Blood Men (25 page)

“I always cared. No matter what you think, I hate my father for what he did. I hate him for this inheritance he left me.”

We reach my in-laws’ street and approach the patch of ground where the man I ran over was shot and killed. There isn’t any crime scene tape up anywhere. They probably had to roll it up as quick as they could and use it somewhere else. There would have been media and cops all over the place, but now they’re gone, and there’s nothing here to suggest what happened this afternoon. It’s too dark to tell, but I’m sure the blood has been hosed away. I wonder if they picked the dead man up first, or his leg. I wonder how much a leg weighs.

From the paper bag, a cell phone rings.

Not my cell phone because I don’t recognize the ringtone.

“You gonna get that?” Schroder asks.

I unfold the top of the bag and reach inside. The phone I took from Kingsly is lit up.

“Hello?” I say, my heart thumping.

“Listen carefully. You say one more word and I’m going to kill your little girl.”

“Who . . .”

“Shut up,” he says. “One more word and she’s dead. I’m not kidding around. Now, tell me yes if you understand.”

My mind goes completely blank, then everything rushes at me from the darkness, the bank robbery, the bodies, my daughter . . . my daughter what? “Yes,” I say, the word hard to form through my dry mouth and I have to catch my breath. My hand is shaking and Schroder is too focused on driving to notice. He pulls in behind the cop car.

“Your girl, she’s ours now. We own her. And unless you do exactly as I say, you’ll never see her again. You get what I mean?”

“Yes,” I say. I break out in a sweat.

“Good. Let me know when Schroder gets out of the car.”

“Wait here while I have a quick word with the officer,” Schroder says, mostly to himself because I’m not really listening to him. I nod.

“He’s gone,” I say.

“In a moment he’s about to run into the house. I want you to go with him. When he reaches for his cell phone I want you to take it off him.”

“You understand I’m in police custody.”

“Of course we know, we’ve been watching you all afternoon,” the voice says. “All the more incentive for you not to miss the right moment, Eddie. Don’t mess it up. You’ll get more instructions once you’re inside. Now go!” He hangs up as Schroder runs back toward me.

Jesus, it’s bad. Real bad. A dead officer out here and who knows how many dead people inside. Blood all over the inside of the patrol car. There should have been two cops watching tonight, hell, should have been four of them, but the budget didn’t allow for the man-hours required, and nobody wanted to pull that shift on Christmas Eve, and damn it, goddamn it, he should have done more because this officer’s blood is on his hands and so is the blood of anybody dead inside. His training tells him to wait for backup, but his instinct is to go inside, into the unknown. Either way, now he knows he has to as he sees Edward limping toward the front door.

“Get back in the car,” Schroder yells, but Edward is ignoring him. He breaks into a run and grabs Edward at the front door.

“Get back in the car!” Schroder orders again. He tries to lift his cell phone to his ear while keeping Edward under control. He gets the phone about halfway up when Edward spins around and grabs it out of his hand.

“What the hell?” he says, but doesn’t say anything else before the phone is snapped in half and tossed onto the ground. “Jesus, Eddie, what the hell?” he asks, and he shoves him against the side of the house.

“Sam isn’t in there,” Edward says.

“How do you know that? We haven’t searched the house yet,” Schroder asks as he presses Edward against the front door. “How would you know that?”

“They called me and told me. And they sounded impatient!”

“We need all the help we can get,” Schroder says. Something isn’t right, but he can see the fear in Edward’s eyes and knows he’s telling the truth.

He lets Edward go and opens the front door. All the lights are off. He goes inside and turns toward the living room. Edward follows him but there’s nobody else here. He keeps flicking light switches and nothing appears out of place.

“The cop outside,” Edward asks. “Where is he?”

“Dead,” Schroder says. “Why’d you break the cell phone? Who called you?” he asks.

Edward doesn’t answer. Schroder opens the hallway door. The only light on down there is coming from the bathroom. “Stay behind me,” he says.

The bathtub is full of water. On the surface is a plastic tray, floating there, one corner nudged up against the side of the tub. On top of the tray is a brick of cash. Schroder steps into the bathroom and looks down at it, and he knows, he immediately knows he’s made a mistake, a very costly one, and before he can try to rectify it he hears a shotgun being primed.

Schroder doesn’t move. He keeps facing the bath and his face scrunches up, waiting for the gunshot. He wonders if he’ll outlive that blast by a few seconds and will get to see the front of his chest spraying across the tile wall. When nothing happens, he slowly
raises his hands and turns around. A solid man with tattoos on his hands and a thick black jersey covering the ones that probably continue up his arms is pointing a shotgun that covers both him and Edward.

“What do you want?” Schroder asks.

“Where’s my daughter?” Edward asks.

“Where’s the money?” the gunman asks.

“What?” Edward replies.

“The money you stole last night.”

“What are you talking about?” Edward asks.

“I’m talking about the cash you took from Kingsly.”

“What?” Edward asks, and he sounds genuinely confused.

“Don’t bullshit me, boy. You answered the phone. Only way you could have got the phone was if you took it from Kingsly. So you took the money too. You return it, and we return your daughter.”

“Wait, wait a moment,” Schroder says. “The money, we took the money into evidence this morning. Edward didn’t take it.”

“No. What you took was a couple of thousand dollars. I’m talking about the four hundred thousand.”

“Edward . . . ,” Schroder says.

“I didn’t take it,” Edward says.

“Turn around and get on your knees.”

“Why?” Edward asks.

“Not you. You, cop, get on your fucking knees and put your hands behind your head.”

“Look, we can . . .”

“Now, asshole!”

It’s the last thing Schroder wants to do, but he can’t see an alternative. There’s no way he can jump forward and battle for the shotgun. That’s certain death. Turning around and putting his hands on his head suggests death, but at the moment it’s all he has. He turns around and kneels down.

“Take his cuffs and use them on him.”

Edward reaches into Schroder’s pockets and finds the cuffs and latches them around Schroder’s wrists.

“Drown him.”

“What?” Edward says, and Schroder is thinking the same thing.

“Put his head in the bath and drown him.”

“Wait,” both Schroder and Edward say in unison.

“You heard me. Drown him or your daughter doesn’t see tomorrow.”

Schroder tries to get up but doesn’t get far before his chest hits the edge of the bathtub. All of Edward’s weight goes on top of him, pushing his face right down to the water.

“I can’t,” Edward says.

“Now. Do it. Do it now!” Tattoo Man says.

“I can’t.”

“You can if you want to save your daughter.”

“Edward . . . ,” Schroder says, but he doesn’t know how to follow it up. There’s nothing. He knows what’s coming and he takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” Edward whispers before pushing his head into the water.

Schroder’s cuffed arms make it impossible for him to fight his way out, though he seems to think differently. If I were any lighter he’d probably make it too. His head bangs against the bottom of the tub and the water turns a very pale shade of red. I pull more of his body from outside the tub and stuff it under the water. I hold him by the back of his neck, pushing hard, his muscles tightening—it’s like holding down a mechanical bull. His feet thrash against the floor, the tips of his shoes draw black lines across the tiles. Water is splashing all up the walls and I’m already half soaked. The bandage on my hand is waterlogged and starts slipping off. I try to imagine that I’m drowning a dog, not a person—that mangy mutt from twenty years back—and imagining that actually helps, not much, but
enough to stop me from letting him up. Schroder slows down. His feet stop hitting the floor. More of him slides into the tub.

“Keep holding him.”

I keep holding him. A couple of bubbles break the surface. Schroder’s legs stop moving but he’s still moving his head, still fighting, still desperate to survive. The seconds keep ticking away. Five more. Another five. The bubbles stop. There is one final shudder and then Schroder no longer struggles. I let go of him and he stays in the water, makes no effort to get up. I turn around. My hands are shaking and I drop to my knees and start to dry-retch.

“No time for this shit,” the man says. “Get me the money.”

I cough like I’m the one with lungs full of water. “Where, where are they? My, my daughter and in-laws?”

“The money,” he says. “Then we talk.”

“The money is here.”

“Where?”

One more cough and I’m done. I slowly get to my feet, holding on to the side of the bath, careful not to touch Schroder. The guy with the gun isn’t wearing a balaclava. He looks like he did this afternoon. He probably hasn’t changed his clothes, or his gun. I doubt he’s used it tonight because it’s too noisy. I bet the policeman outside was killed a different way. I wonder how badly he wants to avoid using it.

“You’ll kill me once you have it.”

“You got this all wrong, boy. I am going to kill you. What you’re doing now is you’re buying your daughter’s life.”

“How do I know you’ll let her go?”

“She doesn’t know who we are. We got no reason to keep her. Now where’s the goddamn money?”

“Living room,” I say.

“Lead the way,” he says, and he backs out of the bathroom.

I lead him down the hallway. We reach the living room. “At the end of the couch,” I say, “against the wall.”

“Grab it.”

I reach down and grab the bag, trying to keep my injured leg as straight as I can. The bag is full of crayons and coloring pencils and
some drawing books for Sam and is nowhere near big enough to hold all the money I saw last night. As usual it’s open. I zip it closed, pick it up, and toss it at his feet.

“What the . . . ?” he says, and he looks down at it and . . .

Now. Now! Now!

We step forward, my monster and me, only this time I don’t even need him, I’m so mad. I swing my arm upwards, entering Tattoo Man’s line of sight from below, the pencil pointing straight up. He must see it coming, but he can’t avoid it, can’t even scream. He snaps his head upward as the pencil drives deep through his eye and, like a sneeze, thick, clear residue splashes all over my hand. He stands up as straight as a board. One hand releases the shotgun, which hangs by his other side for a moment before hitting the floor. He stays standing, staring at me, one eye bright and wide, the other a liquid mess with half a pencil behind it and half of that same pencil out in front. He doesn’t fall while I wipe the eye juice and blood off my hand; he saves it until I crouch down and grab the shotgun. He falls the way a dead man falls, without a care in the world, without any conviction or fear, his face hitting the armrest of the couch and driving the pencil home before snapping it off. He ends up on his side, a jagged finger of wood in his eye, looking at me but not watching as I race toward the bathroom.

What are you doing?

I’m trying to save him.

Why?

I need him alive.

Why?

Shut up.

Only thing you should be doing right now is to enjoying the rush. God, that was a thing of beauty! Come on, Eddie, the way you drove that pencil home—sweet Jesus, that’s a real winner of a memory—a real keeper—much better than Fido. Bet you a hundred to one that’s the way your father felt when he took his knife and . . .

“I said shut up,” I say, then breathe more air into Schroder. His chest rises when I breathe in and drops when I take my mouth away. There is no pulse. His body is limp and heavy. I figure he’s been in the water three minutes tops.

I push at his chest. I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing. The last
first-aid course I took was ten years ago and Schroder sure as hell feels a lot different from a dummy made of rubber and steel. I could be saving him, or I could be cracking his ribs and driving them into his lungs.

I breathe into him. Compress his chest ten times. Should it be ten? Twelve? Breathe into him again. How long do I give this? He’s been dead close to four minutes. What’s the cutoff before there’s a serious risk of brain damage? Isn’t it around four minutes? Only thing I can remember about the first-aid course was the instructor. She kept looking at me as though I were the reason the dummy wasn’t breathing anymore.

Schroder convulses under me and a low roaring comes from his lungs. He begins coughing, his body almost doubling up. I roll him onto his side and he coughs out mouthful after mouthful of bathwater. Then he collapses onto his front, his forehead on his arm, breathing heavily into the floor, his body rising and falling seemingly more than need be as though he’s putting on a show. Other than the show, he doesn’t do anything else. Doesn’t jump up to see if he’s still in danger. Nothing. I’ve removed the handcuffs from one wrist, but they’re still dangling from the other.

“Hessus,” he mutters, but can’t add anything else.

“I’m—”

“Hessus woo . . . ,” he says, and raises a hand up to his face and cups his eyes. He coughs again, then tries to sit himself up and lean against the bath but can’t make it.

“Come on,” I say, and help him. He pulls his knees up against his chest and rests his head on them. The bandage on my hand is loose. I pull it off and dump it on the floor.

“Wash,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate for a few seconds, until “Wash hash,” and then he begins coughing again.