Good Day to Die (11 page)

They did not remove the gag, however. Not when she left the van. The gag was only removed when she ate.

She wasn’t afraid anymore (though she was sure she would be again); she knew she had somehow settled in for the long haul. Questions popped up from time to time, questions about what Daddy and Becky were doing out on the highway. At first, she’d been sure they were going to kill her and dump her body in the woods. But that couldn’t be right; they would have done that immediately. Of course, they might be perfectionists, might be looking for the absolutely perfect spot the way a photographer looks for the perfect sunset.

Once, they pulled into a parking lot and Daddy whispered something to Becky, then came into the back of the van to squat by the side door. Becky got out and Lorraine listened to her firm step for a moment, then turned her attention to Daddy. She could smell his sweat, as well as his excitement. He was waiting for something, and suddenly she knew exactly what it was. He was waiting for prey.

Becky returned a few minutes later and they left the parking lot without speaking. Lorraine listened to the rising pitch of the tires as the van accelerated onto a highway, a highway somewhere, in some place, in some time.

Sooner or later, she decided, they’ll have to give up. They can’t drive forever.

Within fifteen minutes, the van left the highway, bumped along a dirt road and came to a stop. Becky and Daddy climbed into the back, ignoring her altogether. They laid down on the floor of the van and went to sleep.

Lorraine listened to them snore for a while, then suddenly saw them as seasoned veterans. They knew exactly what to expect. Exactly how to pace themselves. They were like soldiers who learn how to sleep in muddy foxholes, to ignore incoming fire not directed at their positions.

A harsh June sun slowly heated the closed van and Lorraine, knowing she was in for a very long day, began to sweat. She was tired, too, but she couldn’t sleep. Instead she drifted into a memory that was closer to vision than to dream.

Her parents had taken her to a beach in Far Rockaway. She couldn’t have been more than five years old and may, in fact, have been a good deal younger. It was very hot, actually sweltering, and they were without the protection of a beach umbrella. After a couple of hours, the ocean was no longer enough to keep them cool, and her father suggested they go for ice cream cones. Her mother was asleep on a blanket.

The line at the concession stand was fifteen people deep, but her father, stuck with his promise, took a place at the back. After a few minutes, Lorraine, in the manner of bored children everywhere, wandered off to see what she could see. The other bathers interested her briefly, but then she heard a voice coming from the back of the concession stand and tiptoed around the corner to investigate.

She found a child standing with his face a few feet from the wall, a young boy. He was talking excitedly, but there was no one to listen. His hands jabbed away as he made his case
. I didn’t; I didn’t; I didn’t.
Over and over and over. As if those were the only words he knew

Lorraine was fascinated; she felt no fear whatsoever. This was something new, something clearly alien to the calm world of her parents. She felt a need to name it, to understand what her eyes were seeing. The universe was much bigger than her parents’ apartment. She was old enough to know that. And to want to bring that larger world inside. To master it.

The boy turned slightly and saw her. His expression jumped from surprise to anger; the change was almost comical. Then he sneered and jerked his bathing suit down to show off his small white penis.

Lorraine stared at it, nearly dumbfounded. She knew something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure what she should do about it. Maybe she ought to run. Or to cry out for her father. But she’d never seen a penis before.

Suddenly there were people everywhere. Lorraine was snatched up by her father, his hands rising to shield her eyes. The last thing she saw, before she was hustled away, was a grownup, a fat woman in a very tight blue swimsuit, slap the boy right in the mouth. She heard the boy proclaim his innocence, both before and after the blow
: I didn’t; I didn’t; I didn’t.

There’s no relevance, Lorraine finally decided. This is all desperation. The mind throwing out anything to pass the time, to push away the fear. I can’t surrender to this; I can’t become insane. I can’t become like them.

I want to live.

A few minutes later, Lorraine fell into a dreamless sleep. When she woke up, the van was already moving. She tried to stretch, but of course she was still tied. Her cramped arms ached and she groaned through the filthy gag covering her mouth.

“Are you okay, Lorraine?” Becky asked sweetly. “We’ll be stopping soon. For food? Daddy says we can get take-out and eat it in the woods. It will be so much fun, Lorraine. Just like an old-fashioned country picnic. The kind we used to have back in Atherton when I was a little girl. Oh, I do remember those church picnics. …”

“Becky.” Daddy’s voice was sharp, almost choked. The van slowed markedly. “See there? I think someone’s in that car.”

“Why I believe you are right, Daddy. And there’s a white cloth tied to the antenna. Do you suppose it is a damsel in distress?”

“Unless it’s some kind of leftover, long-haired hippie. You go up there first, Baby. I’ll get the tools and be right behind you.”

The van slowed further, then stopped. Doors opened and slammed shut. The van’s side door was yanked back and Lorraine smelled the cigar smoke on Daddy’s breath. She heard something heavy scrape along the floor, then Becky’s voice from a distance.

“Hi, you seem to be in a whole heap of trouble. May we help you?”

“It died. Just like that. Brand new and it just died.” A woman’s voice. Young and nervous. “I think I killed the battery trying to get it started.”

“Sound like that darn computer.” Daddy’s voice.

“Computer?” the woman asked.

“Yeah, they got computers in all these new cars. They don’t give no warning when they go. And there’s nothing you can do but replace ’em. Guess these tools won’t do us any good.”

“I know what you
can
do,” Becky said. “If you don’t want to wait for some trooper to come along? Lordy, you
could
be waitin’ till sunrise for one of them boys. But we have a telephone in the van. The new portable kind? You could call your husband. …”

“I’m not married.”

“Well, your boyfriend or your parents. Someone to come pick you up. I mean I just
hate
to see a woman stranded. In these lawless times? You don’t know who is going to come driving by.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”

“Why, I just bet you have. I know it would be the first thing to cross
my
mind. Do you live far away?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“In that case, we’ll wait right here until someone comes for you.

“That’s not necessary. …”

“I wouldn’t even
think
of leaving you all by your lonesome. It would be so un-Christian. Wouldn’t it be un-Christian, Daddy?”

“Definitely.”

“All right. And thank you. I’ll get someone here as fast as I can.”

Lorraine heard relief in the woman’s voice. Relief and gratitude, then steps approaching the van. She knew what was going to happen, wanted to scream a warning: RUN! She tried to spit out the gag, but it was already too late. The footsteps reached the door and she heard a solid thud, then something heavy pushed into the van.

“Drive,” Daddy said. “Take Route 9 out to the reservoir. You know where. I’m gonna see if I can wake this bitch.”

The screams began long before the van stopped. They went on and on and on and on. Until time ceased to have any meaning. Until they become nearly abstract. Like a police siren heard at a great distance in a large, violent city.

Lorraine was far away. Drifting, dreaming. She smelled the coppery smell of blood even as she walked through a fragrant spring garden; smelled the ammonia stink of Daddy’s sweat as she sat alongside a bed of red and yellow tulips. Cherry blossoms dropped onto her shoulders; the delicate white petals carpeted the grass. Lorraine heard the screaming, of course. She heard the begging, but she knew it wasn’t her. It wasn’t her, because it couldn’t happen to her. Now that she was safe in her garden.

I
WOKE UP AT
ten the next morning, hit the bathroom, inhaled a glass of orange juice, and began to work out. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I was living in a converted manufacturing loft on Fifth Street in Long Island City, and the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the western wall threw plenty of daylight.

My “gym” was down at the northern end of the two-thousand-square-foot space. The four-story building (my loft covered half the top floor) had once been the headquarters of Parenti Machinists and was built to hold heavy equipment. Steel beams ran from east to west in a mockery of the exposed ceiling beams common to upscale suburban homes. I’d attached heavy bags to these beams—thirty, forty, and seventy pounds of stuffed canvas—setting each of them at a different height.

The bags dangled invitingly, but they were not the place to begin. A Precor treadmill sat in a corner; it beckoned to me like a drooling sadist contemplating a bound virgin. I hated that treadmill, hated slapping one mindless foot in front of the other. But it was the fastest way to start a workout, and I needed to get done with the running the way a constipated child needs to gulp a dose of castor oil. With all due speed.

I stretched my calves for a few minutes, then stepped onto the platform, started the machine, and began to run. Slowly at first, then faster and at the steepest incline the machine had to offer. Half an hour later, dripping sweat, I flipped the switch and slid off. It would have taken me two hours to get the same workout on the streets.

I moved on to the seventy-pound bag and began to drive my right forearm into its rough surface. Over and over. I have my own method of street fighting. Forearm, elbow, palm-heel, ridge-hand, forehead—those are my weapons. I never use my fists; broken knuckles take months to heal, and sometimes (as more than one promising boxer has discovered) they
never
heal.

For some strange reason, the idea of going out on the street with a damaged hand terrifies me. I want every advantage I can get. Being in shape is part of it. As is packing a weapon; wearing a badge; striking hard, fast, and first. But my biggest edge is a willingness to accept pain without turning away. If I’m still conscious, I’m still coming. You can smell it on me.

That’s undoubtedly part of Mom’s legacy. If you’re beaten often enough and hard enough, the only thing you really fear is losing a fight. But Mom did leave me something besides a hard head and a scarred body. Mom had enough good luck to win the New York State lottery and enough good taste to get drunk on a foggy night six months later and step in front of an eighteen wheeler. There was no will, of course, but as I was an only child and my father turned out to be dead, all other claims were dismissed in probate.

The payoff, $48,000 a year for twenty years, accumulated interest for the better part of three years before the courts decided to pass it over. In a way, the endless meandering of the system worked in my favor. When they finally handed me a check for $102,486 (the remainder having been eaten up by fees), the New York real estate market was in a state of near panic. My loft would have gone for close to three hundred thousand in 1987. In 1990, I picked it up for a little more than half that figure.

I switched positions, adopting a relaxed, natural posture, then drove the heel of my right hand into the center of the bag, right where the solar plexus would be on a live human being. I followed this with a shot to the nose, then returned to my original position and started the process all over again.

From any objective point of view, the sequence was every bit as mindless as running on a treadmill, but it never struck me that way. Probably because I was able to put a human being on the receiving end of the blows. A human being without a body, a face, or even gender, but a human being nonetheless.

I’d done quite a bit of fighting as a kid (even by the rather broad standards of Paris, New York, I was considered a strange child), but despite learning to win, I was never accepted by my peers. Which was fine by me. I wasn’t looking for love; respect was more than enough to get me through.

It was only noon and I was still working out when the doorbell rang. My first reaction was annoyance—Marie Koocek come for a morning romp despite her knowing my schedule. Marie was a sculptor, one of a small colony of artists who lived and worked in Long Island City. I was never able to figure out whether she liked me or not. She’d come to my apartment, usually late at night, and rake me over the coals. In the morning, she’d go back to work without ever mentioning anything as stupid as love. I admit to having had some curiosity about her motives, but not enough to actually ask her and ruin a good thing.

One glance at the monitor above the door, however, revealed that my visitor was not Marie come to drag my sweaty ass into bed; it was Vanessa Bouton come for a bed check. Electronics was a hobby for me, and I’d long ago installed a tiny surveillance camera in the door’s peephole. The camera’s lens framed a determined, imperial Vanessa Bouton standing with her legs apart and her hands clasped behind her back. Her features were stolid and expressionless, but at least she wasn’t wearing a uniform. Thank God for small favors.

I opened the door and she stepped inside without saying a word, then stopped dead at the sight of my apartment. I let her take a good look, let her think about what she was seeing. She’d come to all the wrong conclusions, of course, but that was okay, too.

The area around my little gym was unfinished, and I’d walled off a small bedroom, but the rest of the space was wide open. I’d sanded down the oak floors, bleached them until they were almost white, then covered the boards with a coat of polyurethane. A white leather couch, a matching love seat, and a glass coffee table rested close to the eastern wall, the wall without the windows. The kitchen was white, as well—white cabinets, white sink and stove, white Formica table, white leather chairs on polished chrome frames.