I pounded the blacktop until I reached the turnoff for the downtown Savannah. I stepped up onto the road and watched as an 18-wheeler hurtled by, a woman in the window with a young face—oblong—screaming, pounded the window, as the truck moved past, the silent scream disappearing into the thunderclouds in the direction of town. The license plate of the truck was familiar: A55MAN.
What were the odds?
I sprinted towards town, flinging my thumb out every time I heard a rumble behind me, but nobody stopped. I didn’t blame them. I was drenched and filthy. My borrowed clothes didn’t fit. Someone with an active imagination would have thought I looked fresh out of jail; they’d be right. I sprinted and walked and sprinted and walked, settling into a steady pattern.
“One foot in front of the other, Ray, left, right, left. It’s easy as marching. You know how to do this.” Talking to myself. Out loud. That couldn’t be a good thing.
And I marched on, all the way back to town. The long, wet trek gave me time to consider, to think, to make a decision. I figured I’d help Jimmy Barrens and Eliza McNamara spread their message. It was about time this country realized the contribution of all its members, no matter what ethnicity or background, and I could think of a dozen angles to convey that message. Besides, I felt bad about what had happened in the car. Sure, I didn’t owe Barrens anything, and I didn’t owe America anything either—I’d paid any debt that came with my birthright long ago—but this isn’t about owing. It’s not about getting something for doing something. It’s simply about doing the right thing, and the right thing right now would be to report on what was happening in Savannah, in Georgia, in this country, with its systemic, lethal social injustice.
The other right thing to do would be to find that girl who was trapped in the cab of Assman’s 18-wheeler. I knew from experience what the driver was capable of, and, unlike me, she wouldn’t have what it took to fend him off.
It looked like he was heading back to town, but he might be moving on from there. I figured I’d have a poke around, spend some time in the trenches, see what was going on with the protests and the riots, and at the same time see if I could track down the truck with the memorable license plate.
I pulled my cellphone from the plastic bag and called Ed as I approached town. I told him what was going on and asked him if he knew or had any contacts in the police department. He told me he could get me in but there was no point in going after Groening. My editor reckoned Groening was the governor’s man and that this was more than a political appointment. The fact that Ed was warning me off this gave me pause for thought. He had a good nose for story, but he had been known to leave things lie sometimes when he thought they could get out of hand.
Again, Ed told me to drop it, told me that Groening wouldn’t take any appointment that wasn’t going to result in a promotion, said things were pretty sure. I told him I’d won $300 million and that nothing was sure in this life. He asked when I was resigning. I told him I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction and swore I would work until I died. He told me I should turn in some stories, then. I had several overdue. And then, he told me the details of his contact in the police force.
“Just don’t badger him, Ray. Don’t harass him, hey? And don’t make him stand out like a sore thumb in Groening’s fucking parade.”
I made no promises and asked after Ed’s wife. He told me she was doing fine and that she never wanted to see me again. She’d told me the same, but I was holding out hope and burning a candle in my window. I wasn’t sure if he hated to chat about his wife because he knew what we all knew or because he didn’t know and felt uncomfortable with me asking. It didn’t matter either way.
The noise of people chanting, yelling, screaming, smashing stuff became louder. The sound of rubber bullets being fired, of teargas hissing, of people crying, and mothers waling became so loud that we couldn’t hear each other. I hung up the call and slipped into the crowd of heaving, drenched bodies that moved as a unit in one direction and then swayed the other way, and then chanted and held up signs and threw bricks and smashed fists into riot shields.
I tasted sweat dripping down from my upper lip; the heat and tension was getting to me. I toyed with the notion that a good slug of bad whiskey would help with that, but when I remembered my time in the damn asylum, and what had put me there, I shook it off and ordered myself to focus on the task at hand.
I asked a young girl with a bone through her nose and a mohawk who was in charge around here, who was running the protests. She laughed and told me, “Nobody.” It was organic, she said. It was a response to police brutality, the police state, a system of terror and oppression.
“United States of Freedom my ass,” she laughed. “More like the United States of Assassinations, of Deaths in Custody, the United States of Whiteness.”
I glanced down at my skin and then at hers. I couldn’t discern much of a difference. I quirked a brow at her.
“There’s Native American in me,” she said defensively.
“But it’s not about skin color,” I shot back, always up for a good argument. “It’s about inequality . . .”
Then I remembered my purpose and reined myself in, before Nose Bone and I got into it in a major way, because then we would be there all day. So it was back to my original question—framed differently so it was idiot-proof. “Is there anyone here who’s louder than the others?”
She stood up on her tiptoes and tried to point across the crowd, but I couldn’t see who she was pointing at.
I took her hand and said, “Take me there,” and she led the way. We weaved in and out of the crowd until we just became more faces in the sea of wet hair and faded dreams of equality.
Chapter Nineteen
Irving booked a hotel room through his cellphone and the Internet. He made sure it was one that was dodgy enough to be off the main path, but one that had electronic locks on the doors, so he didn’t have to check-in at a counter or hop out of the cab of his truck. He parked up front and waited for the rain to fall heavier, for people to disappear, and when they did he grabbed the girl, pushed a filthy sock into her mouth, bundled her over his shoulder like a load of dirty laundry, and carried her up the single flight of stairs to the room he’d booked. He pressed his cellphone against the keypad, activating the code, and the door opened. He shoved the door inwards and threw the girl down onto the bed.
She wasn’t really his type, but Irving Mathers figured she was probably Ray Hammer’s type and the rule he’d learned very early on in life was that if you want to get someone over your knee, if you want to take control of a situation, you find what someone else wants and then you destroy it, systemically, bit by bit, until it doesn’t exist anymore. Until it’s a figment, a fragment of what it used to be, broken, torn apart, ripped into shreds. It was even more effective if you could do it in front of that person.
He wanted to make Ray Hammer pay, but he had no idea how to find him or how to get him into Savannah, but then where else would he go? The girl was the only part of a plan that had no other parts—a bad plan, that is to say, but one that he hoped he’d figure out as he went along. He turned on the television and watched the news for a while in the hopes of seeing Hammer’s face again amongst the faces of the other prisoners who’d escaped, none of whom Mathers recognized from his time in the big house. He started to doubt himself, wondered if maybe she was a bit young, maybe not the type for this Ray Hammer guy either. But Mathers would have to make do with what he had because she was all he had.
As he watched the coverage of the riots, he scoffed and cracked a beer. The girl lay on the bed, still gagged, her hands tied in front of her. An hour passed and there was still no news about Hammer. Irving got to his feet, made a better gag, removed the sock, and then pushed the new gag into the girl’s mouth.
“Going out for a moment,” he said, and he opened the door and, just then, the news changed over to a picture of a car wreck and he heard the name of the man he’d been looking for.
R
ay Hammer had apparently been driving the warden’s stolen car and there were two people injured in the crash. Both well known: one a former police chief, who’d been missing awhile, and the other, Jimmy Barrens, rock legend. Irving made a step back into the room. He sat down on the end of the bed, cracked another can of beer, drained it, threw the empty towards the trash can in the corner of the room. It bounced off the rim, missed, and spilled the last remnants of beer on the carpet. He stepped over and pushed it in with his foot.
“I’m going out now,” he said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
The girl didn’t say anything. Her body rocked with silent sobs and salt water trickled from the corners of her eyes.
Eliza McNamara could hear voices around her. They were hushed, kept low, and then there was the stamp of hard boots on polished concrete floors. She kept her eyes firmly squished shut. She listened to the sounds, to the breathing, to the muttering. A strong apricot-smelling cologne wafted over her and she tried not to sneeze. Instead of sneezing, she slowed her breath to try and imitate the sound of someone sleeping, but by the muttering around her, they weren’t listening too closely.
A plumped-up pillow pushed into the right side of her face, and she took a chance at opening her right eye just a crack. A man’s waist swam into her vision, a 9-millimeter hanging carelessly by his side. She could make a grab for it, she thought, but then there were five or six men by her count, and she wasn’t even 100% sure of that.
No one seemed to notice her eye inching slowly open. She took in the dark combat boots, the blue fatigues stained from the wiping of dirty hands, and considered again whether she should lunge for the weapon. Instead, she stayed still and listened a little longer. The voices grew quiet and she felt the presence of men all around her and the odor of apricot became overpowering.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a camera shutter clicking, and then the men erupted in laughter around her. She closed her eyes, pretended to be asleep, breathed deeper, slowly. It was hard to do. And then, the boots crackled out of the room and the smell of apricot became less and less overpowering until it was no longer even there.
She waited still, and then waited some more until she was sure she was truly alone. She opened her eyes, and there on her chest was a Polaroid photo of six armed men in ski masks on either side of her, their guns pointing at her, those of the two closest just inches away from her head. A faint smell of apricot lingered.
She tried to sit up, to look out from where she was, and a man shifted and cleared his throat in the chair beside her bed. She looked over, and Groening grinned at her.
Irving Mathers couldn’t believe it. The second he returned to the room she was all over him, kicking, screaming, her fingernails digging into his flesh, into the soft parts around his eyes, and pushing into every part of him, into his mouth, pulling at his lips and at his cheeks from the inside. She swung around, grabbed the TV remote and held it between her two hands. She thumped it down over his head.
He lashed out, a quick jab to the jaw. She slumped back against the bed, and as he was about to jump onto her, she rolled out of the way and stood up, then brought her elbows crashing into the side of his face. Irving smashed down beside the bed. His vision blurred and he coughed as his congested nose spat blood on the motel floor carpet. The crimson was an improvement on the boring beige, but Mathers shuddered and faltered as he climbed gingerly to his feet.
She crashed into him with her shoulder in his waist, slamming him back against the TV and into the thin wall between their apartment and the next, her voice pitched higher and higher as she spat the gag and uttered a guttural scream. Irving listened for the inevitable knock on the door, the battering rams of police, or sirens in the distance. Nothing. The TV clung to the cabinet through what seemed to be sheer will, then crashed to the floor. The picture was gone, and the sound of the newscaster came out of only one speaker, grating and stuttering.
And then, she whirled again, this time her leg raised in a defiant kick. Irving caught it and spun her back the other way.
She slammed into the opposite wall and then came careening back towards him. He stepped to the side and allowed her to crash back into the wall where he’d been standing. She spun, fury in her eyes, spit frothing on her mouth, her hands still bound together, still grasping the remote, trying to get to him.
He slapped his cheek and shook his head and spat a wad of phlegm on the ground. Mathers’s vision cleared just slightly and he pulled his shoulder back, his elbow high, as she came towards him.
This time, he let loose, hard. Fast. Not pulling any punches.
His fist connected.
She slumped into the ground and didn’t get up. Blood trickled from her lip, and her breathing was ragged. Deep purple bruises swelled under her stretched porcelain skin.
As we approached the protest leader, a skinny black man with a low-cropped mohawk, I noticed the faces of a few the protesters. It seemed like they recognized me from somewhere.
“Do I know you?” said a guy with glasses and long matted hair, and then another guy in a studded denim jacket grabbed me around the throat, spun me into a lamppost and pinned me up against it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said to the studs on his shoulder.
I wasn’t sure if it was the time between drinks or the distinct lack of respect the denim jacket was showing me, but I had a very short fuse, and it was getting shorter by the second. I considered grabbing him by the back of the neck and slamming his head into a lamppost, but he stepped back.
He had sense enough to heed my warning, but not enough sense to stop himself from saying what he said next. “You’re dead, man,” he said. “You can’t just kill one of us and then another one down here.”
“I didn’t kill one of you,” I said. “Who do you mean?”
“An African American man. You killed that guy at the bodega.”
“He was shot in front of me. I had nothing to do with his death. Wrong place, wrong time, just like you, kid.”
The girl with the crazy hair pulled Mr. Denim Studs aside. “What’s this all about?”
“He killed that kid, Tommy Abbas. You know, the one who was shot outside the bodega the other day.”
“That so?” she asked. Her eyes drilled into me, hard and curious. Ready to take offense.
I shook my head. “Couldn’t be further from the truth.”
She rolled her eyes and picked up my hand again and we moved towards the guy with the mohawk. Denim Studs barged me with his shoulders and went past. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten this,” he snarled.
“That’s the smartest thing you can do,” I replied.
I was past him now. Two seconds later, there was a thump in the back of my head as a fist came down. I spun, grabbed Denim Studs around the neck and pulled him over my head, slamming him into the ground.
When he regained consciousness, he just lay there, dazed.
“Sorry, kid, but I warned you.”
He didn’t take heed. He was pretty out of it. And I was ready for that drink, and that $300 million. I called the state lottery regulator, and the machine told me they were closed over the weekend. So, instead, I forced my way through the crowd. The girl ran off somewhere.
When I reached the guy with the mohawk, I spun him around, said hi, introduced myself. “Ray Hammer, former Marine, now a journalist for the press. I wanna tell your story.”
He looked me up and down, asked me point-blank: “Did you kill that man?”
I shook my head.
“The cops kill him?”
I shook my head again.
“Who, then?” he asked, and everyone around us stopped and listened, but the sounds of protest and chants grew to a fever pitch
“Some psycho with a vendetta and a semiautomatic,” I said.
“You know him?”
I shook my head, and then said through the side of my mouth: “But I plan to kill him.”
That was good enough for the guy with the mohawk. H
e extended his hand. We shook.
“Grant Jackson,” he said, and he bundled me into a taxi, and we pushed off down the street to a crummy motel in the middle of nowhere, just the kind of place my target would be hanging out. I looked about the parking lot for a semitrailer with a familiar license plate, but there was nothing there.
Chapter Twenty
Grant Jackson’s motel room was dank. It smelled of old smoke, and the duvet was covered with stains and bleach marks from where they’d tried to get the stains out. The beige carpet cushioned my boots as I glanced around for somewhere to sit down.
“You’re from out of town.” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“What of it?” He kicked off his shoes.
“You’re leading a protest in a city you’re not even from?”
Jackson bent down over the minibar, popped the fridge open and handed me a cold can of beer.
“You get into this kind of thing ‘coz you wanna make a difference, man. Then you realize racism, it’s everywhere. You can’t step out onto a street in this fucked up country and not have someone look at you like you’re a turd on their shoe.”
“There must be hundreds of protests every week. . . .” I cracked the beer can, heard the hiss and drained it in one single gulp. He hadn’t even closed the minibar door yet. I reached out for another. He handed it to me. This one I took more slowly.
“Savannah’s on a knife’s edge. Change only happens when people are ready. This shit has the potential to light a fire under the President himself.”
“You got anything stronger?” I asked, pointing at the minibar.
“You sure you wanna do that? Don’t you have an article to write?” he said.
“I write better when I’m drunk.”
The Fight (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 4) Page 6
