Chop Shop

by Andrew Post

  “Are you really going to cut off my leg?”

  Becky tossed the hose aside and stepped through the pink water on the cement floor. “Yes, I will. Because I made a promise to my bosses that I could fill the order, completely, without any gaps. I’m responsible and professional and I do not allow myself any fuck-ups. I’m A-negative. So, again, maybe the Japs are onto something.” Becky took out her phone, flashing a glance at its screen. “Your friend has forty-five minutes to get here or your gutter-blood leg is going on the truck. Think she’ll pull through for you? Or do you think she’s on her way to the airport to leave your sorry AB-positive ass to suffer for your own mistakes?”

  The basement door at the top of the metal stairs banged open. Ted, Fernando, and Luke clomped down into the room, Ted in the lead. All three paused when they saw Slug dead on the floor.

  “Fuck happened?” Ted said.

  “Had to,” Becky said. “Home-base ran his name and he has a brother in the ATF.”

  “Shit,” Fernando said. “Should we be worried?”

  “Only if he’d made a phone call,” Becky said, “but that doesn’t seem very likely anymore.”

  “Any word from Simone?” Ted asked.

  “Not a peep. She answered a while ago but I think she butt-dialed, or, you know, butt-answered. She’ll be here.”

  “She better be,” Ted said.

  “Oh, chill the fuck out, Ted. I vouch for her. She’ll be here if I say she’ll be here. She has more of a cover story to maintain than any of us. You think dealing with a house full of crying relatives is an easy thing to get away from? Can’t just slip out when someone’s fetching a fresh box of Kleenex.”

  Ted was shaking his head. “She flakes out on us too much. She needs to learn, regardless of personal shit, punctuality means something. What, does she think her time is more valuable than ours?”

  “We’re not waiting on Simone, Ted. We’re waiting on Amber’s friend. Don’t try to blame Simone for shit just because you don’t like her.” She continued spraying. “Talk about not being professional.”

  Luke bent down to take Slug under the arms and drag him over to the last open slab. He stopped, Slug dangling, head lolling. “Wait. What blood type was this one?” He raised Slug a little to indicate to whom he was referring, making the corpse issue a lazy shrug.

  “His blood’s practically orange from all the OxyContin he was using. Just process him, Luke. Leave the ideas for those properly equipped to be making them.”

  “Cripes, all right. Just thinking out loud.” As he began undressing him, starting by removing all of Slug’s cheap jewelry and fake diamonds, he said, “We dumped Bryce off in the river. Figure he’ll be found after we’re on the road.”

  “You could’ve dropped him on the front steps of the courthouse for all I care.”

  Ted was standing next to Amber, towering over her, arms crossed. “Think we should start getting her cleaned up, then?” He checked his watch. “We’re running up on time and I figure it’ll probably take around twenty minutes altogether, with packaging and everything.”

  “Please don’t do this,” Amber said. “Please. Fuck, I’ll do anything. Just don’t cut off my goddamn leg.” She started to cry again.

  All four looked at her – each set of eyes giving her nothing.

  Becky, as she hosed off Robbie Pescatelli, chewed her lip in concentration, eyeing Amber from across the room. Luke was pulling off Slug’s pants, after checking his pockets. Ted, closest to Amber, stood looking at her dangling legs like he was trying to guesstimate their dimensions and thickness. Fernando used a push-squeegee to move the bloody water dribbling off Big Robbie’s corpse toward the drain in the floor, whistling while he worked.

  “I say we start,” Ted said finally. “But that’s just me. Objections?”

  Becky shrugged, spraying around Robbie’s dead face, under his double chins. “Your call. Her friend might still come through. You never know.”

  “Please don’t,” Amber continued, still going ignored. “Please. Please. Please don’t.”

  “Yeah,” Ted said to Becky, “but if she was gonna come through with something, she would’ve been here by now I’d figure. I mean, right? We’re a quarter to three now. And I still need to get gas in the truck before we get on the road.”

  “Again,” Becky said, “that’s your call, Ted. My work’s finished. You and Fernando are driving the truck, not me.”

  Ted cleared his throat. “Okay. Luke, leave Shawn for now. Go get the kit. We need to get Amber ready for surgery.”

  When Luke came over biting the cap off a syringe, Amber, though abundantly aware it was over for her, refused to go down without a fight. She sprang out of the wheelchair, turned, and tried to run for the stairs – but with the chair still fastened to her wrist by the handcuffs, all it took was for Ted to sit down in the seat. On the wet floor, her bare feet swung out from under her. Ted remained sitting in the chair, setting the brakes, anchoring her. Fernando set aside the push-squeegee. Luke tapped on the needle’s tip, stepping over to where Ted had her pinned. Fernando came up behind her and hugged her arms down flat to her sides. Amber screamed and kicked and bit, but feeling the pinch in her bicep – and the slowness everything took on around her suddenly – she could only make gooey sounds with her mouth. The last thing she saw was the floor under her as she was carried above it – and the gradation of the lights brightening on the wet cement, shining, as she was taken over to the slab they’d cleared just for her.

  * * *

  Jolene remembered another time she had made a widening pool of blood around herself. That lonely co-ed bathroom stall, listening to the muted bass of someone’s music through the wall, nobody knowing someone was killing themselves mere feet from their dorm room. And the sound of a door opening, someone calling her name, and Amber was there, standing in the open stall door looking in at Jolene, going saucer-eyed at the horror she’d made of herself. But Jolene had been relieved, then. Happy to see her, happy to see someone had come. She didn’t really want to die, but only knew that when it seemed it was too late.

  And now, years later, a door was opening. Someone was coming in to save her. Someone was standing over her, looking at her with a shocked expression. But it wasn’t Amber. Jolene’s eyes couldn’t focus; she’d lost her glasses at some point. Maybe they weren’t looking down at her with shock. No, it wasn’t Amber. And they weren’t sad and scared for her, but smiling. Cornelius stood over her, hands working his belt, smiling at the discovery he’d made on the funeral home floor.

  “I’m not dead,” Jolene said. “Stop, I’m not dead.”

  Cornelius’s hands paused, his fly halfway down. “Miss Morris?”

  “Help me,” Jolene said, only able to manage a hoarse whisper. “I need to go get Amber.”

  Cornelius looked around the room – as if seeing its state for the first time. Like he’d come in, seen Jolene lying there pale and still and had seen nothing else. “What did you do?”

  “We need to go to the bowling alley.”

  “I don’t think you’re in any state to go bowling, Miss Morris. We should get you to a hospital.” He sounded disappointed as he buckled his belt up again.

  “No. Not the hospital. Help me up. Where’s your car?”

  “Outside.” He wouldn’t take her reaching hands. “What do I get?”

  “What?”

  “If I help you will you reconsider my proposition?”

  “Yes. Just help me. Amber needs me.”

  “You’ll really reconsider?” Cornelius said, smile widening. Those awful tiny teeth.

  “Yes, Cornelius, just get me to your car.” Her jaw felt heavy, tongue fattened and numb. “Lake Calhoun Bowl & Bar. We need to go now. What time is it?”

  “Just a little after three.”

  “Shit. Where’s my phone? Help me up.”

 
The next half hour hit Jolene in flashes. One arm draped over Cornelius’s shoulder, she could smell his cologne. Hopping on one foot as he helped her through the garage. The rumble of plastic wheels as he dragged behind the cooler with her leg in it, leaving a thin trail of dry ice smoke in its wake. Then she was screaming in pain but didn’t know why – until, returning to herself, she saw the round red stamp she’d made on the car door as Cornelius tried putting her in the passenger seat. Then the wind coming in through the open window. Traffic. Other cars. People staring at her, concerned and sickened and worried. Cornelius’s awful taste in music – Air Supply or some other soft rock group. More traffic. The smell of asphalt heated up by the summer sun. Car exhaust. The grinding car engine as Cornelius sped them across town. The slow trickle, though, was constant. The smell of blood and Cornelius’s cologne, mixing, turning her stomach. She caught flashes of him talking to her, at her, about something. Asking if she was okay, maybe. She answered that question, whether he truly asked it or not she didn’t know. “I’ll be okay,” she said. Same as she told Amber when they closed the ambulance doors between them that night of her senior year.

  Cornelius held the phone for her as he drove with his other hand. Jolene didn’t remember asking him to call anyone. She heard Amber’s outgoing message: “—calling Hawthorne Funeral Home. We’re not in right now, but leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Beep.

  “Amber. Tell them I’m on my way. I’ve got a leg. I got one. I got one. I got one.…”

  Chapter Nine

  Frank kept the pedal pressed to the floor, batting at the wheel to keep the Honda on the road as he took the final turn – the Lake Calhoun Bowl & Bar stood straight ahead at the end of the street, lined on either side by closed factories and empty office plazas up for sale. He spotted the refrigerator truck waiting parked in the side lot and drew the Honda up ahead of it, parking sideways in front of its tall grille. Texas plates, he noticed. He sat in the car a moment, looking ahead at the bowling alley’s back door, glancing down at the chrome pistol in his lap. He struggled to get the magazine to release. Ten bullets. He had no idea how many people were inside, how large the network was, how many Rhinos were within. If this was even the right place at all. Maybe Simone just liked bowling alleys and he’d picked to go to the first one he saw she’d ‘checked in.’ It didn’t matter. If this wasn’t the one, he’d try the next.

  He didn’t feel responsible for Amber and Jolene getting wrapped up in all this, that wasn’t his doing, but they didn’t deserve to die for messing up an order. Ted, this Becky person, and whoever else was potentially inside the bowling alley could just let them go. No one had to get hurt. He would do something. He’d try to save their lives, albeit by a method he wasn’t accustomed to, no scrubs or scalpels here, but he’d still try.

  Frank swallowed down the bile burning the back of his throat, took a couple deep breaths, and stepped out of the car, closing the door on Simone lying in the back – his potential bargaining chip, a means to start a trade maybe.

  He could feel the heat of the baking asphalt washing up his bare legs and under his chin as he approached the bowling alley’s back door – marked ‘closed’ currently – the gun warm from his own body in his pocket, beating against his leg with each step. He approached the glass door and cupped his hands to see inside past his own reflection.

  A few neon bar lights, a couple arcade cabinets shining out in the dark, nothing else.

  He tugged on the door. Locked.

  Turning, he noticed a pale blue minivan. That was Ted’s car. This was the place.

  Lifting the lid on the dumpster, Frank spotted an old printer inside and struggled to lift the slop-drenched thing out. He swung it in his arms and released it, sending it crashing through the glass door. Drawing Simone’s gun – nearly forgetting to pull back on the slide to chamber a round – Frank crunched through the shards, into the air-conditioned bowling alley, seeing no one behind the bar, no sounds other than the whoosh of air from the vents above him, the hum of the ball return, the electronic chirps of the various idle arcade games and pinball machines.

  A door marked employees only. Sweat coursed down the sides of his neck. He paused to wipe his palms on his shorts so he wouldn’t drop the gun, should he need to use it. He hoped he didn’t. He hoped the threat of it would be enough.

  Bumping open the employees-only door, he found two desks, both standing empty. The next room, through the swinging kitchen door, he found nothing but recently mopped floors and glistening shiny appliances. Maybe he was late. Maybe they’d already gone. Maybe that refrigerator truck sitting outside was a decoy. Maybe—

  “Who are you?” someone asked, behind him.

  Frank started to turn.

  “Whoa, man,” they said. “Don’t fucking turn around. Stay looking that way.” A shotgun loudly racked, a cold barrel pressing on Frank’s spine. “Who are you?”

  Frank kept Simone’s pistol close to his belly. They didn’t see he was armed yet. “I’m looking for the manager,” he said.

  “Well, she ain’t here right now. You’re trespassing, buddy. I suggest you go back out the way you came in.”

  Frank turned his head to look over his shoulder. In his peripheral vision he could make out little detail of the young man. He was olive skinned, dark hair, wearing a baseball cap cocked sideways on his head.

  “Don’t look at me, dude,” he said. “Keep facing forward.”

  “Are you going to shoot me? Because I’m type O-negative. I’m here for a trade. Amber for me. Or Simone, if you prefer. She’s out in the car.”

  The guy lowered the shotgun barrel slightly. “Who the fuck are you and how do you know about all this shit you’re saying, man? And where’s Simone? What?”

  “Simone is outside. I’m here to trade. Me and her for Amber.”

  “Simone was fucking playing us?”

  “No. She didn’t turn on you. I should clarify. Her being part of this deal I’m suggesting isn’t exactly her say, but given her current condition—”

  “Whoa, what you mean she ain’t got no say? What’d you do to her? You got a gun on you, man? Turn around.”

  If he saw the chrome pistol, he’d shoot. This was Frank’s only chance.

  Frank planted his sneakers, hoping their tread wouldn’t fail him on this freshly mopped kitchen floor. He twisted around, fast, snatching the shotgun barrel with one hand and lifting up and away as he thrust the pistol toward the guy’s chest, the barrel clinking against the guy’s golden crucifix necklace.

  “Okay, man, okay,” the guy said, one hand raised open with the other still clutching the shotgun’s wooden stock.

  “Let go of the shotgun,” Frank said.

  “Just let me take it and I’ll go. Got my prints on it. I’ll just go, man.”

  “No, let go of it or I’ll shoot you,” Frank said. He felt like he might have a heart attack any moment. “I’m here for Amber. I’m willing to trade as long as you don’t hurt her.”

  The guy blinked at him. Frank could see it. It was the same look he used to see as he went to tell a patient’s family in the waiting room bad news – often, before he’d even opened his mouth, somehow, they knew. Something had happened. But now it was Frank getting the bad news, no need for words, just a look.

  “I’m not supposed to shoot you,” the guy said. “You have type-O. That’s gold to us. But I’ll do it, man, if you don’t let me go.” When he tried wrenching the shotgun down – the kitchen exploding with the sudden flat noise as it discharged inches from Frank’s head – Frank, entirely involuntarily, squeezed the trigger of the pistol at the same time.

  Shot point-blank, the guy made a guttural, low grunt, stumbled back through the kitchen door, and fell across one of the desks. He lay with a smoking hole in his shirt over his heart next to his nametag that read Fernando.

  I
t’s just meat. It’s just meat.

  Frank held his head, his skull vibrating. The heat of the shotgun going off in his face tingled painfully. Though his ears had been ringing for days, the left wasn’t picking up even that much anymore. He touched at his face. One eyebrow was crispy, same as the hair on his left temple. He was only bleeding from his left ear, but none of the bullets had punctured his skin.

  Gun still hot in his hand, Frank stared at what he’d done to the young man lying draped across the desk, bleeding a thin line out of his shirt.

  Nearly a decade of school, all those hours at the clinic, days and nights one to the next saving people, double shifts, triples, sleeping in his car, pulling people back from the brink even as their bodies begged to be let go, to just die, again and again – and in one day Frank had personally shoved two souls spiraling into the Great Whatever. He stood, stared, and breathed, concentrating only on slowing down his heart for a while. He told himself he was under no oath, like he’d told Simone; maybe someday he’d believe this was justified, that this was okay. But right now it felt sickening, as necessary to saving Amber as it may’ve been.

  Woozy, he bent to collect the shotgun from the floor. He pocketed the pistol and used the shotgun barrel to poke open the kitchen door, stepping back out into the bowling alley behind the bar.

  Immediate gunfire chewed the floor at his feet to splinters. Frank dropped, only seeing a flash out over the lanes before shattered booze bottles rained liquor and glass down around him. Staying low, he racked the shotgun, letting them know he was armed.

  “Might want to identify yourself,” a male voice shouted. Not Ted. Someone else.

  “I’m here for Amber.”

  “I didn’t ask what you’re here for, asshole,” the voice said. Frank could hear heavy boots on the polished wood of the lanes as a man stepped out. Sitting up a little, Frank used what remained of the mirror behind the bar to see. Though the cracks made the reflection unreliable, he could see a bald man in blue scrubs, several of him it seemed, all moving together as one, crossing the lanes, each with a compact machine gun in their many, many hands. “Name.”