Feelers (21 page)

“I am different from the Balkan Boys because I have something you want, Pete!”

“Ten thou? Is that all?”

See how clever I was? When you bring up money, like sex, it will distract most people.

“I swear, Pete, that is what I got. Those little lying brown bastards exaggerated! You must have had that happen! Yes?”

His eyes began to wobble in their sockets as his rage succumbed to a morsel of thought. I figured I had better keep working on him.

“I’ll give you the ten thousand and then we can have peace, yes?”

“No, no, no peace, ever.” His rage boiled anew. “You give me the money and I still hate your guts, spic.”

“Pete! I cannot give it to you from down here, can I? You have to let me up so I can get it, yes?”

He took a swing at me with the bat, and I pulled my hands away just before he smashed my hands into skin bags of shattered bone. Well, I knew this was going to be a predatory day, did I not?

“I could smash you into a pulp, throw you in the car, and twist your cock with vise grips until you told me where to drive to find it, how’s that?”

“Pete! Pete! Listen to me!” He had really given this some thought, yes? “If you did that, what would keep me from going to the police afterward? I mean, unless you aimed to kill me, and if you did, you would surely get caught with all these witnesses and sent to jail for the rest of your life and never see the money. Yes? Yes?”

His eyes got all wobbly again as his brain tried to process what I was saying.

“Get up.” He still had his weapon ready, so I was cautious.

My eyes stayed on him as I slowly rose to my feet, hands out,
palms down in a calming gesture like one might use on an escaped gorilla.
Easy, big fellah.

“Your car or mine?” I asked, if nothing else to try to keep his mind off hitting me.

His eyes wobbled and then he said: “Your spic-mobile, what else? Try anything cute and I’ll ram this board into your cock so hard your eyes will fall out.”

I never before would have suspected Pete was capable of such colorful descriptions. This was his second reference to maiming Pizarro, and I had to wonder if Pete the Prick got that name for a reason other than his personality.

As I walked ahead of Pete toward my car, I was busy thinking. I could not really take him to the money or he would see that there was a lot more than ten thousand and want it all. I was not about to give him all the money, though I might have parted with ten grand to get this asshole off my back. A small price to pay when you look at the larger picture.

No, I could not take him to the storage locker. I glanced at my watch. I was supposed to meet Dexter.

Can you see where this was going?

Who better than Dexter to defuse this situation? I could say the money was still in the house and, with Dexter there, get a little room so I could run for it or something if necessary.

At that moment, though, Dexter Lewis was in intensive care at East Brooklyn Hospital. The ice pick narrowly missed his heart, puncturing his left lung, and he was able to climb from the tub after he heard Danny leave. That is when he heard someone else come into the room—Charlie. Though he heard this person gasp upon seeing him on the floor, Charlie left without helping him. Dexter was blinded by having the phone pounded
into his face but managed to crawl out of the bathroom. That is when he was discovered by the Luna Motel staff and was rushed to the hospital.

So Dexter would not be meeting me at the house on Vanderhoosen Drive.

Danny would.

DECKED OUT IN HIS NEW
outfit, ball cap pulled low over his Donna Karan sunglasses, Danny had decided to wait inside his uncle’s house on Vanderhoosen Drive. Inasmuch as Dexter had said that there were people looking for him, Danny figured that it would be better to be seen as little as possible. Especially loitering around his uncle’s house. The doorjamb was already broken, so he had no trouble getting in.

So when I drove my rusty white Camaro up to the curb, and beheld the shabby two-story brick house, I expected to see Dexter waiting for me out front. I did not even see Danny. My heart sank. This would make escape more difficult. A lot more difficult. And if I gave Pete any clue that I was bullshitting, he would likely make good on his promise to mangle Pizarro.

I might have to enact Martinez’s Second Rule of Combat: Go for the balls and run.

“Here?” Pete shouted.

“Yes. I found the money here but moved it to a different location in the house.”

“Why would you do something so fucking stupid as that?”

“Because it is the last place anybody would think to look. The place where I found it.”

“You’re a fucking spic idiot. Come on, get out.”

So we got out and walked up to the stoop, Pete keeping his distance and making the Martinez Second Rule of Combat difficult to enact. I knew the key to the front door was in a magnetic container under the mailbox—but Pete didn’t know that.

“We have one problem,” I sighed. “I do not have the key. I gave it back to Mary. And we cannot get it from her now.”

“Bust it in, faggot.” He prodded me in the back with the two-by-four. Even if I gave him the money, even if it were there, he would go to town on me with that two-by-four, I was certain.

“I will try. But people may see and call the police if we break in the front door. Perhaps we should break in the back door, a door with glass panes that would be easy to break. Yes?” This may seem like I had a plan, but I did not. Just stalling, looking for an opportunity to escape.

“
Yes,
asshole.”

So we went through the side yard, which was a narrow driveway of maybe ten or twelve feet between houses. I could not help but notice someone move in front of the window in the house next door, which was odd, because that house also was empty. It was the one Frog had cleaned a few weeks back. Could Dexter have gone to the wrong house? And gone inside?

We reached the rear entrance to the kitchen, and I opened the flimsy wooden screen door. “Could you hold this screen door open while I try to force my way in?”

Pete merely snorted, took a step closer, and held the screen door.

Let me tell you, it is very difficult to enact my Second Rule of
Combat on someone standing behind me. Turning quickly would give him enough time to react.

The door was locked. I slipped off one of my tennis shoes and smashed a glass pane in the door. Carefully, I removed any remaining shards that might cut me, reached in, and unlocked the door. Pete watched me closely, so much so that I did not think that trying to slip a shard of glass into my pocket—perhaps useful as a knife—was wise unless I wanted to be castrated with a two-by-four. I turned the knob and the door swung open.

Exactly as I had left it. Cupboards all bare, greasy stains on the wall surrounding where the stove had been, striped rectangle of dust on the wall where the refrigerator had been.

“Where is it?” Pete jabbed me with the two-by-four.

“Upstairs. The attic.” It was either that or the basement, and I would rather flee running down stairs than up. At least if I fell in my haste I would not fall back toward Pete. I say this all calmly enough now, but I will be brutally honest: I was shitting bricks, my back soaked with sweat, my heart doing jumping jacks in my chest. At the same time, I was coiled like a spring, ready to do what I had to save my skin. I was sure Cortés felt like this when the Aztecs were after him at Tlaxcala.

I led the way up the steps, and that two-by-four jabbed me a couple times along the way. A little reminder of what was in store for me.

I went to the hall closet and pointed at the ceiling.

“A hatch?” Pete looked up with disgust at the square wood panel that led to the attic.

“Yes, a hatch. Do you want to . . .”

“What am If An
idiot
? You go up. And if you don’t come down with ten thousand bucks, doctors will be pulling splinters from your balls. Got it?”

A reply to the third threat on Pizarro seemed unnecessary.

“I need something to stand on to get up there, and all the furnishings are gone.”

“You’re stalling, spic. The money isn’t up there, is it?” He started waving the two-by-four, winding up for the beating.

“Well, if you beat the shit out of me with that before I go up into the attic, how will you ever know? For Christ’s sake, Pete, would I lead you up here and corner myself in the closet or the attic if the money was not here? Try thinking with your head for a change.” Perhaps it was bold of me to push back like that, but it worked. Pete stepped back. He was still fuming, but he was also looking around for something I could stand on to reach the hatch.

Directly across from the closet was the bathroom, and on the wall of the bathroom was a wooden cupboard. Pete set his two-by-four on the sink and began to grapple with this cabinet, to try to pull it off the wall.

Unfortunately, the door to the bathroom opened in. Otherwise, I would have slammed the door shut and bolted down the stairs and not stopped running until I was in La Paz standing before the three-tiered Martinez fountain.

The cupboard jarred free from the wall, white dust pluming out from where the wall anchors had burst from the plaster. Pete turned it toward me.

“Here, asshole, use this,” he said from behind the cabinet.

It was then or never.

I could not kick him in the balls without having the cabinet fall on my knee. Then we would both be injured. Instead I did a high kick into the cabinet itself just as hard as I could.

He stumbled back, his shins hit the edge of the tub, and he fell into the shower, the cabinet thudding down on top of him. I
heard what sounded like his head hitting the shower wall, and a strangled yelp—that must really have hurt. Even if he was still conscious, I figured that little mishap should delay his pursuit long enough for me to make it to the Camaro and zoom off.

I did the switchback staircase to the first floor in two jumps, turned toward the kitchen, and came to a screeching halt.

There, just inside the door through which I had entered, was a man in woman’s sunglasses, a brown Gap ball cap, and department store duds. I did not recognize him as the man I saw standing in front of the house, or the man at the library computers, or the man in the mug shot. My immediate thought was that this was one of Pete’s henchmen, one I had never seen before. But how would he have come to this place?

All I could think to do was say, “Excuse me.” I turned and went for the front door.

“Martinez?”

I was already at the front door, yanking it open, when there was a hand on my shoulder, spinning me around.

“I’m talking to you!”

Not a wise move on this stranger’s part, because as we know I was in Martinez Combat Mode.

He spun me around and my knee came up fast and hard.

A man sort of hates to do this to another man, but at the same time we know exactly how devastatingly effective this maneuver is, don’t we, Father?

My knee found its mark. The stranger’s body jackknifed.

“Oof!” he grunted, his jaw muscles visibly locked in bashed gonad anguish.

There was a clunk on the floor next to him. It was a meat hammer. It seemed to have fallen from him when he contorted. A meat hammer?

The stranger was jerking his right shoulder strangely, but I did not take time to continue my study of him. I burst through the front screen door, scrambled into the Camaro, and sped off down the street.

Danny, of course, had been trying to move his right arm to grab his ice pick, but the contortions resulting from the explosive agony in his groin prevented him from this act. He staggered back against the wall, gasping, wincing, hearing me fire up the Camaro.

All herky jerky, he managed to straighten up, tears streaming down his red face.

Then he heard another sound. From upstairs. There was a crash and an unintelligible shout.

Someone was stumbling down the stairs, roaring like a wild and rampaging ape.

Pete the Prick turned the corner into the living room, the two-by-four in his hand. He saw in his peripheral vision someone standing against the wall. He did not know who. At this point, he was so enraged that he swung the weapon in an attempt to injure whoever it was.

Can you see where
this
is going, Father?

Danny had gotten hold of his ice pick by now.

It went badly for Pete the Prick. But I cannot say I miss him.

THE POLICE STILL DID NOT
have a clue about what was going on.

They had found Mary stabbed, and it looked like a robbery because the cash box had been looted.

They had found Rude Man half eaten by rats. They had yet to figure out that he had been stabbed. From what they could tell there was no sign of foul play, so an autopsy was not scheduled until the next day.

They had found Dexter with his face caved in by a phone and stabbed in the chest. He had undergone emergency surgery for the chest wound and to try to save one of his eyes. Even though he seemed stable in intensive care, he had not regained consciousness—and the doctors were not sure if he would.

To the police, these three unfortunate incidents had nothing connecting them.

So the cops were searching for a tall, dark man in a turtleneck and large sunglasses, the one on the fuzzy motel security tapes, the one who had registered as Tom Roberts. They were not looking for someone in a Gap cap, large sunglasses, plaid brown
shirt, chinos, and white Converse All Star low-tops. The chances of them picking up Danny were slim indeed.

The only thing tying any of this together was the small wounds, but they were not even in the same place on the bodies. Mary got it in the eye, Dexter in the chest.

The people like me and Frog and the barflies at Oscar’s who might have had a clue were not getting involved with the cops, and the cops had no real reason to seek us out for questioning.

They did have one thing to go on. The guy who rented room 404 at the Luna Motel. They got a full description: tall, dark complexioned, turtleneck, sport coat, scar on lip, women’s sunglasses.