Faces in Time (31 page)

Outside the bar, one minute and forty-five seconds earlier.

A tall, skinny man walks with his shoulders and legs moving in an exaggerated fashion, slowed down by dragging pretension hanging at his knees and ostentation wrapped around his shoulders. The quirky movements follow a rhythm that no one else can hear, but he marches on as if his theme song were being blast to everyone in his line of vision. Far more social than functional, his walk depicts his life. Tattoos scream from the pale skin on arms that dangle out of his wife-beater t-shirt.

Following three steps behind is a younger girl who keeps her head down and whose eroding teeth suggest her boyfriend deals in more than games of chance. She walks with her arms crossed, sliding her fingers over each side of her tiny belly. She’s been doing it whenever she’s nervous, and she has worn the skin raw lately.

His eyes are on the front doors. He hasn’t been back here since he was arrested a year and a half ago for pulling his gun on a man over what was reported as a billiards dispute. The uneasiness over returning to the scene from which he’s been banned adds to the animosity and the thrill of defiance that’s been proliferating inside him since the call came a short while ago. As it’s grown, the girl has retreated further into herself.

The rumble of a thin metal container bending in and popping out under uncertain fingers catches Manny’s attention, breaking through his internal theme song. Looking to his right, he sees a man crouching down in front of an open gas filler tube. Manny’s eyebrows become steep, pointed slopes and his smile grows narrow and sharp. He stops short and his girlfriend, keeping her head aimed sharply downward, walks into his back full stride.

Giving her a quick annoyed look, he returns his stare to the man with the nervous fingers wrapped around a canister that has justn drained of inflammatory fluid.

“Running a little low, lucky boy?”

“U-h-h, yeah. Top-topping it off,” he responds with nervousness and confusion, barely giving the speaker a glance as he places the canister on the ground and fumbles as he picks up his next tool.

“L.A.’s a big town, but not big enough that I wouldn’t find you again. Didn’tchya think I’d come looking for you after what you two idiots pulled?”

Chester stares back consumed with confusion.

Manny continues, “Know all aboutchoo, Chaz. Been askin’ ‘round ‘boutchoo. Know you and Lucky been makin’ da rounds. Know all about your TV star girlfriend. Run a business ‘round here. Can’t have two smartasses running bar to bar ripping me off.”

The tool fumbles in Chester’s hand; his face is pained while his mind scrambles to make a connection to anything the man has said to him.

“Whatchyou doing wit dat tire iron in yo’ hand, son? You thinkin’ a-hitting me wit’ it?”

“What? W-wait. Wait! The guy you want is inside the bar. I swear.”

Reaching around to the small of his back, he says, “No, the guy I want is right here,” unleashing the shining barrel into the newly birthed night illuminated by the overhead parking lot light.

“No, don’t shoot—you’ll kill us both! The car’s—”

“You’re half right.”

The gun fires.

Fireball like a cloud. Draws out sweat before the heat can register in his mind. Ravaging. Cars to the right and left get pushed into the cars next to them. Tire slams into the bar door.

Glass sparkles and flies like raindrops and slices like reality. The heat hits Manny’s girlfriend’s face, reminding her of standing too close to a crawfish boiler. She throws a hand over the side of her face and the other over her stomach.

The shape of the man that was just a few inches from the explosion is a black silhouette inside swirling ange and red flames, flickering and consuming as it explodes into the expanding fire.

The door is shoved open, and all are drawn to the flame. After staring at the fiery wreckage beneath the first light post, watching the debris of a dream of metal disintegrate, and seeing a wave of red hair blowing in the fall breeze between him and the flickering flames of the carnage, Chester’s chest flares up, determined to not let the destruction spread to more important things. He is the only one to pull himself away from the destruction and see Sammy running to the far corner of the outside of the bar.

Leaning in close to Rhonda’s ear, “Stay here.”

“Wher—”

“Please, trust me this time.”

“But, Chester…”

Whispering directly in her ear, “Rhonda, see that burning shoe in the middle of the parking lot? It used to be mine—was on our host’s foot the other day at the apartment.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Shh. You have to act like you don’t know anything. No one knows that’s my car besides us.”

As soon as her head starts to nod, he turns away from her. The crowd watches the flame, as mesmerized as cavemen were at its first appearance, but Chester starts after the bookie.

Locating Sammy took just one glance to the far corner of the bar’s facade. Standing next to today’s bookie, a tall, skinny man leans over a woman who is on her knees with her hands over her face. The two men have their backs to Chester as he approaches, and their words become audible.

“…you alright?” asks the tall one.

“Yeah, we’re okay,” answers a small voice from behind the hands covering her face.

“What did you say?”

“We’re okay—uh, you and me.”

“You sure?” he asks in a tone far too harsh for following an injury.

Sammy says, “Damn, Manny, give ‘er a break—her face.”

Raising his hand, “Shut up, Sammy. Chantelle, answer me.”

“Yeah. Just meant you an’ me. I’m sure.”

“Better be.”

Something about her accent is familiar to Chester, but he can’t focus enough to place it.

“Manny, you blew up my car?” Chester asks in a  powerful tone.

As the tall man twists his torso around to look at the person speaking, Chester can see the woman who is also trying to catch a glimpse of who dared speak to her man so forcefully. Her face is red and sweaty with one deep cut running along her cheek and several miniscule bits of glass embedded into her skin, but she has no burn marks. Manny has some scrapes on his right forearm, but she took the worst of the explosion.

Horror creeps over Manny’s face, “That’s impossible, man. I watched you burn. I watched you burn.”

“Time to let this one go, Manny; you’ve done enough damage here.”

He nods in agreement feeling the truth of the comment, but quickly remembering who he is, he says, “No way, man. This won’t make any sense ‘till it’s over.”

“It’ll never make sense. Don’t come near me again, Manny.”

Reaching around to the small of his back and then grimacing as he looks at the growing crowd staring at the burning car a mere dozen yards away from them, “Some kind of a freak—a monster. Can’t have nobody running ‘round cheating the odds, especially not something like you.”

“Let it go before you can’t.”

“Too late, Ch—”

Sirens cut through the smoky air, which is pungent with eradication, and invade their ears.

Manny grabs Chantelle by her arm, yanking her to her feet and into a brisk stride toward Chester. They walk so closely past him that they nearly touch, but they keep a straight line to walk through the crowd in front of the bar and into the mass of peple at the car show.

“Melted remains of car alarm control box stuck to rear wheel well, shock sensor inside the tailpipe, charred remains of a spark plug mounted in front of the gas filler tube. Haven’t found any other remains of the body besides the bit of foot in the scorched shoe.”

With his arms folded, the one policeman in a suit nods his head as he listens to the report coming from his detective standing in front of him.

“The way this car blew up and burned—might have been an explosive placed near the gas tank too. There’s residue of some type of homemade napalm, probably Styrofoam and gasoline mix, which is most likely why there hasn’t been any more of the body found. It’d also account for some of the smell. We found the filler cap blown toward the back of the parking lot. None of the threads are stripped—was off the car when it exploded. No eyewitnesses. Several people swear they heard a gunshot go off before the big explosion.”

“What was all of this supposed to do? Besides destroying the guy trying to set it up, that is. How was it supposed to work?”

“Shock sensor in the exhaust would set off the alarm as soon as the engine fired, the alarm would turn on power to the spark plug he rigged in the gas filler tube, which would ignite the accelerant-saturated rag that runs down the tube into the gas tank itself. Once that car started or maybe even the car door slammed hard enough, this vehicle was going to turn into a fireball. Napalm suggests he wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything left of the bodies. Apparently it went off while he was still trying to set it up.”

“Seems like a lot to set up in a busy parking lot.”

“Not really. Not if you wire it before you come out here. Then all you’d have to do is stick the alarm box to the wheel well with duct tape, wire the alarm up to the battery, stick the shock sensor into the exhaust pipe, shove the presoaked rag down the gas filler tube, and place the spark plug close to the rag. If you’ve got the wires that run to the battery already wired to clips, which they were, it’d take you just a few seconds to hook it up to the battery terminals, especially on an old car like this—there’s not much in your way under the hood. With some duct tape, mounting tape, or that magnetic tape to mount everything, you could set this whole thing up in less than five minutes. If someone’s practiced, less than three. Hardest thing would be shoving the rag down the filler tube. We found a warped and melted tire iron not too far from the car—could’ve used that to shove the ag down the tube if it was skinny enough.”

“Seems like someone would have seen him.”