Chop Shop

by Andrew Post

  “My name is Frank. I’m here for Amber. I want to trade.”

  The heavy boots stopped. Frank watched in the mirror as the multiple blue-scrubbed bald guys lowered their machine guns together in unison, all of them screwing up their heavy-browed faces. “Frank as in Frank Goode?”

  “Doctor Bad himself,” Frank said, and shook his head at himself. Idiot. “So are we going to talk or are we just going to shoot each other?”

  “Did you kill Fernando?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. I didn’t want to, but I did.”

  “You have anything to do with the fact Simone hasn’t answered her phone since this morning?”

  There was no point in lying. “She’s dead.”

  The man in the scrubs and heavy boots brought the machine gun up to his shoulder again, taking aim at the bar. Frank, behind it, slid along the floor on his knees through the broken glass to put the reach-in freezer between him and the potential bullets, thinking maybe, like at home, he could make himself a shield. He waited for the hail of bullets, but none came.

  “Did you kill her?” the man shouted.

  Frank couldn’t see him in the mirror. He tried angling his head around to use his right ear, the one that still functioned. “I did.”

  “Why?” He didn’t sound mad, but slightly irked.

  “Because I had to.”

  A muffled gunshot rang out somewhere in the building. Neither man standing at opposite ends of the bowling alley said anything for a couple heartbeats.

  When the guy in the scrubs called out, fear was strangling his voice. “Ted? Becky? You guys all right down there? Fuck.” He called out to Frank, “So you’re the universal donor, right? You were some of the blood in the jugs, the shit that came out of Vasily?”

  “Yes. That was mine.”

  “So you did try to save him. What do you know? Looks like I owe Ted twenty bucks.”

  “I tried,” Frank said, “right before your friend Simone shot him.”

  “I see. And you’re here because you’re after Amber? She family to you?”

  “No.”

  “But you still wanna save her?”

  Frank sighed. “Look. Why don’t we just cut to the chase? I already know what you’re going to say. And I’ll agree to it, without you even needing to ask. I’ll give you me if you let Amber go. Bring Ted out here, I’ll talk to him.”

  “No. And I call bullshit. There ain’t nobody who wants to get chopped. I’ll come back there and shoot you and then chop you – but I don’t believe it for a fucking second you’d give yourself up knowing what’s in store for you.”

  “I will. Because, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, man, I don’t have jack shit to live for,” Frank said. “The cops are after me, as you probably heard on the news. They think I wiped out both the Pescatellis and the Petroskys. And if either family has relatives around, in other states, I’m sure they’ve heard what happened and they’re on their way here to find me right now. Long story short, I’m fucked. And since all this stuff you take across the border or wherever you take it, helps people, I’d rather do that than rot in prison the rest of my life or end up buried in a cornfield somewhere, not helping anyone. I might have hepatitis C from sharing an IV with Bryce, but I’ll sit still if you want to test me before making your decision. Just let her go, please.”

  “That’s real kind-hearted of you to say and all, Frank, but I still don’t buy it. So let’s do it my way, huh? Put Fernando’s shotgun on the floor, come out from behind there real slow, and we’ll—”

  Frank jumped at the loud, sudden pop. He stood up from behind the bar, and saw the man in the blue scrubs lying facedown on the floor, his blood running into the ball gutter, as Ted, one hand full of a gun, another holding a plastic-wrapped leg by the ankle, went running for the door.

  “Ted! Stop!” Frank charged out from behind the bar, stopped to take aim, and fired. He hadn’t braced for the shotgun’s kick enough – something in his shoulder snapped, pain flaring hot.

  Ted hopped through the glassless doorframe and out into the parking lot, the shot only stirring the broken glass on the floor.

  Frank, reaching the broken door, shirked back when a bullet sparked off the ground at the doorway. “Don’t follow me, Frank. You don’t wanna go where I’m going.”

  Standing to one side of the doorway, Frank pumped the shotgun. He was pretty sure he’d broken his collar bone. “You piece of shit, Ted. What the fuck are you doing, man?”

  The throaty rumble of a diesel engine started. Frank stepped out, raising the shotgun. Ted was behind the wheel of the refrigerator truck, window down. Ted looked out at Frank. Simone’s Honda blocked his path. Frank approached, barrel out, aiming up at the window as Ted glared down at him.

  “If you came here to save her, man,” Ted said, “you’d best get down there. I undid her tourniquet. She’s bleeding out. So you can either shoot me or you can go save her.”

  “Or I can shoot you, then go save her,” Frank said.

  “But you ain’t got it in you. You’re a healer. You can deal with killing these folks you don’t know. Or Simone, I see you brought her with you, but you know me. You’ve known me since school, man. We came up together. And when you think about it, I didn’t do shit to you. Nothing directly, anyway. But go ahead, Doctor Goode, shoot me.”

  Frank lowered the shotgun. “I hope this was all worth it, Ted. I really fucking do.”

  “I’ll see you, Frank.” One parting look – maybe a tinge of regret there – and Ted rolled up the window.

  Frank took a step back from the truck as Ted put it in reverse, the engine rumbling as he started to nose the front end around the narrow gap Frank had left parking Simone’s Honda in the way. He was about to turn and run back inside the bowling alley for Amber when Frank noticed Ted pause, hands still on the wheel, to watch something coming up the road. An electric-yellow sedan was screaming toward the bowling alley, the shape of two people within. Frank, wanting to believe it was someone after Ted, who might finish the job, left them to it and ran back inside, slipping on the broken glass in the doorway a second time.

  He ran across the ten lanes, hopping over the gutters, until he reached the maintenance door on the far side. Inside, the stink of machinery and blood hit him. Over the railing he could see from the top of the stairs four exam tables. Three were empty, with a fourth, covered with blood, holding Amber sitting halfway up, her hospital gown soaked with red up to the waist. From under the gown’s hem only one leg was sticking out.

  On the floor lay two other bodies. A woman, shot through the head, with a large cross tattooed on the back of her neck. The second Frank recognized immediately – the kid, Slug, Snail, whatever – lying on his side, also shot, also not moving. Fellow vultures Ted didn’t want to share the score with, Frank guessed.

  Frank started down the basement steps, undoing his belt. Hopefully Amber hadn’t lost too much blood. He felt under her jaw. She had a pulse. Very slow, very faint. He wrapped the belt around her leg, above the knee, and growled with the effort as he pulled as tight as he could. Amber sat up, her lips parting as she issued a soft gasp of pain.

  “Where’s Jolene?”

  He’d said it countless times. “You’re going to be okay.”

  * * *

  More time traveling for Jolene. Stoplights, then suddenly in motion again, the edit between choppy, loud, and jarring.

  Cars around them, then not.

  She was lying one way, then the other, flopping side to side when unconscious in motion with Cornelius taking sharp turns.

  She woke one time to find her chin resting on his bony shoulder. Cornelius smiled down at her. Despite her injuries, she could summon the energy to slump herself the other way; anything to not be touching him.

  She sat up and glanced down, hoping she’d only cut off her own leg in a dream. But the car sea
t under her, soaked through with blood slowly going cold, told the whole story. “Shit.”

  She watched, vision blurry, the wind sharp in her face, as they took the next turn. Dead ahead lay the bowling alley, neon squiggle of its sign shining bright, flaring at the edges to Jolene’s eyes. She saw a small blue car parked in front of a refrigerator truck. One man, in a bloody shirt and shorts, running back toward the bowling alley as the driver of the refrigerator truck hopped out and took aim. Cornelius screamed and started flinging the wheel left and right. Loud snaps of gunfire sounded as the windshield fell into the car, in shards. Jolene reacted to everything on a delay, screaming too late as more bullets zipped into the car. Cornelius fought the wheel, the tires lost traction, and spinning a full circle in the road, they came to a stop.

  Jolene, dizzy, eyes trying to roll themselves back into her head, only heard the sharp click of something metallic near her ear – then fought to lift her chin to look at the man leaning into the car with the gun in his hand. Cornelius was slumped over in the driver’s seat, face pressing the horn – it droned, echoing about the dead factories, unheard by anyone but them.

  The man in the orange polo shirt aiming the gun at Jolene twisted up his face. He’d probably seen all the blood. Jolene didn’t have the strength to push the gun barrel out from under her chin where he held it, smashing her teeth together.

  He leaned into the car, past Jolene, peering into the back seat. He laughed, loud, in her ear, as he withdrew. “Two for one, huh? I’ll take it.”

  The gun came out from under her chin. She heard a car door open, its rusty hinges squeal, and then heard it boom shut. Jolene blinked slowly, watching the man in the orange polo shirt and black shorts lug her camping cooler away from Cornelius’s crashed car, heading back over to the truck he’d gotten out of.

  The refrigerator truck, belching two puffs of black exhaust from its high pipes, nudged its grille into the side of the tiny blue blocking its path – it skidded sideways, the side window breaking. Jolene tried tracking the truck as it passed but her head refused to turn that quick. She caught Texas plates. That was about all – before she fell unconscious again.

  Somebody was talking. She heard footsteps on rough concrete. She raised her head, not realizing she’d passed out again. The driver’s seat was empty. Cornelius was gone. Out ahead of the hood she saw Frank carrying a limp, bloody shape. He was looking where the little blue car had been, which, like Cornelius, was now also gone.

  “Over here.…” Jolene raised her hand, waving for Frank as much as she could. Frank spotted her through the broken frame of Cornelius’s car where it stood half on the sidewalk and shuffled over, carrying…somebody. Once in range of Jolene’s vision, she saw it was Amber and her heart exploded with relief.

  Mashing down an elbow on the seat, Jolene pushed herself up to sitting – the damp seat made her keep sliding down into the floorboard. “Is that her? Is she okay?”

  Frank said nothing. He pulled open the back door and struggled to lay her across the back seat. It was only once he stepped back from her and her blood-soaked hospital gown peeled from his belly and fell draped over Amber again that Jolene saw…she only had one leg.

  “No. No.” Jolene’s heart couldn’t summon a faster pulse than the dim occasional thump it was giving her now.

  “She’ll be okay,” Frank said. “She’s going to be fine.”

  “They cut off her leg.” Jolene’s eyes welled with tears as she reached into the back seat, fingers cold and numb. “They cut off her fucking leg.” She touched Amber’s cheek and she stirred, sitting up, her face as ashen as Jolene’s reaching fingers. Amber coiled her fingers with Jolene’s. She could hardly squeeze at all.

  “I’m okay,” Amber murmured. “I’m okay.”

  Frank got behind the wheel, looked over at Jolene sitting in the sodden seat, and his mouth fell open seeing she too was in the same state as Amber.

  “Fuck,” he said. “They got both of you?”

  “No. I did this,” she said. “I did it to myself.”

  Frank swallowed. “Jesus Christ. Okay, well, I’m taking you two to the hospital. This goes beyond my expertise. Just hold on, okay?”

  Frank struggled to get the car to turn over, stomping the gas in time with twisting the ignition.

  “Start! Come on! Come on!”

  With one last stomp on the gas, the car spurted to life, smoke rolling out from under the hood. He backed the front wheels off the sidewalk and hammered the gas. Jolene felt mashed into the seat with the sudden movement. She couldn’t keep anything squared up in front of her eyes – but she had Amber’s hand, and she would never, ever let go.

  * * *

  Frank broke the speed limit when he felt it would be safe. Other times, he dodged the bright yellow four-door around other cars, picking up speed toward yellow lights. Without a windshield, his eyes watered whenever they picked up speed. Amber and Jolene would nod off in turns, one slumping over in their seat while the other would wake with a start, a gasp, and a low scream of agony. Frank told them to keep pressure on their wounds; he was driving them to the clinic, taking his old route to work, the fastest way he knew. “We’re almost there, we’re almost there.”

  They crossed over the bridge between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and hit traffic on the far side. There was no way around and a few cops, ahead, were directing traffic. Frank heard the initial pop. And then, out over the summit of the Cathedral of St. Paul, he saw the first flash. Blue, then red. Then another arcing, sizzling trail and a set of flashes, pink and orange. Jolene, in the passenger seat, let her head fall toward the window. Frank watched her slow blinks, the shine on her face, lighting blue then red then green, as the fireworks continued. She reached into the back seat, shaking Amber’s shoulder. “Look. Happy Fourth of July, Amber.”

  And while they waited for traffic to resume, they watched fireworks from their stolen car full of blood. Maybe the distraction helped to make the pain, just for that couple of minutes, tolerable. When it came time for them to take the turn, the lights finally working at the intersection ahead and the cops pulling off – thankfully – before they rounded the curve, Amber and Jolene continued to moan and hiss and curse and groan, pain rushing back in, fully felt.

  Frank pulled the car under the drop-off awning, a space clearing at the curb as they arrived. He left it running. Pulling open the passenger door, he reached in, trying to pick Jolene up in a way that wouldn’t hurt her too much. He screamed for help while she screamed in his ruined left ear. The orderlies came running with a wheelchair. Frank told them to grab a second, he had another in the same condition in the back seat. The orderly rushed off with Jolene, Amber screaming from the back seat. Frank helped her out next, turning her around, holding her under the arms, feeling the blood soaking through her hospital gown. They set her in the chair, his belt around her thigh – she left a trail across the sidewalk, people gawking, as they rolled her in through the doors, not far behind Jolene. Frank watched doctors, nurses, and patients alike spring back as the two women were carted, wailing, into the hospital. All stopped for them. Frank followed, blood on his hands, blood dried on his clothes, exhaustion catching up to him now. He slowed as he watched two doctors toss down what they were doing – one was wrist deep in a bag of chips – to get Amber on a gurney, then Jolene. They rushed them off through a set of doors. Frank watched them being run, side by side, the two women never letting go of one another’s hands. He waited there, watching them go. They took a corner, and were gone.

  And then all eyes in the ER turned toward him. The TVs about the room were all showing his face, his old mugshot, and people were putting it together. He did this to those women, he could see them all thinking. A few, slow on the uptake, noticed what the others were looking at. One woman stood, and pointed. “That’s him! That’s Doctor Bad!”

  Frank turned and sprinted back out of the ER, to the little yellow car
sitting on the curb. He hopped in as he heard, behind him, squawking police radios and heavy boots and authoritative shouting for him to stop. He got the car in gear and tore out of the clinic parking lot, merging with traffic, the shouting and blaring horns of the people he just ran off the road behind him.

  He didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the highway. He kept to side streets and quiet neighborhoods, moving toward his house in a zig-zag pattern, pulling over and cutting off the engine every time he heard a siren anywhere nearby. Resuming after all was quiet again, he passed a few public parks where further fireworks displays were going off. With no windshield, the smell of people grilling was easy to pick up on the air. He listened to the dull thump of the colorful explosions in the sky going off all around him, and the faraway cheers of people enjoying themselves. The flashes found their way into the car, painting his bloody hands on the wheel different colors as he drove. He heard sirens, figuring it was somebody who fired a Roman candle into their own bedroom window by accident. That it wasn’t for him, they didn’t know where he was. He would go to the last place they’d think to look. They were at the airports and bus depots showing cabbies his picture. They wouldn’t think he’d go home.

  He parked a few blocks from his house, left Simone’s and Robbie’s phones, but took his own and Simone’s handgun – fearing some kid might find it. He walked up the sidewalk, the wind tossing his hair, even the burnt parts of it on his temple. He cut through backyards. Most people weren’t home, they were likely at the stadiums and parks to watch the fireworks displays. He avoided houses where the fog of grilling swelled over the hedges. He had a few dogs bark at him, had one motion-sensor light come on, but no one shot at him, no one told him to freeze. He hopped the last fence, finding himself in his own overgrown yard. There was no smell of grilling here, no laughter of friends, no beers or hot dogs or tiny firecrackers for the kids. His house was dark, the back windows each black with his thick curtains all closed. He stepped around the side of the house, peeking toward his front yard and the street.