The Four-Night Run (5 page)

9

C
RAPSTOWN

He cut into an alley, veered up a wide street, darted into another alley. He ran like an asthmatic kick returner with the legions of hell out to tackle him and the whole of Crapstown as his field.

The cityscape he ran through was barely lit, the odd streetlight here, the odd porch light there, a wall vaguely illumined by the blue-gray flicker of a television. But even in the shadows, Scrbacek could feel the changes as he made his way farther from the boardwalk. The windows became first barred, then shattered, then boarded up with planks of splintering plywood. The lines of houses were first pitted with the occasional empty lot here and there, then held as much empty rubble as a standing building, then were reduced to swaths where the few standing buildings looked like the tottering teeth of a decrepit old man too poor to afford his daily orange. The stench of decay grew ever stronger, the sounds grew more desperate: the wails of a siren, the clash of a metal can overturning, a moan, a cry, something like the shattering of bones.

He ran past whores with silvered tops and fishnet stockings, who hooted at him and laughed as if it were they he was running from. He ran past packs of men standing in the shadows on dark corners, men who danced uneasily from foot to foot and called out to him as he ran past. A long-toothed boy spied him and gave maniacal chase before surrendering the pursuit with a shouted expletive. An old woman without any teeth rocked on a porch and stared down as he ran by. Dogs, eyes glowing red, heads bowed menacingly, tracked him as he made his way. And rats, big as small cats, sometimes held their ground as he approached, rearing upon their hind legs, snarling.

Lungs bursting, muscles screaming, heart failing, Scrbacek ran blindly on, pushed by fear, careering here and there but always heading west, until his jammed leg wobbled and he swerved off course, hitting the wall, literally, smashing his face into brick. He spun until his back was against the rutted surface, and looked behind him. Nothing. No one. He took a long breath, coughed it out, took another. He grabbed his arm, and slid to sitting on the ground.

He was bleeding too much, he knew. He tried to take his arm out of the raincoat, but it was swollen grotesquely and limp with pain. With his other hand he unbuttoned the front of his shirt, reached for the collar of his tee, and pulled. A sharp pressure at the back of his neck. He pulled again, resisting with his neck, gave it a sharp yank, and suddenly the whole front of his T-shirt ripped free. He tied it into a loop and slipped it over his hand and up his arm on the outside of the coat until it sat above the wound. He looked around the ground and found a thick splinter of wood. He scraped the points off the ends, slipped the stick into the loop of cotton, twisted it, and twisted it again until the loop was brutally tight upon his arm. He packed the stick and knot into his armpit so it wouldn’t spin loose.

Tourniquet in place, he looked up and down the street. He wondered if maybe he had lost his pursuer, if maybe he wasn’t really being chased at all, wondered if the whole thing was indeed a mistake, despite the explosion and the fire and the bullet wound. But the screech of a cat jolted his bones, and he scrabbled up and staggered forward again. He was reduced by terror to his raw essentials: joints and bones and lungs, the pain in his arm, the stitch in his side, the demented cough, the need to move, to get away, to be someplace else, anyplace else, to run.

As he made his way past a stack of metal trash cans, a hand reached out and tripped him. When he hit the ground, he saw the hand retract and a large shadow emerge from between the cans. Before the shadow could approach any closer, he pushed himself back to his feet and kept on moving. Along one sidewalk a silhouette lifted up an arm to try to stop him and he put a shoulder into the figure, knocking it aside, so he could continue his run.

Finally, on a dark narrow street with trash strewn and its buildings reduced to rubble, exhaustion caught him by the scruff of the neck and threw him facedown onto the cracked cement. A stone stoop stood out from the rubbled brick of a ruined house, and he crawled into the dark corner between the stoop and the brick. As he twisted into a sitting position, something scurried away, its claws scraping the cement.

He grabbed at the air with his lungs, coughed, grabbed for more, and fought to beat back the fear. Calm yourself, he thought. You must have lost the bastard by now. Probably even lost him when you made that first cut off your street. And if the shooter is right there behind the ruined wall ready to take you out here and now, what the hell are you going to do about it anyway? So calm yourself. Make a plan.

The first plan that came to his mind was to get up and run, but as he tried to stand, a violent vertigo pounced, throwing him back down to the cement. No more running. Calm down. Make a plan.

He touched his wounded arm. The raincoat was now sticky and stiff with drying blood. He gently felt for the damage, and a pole of pain shot into his shoulder. He probed further and woke another pole of pain, and he shouted out despite himself. There were two wounds, one on either side. The bullet must have gone right through his arm; it wasn’t stuck in there to torture the muscle. Chris at Mount Olympus had been right—it was his lucky night. It was unbelievable how lucky he felt. So damn lucky he wanted to wring a neck. He pressed the wounds again, two poles of pain ripped into his shoulder, and he shouted out:

“I’m so fucking lucky!”

Stop, he told himself. Calm down. Make a plan. His arm was still oozing blood despite the tourniquet. He opened his shirt and ripped himself another swath from his T-shirt. He wrapped the white cloth as tightly as he could bear around his bicep, twisting the loose end into itself so it would stay in place.

Now what? He would need a hospital. But to walk into an emergency room in the city—the bright fluorescents, the nurses rushing back and forth, the other patients watching him, the doctor calling the police to report a bullet wound—to place himself in that much light now seemed impossible. Someone was out to kill him, someone who could blow up his car and burn down his building, someone with the gall to shoot at him in the middle of his own street. Checking himself into a hospital in this city seemed a certain way to give himself over to that someone. No, he needed to get away, far away. But how?

His hand jerked to his raincoat. He felt for it. Here, no here. He pushed himself up to his knees and patted the pockets. There it was. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. The screen lit, and he let out a great breath of relief as he pressed his finger to the reader.

Who to call? His first thought was of his mother, but that was the reflex of a scared little boy; there was nothing she could do for him from The Villages. And 911 was an impossibility, what with the corruption that riddled the police force like a ruinous case of clap. Some cop had probably already been paid off to issue an APB with his description, all in the hope of leading the killer to his quarry. He thought of Dolores, but how reliable was she, really? He thought of his friends, his colleagues, friendly beat reporters, but could come up with no one in whom he had absolute confidence and who had the wherewithal to help. His secretary talked too much. Ethan Brummel was dead. Jenny Ling had dropped a restraining order on his ass, not that he didn’t have it coming. And then there was Cirilio Vega, friend and fellow member of both the defense bar and Sweeney’s Sunrise Club, where a pack of criminal defense attorneys shared strategies and swapped stories each morning before court. They were as close as rival attorneys could be, but there was something slippery about Cirilio, and his clients all were criminals. Could he trust his fate to a man who spent his entire life working for criminals?

Thirty years of life, and Scrbacek could come up with no name he
absolutely trusted. His frustration rose within him and welled into a sob.

Calm down. Make a plan. He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his raincoat, went through his options one more time, and suddenly he knew. He found the number on the Internet.

“State Bureau of Investigation,” said the voice.

“I’m looking for Special Agent Stephanie Dyer,” he said, as softly as he could.

“I’m sorry,” said the voice, “but I’m showing her not on duty now. Is there a message?”

“This is an absolute stone-cold emergency. Can you give me her home number?”

“That’s not allowed, sir, but if it is an emergency, I can page her for you. Would you like me to do that for you, sir?”

“Yes. Of course, yes.”

“What is the nature of the emergency?”

“Someone is trying to kill me.”

“I see. Yes. That would be an emergency. And can you give me your name?”

“Scrbacek. J.D. Scrbacek. And please hurry.”

“Oh, Mr. Scrbacek. Of course,” said the woman, her voice quickening in recognition. “Stay on the line, please, and I’ll find her right away.”

He was put on hold. Music was pumped through his phone, nice cheery music with violins. He closed his eyes and listened to the music as if it were a lifeline, the sweep of the strings like the sweep of a rope as it flew in the air to save him. When he opened his eyes to catch sight of the rope, he saw the shadowy figures, three of them, walking in a line down the street toward him, three of them, walking in a line.

And the music in Scrbacek’s ear was suddenly as loud as a Sousa march played by a great brass band.

10

A
NSONIA
R
OAD

They had to hear it, the three walking toward him, the music was so damn loud.

Scrbacek pressed the phone tighter to his ear, and the crazy music grew even louder as the figures stepped closer. With a rush of panic, he ripped the phone from his ear, disconnected the call, and pressed the device against his chest to hide the light as he scrunched backward to fit as tightly as possible in the darkened corner of the stoop.

The three figures approached, their footsteps growing louder, their voices more distinct. Scrbacek couldn’t yet make out the words but could read the tone: young, arrogant, slow. He scrunched up even tighter and kept his breath as silent as his fear would let him, fighting the compulsion to cough.

Closer they came, closer.

The tall shadow was doing most of the talking, the short shadow was letting out the occasional “Yes” and “Oh man,” the middle shadow was saying nothing, but walking with a speed and purpose that forced the other two shadows to keep up their pace.

“They’re like great bowls of Jell-O, and it don’t take much of a joke to get her laughing and them two bowls going.”

“No, man, it does not.”

“Just a little joke, a three-priests-on-a-boat joke, and the Jell-O, it be jiggling and joggling.”

“That’s right.”

“Makes you want to go in with a can a whipped cream and a spoon and get you some, all that jiggling and joggling.”

“Oh man, yes, it does.”

As the three shadowy figures approached his spot, Scrbacek jammed himself as far into the corner as his bones would allow and held his breath. Except for his heart, which was thumping madly in his ears, he was totally silent.

“She’d be good-looking, too, Rita, yes, if it wasn’t for them teeth. I’d be afraid to stick anything near them teeth, she’d a bite it right off.”

“Yes, she would.”

“Like a beaver going after a big old oak tree.”

“Now you’re getting proud.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Scrbacek was sure they could see him, certain of it, wincing involuntarily at the recognition of his presence he was sure would come. But they kept walking and talking, coming ever closer, right up to the stoop where he hid. And then, quick as that, they were past.

He didn’t dare breathe yet, waited as step by step they moved past him, step by step, their footsteps dropping in tone, their voices growing lower, quieter. He couldn’t hold it any longer and slowly let out a breath, and as soon as he did, he heard the loud blaring of some techno-jazz.

He jerked when he heard it, sending pain crashing through his shoulder. It was his damn ringtone. Crap. He answered the call as quickly as his shaking fingers would allow, jamming the phone to his ear.

“Mr. Scrbacek? Are you there, Mr. Scrbacek? I’ve paged Special Agent Dyer, and she should be calling in shortly. We were disconnected somehow.”

He was shaking so hard he couldn’t answer, just listened to the phone, shaking, staring down at the cracked cement beneath him as if to do so made him smaller, less obvious.

“Mr. Scrbacek, are you there? Are you there?”

“Yes,” he said softly, “I’m here.”

“Can you tell me where you are, Mr. Scrbacek?”

When he looked up, there was a man bending over him.

The man was young and squat and said nothing. Behind him were the tall figure and the short figure. The man bending over him and saying nothing reached out, took the phone away from Scrbacek, canceled the call, and passed it to the tall figure.

“Oh man,” said the tall one, gazing down at the phone. “This sucker was just released. The Freak’s gonna love this.”

“Nice,” said the short one.

“The Freak, he’s gonna pay top dollar for this one, not like that old flip unit we took out from that van last week.”

The man bending over Scrbacek started searching through Scrbacek’s front pants pockets. When Scrbacek said something, the man ignored him, and when Scrbacek tried to grab the man’s arm to stop the search, the man just slapped his hand away before reaching in a pocket and pulling out his keys. He looked at them and handed them to the man behind him.

“Now what are we going to do with these? What the hell use are keys?”

The man bending over Scrbacek grabbed Scrbacek’s hip and rolled him over onto his side. Scrbacek landed on his wounded arm and screamed in pain. The silent figure checked Scrbacek’s back pockets and pulled out his wallet. He handed the wallet to the tall figure behind him.

“Now look at this, look at this,” said the tall man. “I told you stuff was happening on the street tonight. I told you we ought to get off our fat asses and find us some trouble, and now look at this. Cash, cards, the whole shooting match. We’re going to have us a time with this.”

“Is there an address?” said the short man.

“Of course there’s an address. What does that matter?”

“The keys.”

“The keys? Oh yeah, the keys. We got the house, we got the car, we got the cash. Oh, we’re going to have us a time. Let’s get what we can get and then go to Stinger’s, man, scarf some shrimp, have us a time. What else that dude got there, Jorge?”

The techno-jazz played, and the tall man answered the call, saying, “Hello, no one home,” before hanging up.

The silent man grabbed Scrbacek’s right arm and yanked up the sleeve of his raincoat, then dropped it and grabbed the left arm. Scrbacek screamed again in pain as the silent figure shoved up the sleeve on the left arm, grabbed hold of Scrbacek’s metal wristwatch band, flicked it loose, and pulled it off the wrist. He handed it to the tall man.

“What’s this? Tag who? You think we could luck at least once into a Rolex.”

“You’d think.”

“A Rolex would look sharp on my arm, yes, it would.”

The silent man stepped back and lifted up Scrbacek’s leg. He eyed the sole of Scrbacek’s boot, did a rough measurement with his hand, let the leg fall back to the cement. Then, still without saying anything, the man stood up straight, turned away, and started walking again down the street.

“Is that all?” said the tall one, hurrying now after the silent man. “No shoes, no belt, nothing else? What about the raincoat? Even filthy as it is, it’s got to be worth something.”

“At least something,” said the small one, following behind.

“Jorge, man, what’s the rush? I mean, we can’t just throw away these opportunities. Jorge, come on, man.”

They continued down the street, their voices growing less distinct until Scrbacek could no longer make out the words, just the tone: young, arrogant, slow. In the distance he could hear the techno-jazz ringtone play and then die, play and then die.

Scrbacek leaned back against the edge of the stoop and held his arm and gasped. He had never felt so lost, so scared, so hurt, so weak, so hopeless. It was as if even the air, as it burned his lungs with every breath, had betrayed him. He closed his eyes and tried to make it all go away, tried to force himself to wake up back in his apartment, whole and uninjured, ready to start another day as the brilliant legal hotshot with the whole city at his feet. But then his eyes snapped open. He thought he heard something. He thought he heard them, Jorge and his two lemmings, coming back for the raincoat, the belt, the boots. He pulled himself up to standing, fought the wooziness, looked down the street the way they had gone. Even though he saw nothing, he headed in the opposite direction.

He wasn’t running now. He was too tired, too weak and dizzy, in too much pain. He was walking, slowly, limping from his jammed leg, holding his injured arm tight to his chest, coughing and shivering with every painful step. When he reached a cross street he turned, and when he reached another cross street he turned again. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just going. At the next intersection he looked at the street signs to see if he could get his bearings.

Taft and Ansonia.

Ansonia?

It was somehow familiar.

Ansonia Road.

He had represented someone who lived on Ansonia Road, a man picked up on a weapons violation. Donatino Guillen. Donnie. The case had been a loser except for a minor search-and-seizure issue, which Scrbacek had built into a major problem for the County Prosecutor’s Office, allowing Donnie to plead to a gift—three years, suspended, with two years’ probation. He remembered Donnie Guillen because Donnie had been very grateful after everything and because Donnie hadn’t seemed the type to play with guns. He had been small, quiet, sweet, actually, without the aura of violence that usually attached to his gun defendants, which was peculiar because they had found on Donnie Guillen enough weaponry to arm a battalion: seventeen handguns, two automatic rifles, a hand grenade, a silencer. And he remembered Donnie Guillen’s address because it combined the number of home runs Babe Ruth had hit with the Babe’s New York home, the Ansonia hotel. When Scrbacek had mentioned the coincidence, Donnie had said, “Who’s Babe Ruth?”

714 Ansonia Road.

Scrbacek was on the five-hundred block of Ansonia Road. He started to make his way north, through the five hundreds and the six hundreds, staying in the shadows, hiding when a police cruiser slid by. The street, he could see, dead-ended at the bay, there was only so much farther he could go, and still it seemed like he would never get there. He grew weaker with each step. The dizziness increased, the coughing, the shaking. Twice he felt like he was about to faint before he caught himself. He wrapped the raincoat as tight around him as he could, but still he couldn’t stop his shivering.

He staggered on and on, and finally he was there: 714 Ansonia Road. And his hopes sank until they pooled at his feet.

An old tenement building near the very end of the street, dark and ruined, with all but one of the windows planked with plywood and this last showing not the faintest ray of light. Looming behind was an abandoned warehouse with bricked-up doors and windows. The warehouse’s lot was ringed with a fence topped by barbed wire. Trash was piled high outside the warehouse, sat in drifts along the fence, spilled out from beneath the house’s porch. The whole place was as forlorn as anything Scrbacek had ever seen. If Donnie Guillen had lived there once, he lived there no more, unless he had fallen lower than a rat. Still, without a choice, Scrbacek struggled to climb the steps. He crossed the rotted beams of the porch and banged on the door.

Nothing.

He banged again, harder and longer, feeling the reverberations in his injured arm, banged until his right hand was numb from banging. He leaned against the door and felt a wave of weakness fall through him. He closed his eyes and thought of sleeping, and his knees buckled and he barely caught himself. And then he heard a sound. From inside the building. A shuffling, growing louder, coming closer.

He banged again and shouted, “I’m looking for Donnie. Donnie Guillen.”

Slowly the door opened.

A face appeared out of the darkness.

“Mr. Scrbacek?”

“Donnie, thank God. I need . . . I need . . .”

“What are you doing here?”

“I need . . .”

“You’re bleeding. Let me call an ambulance.”

“No ambulance. No hospitals. No one can know where I . . . where I . . . They’re after me. They’re . . .”

“Mr. Scrbacek?”

And then he fainted, J.D. Scrbacek, fainted right into the ruin that was 714 Ansonia Road.

If you were looking from across the street, you would next have seen an unsettling sight. A man in a bloodied raincoat, lying on the doorstep of an all-but-abandoned house, his body half inside the black doorway, his legs on the porch. And then you would have seen those legs slowly disappearing, dragged into the building inch by inch, until their entirety was inside, and the door was closed, and everything was again as it should have been on Ansonia Road in the heart of Crapstown. Dark, deserted, despairing.

Desolation.