that purple scar like a thermometer in July, waiting for it to blow. That was when to get out of his way. That and every other time you saw him coming.

  Bo met Slick’s practiced stare, not bothering to brush away the wet strands of blond hair over his left eye. A leak had opened up in the thin roof above him, but to move would be to act like a pansy who couldn’t get his panties wet, so he stayed put. Bo was handsome in a surf bum kind of way. He hated to wear shoes, his hair hung down to his shoulders and looked good even when he didn’t shower for days. A come-and-go crystal meth habit had ruined his skin, but when he was younger all his friends told him to get the fuck out of town and go be a model somewhere. Bo knew that was a fast track to a few starring roles in gay porn to pay the bills and then either a heroin habit or AIDS so he hung around in his backwoods, go-nowhere town for a few more years. Years that led to this.

  “Stupid cunt couldn’t keep your head,” Slick muttered, all but “cunt” drowned out by the storm sounds.

  “You talking to me?” Even at his most intimidating Bo tended to sound merely cordial.

  Slick raised his voice to challenge the thunder. “Ain’t no one else back here, dumb fuck!”

  “Keep it down back there!” called Holt through the tight metal grating separating them.

  Slick dropped back down to a low growl. “You’re the reason I’m here, motherfucker.”

  “It was your plan. I only followed orders. How is that my fault?”

  “When shit goes down, you improvise. Improvise, man.”

  “You didn’t say that before.”

  Slick tugged at his shackles; feet bound by a length of chain looped through two eye hooks bolted to the steel floor and then up to handcuffs. The tin box of the van acted as an amplifier for metal on metal sounds and every time either man shifted his chains it sounded like angry dogs straining to get loose.

  “You cost me six hundred grand.” A thick rope of angry spit clung to Slick’s stubbly chin. His hands would not reach high enough to wipe it away. “I told you before, man, we get to that yard and first chance I get you’re getting a shiv up your ass.”

  Bo believed it, tried not to let it show. “I thought Emma was keeping it for you. You didn’t lose shit, you just can’t make a withdrawal for a while.”

  “You want me to brush off twenty-five years like it’s no big thing?”

  “No, I want you to eat shit and die.”

  Slick pulled up on his shackles, the eye hooks held firm. Clanging chains rattled like Marley’s ghost inside the van.

  “Seriously! Keep it down back there. The man’s trying to drive!” Holt didn’t want anything to distract Nuñez from paying attention to the road. From where he sat there was only six feet of visibility ahead of them and it gave the impression of endlessly driving off a cliff.

  Wind gusts pushed the van sideways, bouncing it on the shocks like some good old teenage humping was going on. If the van is a-rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.

  Nuñez leaned so close to the steering wheel he set off the horn with his chest. Startled, he jumped back into his seat, Holt hopping up out of his for a moment.

  Outside, a different sound. Higher pitched than the thunder rolls, it split through the drum roll of the rain battering the van. The sound made Holt turn. He never saw the tree.

  A forty-foot pine hit the van right above the windshield. A branch speared down through the roof and Nuñez took the thick spike of wood to his chest and died at the wheel before he had time to shit his pants. Safety glass like freezing rain coated the inside cabin and pelted Holt’s eyes. He screamed, leaned forward putting his head straight in line with the dashboard when the van left the road.

  In the back, the two prisoners were weightless for a second, held in place by the shackles, with their butts rising off the benches in a roller-coaster move. The tree rolled over the top of the van, front to back, tearing into it with branches and peeling back the roof like a giant opening a can of sardines. The front of the van tipped then stopped abruptly and all forward momentum stopped in an instant when it hit a tree more stable than the pine.

  Slick and Bo’s bodies carried forward for another beat and then were clawed to a stop by the chains binding them to the van. Cuffs tore at their ankles and wrists, but held firm. If not for the quick stop they both would have done headers into the thick firewall between the prisoner compartment and the cabin of the van.

  The rain no longer echoed in back. A steady cascade of rain now flowed in splashing Slick and Bo to awareness like a glass of water in the face when you’re drunk.

  The wall between them and the cops had split open like a cut throat. Slick saw something in a flash of lightning. The shotgun had fallen from Holt’s grip and poked through the split, a toothpick in gap teeth. He kicked out a foot and reached the butt of the gun by an inch. He flipped his foot up and brought the gun closer. Bo figured out Slick’s plan and tried to back away, but only rattled his chains and rubbed his ankles more raw.

  Slick hooked a prison issue boot under the gun stock and flipped it up into his cuffed hands. Bo braced himself for a blast.

  Instead, Slick upended the gun, pointed the barrel straight dow
n and shot the eye hook keeping him attached to the steel floor. The sound was incredible. Even with the torn open top of the van it was loud enough that both men reached to grab their ears only to have their wrists cruelly scraped again and held in place. Ringing deadened Bo’s hearing, but the gunpowder smell reeked in his nostrils as if a skunk had gotten into the van.

  The chain connecting Slick’s feet had been split. He moved quickly, crouching by the open gash and reaching a hand around to Holt’s belt. Without being able to see, he felt around and sunk his hand in something warm and wet. He pulled back quickly, hand covered in blood from the entrails he’d accidentally fondled. Holt’s body split down the middle, his intestines hanging over his belt like a beer belly.

  Choking back a gag Slick reached again, this time starting on Holt’s pant leg and feeling up until he reached the belt, a move he hadn’t used since high school in the back seat of Danielle Zeboli’s car. Slick snatched the key ring, found the cuff keys and undid his leg and hand cuffs.

  Bo watched helplessly.

  Straightening up to his full six-foot-two, Slick tilted back his head to the rain and let it wash over him. He let out a bellow to the skies like he was challenging the storm to a fight.

  Slick lowered his head and his eyes met Bo’s again. He lifted the shotgun.

  “Looks like I don’t have to wait for the yard.”

  Bo strained at his cuffs, wanting at least to cover his face with his hands, but he ended up squirming like a little girl in a room full of spiders.

  Slick squeezed the trigger. No sound. He pulled back on the stock and it spat out the used shell, but there were no others to reload.

  Bo peeked open his eyes.

  Slick got down to his knees and scanned the floor of the cabin for any spare shells. As he inched forward the steady stream of water flowing down the incline of the wrecked van ran through the opening and mixed with the blood of the two officers which coated the floor beneath their feet.

  As Slick shifted his body forward, the front end of the van tilted to a steeper angle. Slick retreated.

  He rose to his feet again, still gripping the shotgun.

  “Guess I’ll let the storm take you. I got a gal to see and some money to spend.”

  Slick hoisted himself up through the tear in the roof. Bo could hear him climb along the outside of the van and drop off.

  Bo scanned around the carcass of the van for anything that could help him. He was alone.

  Slick’s size fourteen boot slammed against the back of the van. It rocked forward. Another boot, another inch forward.

  Bo tried to shift his weight to the back of the van for counterbalance, but one more boot to the bumper and he found himself sliding with the van down an incline. He had no idea how far down it went.

  Slick stood on the two-lane highway in his state-issued Creamsicle-orange jumpsuit holding one state trooper issue shotgun with no shells. No one else knew the gun wasn’t loaded so he still had an effective bargaining tool.

  Wet leaves stuck to his legs as he stood in the midst of the tempest. Fat drops of rain landed on every part of his already soaked body. Six hundred forty-two thousand dollars lay less than fifty miles away with Emma. She didn’t expect to see him for another twenty-five years.

  Boy, would she be surprised.

  CHAPTER 2

  Emma stood naked in front of the mirror taking inventory of everything she hated about herself.

  First: the hair. She tried bleaching it blonde, but it never looked right so she gave in to life as a mouse-brunette. There was the ten, okay fifteen, aw hell twenty pounds she had to lose. The four moles that lined up on her chin like some sort of miniature Mount Rushmore. Her teeth, oh her teeth. Crooked wasn’t even the word.

  All of this artifice, these surface imperfections and she still had a killer ass, great fleshy round tits with tiny nipples that drove men nuts. Crooked teeth or not, she could suck the memory of all other women right out of a man’s dick. But what did all that get her when spackled over with her list of imperfections? Slick Eddie.

  She learned to love him over time, but the part of her pushing tears out when he got sentenced was fighting a brawl inside with the part of her that was glad to see him go. If only she’d gotten a tumble with Bo before he was sent up. Now, him she could do a little time with.

  Emma got dressed in the dank chill of her basement apartment. She rented the concrete-walled space from Sylvia, an older woman who wasn’t letting her house sit around and not earn. She rented out every room in the place, except the master suite and her son Delmer’s room, to college girls. The two-story-plus-loft Victorian made her an awfully nice return on a house that was paid off in 1986.

  Emma at least had her own bathroom, kitchenette and a separate bedroom with a door that locked. The other girls, who had to live side-by-side with Delmer, gave Emma jealous looks when she came and went.

  She tied her hair in a ponytail and no truer description of her hair was ever uttered. Horse-like. She checked the thin windows up near the ceiling, ground-level outside, to see if it was still raining. It was. The concrete walls were slick with groundwater leeching in. Mold grew in fuzzy patches on the window frames.

  I’ll be glad to get the fuck out of here.

  There was still planning to do. It would be too easy to just bolt out of town so soon after Slick was sent away. She was a known companion to a convicted bank robber and the money still hadn’t been recovered.

  Shit, she knew that because she hadn’t given it to them.

  Emma had already given her notice at the bookstore where she worked saying it was too much to handle when Slick went away. She needed a fresh start. She did a little research using the Internet at the library and found out that the Cayman Islands were an awfully good place to go with a sack full of cash if you wanted no questions asked.

  Her research was less than scientific, but satisfied her urge to find an island on which to get lost.

  The plan was to go to Miami for a few weeks, get a post office box, be seen around town and act like she was setting up a new life and then bust out for the islands with the money.

  For the moment, she needed a withdrawal from the bank of Slick’s booty. That meant heading out late for a stop at the storage unit. She knew once she was there she wouldn’t be able to resist counting a little bit more of it, rolling around on top of it. That first night she even got so worked up she held two paper-wrapped bundles in one hand and finger-fucked herself with the other. When she came, she rubbed a big wad of bills all over her pussy, getting them wet and sticky. Still legal tender, though.

  She locked the door behind her and crept up the stairs.

  Delmer was there. She jumped and swallowed a scream.

  At thirty-three years old you could hardly call Delmer a boy, but for all the brain power he exhibited it was all you could think of when you spoke to him. He stood tall and rotund and awkward as a newborn cow. The constant slick of sweat on his forehead even reminded Emma of afterbirth. The way the old woman babied him it was a wonder she ever cut the cord.

  None of the girls in the house liked to be around him. There were rumors he breastfed until age ten.

  Delmer had a special fixation on Emma. Probably because she’d been there for over two years, much longer than the one or two semester stays the college girls had.

  “Goin’ out?”

  “Yeah, Delmer. I was.”

  “Where to?”

  “I got stuff to do. Don’t you?”

  “Naw. It’s my bedtime.”

  He took up the whole doorframe at the top of the stairs so Emma was trapped until she could divert his attention, but she wasn’t holding anything shiny at the moment.

  “Well, then you should go to bed,” she said cheerily, the way a kindergarten teacher talks.

  “You look good.”

  “Thanks, Delmer.” She sighed. Guys like Slick and Delmer. Such was her lot in life. Curse her mother for the crooked teeth and mole genes.

  �
��You goin’ out?” he said again.

  “You know what?” Emma turned on the steps. “I just remembered I forgot something. I guess I’ll stay in. See you later, Delmer.”

  She descended the stairs under his looming watch.

  CHAPTER 3

  Like a drunk college kid with his hand in a cup of water, the rain made Bo piss his pants. The thick fog of unconsciousness contributed to the pants wetting, but he was awake now and soaked through from the rain much more than the piss.

  The van rested comfortably on a set of train tracks at the bottom of a fifty-foot incline, one Bo had ridden all the way down. The van barely qualified as a vehicle any more. Roof ripped open, tires shorn off, windshield gone and passenger cabin caved in, pine branches embedded in the frame, floor cracked open. The fault line in the steel floor ran right across where the eye hook that held Bo to the floor used to sit. He was untethered from the twisted metal of the van, but still shackled to himself.

  His world moved slow, a feeling he was familiar with. Since he was twelve, Bo had been a serious self-medicator. He’d come to like the slow feeling, not the speed. All efforts were on procuring the pot and pills to keep things mellow and slow. Vicodin and Percocet were favorites. Oxycontin would do in a pinch. His time doing crystal meth nearly did him in. He found a person inside he didn’t like when he was on speed, but the person who moves slow, that was a dude he could hang with.

  He blinked rainwater out of his eyes. Lightning flashed, thunder right on its heels. Across from him in the open carcass of the transport van were Slick’s old shackles. In the handcuffs, jutting out like a middle finger, was the key.

  Bo moved as quick as his syrupy brain would allow and kept a death grip on the tiny key. Losing it in the chaos of the wreckage and the storm would be game over.