The Bottom (22 page)

The whole procedure took maybe twenty minutes but felt like a lot more.

“That way,” Kusack says, “they won’t have to wonder who did this to you.”

“This,” I understand, is going to be a lot more than a tattoo. There is a knife lying on the table not ten feet away. Kusack sees me looking at it.

“Not yet,” he says. When he smiles, two gold teeth shine in the upper part of his mouth. Where they’re positioned, they look like fangs. “Part of the fun is the anticipation. Not your fun, you understand. Me and Ronnie, we always have fun before the end, although you might not be as much fun as those girls were. But you’ve had about all the fun you’re going to have, asshole.”

I don’t know what was on the rag he used to put me under. I just remember feeling like I was going to suffocate, and then nothing.

NOW WAKING UP, I get past this burning pain and try to focus. My ankle is on fire. I look down, and there it is, all bright and shiny and bruised. Tweety Bird.

Looking around the room, the only life form I see in the dim light is Ronnie Sax. He’s sitting in an easy chair that looks like it came off a trash heap. He’s reading what looks like an illustrated comic book, although closer examination reveals it to be one that could only be sold at the local fuckbook emporium. He seems to be reading it with one hand.

I make as much noise as I can through the gag. Ronnie puts his porn down and walks over.

“Whatta you want?”

He’s trying to be Mr. Tough Guy, disremembering that we used to work together and I know what a putz he is. He’s still Ronnie Sax, a wheezy little guy who’s mostly a threat to those smaller than himself.

“If I take the gag off,” he says, “you gotta promise not to yell, or I’ll have to hurt you.”

He puts his right hand on the Taser. Compared with what big brother is planning, Ronnie’s threats aren’t adding to my anxiety.

He tells me that his brother has gone out.

“He’s got to get some money from the ATM,” Ronnie says. “He told me we’re probably going to have to get out of town, maybe go to Canada for a while.”

I thank him for removing the gag. And then I start in. They always said, on Oregon Hill, that I could sell refrigerators to the Eskimos. A lot is riding on my still having the gift of gab.

“So you and Cordell are gonna skip town.”

Nothing from Ronnie.

“You know, Cordell seems like a smart guy. Know what I’m betting?”

He’s still not talking to me, but he stops what he’s doing. I know he’s listening.

“I’m betting that Cordell has already figured that he can travel faster alone . . .”

“Shut up.”

“Well,” I continue, keeping my voice just loud enough that he can hear me without doing something that’ll encourage him to silence me again, “here’s the thing. If Cord is really dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s, he won’t want anybody around who can get caught and maybe tell the police who’s really responsible for all this.”

Ronnie turns toward me.

“He knows I’d never tell on him. I never did. Not to Momma or anybody.”

“But, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that he was to come back here, do whatever he’s planning to do to me. Then wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to shoot you and leave you lying here dead on the floor? Maybe make it look like a suicide?”

“I’m gonna put that gag back in your mouth. You’re talking bullshit, man.”

But he doesn’t put the gag back.

I take a deep breath.

“And maybe he’ll want to get rid of your sister. She’s already told me about Cord. Sure she called and warned him, but who knows when she might get scared into talking to the cops?”

“Mary Kate? He wouldn’t hurt Mary Kate.”

I let that one hang while Ronnie Sax mulls it over in his feeble mind, maybe trying to drown out that little voice I’ve planted there.

He comes back over, his face red and furious in the light.

“No! Cord wouldn’t do that. He said if we did what he said, nothing bad would happen.”

“But you got caught. And Mary Kate talked.”

He gets right in my face. There is actual spittle on his chin.

It is my chance, maybe my only one. Another thing I was known for on the Hill, growing up, was my hard head. I did that thing a couple of times in fights, where you walk up to some guy who’s ready to tear you apart, and you just headbump him. Hard. I don’t know why some people can do this and some can’t. Maybe I have an overload of calcium. Maybe my family is just naturally thickskulled. Look at Peggy.

When Ronnie’s maybe six inches away, I spring out of the chair with all the energy I have left, more or less throwing myself at the idiot.

Ronnie drops like he’s been shot. I have knocked out the softheaded son of a bitch. For how long, I don’t know, but it’s a break, and I’m desperately in need of one.

I see the knife shining in the dim light. I manage to wrestle that chair across the room. I back up to the knife, praying that Ronnie Sax is out for at least the next twenty minutes.

I can feel the knife cutting into my skin behind me as I wedge it against the side of the table, trying to get in just the right position to saw the rope holding my hands in place. It feels like I’m taking as much skin as rope, but finally, after maybe ten minutes, I feel the rope loosen a little bit, then a little more, until I can get one hand out and then the other.

I reach down, still trying to get some feeling back in my hands, and undo the straps holding my ankles. My right wrist is kind of a mess. I look like a bungled suicide attempt and my ankle’s on fire from the involuntary tattoo. But who gives a damn? I’m free. I have a fighting chance. More than one editor has called me a hard-headed bastard. Well, you use what you’ve got.

And that’s when I hear footsteps outside. As far as I can tell, there’s only one way out of this hellhole, the window frames being some kind of metal, and it sounds like either Cordell Kusack or a police posse come to rescue me is outside right now. The way my luck’s been going lately, I’m not betting on the posse.

And so I retreat back into the dark. Beyond the light, this warehouse is black as the pits of hell. It must go back a couple of hundred feet. I go about halfway back to hide until I find out who’s out there.

And, of course, it’s Kusack. He looks a little wild-eyed, even by his standards.

“What the fuck?” he says when he sees his brother lying on the floor, still in la-la land.

He talks to him like he thinks Ronnie can hear him.

“Goddammit, man. I leave you to do one thing, one thing, and you fuck it up.”

He sounds more sad than angry.

“Well, this just makes it a little easier.”

He’s probably thirty yards away, and I can just make out the pistol in his hand. I can barely hear him when he says it: “Bye-bye, Bro.”

The gunfire makes me jump. He shoots into Ronnie Sax’s unconscious body five times. I can see what is now a corpse jump from the impact.

Kusack looks around the room, looking first at the door and then staring into the darkness, right at me although he can’t possibly see me from where he is.

He reaches around behind his head and rubs his neck.

“Well,” he says, raising his voice as if he is expecting someone else to hear him, “that door hadn’t been touched since I left, and there ain’t but one way out of here.

“So,” he says, saying it like he’s playing a game with a kid, “come out, come out, wherever you are.”

What a dumbass I am. Ronnie had a pistol on him, too, and I didn’t take it off him. In my panic, I didn’t even think to grab the knife. Well you can’t think of everything.

So here comes a six-foot-seven nightmare with a gun. It just doesn’t seem fair. I’d like to claim my Second Amendment rights to have some heat, but it’s a little late for that. Glenn Walker, the present husband of my first wife, once gave me a pistol when it appeared I might need one. I think I turned it in to the cops at one of those drives to cut down on the city’s firepower. Like that ever works.

He steps and walks back to a low table by one of the windows and picks up a flashlight. Shit.

“Well,” he says, calm as can be, “I’ve taken care of two of my problems now. Let’s see if we can make it three for three.”

Now he’s making his way toward me, a step at a time, the gun in his right hand, waving the flashlight from side to side with his left. I figure he can see maybe twenty feet away. From where I stand, pushed against a wall, he’s a monster silhouette, lurching toward me like an extra in some zombie movie.

He’s maybe twice that distance when I make my move. There really isn’t much choice.

The feeling is more or less back in my legs, but I am still no threat to win the forty-yard dash. I don’t remember bumping into anything on the way back here and hope my memory is correct.

I have no intention of trying to fight Cordell Kusack. I’m a welterweight and he’s definitely a heavyweight. My hope is to somehow dash past him and get to that plywood door before he shoots my ass.

He must see me just before I draw even with him. As he raises his left arm, I collide with him. The flashlight goes flying. Kusack lets out a roar.

I’m still in the dark when I hear that first shot, echoing, and half-deafening me. He’s wide of the mark, but I don’t have much of a head start. When I burst into the lighted part where Kusack has been more or less living, it seems impossible that I could get that makeshift door open and get out before he brings me down.

I see the knife, still lying there with my blood on it. I dive for it and crawl behind the chair where I was sitting. Kusack fires a shot into the chair, and my luck holds out again.

There is only one option. Before he can try again, I rush him. Maybe it surprises him a little. I don’t know. All I know is that when I get to point-blank range, I go for his eye. The good one. The first time I’m a little wide of the mark, but so is his second shot. I only leave a gash along the side of his head. The next time, while he’s a bit distracted with the blood and all, I hit dead center. I try to drive that damn blade all the way through. I’ve never killed anyone before. It feels good, standing there with Ronnie Sax’s blood sticking to my feet.

He squeals like a stuck pig, falling to the floor with the knife still sticking out of the socket of what was his only good eye. I’m still not sure he won’t fight through the pain, and he hasn’t let go of the gun that’s still in his twitching right hand.

I run. I tear that plywood door from its makeshift hinges and scurry outside, free at last. It’s dark. My car is between my escape hatch and the river, but I don’t know where the keys are, probably on either the dead body of Ronnie Sax or the still live one of his brother. It occurs to me that he might have used my car to make a trip to Mary Kate’s house.

I reach into my pocket. Amazingly, my cell phone is still there. I run up the same ramp we came down a few hours earlier and don’t stop until I’m on the street, a good hundred yards away from the place that I thought a short while ago would be my last stop on this planet.

I call 9-l-1 and give them as good a description as I can of my location. The dispatcher is calm and cool. Half the police force has been looking for me. I can hear the sirens already. I tell her to tell them to hurry.

And then I call Cindy Peroni and tell her it looks like she’s going to have to take another rain check.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

X

T
he cops are there in less than two minutes. I’m hiding in the bushes, keeping one eye on the warehouse building where I left Cordell Kusack.

When I hear the sirens and see the blue lights approaching, I jump out and wave the first one down. And who should it be but Gillespie, my doughnut-devouring frenemy of many years.

“I should have known,” he says. “If there’s shit stirred up, you’re bound to be there with a stick in your hand.”

I explain, as quickly and succinctly as I can, what has happened. When I tell him and the other cops—there are three cars now, with more coming—that I think the Tweety Bird Killer is inside the warehouse building in front of them, it gets their attention. I also give them an address on the North Side where I think they might find a female body.

They wait another ten minutes before coming up with a plan of action, which consists of cordoning off the area and telling Cordell Kusack, via bullhorn, to come out with his hands up.

Then the SWAT guys take positions on both sides of the building. I’ve assured them that there is only one way in or out, but they have to see for themselves.

At last they make their move. They throw one of those flash-bang grenades inside and go tearing in right after it. I want to tell them that the flash part won’t have much of an impact on the now-blind if not dead Cordell Kusack, but I don’t want to butt in. I’m watching from a hundred yards away, which is as close as they’ll let me come. They’re in there for what seems like a long time, and I don’t hear gunfire.

I call Sally Velez and tell her she’s going to have to remake A1, and why. I tell her I’ll try to get there within a couple of hours. I take a few pictures with my iPhone camera of cops picking their noses. Gillespie tells me to stop. I tell him to go fuck himself.

By this time, half the town seems to be here. L.D. Jones has been in attendance since he left the football game in the third quarter. He’s still wearing his Virginia Union sweatshirt. A large contingent of Shockoe Bottom residents and revelers has made its way to the edge of the yellow police tape, sensing free entertainment.

Cindy is there maybe twenty minutes after I called. She gives me a venti-size hug and then gives me hell for trying to go it alone. I try to explain that I didn’t really plan to be abducted by maniacs. It just worked out that way.

When she stops yelling for a second or two, I lean down and give her a kiss and thank her for caring. She kisses me back.

Meanwhile the cops seem a bit confused. I learn, through eavesdropping and pestering, that Cordell Kusack is not inside the warehouse. Yes, they checked all over, with floodlights on. There apparently was no way to get from the first floor to the ones above, and the only life form they found on the first floor was the bullet-riddled body of Ronnie Sax, whose brother definitely was not his keeper.