The Damned (23 page)

Scott huffed out a sharp little laugh. “Didn’t want to, huh?”

“Hell no, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want
anything
to do
with them, but I didn’t wanta die, either.”

Warren
placed the bottom edge of his hands on the porch, wincing as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. “What are you planning on doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“All those questions, where they live and where they keep the prisoners. What are you planning on doing?”

“They’ve got my wife. I’m going to get her back.”

“How do you
know
they’ve got her?”

“I just do.”

“And you’re gonna do what, walk in there like Dirty Harry or something?”

Scott sighed, looked down at his feet and shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do—something.”

“You know how many there are?”

“Haven’t got a clue.”

“A
lot
. It’s not just the small group you saw here today. They’ve been recruiting folks all over the city. Hell, half the cops are with them now, the ones who didn’t haul ass outa here. A lot of them did, you know.”

Scott didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say.

“Look, I know you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t either if I was you. Hell, I tried to kill you back at the pit. But you could’ve left me up there just now, left me up there and went on your way.”

“Don’t think I didn’t consider it.”

“But you didn’t do it. My hands hurt like hell, but I’m gonna survive. I’m not going to die with them nailed to the doorway. I don’t know what you’re about to do, or if what I’m about to tell you will be helpful. But I’m going to tell you because I’m grateful—even if you did do it the hard way.”

Scott smiled. “That was for Lila.”

Warren
shrugged his shoulders, gave his head a little nod. Then he said, “Know what you look like with that harness strapped around your shoulder?”

“What?”

“A cop. You won’t last three seconds you walk in like that.”

Three seconds,
thought Scott.
Where’ve I heard
that
before?

“Back at the pit, you remember what I said when you mentioned your wife?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“There’re two places they take the lookers. The decent ones, if they raise hell and won’t do what they’re told, they get the shit beat outa them and locked up at the jailhouse, so they can be barter-bait later on. If they’re exceptionally pretty, if they’ve got a fantastic bod on them, one of the bikers’ll claim ‘em. One of the higher-ups, and God help ‘em if they don’t go along with
them.
”
Warren
looked down at his hands. “God
damn
these bastards hurt.”

Scott turned and looked at him, chuckled softly and looked out across the yard.

“They don’t know what you look like, but they do know your story, that you came to seven weeks after being shot in the head. So if you go wandering in there with that bullet hole of yours uncovered, you won’t last—”

“I know,” Scott said. “Three seconds.”

“If that.”

It had taken most of the morning to get the generator fueled and in place. Further delays ensued when a weary crew of hung-over electricians had some kind of cabling problem. But they finally did get the power back up. Then
came
Carlo’s men, six rugged guys led by a white-haired old man with a rattling cough and a thick
New Jersey
accent. He reminded Dub of old man Carlicci with all his bullshit stories about his death dealing days on the streets of north
Jersey
. Except this guy’s tales were of bank heists and babes, prison cells and men of honor of some bygone era Dub doubted had ever existed in the first place. The golden days, the old man called them, when a man could trust his partner in crime to keep his trap shut, to do his stretch and return to the fold. His name was Wally, and he’d been cracking safes since the late sixties. ‘Piece’a cake back then,’ he’d said. ‘None of this complicated optic wire bullshit’. A stethoscope and a nimble set of
fingers, that
was all Wally needed back then. He needed a lot more now, though. His muscular sidekicks carried with them industrial-sized drills and lasers, zippered canvas bags of assorted tools and gadgets, acetylene tanks and torches, and enough electrical cabling to power up a
Rolling Stones
concert.

Dub could tell just by the way they set the wheels into motion that they were good at what they did, each man a part of the whole, each with a specific job to do, a function to perform. An exercise in precise measures, effortlessly executed as if they were back in prison stamping out license plates. They were good at what they did, that much was obvious. Even so, it was slow and tedious work. ‘Hit and miss,’ the old man told him between his endless supply of stories and anecdotes. ‘A fluid situation’. He wore black framed glasses with thick lenses, a hearing aid and a gold Rolex watch. In all his years ‘on the job’ he’d been through every snag and snafu, every problem ever known to have existed. He sat in an office chair, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes and rasping out orders like the old geezer trainer from the
Rocky
flicks. They’d hit a dead spot and he’d guide them through it. Then he would take them back to his golden olden days of cracking safes from one end of the eastern seaboard to the other.

It took forty-five minutes to get through two locked doors that led to the vaults. Two hours later they were standing in the main vault. Dub, who had never been so far into the interior of a bank, expected it to be full to the brim with suitcase-sized, plastic wrapped bundles of currency, just like in the movies. But that wasn’t the case. Had he not been there with them to see it for himself, he would have been sure they’d held out on him. Sure, there was money, and plenty of it, just not as much as he had expected. All in all it was a long, drawn out process that left Dub bored nearly to tears. But he had to be there to see it through, because he couldn’t trust anyone to do it for him, not Teddy, nor Bert and Ernie. He certainly couldn’t rely on Carlo and his crew to play it straight with him. So he stood there listening to Wally the geriatric safecracker drone on about how he’d heisted a shit-load of diamonds and jewels from Sinatra back in the late seventies, only to be forced to give it all back to the prick when word drifted up to the mustache-Petes who where backing the crooner’s play. All very fascinating for someone who gave a damn, but not for Dub, who by that point was considering the ramifications of sticking a gun to the old man’s face and blowing out the back of his head. Luckily for the both of them, Carlo and his crew finally gained entrance to the ‘working vault’, something Dub hadn’t even known existed until that day. Two and a half hours later they were back in the booking room, deep in the interior of the jailhouse, staring down at rows and rows of neatly-stacked bundles of cash piled high upon the fingerprint table—Dub and Bert and Ernie, Carlo and his three henchmen. They’d left the old man and his crew back at the bank packing up their gear for the next job. The old man couldn’t have cared less about the money. It was the act that interested him, the act that completed him. The knowledge that he had beat the system and now stood triumphant in its hallowed halls pushed him forward—not the monetary reward, of which he knew he’d get his fair share.

“One point two mil,” Carlo said. “Not bad.”

“I expected more.”

“So did I, the first time,” Carlo told him. “Banks have rules they have to follow, guidelines to stipulate how much cash they should have on hand. This is a respectable haul—
very
respectable. You’ll see when we hit three hundred grand a couple of times.”

“Yeah,” Dub said. “I’ll see. I’ll see because I’ll be right there looking over your shoulder.”

Carlo, smiling, looked at his men, who started to chuckle. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, my friend.”

“Good,” Dub said. “Glad you see it that way.”

They divided the money straight down the middle, six hundred thousand for each of them. Carlo’s men filled a large canvas bag with their share of the proceeds. Dub left his where it lay. A smaller bag was hoisted from the floor, its contents dumped onto the table. Diamonds and jewelry, cash and stocks and bonds, legal documents and sealed manila envelopes, car keys and house keys and a myriad of personal items Dub deemed to be useless pieces of shit, all plundered from the bank’s safety deposit boxes.

“How about this shit?” Carlo asked him.

“Right down the middle,” said Dub.

Piles were made, the diamonds and jewelry divided and pushed into two different areas of the table. Carlo bagged his and Dub left his alone. An additional two-hundred thousand dollars had been lifted from those safety deposit boxes, which made both men smile. The manila envelopes were gone through, their contents quickly discarded, most of which turned out to be wills and deeds, and personal letters.

“Look at this,” Carlo said, and then tossed a handful of photographs onto the table, eight glossy, 8x10 color photos depicting two men having sexual relations, both seemingly unaware their trysts were being recorded.

“Hey,” Dub said. “I know those guys. They’re on TV all the time.”

Carlo said, “It’s the fucking mayor, and that protect-the-children Corrigan prick from congress. Man, somebody’s making a pretty penny off these sons of bitches. How’d you like to see
these
show up in the newsroom if you’re one of those scumbags? Protect the children, my ass.” He scooped up the photos and stuffed them in with his bag of jewelry. “I’m keeping this shit.”

“For what?” said Dub.

“Pos-fucking-sterity.”

“Huh?”

“Posterity.”

“Oh,” Dub said, even though he had no idea what he’d meant.

Carlo and his crew secured their payload and Dub and his two Neanderthals followed them out of the room, down the hallway and into the jailhouse lobby. It was late afternoon. Soon it would be dark, and the place was filling with its usual assortment of bikers and broads, truckers and electricians, all members of Dub’s new world order filing past tables of food and drink on the way to another night of raucous debauchery designed to drive the circumstance of their bleak existence into a drug-induced haze. An old Ronnie James Dio tune blasted from the wall of speakers as they made their way through the room, augmenting an even older
Easy Rider
flick that rolled silently across the gigantic big screen set up within the thumping sound system.

They left the room behind and stepped out into what was left of the day. An eighteen wheeler rolled up in front of the jailhouse as Dub and his guests made their way past a couple of bikers who stood at the top of the concrete stairs.

Carlo said, “There’s your beef.”, and Dub said, “I’ll be damned.”

An arm shot out of the driver’s window. Carlo acknowledged it by raising one of his own. They were at the street now, directly in front of the tractor trailer rig. The driver leaned out through his window. “Here okay?” he said. He had stopped, directly facing the tanker truck. Dub nodded. Seconds later came a loud whoosh of air as the brakes were set. In one practiced motion, the guy jumped out, cranked down the landing gears, unhooked from the trailer, released his brakes and pulled away, leaving the refrigerated unit behind.

“You got diesel?” said Carlo.

“Yeah,” Dub told him.

“Keep that reefer unit running and you’re good to go.”

They walked to the rear of the trailer, Dub and Carlo in front, Bert and Ernie and the henchman following behind them. Carlo stepped back and two of his men stepped forward. They threw open the doors and a cloud of frigid air billowed from the opening.

“Wow,” Bert said.

“No shit,” said Ernie, both men staring up at several sides of beef hanging suspended from hooks at the rear of the forty-foot trailer.

“Gonna be a hell of a party tonight,” Dub said.

“Damn right,” said Bert.

“Maybe we’ll swing round and join you, me and the boys.”

“Swing by anytime you want,” Dub said. “We’re partners, now.”

“That we are,” Carlo told him. Then he and his three henchmen headed down the street, to their vehicles, where his men climbed into a black Hummer and pulled away from the curb, followed by Carlo in old man Carlicci’s cherry-red Vette.

They sat on the porch for quite some time, neither of them saying much of anything, Scott on the top step,
Warren
behind him.
Warren
stood up and Scott told him to sit back down. He didn’t trust him; he had tried twice to kill him and Scott wasn’t about to give him another chance, no matter what he’d said about being grateful to be out of the doorframe. Scott asked again about the meth labs, how they could be run without electricity, and was told about those industrial-sized generators and the rolling fuel depots that kept them churning out the juice. The jailhouse had power, and the Ambassador. Other places too, maybe, although
Warren
couldn’t say for sure.

It was late in the day now. Shadows were beginning to creep across the front of the house. It would be dark soon and Scott had things to sort out, like where he was going and what he would do when he got there. But for now he was hungry, so he stood
Warren
up and took him into the house. Davey was on the floor. Lila was still on the couch. One glance was all Scott needed to know that she remained virtually untouched since he had last seen her. Unfortunately, that one glance also showed him the ragged gash across her throat, the blood-soaked blouse and the dead-rictus grin.

“I oughta make you bury her,” he said.

Warren
said nothing. He just stood next to him, staring down at the floor.

They went down the hallway, to
Warren
’s stash. Scott asked him if he had anything better than beef stew, but he didn’t. Yesterday it had seemed like nectar from the gods, but today he found himself having to force it down. But he was hungry, so he polished off a can of the stuff, some fruit and a bottle of water. While
Warren
did the same, he sat there, staring at him, until
Warren
said, “What?”

“Your teeth, why are they like that?”

“The same reason I only come up to your belt buckle, I reckon.”

“You were
born
that way?”

“Yes.”

“Hmph.”

“You figured out what you’re gonna do yet?”

“Pretty much.”

“Oh yeah… what?”

“You got any more of that yellow rope?”

“Yeah… why?”

“Where is it?”

“In the closet. Why?”

“I need some. Get in there and get it.”

Warren
got to his knees. Grimacing, he got to his feet, and Scott followed him to the closet. He opened the door and Scott slipped his pistol from its holster, thumbed back the safety and shot
Warren
in the head. He had tried twice to kill him, once at the pit, and once again with Dub and his gang. Scott couldn’t afford to give him another crack at it. He turned and crossed the room, leaving
Warren
dead in the closet doorway, the smell of blood and cordite hovering over his shoulder as he paused by the bed. He was about to leave the room when he spied a bandana lying on the floor. He remembered Lila removing that same bandana from Davey’s mouth, and then remembered how that kindness had been rewarded. He picked it up, stepped into the hallway and went down to the bathroom. It was getting dark now, and he saw only a vague outline of himself in the bathroom mirror. He touched the dimpled indentation in his scalp, and then brought the ends of the bandana together, knotted them and made sure the wound was covered. He drew his weapon from its holster and slid it behind him, like those guys back at the pit, shrugged out of the harness and dropped it to the floor. Then he left the bathroom and went back outside, sat down on steps and stared out at the street.

He sat for a long time, staring out into darkness, wondering what the chances of getting his wife back actually were, and if he got her back what kind of shape she would be in. Would she be horribly scarred? Mentally? Physically? How could she not be, after what she’d been through? He could only imagine what had been done to her these last four weeks, the cruelty she had endured.

An hour went by, then another, and even though he knew time had no bearing on the matter, that in this upside-down world, time was irrelevant, Scott wondered what the hour was. The night sky was dark, but his eyes had adjusted to it. He looked at his bike, at the house across the way, and then back at his bike. Beyond him was the city he’d spent the past twelve years of his life in; somewhere in that city was his wife. It was time to get going. He stood up and glanced back at the open doorway, at the blackness it framed. He thought for a moment of the brave woman entombed within those walls. She had saved his life, and he would never forget her. He sighed and shook his head, and then turned and walked down to the street, straddled the bike and fired it up, and turned his headlight on. Then he worked the kickstand back into place and roared off through the neighborhood.

A left and a couple of rights put him back on the city streets. Before he knew it he was rolling up in front of the Ambassador Hotel. A horde of merry revelers crowded the sidewalk in front of the place, bikers and their babes intermingled with men and women who didn’t look like gang members at all—citizens, maybe, who had somehow fallen in with these pricks. They were laughing and joking and passing around the booze, milling about several huge grills that had been lined up in front of the hotel. Smoke drifting up from the wide mouths of those metal containers put Scott in mind of the pit, but it wasn’t the nauseating smell of human flesh wafting through the air tonight.

He slowed to a stop amongst a group of Harleys parked alongside a forty-foot trailer. He knew it was a refrigerated trailer because he could hear the reefer unit attached to it thrumming along in the background. Nervous apprehension flooded over him as he killed the engine and jacked down the stand. Even though only a few had even bothered to look his way when he pulled up, he knew that he was a stranger in their midst—one curious look, one wrong move could bring an unwanted scrutiny that could lead him straight to his death. He wanted to turn, to get on the bike and run. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He turned off the headlight, dismounted and walked calmly over to the sidewalk. Nobody seemed to notice as he passed through the hotel entrance. They were all too busy with their hunks of meat, the booze and the pot they were passing back and forth. Loud, raucous laughter drifted up the hallway, intermingled with the thumping beat of a bass and drum, the wild, piercing wail of a guitar. Scott recognized the tune to be AC/DC’s
Highway To Hell.

How appropriate,
he thought. He stood for a moment in the hallway. The lights were on and the music was blaring. He closed his eyes and his life was back to normal. He was in a hotel bar with the boys, waiting on Sandi to show up after a hard days work. Beer and hot wings and some casual conversation would make things right, then he and his wife could go home and make love.
Make love.
He sighed and shook his head, and those thoughts quickly evaporated. Then he pushed open the door and the ear-shattering heavy metal music enveloped him.

The place was packed with the same variety of people he’d seen outside, just more of them. Bikers and babes stood side by side with average every day people of all walks of life, truckers and workmen and people in the ragged remnants of what once would have passed for business attire. Across the room, a three piece band was cranking out the jams, a bouncing bass player with a face full of metal, a pretty-boy guitarist and a drummer who looked like he was bored half out of his mind. The raised platform on which they performed was their kingdom, the gyrating crowd their subjects. Off to their left sat the guy who had nailed Warren to the doorframe, the same guy who had hacked off a burnt and blackened breast and tossed it to that crazy bastard back at the pit—that guy was there, too, a few seats down from… Dub, that was his name. He and his gang were sitting there with a couple of… He saw her. Through a haze of smoke as thick as a curtain, he saw her. He would’ve known her anywhere, the blonde hair, the full lips and the curve of her shoulder. He would’ve known her anywhere and he knew it was her. She was sitting beside Dub, smiling and leaning against him. He had his arm around her shoulder, rubbing his fingers across her breast. And she was
enjoying
it. She was
smiling
, smiling while Scott’s heart leapt into his throat and his breathing became shallow. She leaned forward and grabbed something off the table. It was a syringe, and she sank it into the crook of her arm, leaned further into Dub and closed her eyes. She stayed there for a moment, her eyes closed, the needle still in her arm, Scott staring at her from across the room while the ear-crushing strains of
Highway To Hell
became a dull and droning echo of discordant notes, further muddled by the blood pounding through his temples. She opened her eyes and pulled the needle from her arm, tossed it onto the table and looked out into the crowd… And saw him. He knew she did, he could see it in her eyes, the look of shocked disbelief as if someone had stepped out of their grave and said, “Hi”.

For a brief moment, one split second, it was Sandi and Scott alone in the room, the unruly crowd surrounding them nothing but hazy grey shapes. Then the moment was over and she was saying something to Dub. A couple of bikers stepped in front of Scott. When they moved, she was gone, and Dub’s table was empty.

Scott made his way through the crowd, hoping to see where they had gotten off to, but there were too many people in the way and he couldn’t find them. Then the crowd began to part and they were coming right at him, Dub and those two Neanderthals from the pit. They had Sandi with them, stumbling and shaking her head ‘no’ while that tattooed prick pulled her along behind him. The band had just started up with another tune: Van Halen’s
Running With The Devil.
Dub raised a fist in the air and the music stopped, leaving nothing but the murmur of the crowd, who had gathered around Dub and his crew, who now stood directly in front of Scott. Dub nodded and the two behemoths took a step forward, one on each side of him.

“Well,” Dub said. “What could a skinny little runt like you have done to upset my woman so?”

Scott said nothing. His wife stood before him, staring down at the floor. She wore a thick coat of garish make-up, a black miniskirt and a red silk top, fishnet stockings and come-fuck-me pumps. He could feel the 9mm. resting against his hip, but he wasn’t going for it. He wouldn’t last…

“The fuck are you?”

“Nobody.”

“Who is he, Cherry?”

“
Cherry?”
Scott said. His voice, full of derision, drew a wide smile from Dub, who said, “Who is he, Cherry?” He tightened his grip and she yelped out the name, “Scott… he’s my—”

“Scott? Scott with a bandana around his head? You’re not Scott the midget’s friend with a bullet in his head, are you? Scott who couldn’t kick his own ass if he tried but somehow managed to fuck up a whole shit-load of my men?” Dub’s eye’s narrowed, the smile having already evaporated from his face as he snatched the bandana from Scott’s head. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

Scott’s hand snaked behind his back, and was promptly grabbed by one of the towering behemoths, who took hold of his neck and yanked his arm halfway up his back.

Tears welled in Sandi’s eyes as she cried out, “Don’t hurt him!”

“Why, Cherry, why don’t hurt him?”

“He’s my husband!” Now she was sobbing, tears streaming down her face as she looked up at Dub, who said, “Ease up, Bert.”

Scott’s arm was released, his gun taken from him. He stood there, waiting for whatever came next while a blood-thirsty crowd surrounded him. He was dead and he knew it. He’d been lucky these last two days, but he would need a lot more than luck to see him through this.

“Why’d you freak out when you saw him?”

“I… I thought he was dead. I didn’t want him to see me like this. You’re supposed to be dead, why aren’t you dead!”

Scott said, “Believe me, I wish I was.”

Dub chuckled. “Well,” he said. “We have quite a predicament here, don’t we, boys?”

“Yeah,” Bert said.

“Damn straight,” said Ernie.

“On one hand, I have to admit I have a certain amount of respect for what you’ve accomplished here. Skinny little fuck that you are, you wiped out four of my best men yesterday, all by yourself. How the fuck you did that, I have no idea. Then got the fuck away when we had you cornered this morning? I gotta give it to you, man; you’ve got a huge set on you. But then again, you did fuck up my men, and I can’t let
that
stand, can I? So, on one hand, you’ve got a small measure of respect. On the other, well, you’ve got something coming to you. Then there’s Cherry Vanilla here, with the soft lips and a pussy like a 7-Eleven—
always
open for business.”

Scott, visibly shaken, winced at those words.

“That’s right, Scotty. Give her a little scag and off she goes like the fucking Energizer Bunny. Don’t you, baby?”

“Can’t you just let him go?”

Dub laughed. “Let him go? Hell yeah I can let him go. I run things up in
this
motherfucker. I can do anything I want.” He looked at Scott, then down at Sandi. “Tell you what. You leave me and the scag behind and go off with Scotty into that bleak-assed world out there. Leave the food and the drugs and your nice luxury apartment and go and fend for yourself with all the slimy creatures running through that shit out there. Do that and I’ll let the both of you go. Do that or stay with me, and let hubby there get crucified at the crack of dawn.”