the Plan (1995) (20 page)

Ryan knew that each time he cooperated, he was just moving closer to his own death. Tony leaned down and tried to open the briefcase. The originals were inside. Once Tony found them, it was over, but the combination locks were set and it wouldn't open.

"How do you get this open? What's the combination?" Tony asked.

"I don't remember," he said, lamely. Tony turned the gun at the case and fired. The briefcase blew open and three videotapes rolled out on the ground.

Tony held them up and looked at them.

"This everything?"

"No, I made copies."

Tony was smiling at him, and then he put the tapes on the ground and stomped hard on each one, shattering the cassettes. He pulled the tapes apart and unwound them. Ryan considered charging him while both of his hands were busy with the broken cassettes, but Tony read him again and pulled the gun up.

"Nothing says you gotta die here, Mr. Bolt, 'less you make a mistake." New York Tony took out a cigarette lighter and set fire to the tapes. They didn't burn at first but finally started to blacken and curl as the small flame licked at the edges.

"Know what I think?" Tony said as the tapes were smoldering between them.

Ryan's body felt weak.

"I think this is the whole deal, right here. I don't think there's any more copies."

"You're wrong," Ryan said.

"Turn around, Mr. Bolt."

"What're you gonna do?"

"I'm just gonna ask you to face the other way while I get outta here," Tony lied, thumbing back the hammer o
n t
he .22, getting ready to do the kill shot, wishing he were back in the West Jersey Cattle and Meat Packing Company where he could work close, feeling the heat of the animal against his leg. He liked doing his disco shots while the big bovines stood, waiting. But this guy was quick, so he kept his distance.

"Come on, turn around," he ordered.

Ryan knew he was out of time. He turned, planting his right leg, then pivoted back and hurled the turn indicator at New York Tony, who saw it coming too late. It hit him above the right eye. Tony fired prematurely. His first shot went wild; his rhythm was off. Ryan was scrambling for the trees and Tony fired a second time, hitting Ryan in the left thigh. A large chunk blew out of his leg, causing him to spin around and land on his back in the wet leaves. In a flash, Tony was upon him, wiping the blood from the small gash over his right eye. He held the .22 on Ryan.

"We're gonna skip the closing prayer, asshole." He thumbed the hammer back, pointed the gun at Ryan's head, moving the sight up so it was aimed at a spot between his eyes.

Then New York Tony's head exploded.

Red mist, bone, and original thought flew into the air and rained down on Ryan, a wet salad of destruction. For a horrible moment, Tony's headless torso was still standing over Ryan, the gun gripped in its hand. And then New York Tony made his last cool disco move. His left leg buckled and he spun around in a tight circle and fell sideways, landing two feet to the right of Ryan.

Ryan felt numb all over. Then he saw movement in the trees and a stocky, middle-aged man moving slowly toward him. The man was wearing a Hawaiian shirt under an overcoat. He had a huge .357 Magnum in his hand and a chewed-up cigar wedged in the side of his mouth. He came over and looked down at Ryan.

"Hi, I'm Kazorowski. You looked like you was in need of a dust-off," the grizzled ex-fed said.

Chapter
26.

DR. JAZZ

KAZ GRINNED AT THE HEADLESS CORPSE. "TONY, YOU'RE beautiful, babe. . . ."

Ryan tried to focus on the big man in the Hawaiian shirt, green and purple palm trees strobed on yellow Dacron. Ryan was bleeding badly as Kaz looked into the wound and whistled.

"You're missing a pound a' hamburger and a quart a' ketchup. We gotta get you fixed up, then I'll come back here an' take care a' this hard-on." He grabbed Ryan by the elbow and helped him up.

Heavy arterial blood started to ooze. Kaz got him in the back of the station wagon, stripped off his Hawaiian shirt, rolled up the florid monstrosity, and tied it above the wound. He looked around in the dirt for something to make a tourniquet and found the turn indicator that Ryan had thrown at Tony. Kaz stuck it through the knot and twisted it.

Ryan was gritting his teeth and felt himself starting to go into shock.

"Let this loose every minute or two. I know a guy in Trenton who can fix you up." Kaz put on his overcoat and got behind the wheel of the stolen wagon and pulled out, leaving his tan rental behind.

The "guy in Trenton" was an ancient, stringy black man named Dr. Jazz. He was in a ghetto wood house with boarded-up windows that seemed to be growing out of a bed of broken household appliances. Dr. Jazz had an Adam's apple the size of a handball. He was shaved bald and his black dome glistened. Bicuspids flashed in 24-carat gold. His black eyes were always laughing.

"I'm sittin' here feelin' the jazz and along comes an ugly fed name a' Kaz," he intoned, grinning and showing more shiny yellow metal. His voice was high and reedy with a singsong West Indies lilt. He was looking at Ryan in the back of the wagon. "Man, you be comin' real close t' glory. So come on in, tell Dr. Jazz the story."

Ryan was getting cold--he assumed, from loss of blood. He leaned up on his elbows, shivering as he looked at the black man standing on the porch with rotting wicker furniture sagging behind him.

"Ryan, this is Dr. Jazz," Kaz said. "He's gonna sew you up."

The old man grinned wider, showing two holes in his lower bridge.

Ryan looked over at Kaz. "What kinda doctor?"

"Dr. Jazz has zipped up more than one outlaw an' more than one lawman. Any time a man's got a hole in him, he thinks it's better not to report,
. D
r. Jazz has the pizzazz."

"I put mor'n one stitch on yer tired, ugly ass," the doctor said. "Bring him inside 'fore he pumps hisself dry."

Kaz pulled Ryan up out of the back of the wagon and threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. He lumbered up into the old man's house, across the porch, stepping over a sleeping cat, into the tattered front room.

"Bring you back here where we got the big mirror and set ya upright under the big light," the old man rhymed to his bleeding patient.

The guest bedroom was a doctor's office. There was a steel medical table, immaculate under an enormous surgical light. There were medicine cabinets and steel tables;

syringes in plastic wrappers were laid out on a white towel. A drug cabinet full of metal-topped bottles was on one wall. Ryan took some comfort from the equipment in the room.

"Kenetta," Dr. Jazz called out.

In a few seconds, a beautiful black woman, about twenty-five, with her hair braided in dreadlocks, moved into the room.

"Hey, Kaz, you look better than the last two times you was here."

"Kenetta, this is Ryan Bolt. Kenetta is Dr. Jazz's daughter."

She looked at Ryan for a beat while Dr. Jazz scrubbed up at a big sink in the adjoining bathroom. Then she leaned down and looked at the wound.

"Jeez, what did this?"

"Twenty-two dumdum," Kaz said.

"Come on, chile," Dr. Jazz yelled from the bathroom where he was scrubbing up. She took a green surgical smock out of the sterile wrapping and moved over to her father and opened it.

Kaz looked at Ryan, who was still not convinced. "Dr. Jazz was a surgeon in Kingston, Jamaica. He had some political trouble in the seventies and had to leave. The trouble chased him and he wasn't able to get licensed in this country. He knows what he's doing. Believe me, you don't wanna go to the hospital. Mickey will find you there."

Ryan was too weak and in too much pain to wonder who this huge, disheveled man was, where he had come from, and how he knew about Mickey.

He watched Kenetta get into her surgical gown and pile her braided hair up under a green paper cap.

`Think we better put da boy to sleep," Dr. Jazz said. Kaz nodded. "I'll be back once I take care of Tony." Kenetta moved to Ryan and stood over him. "This i
s e
ther. We don't have lidocaine, but I have Adrenalin her e a nd I'll monitor your vital signs. I'll bring you up if I have to. I'm sorry, but that's the way we do it."

"Shit," Ryan said, thinking he was a long, long way from the U
. C. L. A
. Medical Center with its pastel rooms and hermetically sealed breakfast trays. She poured the ether on a sterile cloth and held it under his nose. Dr. Jazz cut away the rest of his pant leg and studied the wound.

"Those dumdums sure do make a fucking mess, don't they, sugar?" he said, less poetically, as Ryan slipped under.

It took Kaz twenty-five minutes to collect what he needed. He also stopped and bought a flannel shirt at a surplus store.

He got back to the clearing in the stand of cypress trees at about eleven A
. M
.; he dug the hole in a ravine fifty feet behind the tree line. He worked for almost three quarters of an hour with a shovel he'd found in Dr. Jazz's garage. Finally, he dragged the Jersey killer over and rolled him onto a blanket. He ripped open the bag of lye Tony had bought and poured it over the body, closed the blanket, then powdered the top. It was time for the last rites.

"Dear Lord," he said in mock seriousness. "Blessed are the truly unwise for they bring hope to those destined to pursue them! Amen." Then he kicked the powdered burrito containing New York Tony into the shallow grave.

Chapter
27.

WHILE RYAN WAS STILL IN RECOVERY AT DR. JAZZ'S
house, Kaz had rented a small room in a hooker hotel in
Trenton called the Blue Rainbow. He had learned long ag o t hat hooker hotels made great hideouts because the des k c lerks and the staffs had no inclination to talk to the cop s o r anybody else, for that matter. Money was the only language anybody spoke. He had prepared the dingy, threadbare room, bringing the medication that Dr. Jazz ha d p rescribed, along with clean sheets and blankets he'
d b ought that afternoon in a department store. He als o b ought an ice chest and four six-packs of Gatorade to restore Ryan's fluids and electrolytes. He bought two six -
packs of Coke for himself. He put all the provisions in th e r oom.

He picked up Ryan from Dr. Jazz at twelve-thirty A
. M
. Ryan was still out of it, mumbling incoherencies as Kenetta and Dr. Jazz helped get him into the Nova rental that Kaz had picked up that afternoon.

"Ain't gonna be much fun for a while," Dr. Jazz said. "He lost half of his adductor longus and I hadda rebuild his iliotibial tract. . . . I sewed what's left of the adductor to his vastus lateralis. He gonna be gimpin'."

"I'm gonna have to put this on my account," Kaz said, "but I'll get it to you."

"I don't work for cash," the old man said, the handball bouncing up and down in his stringy neck. "You watch for infection and give him dem antibiotics till they all gone."

He watched with old eyes as Kaz kissed Kenetta goodbye, then got behind the wheel and drove Ryan away into the moonless night.

They arrived at the Blue Rainbow Hotel and Kaz pulled around to the alley in the back and parked. He had already unlocked the fire door. He got Ryan out of the seat and supported him so that he wouldn't have to walk on his damaged leg. Kaz struggled to get Ryan up to the second floor and down the hall. He passed a heroin-ravaged hooker with striped orange hair, who smiled at Ryan through broken teeth.

"Lookin' fo' some good times, baby? I buff yo' pink helmet, make yo' Johnny feel so thce. . . ."

"Why don't we wait till he stops bleeding, sugar?" Kaz said pleasantly, wondering if she was blind or just brain-dead. Kaz got Ryan into the room and onto the bed. He locked the door and put a blanket over him.

"Z0000 nooth. Luvvvv wingggg," Ryan said.

"You're very welcome," Kaz responded and he went to the cooler and popped open a cold soda, sat down, and looked at Ryan, who had already drifted back to sleep.

The Alos had put Ryan Bolt up on waivers and Kaz had claimed him. He still didn't know why or how he fit the puzzle.

While Ryan was lying in the hooker hotel unconscious, Lucinda had dressed and waited for New York Tony to come back. At eleven o'clock, it was certain something was very wrong. Her brother had been stomping around downstairs and had started using the phone. She had tried to call Ryan at the Cape May Inn on her private line, but there was no answer. She had gone downstairs and move d q uietly into the living room so that she could overhear her brother in the kitchen.

"Where the fuck is he?" Mickey was saying into the phone. "Look, not on the phone, okay? I think we gotta figure it didn't happen. I'll talk to you in an hour." He hung up and spun around and caught his sister standing in the living room ten feet behind him, listening.

"Whatta you doing?" His eyes had that same shiny, glazed-over look she remembered from the park, twenty years ago.

"I just came down to get something to eat."

Mickey moved quickly, covering the short distance between them in less than a second. She tried to turn and run, but he grabbed her arm, spun her, and held her in a vise grip by both wrists.