Chump Change (24 page)

“The Boys kept that sorry son of a bitch alive for a month.”

“Five weeks,” said Dexter. “Five weeks and three days.”

“
Fore somebody got sloppy and let him get away,” Bain added.

“We fixed it, didn’t we?” Rockland bleated.

“
We?
Did you say
we
, Sonny Boy? Your daddy cleaned up your mess, just like he’s had to do for your whole damn life. Unlike your sorry ass, Junior, your daddy’s smart enough not to leave loose ends hanging out.”

He stepped to my side. Looked down at me.

“Well. What’s it gonna be, boy? You gonna go out with a little bitta dignity, or you wanna be shittin and cryin like that stupid bitch there?”

I nodded. “Dig-ny,” I said. As close as I could get.

“What I figured,” Bain said.

Moon freed my right hand from the handcuff. Dexter slipped a pen between my fingers. Bain took his gun from his pocket and aimed it at my head, then slid the papers in front of me. “Need ya to sign on the yellow and initial on the red,” he said. “Nice neat signatures, so’s there ain’t no question bout who signed em.”

I leaned forward in the chair.

I had no illusions. There wasn’t going to be a better chance for me. This was it. Sitting there, chained to a chair with my feet in a bucket of water and a gun to my head, was as good as it was going to get. Which sure wasn’t saying very damn much, as far as I was concerned.

I adjusted the pen in my hand, rolling the back of it downward until it rested against the palm of my hand, with the business end sticking out between my index and middle fingers. Dexter reached out to help me.

Using every bit of strength I had left, I jammed the pen into Dexter’s left eye so hard I felt it hit the back of his skull. He bellowed like a gored animal and twirled in a circle, knocking Bain’s gun from his hand, as he fell, stone dead, onto the floor. When I looked up, Rockland Moon had collected his meager wits and was flying my way from the far side of the room.

I ripped the alligator clips from my chest. Roaring from the pain, I jerked my feet from the bucket and stood up. I reached over, grabbed the light, and threw it into the bucket. A waterfall of sparks showered the room. The lights went out. I swung the chair around my body in a wide circle, like an Olympic hammer thrower.

I heard Moon grunt from the impact of the chair, so I kept it swinging and made contact for a second time. Then I picked up the chair and took off running.

I used my free hand to guide me, running my fingertips along the corrugated corridor as I moved along in the darkness. I heard Bain curse and a keening sound of agony that set my teeth on edge.

I fell. Used the chair to get back up and keep shuffling forward. I kept moving, trying to get as far away from the noise as I could, when suddenly my hand found thin air. I stopped. No doubt about it. There was another storage container on my left, and the air coming from that direction was a whole lot fresher than what I was breathing. I found the opening and moved through it, holding the remains of the chair before me like an offering.

Kept going until I tripped over something and fell on my face. I felt around. Stairs. Concrete stairs. I groped my way upward, one step at a time. The air got better and better as I climbed. My head made contact with something hard. I reached up and felt metal. I pushed. It moved, so I pushed some more. Stepped up and out.

The cool night air washed across my sweaty skin. I looked back over my shoulder. A narrow set of stairs led directly down into the ground, like a stairway to hell. A pair of old-fashioned cellar doors lay flapped wide on either side of the opening.

I knelt on the ground and bludgeoned the remains of the chair to pieces against the nearest concrete stair. Once free of the chair, I closed the cellar doors and wedged a piece of the seat between the handles.

I staggered forward a couple of steps and looked around. I was somewhere in the Lewiston Valley. I knew that because I recognized the silhouettes of the mountains. I tried to triangulate in my head. To recall which peaks were in which direction. To find a sense of which side of town I was on. But my mind wouldn’t hold a thought long enough to put it together, and so I began to walk.

I cursed as my foot came down on something sharp and reminded me I wasn’t wearing shoes. I checked the inky sky. There may have been a moon up there somewhere, but it sure wasn’t shedding any light on me.

Bang.
Somebody was trying to open the cellar doors. I heard a curse from down below. Bang. I looked around.

Over to my left, way out in the distance, I could see the lights of a house. Instinctively, I lurched half a dozen steps in that direction, before I came to my senses and realized I had no idea where I was, and that, for all I knew, those lights might be my pursuers. I stopped. Gave my eyes a chance to acclimate to the darkness and then began to jog in the opposite direction.

I kept my eyes glued to the ground as I loped along. Breaking an ankle at this point would surely be the end of me. The handcuffs dangling from my left wrist kept swinging up and hitting my forearm, so I swung the loose end up into my manacled hand and hung on to it as I ran.

I began to count my strides inside my head. Looking for a pace I could keep up all night, looking to make the noise inside my head so loud the pain couldn’t get in. Letting bits of old songs blare in my ears like anesthetic anthems as I pumped along over the uneven ground. I could hear Otis Taylor roaring his outrage as I wove my way through the prairie grass and mesquite, and then the channel abruptly changed, and Townes Van Zandt was making me wish I had some of those damn flyin shoes.

Seemed like I’d counted all the way to a million. Spotted two irrigation ditches and managed not to fall in. By the time I crested the far side of the second ditch, my legs were getting loose and floppy; my breath was streaming in and out of me like a squall.

I kept my eyes on the ground and lumbered on, slower now. Counted till I was out of numbers and then started over and counted some more. With a Sousa march blaring in my ears, above the shouted numbers and the roar of my own breathing, I ran until that’s all there was, the next stride, the next breath.

And then the first of the shadows swished by, and all the noise and clatter ceased. I stumbled to a stop and looked behind me. The lights that had originally attracted me were no longer visible. But the two sets of headlights bouncing across the prairie in my direction sure as hell were. I groaned.

They were bouncing up and down, throwing spotlight beams up into the roiling clouds one minute, and sweeping back across the open prairie the next. They were moving slowly, making sure they didn’t drive into a ditch and break an axle.

I began to run again. Veering off to the left now, moving what I imagined to be parallel with the ditch system, so I could run with full abandon.

As I put my head back and gave it everything I had, my hips felt as if they were going to rotate right out of the sockets. Like whatever sinew had heretofore held me together had finally decided it had had enough and was leaving town.

And then the headlights suddenly enveloped me. I veered further left, flying for the darkness with every fiber of my being.

No matter, though. He’d seen me and was closing in. I could hear the roar of the engine now, and above that, the barking of a dog, before the lights swung my way, and I found myself chasing my inky shadow across the silver field.

The barking was frantic now, more urgent than the roar of the engine or the labored rasp of my breathing. And then I was airborne. Like running off the roof of a building in the dark. My legs kept right on churning, trying to run on air, right up until the moment I hit the water.

I came up flailing and sputtering. The water was waist deep, brackish, and cold as hell. To my left, an enormous culvert yawned. I began to force myself in that direction, wading through the muck and weeds, paddling with my hands and struggling forward, one exhausted step at a time.

Above me, I heard the engine approaching and the feral yapping of the dog, in the seconds before the headlights bobbed to a halt at the edge of the ditch.

I bent my head and waded farther into the culvert, using my hands to help propel me deeper into the dank, galvanized recess.

A voice yelled something, but I couldn’t make out what. I kept pushing, up toward the bend in the pipe about twenty yards ahead of me, when I heard the splash and looked back. It wasn’t just a dog. It was the same dog as the other night. Coming my way like a freight train.

As I angled around the bend in the culvert, the water suddenly got deeper and colder, chest high now and bone-numbingly frigid. I waded as fast as my numbed muscles were able. I could hear the mutt getting closer, and redoubled my efforts, and then it came to me. Probably my first intelligent thought in a week. Where I was standing was way over the dog’s head. He’d be swimming when he got to me. That was my edge. With his feet under him, he’d tear me to pieces, but they wouldn’t be under him, they’d be paddling, so I turned around, spread my feet for balance, and waited.

Five seconds passed, and I could hear him breathing, then I saw his big head as he paddled around the corner and began barking like a lunatic at the sight of me. His ears were back, his teeth bared. Took every ounce of my resolve to stand my ground.

You have to train attack dogs to believe they can beat a person, because they’re not naturally inclined to think they can. A pack of them? Sure. Cornered? Sure. But one on one, they’re like the rest of us. They’ve got their doubts. This one had been well trained. Despite the fact that I’d already whipped his ass once, he didn’t hesitate for a single second.

Neither did I. The minute he paddled within reach, I grabbed him by the ears and forced his head under the water. I threw a leg over his broad back and used my weight advantage to push him toward the muddy bottom, but he was god-awful strong. When he flipped completely over, I lost my hold on one of his ears, and he sunk his teeth into my arm, just below the elbow. The pain was blinding.

I screamed as his nails repeatedly raked my chest, but refused to let him go. I forced my head above the surface, pulled in one huge gulp of putrid air, and pressed downward again, keeping my bulk between the dog and the surface.

His struggles became frantic. His nails were shredding my skin, but the pressure on my arm began to lessen, and that gave me hope. The longest thirty seconds of my life passed before he shuddered twice and then stopped moving altogether. His mouth relaxed. I pulled my arm out. I counted to ten, got my feet under me, and stood up. The mutt floated to the surface right in front of my face.

“Pistol,” somebody was calling. “Get im, Pistol.”

I floated the dog’s carcass behind me and peeked around the corner of the culvert. The guy was no more than ten feet away, his head on a swivel, holding a handgun high out of the water, as he slogged along. “Pistol,” he called again.

He was way easier than the dog. I floated up under him and had a death grip on his nuts before he ever knew what hit him. The pressure paralyzed him long enough for me to grab his gun arm and pull him under the water. A minute and a half later, he and Pistol were floating side by side in the fetid pipe, and I was wading toward the light.

Took me three tries to climb the bank. I had to rest on my hands and knees, until I had the strength to lever myself to my feet and stagger over toward the red truck.

Good thing the truck was running. I’m not sure, at that point, I could have managed to slide the key into the ignition. As I climbed into the seat, I shuddered so hard, and I had to hug myself. My teeth were chattering like maracas.

When I could pry an arm loose, I turned the heater up to high, slammed the truck into reverse, and turned it around. And then, for the second time tonight, realized I had no idea where I was, or which way salvation lay.

Didn’t matter, though. That’s when the lights bounced over me, and I looked out to my left. The other set of headlights was speeding in my direction. Must have seen his buddy stopped and decided this was where the action was.

“Ah, Jesus,” I groaned, as I slammed the truck into drive and put my foot to the floor. The truck rocketed forward, shaking its ass like a go-go dancer as we raced across the prairie at full throttle. I held the wheel in a death grip, trying to stop my hands from shaking, and get my vision to stand still. I kept my eyes glued on the prairie grass as it disappeared under the truck.

The other driver was veering hard in my direction, trying to cut me off before I could find a way over the next irrigation ditch. I had no idea where I was headed, but I kept on keeping on. Standing on the accelerator, with The Blasters rocking “Red Rose” in my head at top volume as I bumped across the humps and hillocks, going airborne once in a while, slamming back to earth, the back of the truck dancing the Watusi every time we thudded down hard.

At the outer range of my headlights, a line of darkness appeared. The kind of straight line that seldom appears in nature. Told me I was approaching another ditch. My exhaustion and terror said to turn right, to turn off the lights and flee into the darkness.

My anger, however, had other ideas. Something akin to a roar came pouring out of my mouth as I swung the wheel hard to the left and tromped the pedal to the metal.

The trucks were speeding right at one another now. I took aim at his headlights and looked down at the dashboard. I was doing fifty-three miles an hour across a rutted field, in the dead of night, locked on a head-on collision course.

Turned out to be one of those moments when all those public service announcements about wearing your seat belt suddenly paid dividends. Without ever willing it so, I took one hand off the wheel, and buckled myself up. The “Buckle up for safety, buckle up” jingle began to scream in my head.

When I looked back up, no more than a couple hundred yards separated the speeding trucks. I could see the other guy’s silhouette in the driver’s seat. I’d never played chicken with anyone before, and it was every bit as scary as I’d always imagined it to be. Looked like a 747 was coming right at me. Every hair on my body stood on end as we raced ever closer.