Thrust (10 page)

He paid the bill and left.

E
ven
without all the shrieking sirens and the cops shouting, Chase knew he'd wandered into calamity just by looking into the father's bloodthirsty eyes.
 

In his drunken haze, Chase kept missing out on what the police were telling him, watching the EMT's taking the little girl away.
 
She was dead and they had her in a body bag but the zipper had stuck about halfway up.
 
One hand remained poised at her chin, and her mouth was drawn into a thoughtful smile.
 
Lots of pink barrettes clipping her blonde hair into little stained clumps sticking up all over.
 

Her front teeth had a small space between them and her tongue, drying now, had stuck there.
 
She was perhaps six years old.
 
A small splash of blood had turned to rust just over her right ear.
 
Her eyes, still half-open, were large and blue, and her dead gaze speared Chase where he stood.
 

They drew her away and the tiny hand flapped as if waving goodbye.
 

The pickup had flipped twice, lying on its side with most of the mangled hood torn off.
 
The passenger side window bloomed with a spider-web crack just above the door handle, where her head had snapped into it.
  

Chase leaned forward but a beefy cop kept him in place with a large hand pressing hard against his chest. Chase's shoulders, neck and legs were bruised and swelling.
 
The whiplash was killing him.
 
You see people in the funny neck braces with their chins pushed up and you want to laugh, but man, it
fuckin
' hurts.
 
He'd chipped both shins against the bottom of the dash.
 
When he came back to himself he was in horrible pain, but he only felt it in boiling waves as his lucidity came and went.

Joe Singleton.
 

Chase kept hearing the name and finally glanced at the father, who was in handcuffs, being braced by the police.

He was shirtless and covered in blood.
 
A lit cigarette dangled from his bottom lip although his wrists were shackled behind him.
 
One cheek had been smashed so badly that bits of bone stabbed out through the awful rips in his face.
 
The bloated, broken nose had been mashed upwards into a piggy snout.
 
He must've been in agony but didn't appear to notice.
 
He chatted easily with the cops and even grinned from time to time.
 

Okay, so:
 
Joe Singleton, the
fuckin
' maniac.
 

His torn shirt lay at his feet, red and wet from where he'd tried to staunch the flow of blood from his battered face.
 
Indistinct and faded tattoos littered his muscular chest and arms, the long hair pulled into a ponytail and tied back with rubber-band.
 
A jagged, raised scar wove across his belly and vanished beneath his belt.
 

The beefy cop gave Chase a breathalyzer test, found the
Haldol
, and sealed his fate.
 
The man's voice was firm and demanding but also kind, reminding Chase of his grandfather before the old man started calling him Freddy.
 
Chase was going to be arrested for driving while intoxicated and taken to the station, where everything would be sorted out.

Of course it would.

Joe Singleton turned to stare at Chase, blinking the blood out of his eyes, and nodded once.
 

Chase relived that moment in dozens of nightmares over the last five years—the beautifully frozen second forever unchanging and still blazing.

Those insane eyes so similar to his own.

You know the meaning of rage.
 
You understand the wrath of a patient man, and that's what Singleton was telling you.
 
Saying how he could bide his time, wait a few months, a couple of years if he had to, but he'd eventually settle the score.
 

He thrust his belly out, showing off the knife scar.
 
Like he's making his intention clear, going, This is the life I lead.
 
Violence and the ripping of flesh.
 
I handle it with ease.
 
I can take one in the guts and keep right on rolling.
 

Hey, hold that thought, I'll be back soon.

When Chase shook off his stupor he was sitting in the 3rd Precinct cell surrounded by other drunks.
 
Reality started tightening around his throat.
 
The cops went over his statement again.
 
They questioned him for over an hour, placid, friendly, offering him coffee and cookies.
 
They told him about Joe Singleton.
 
His blood chemistry was
fragged
and the sugar didn't help.
 
Eventually he got the full story.

Singleton, an ex-con petty criminal with a history of forging check and running scams on the elderly, had arrived on his ex-wife's doorstep despite a restraining order.
 
He'd been rambling around out of state for almost five years, working oil rigs, hustling old ladies, and doing some time.
 
He hadn't seen his daughter Stacy since she was two.

He battered his ex-, Annie, around her apartment for the better part of an hour, leaving her with two black eyes, three broken ribs, and a dislocated vertebra in her lower back.
 

Singleton watched her crawling across the carpet with blood leaking from her ears, stole fifty bucks out of her wallet, and promised to return to kill her boyfriend within a few days.

Then he led Stacy from her bedroom and out the back door, while Annie Singleton moaned and cowered unable to reach the phone.
 
He took his daughter to a local burger joint where he ordered jumbo plate specials while Stacy sobbed in quiet terror.
 
He ate both meals himself and skipped on the check.
 

From there they stopped at an ice cream parlor.
 
Stacy was getting used to him and had stopped crying, though she constantly asked about her mother.
 
They had a banana float and Singleton ran out on the bill again after a brief scuffle with the two teenage boys employed there.
 
One kid wound up with a dislocated shoulder when Singleton shoved him over the counter and into a frozen beverage dispenser.

Singleton was headed back to his ex-wife's home, either to kill her or simply release their daughter, when a state trooper spotted the truck on the parkway and gave chase.
 
Three other police cars joined in within three minutes.
 
Singleton kicked his pickup to ninety-five and the rattling piece of shit threw its muffler and nearly shook apart.
 

Eight miles later the pursuit ended when Chase, lost in his own drunken stupidity and with a head full of 50s tunes, hit the exit at the wrong time.
 

They released him on a two grand bail.
 
Over the next several days he watched as events grew and carried on with no assistance from him.
 
He hadn't said a word to anybody, but the papers were quoting him on page three.

When they got around to charging him with criminally negligent homicide and the court case got under way, there were folks who rallied on the sidewalk.
 
Somebody tried hiding the records showing he had three times the legal alcohol content.
 
Local benefits were held for him.
 
Death threats were made.
 
Somebody hanged his neighbor's cat from a lamppost because they thought the calico belonged to Chase.
 

Everyone took a side. One city paper called him "a heroic victim of misfortune, who attempted to stop a kidnapping in progress only to find himself at the mercy of an overzealous legal system."
 

Another labeled Chase "a mentally challenged drunkard who caused the early death of an innocent, frightened child after a loaded joyride."

The
Greenwich Downturn Weekly
, an underground rag run out of a condemned building in Alphabet City, noted him as "a brave citizen who intentionally swerved into the path of known criminal Joe Singleton in an effort to save the life of a petrified little girl."
 
At least one police officer attested to this.
 

Magazine publishers who'd rejected his work dozens of times turned up on newscasts praising his genius.
 
The literati gathered in Washington Park and read his poetry to middling crowds, even while members of M.A.D.D. and other protesters hissed their hatred.
  

An attorney named Ellis stepped up to defend Chase pro bono.
 

That's when Chase figured he was truly screwed, when a lawyer walked in and didn't even care about the cash.
 
It meant there would be plenty of theatrics, careers on the line, all the elements of an off-Broadway play.

Chase met him at his office on the upper east side.
 
Chase had hardly ever been to the east side and got lost twice, unfamiliar with the subway lines.
 
When he finally walked in, twenty minutes late, Ellis' secretary stared at him like she might take him out in the alley and use a set of brass knuckles on him.
 
She had about forty pounds on him, and her reach was at least three inches more than his.
 
She could've taken him easy.
 

He didn't think he could melt her heart by launching into one of Shakespeare's sonnets.

In the office, Ellis gestured towards the opposite seat.
 
About forty years old with razor-wire
moussed
black hair and an overlapped front tooth, Ellis spoke slowly and concisely as if talking to a moron.
 
Chase appreciated that.
 

The lawyer didn't offer his hand or any other social amenities.
 
His face lacked all expression, except for a glint of melancholy deep in the center of his assertive eyes.
 
Chase thought maybe he was
Botoxing
, freezing out his wrinkles.
 
The man wore silk ties and used a Windsor knot.
 
Old school.

"First thing you do," Ellis said, "is voluntarily admit yourself to Garden Falls State Psychiatric Facility out on Long Island for a full ten week stay.
 
You go through their
detox
program, dry up, and get on proper medication to help stabilize your personal disorders."

"Okay."

Ellis glanced up at him, gave him the ice age gaze.
 
"Don't bother to agree with me, Grayson.
 
You'll do as I say."

Chase didn't know whether to say okay to that or not.
 
He decided to let it slide.
 
He'd known guys like Ellis before.
 
They asked for nothing and demanded only obedience.

You could respect a relationship like that.
 
Everything was out in the open, no tangles or snarls along the way.
 
It's what Chase needed at the moment.
 
He had the cold sweats and shuddered in his chair from time to time, keeping his clenched fists hugged tightly to his stomach.
 
His entire body was sore and he had his legs wrapped tightly with bandages.
 
Nothing broken but everything sprained.
 
His neck was so stiff that the slightest turn of his chin made him want to bellow.
 

On top of that, the dry heaves hit him without warning.
 
While he shuddered in bed coughing up his empty guts, his father would come stand beside him, put his hand on Chase's shoulder, talk about the baby again.

The wind carried the resonant strain of church bells through the room.
 
Ellis crossed his legs, and his trousers pulled up to reveal pale flesh and varicose veins webbing his calf.
 

"He's been in and out of prison for the last fifteen years," the attorney said.
 
"This Joe Singleton.
 
Petty larceny and misdemeanors.
 
Forging checks, minor theft.
 
Robbed a couple of liquor stores, but he never approaches the cash register, just takes a bottle or two off the shelves and walks out.
 
He goes to jail for six or nine months, stays out for several years, then goes in again for something stupid.
 
Nothing serious, no felonies.
 
He beat his wife up a couple of times while they were married.
 
Twice he punctured her lung, but there were no injuries to her face, so the police botched the investigation and the DA never followed up."

Violence without the show.
 
Joe Singleton didn't go in for the macho act as a way to impress the boys.
 
He liked to keep it under wraps, deep in the muscle.

"Are you listening to me?" Ellis asked.