Angry Buddhist (9781609458867) (18 page)

 

H
ouse Cat has no experience as a kidnapper, but in the new economy a person needs to adapt. Take work where you can get it, punch the clock and don't ask questions. When he got the call, he contacted Odin because he knew the man was a stone killer, U.S. government trained. House Cat had done time for breaking and entering but he'd never snatched a human being. Didn't want to, either. It wasn't like he had qualms, just a weak stomach.

The plan: secure the target in the trunk, drive the target back to Odin's place, stow the target blindfolded in the abandoned camper in the backyard until the middle of the following week. Feed her. Give her water. Let her go.

Catch and release.

The lights are off and the place is dark. House Cat stands at the front window looking out over the street. Odin sits on the couch, having helped himself to a bag of potato chips. Nadine lies on the floor, hands tied behind her with rope, feet bound, a pillow over her head and electrical tape sealing her mouth. Diablo's muffled barks escape intermittently from the drawer into which he has been stuffed. House Cat figures he'll let the dog live. Doesn't want to shoot it and breaking its neck too risky, the little rat-catcher obviously borderline feral. In the glow of the streetlights, the nearby houses look like a stage set with their empty front yards, their dark windows. The neighborhood is middle class and the tan stucco single story homes are well kept. The one notable detail is the absence of vehicles in the immediate area. This is because several homes on the street are in foreclosure, so they are empty.

The men have been waiting nearly an hour. They want to make sure the place is completely quiet before they relocate Nadine.

House Cat heads into the bedroom and removes a thin blanket. Returning to the living room, he lays it on the floor next to Nadine. Odin puts the bag of potato chips down and grabs Nadine's ankles. House Cat takes her shoulders and they roll her on to the blanket and quickly wrap her up. Then House Cat rips two pieces of duct tape, each about a yard long. He hands one to Odin who seals the blanket at Nadine's feet. House Cat does the same at the head. Their parcel ready, House Cat takes a last look out the front window. The street is deserted. Grabbing one end of the rolled blanket, he signals Odin to take the other. The two of them lift Nadine. She pitches and bucks but Odin thumps a fist into her head. There's a groan from within the blanket and she goes limp. When they carry her out of the house the cooler air hits them. Arriving at the car, they lay the wrapped blanket on the driveway. Odin opens the trunk and the two of them bend to pick her up. Nadine rolls but they quickly arrest her movement, lift her and toss her in the trunk. House Cat slams it shut. He looks up and down the street. No signs of life.

Odin is behind the wheel and they cut north, toward Route 62. He stares straight ahead. House Cat wonders if he's nervous. He's strangely calm himself, everything having gone easy after the initial struggle. The Sonny Bono Highway is behind them and the desert spreads out on both sides. To the west a forest of giant steel windmills, arms whirling crazily in the moonlight. They climb into the hills, neither man talking. Houses dot the hillsides, a business strip up ahead with a Korean restaurant, a Pentecostal storefront church, a unisex hair salon and a service station. They drive by a couple of walled developments, only the roofs visible. The Bonnie Dunes trailer park, hookups available, drifts past the windshield. House Cat thinking about the down payment on the bed and breakfast.

The road is a sweet dream as they climb into the hills, smooth and easy. The high headlights of a truck are bearing down on them now, beams shining into their eyes. The snatch went without a hitch and this has House Cat pondering a little improvisation. He looks at Odin, staring straight ahead, gripping the wheel. Knows Odin is the right man for the job, his military background excellent training for this kind of hardcore stunt. Figures he might be amenable to upping the ante. The open-backed truck whooshes past, its piled-high cargo of quarry rock visible for a blink. The slipstream causes a barely discernible shudder in the car. Deeper into the hills the road curves and heads west.

“I was thinking,” House Cat says. “Maybe we find out a little more about this girl we got in the trunk, find out who her people are.”

“Then what?”

“Hold her for ransom.”

Odin nods. Sounds like a pretty good plan. Rolls down the window to let some air in the car. House Cat peers into the distance, sees the glow of a night business up ahead. Probably a convenience store. There was nothing to drink at Nadine's, House Cat thinking he might like some liquid refreshment. Better to stop out here. There could be Sheriff's deputies on Route 62 so best make straight for Antelope Valley once they hit the highway.

“Feel like a beer?”

Then the car swerves wildly, House Cat's stomach reels as he jerks his head to the side, sees Odin twisting the wheel, looks out the window and registers rocks the size of cinderblocks scattered across the road, then feels a sickening thump and hears what sounds like a gloved fist hitting a speed bag as the car lurches and shudders to a stop. Flat tire. Shit.

“Rocks must have fallen off that fuckin truck,” Odin says.

“Yeah.” From House Cat, like understanding the provenance of their misfortune makes it easier to deal with.

House Cat asks if there's a spare and Odin tells him it's in the trunk. The two of them get out and head to the back of the car. The stillness of the desert at night is unearthly. House Cat breathes deeply, gazes up at the sky, takes in the immensity, the quiet, clean air filling his chest, the man feeling nearly spiritual as he thinks about the boundless future so he's not prepared for the jagged scream he hears a moment after his partner opens the trunk. Grunts of pain and to his left Odin is imploding, collapsing, there's a blur then House Cat feels like he's been shot as Nadine is pressing a piece of metal into his side and the 75,000 volts liquefy his spine, the pain radiating like a demonic pin wheel, urine running down his leg, bowels loosening. House Cat has heard of neuromuscular incapacitation, but to experience it is something else altogether. Lungs immobilized, excruciating, can't inhale or exhale. Drops to the ground, smacks the pavement, the dull blow a relief compared to the sensation he just experienced. On his back now, neck stiff, eyes wide in shock, palms flat against the gritty roadway. Slowly, muscular control asserts itself. He can hear the other man's staggering footsteps and his curses. House Cat rolls on to his side and pushes himself to a standing position. Sees Nadine running, her dress a white smudge, toward the lights in the distance, tennis trained legs carrying her swiftly toward the store, it's yellowish lights, it's perceived safety. House Cat quickly realizes they did not tie her tightly enough and had they bothered to look through her pockets they might have found the Taser, thus forestalling the events with which they are now dealing. Berates himself for not remembering this simple procedure. Nadine, meanwhile, jackrabbits down the highway, her shapely form shrinking in the bright headlights. Odin pulls the stolen military pistol from under the seat. Nadine further away now, Odin giving chase on unsteady legs. House Cat follows at a slow trot, his muscles not having entirely recovered from the shock.

The convenience store looms in the distance like a Mars station, a lone single story structure glowing in a vast nightscape. Nadine dashes beneath a plastic sign mounted on a metal pole reading Super #1 Store. Her breathing ragged, she doesn't look over her shoulder. If she did she would see Odin closing the distance between them, hurtling through the dark, backlit by headlights, arms pumping, a gun gripped in his right hand.

The place is long and narrow, a refrigerator case packed with beer and soft drinks to the right and a counter to the left, two aisles of groceries perpendicular to the door. The wall behind the counter is stocked with liquor bottles. The place smells of disinfectant. The lone counterman a Latino in his forties. Seated on a high stool, overweight and tired looking, a birthmark the size of a nickel on his left cheek. Glances up from the copy of
Hustler
he's reading and stares at Nadine heaving, pulling a cell phone from her pocket. She tries to open it, hands shaking so violently it drops to the floor and skitters down an aisle then she's screaming in a voice like thumbtacks for the clerk to call the police. Yanked from his torpor, the man rises to his feet, shouts what's going on?
Call the police someone wants to kill me!
Nadine whirls and locks the door behind her. The counterman pulls out his phone, and is dialing 911 when the first bullet shatters the glass, catches Nadine just below her collarbone, sends her reeling toward the twilight. The counterman ducks out of sight as Odin's hand reaches through the broken pane, and
click
unlocks the door. Pushes it open, steps into the store, out of breath, raging. Nadine lies on the floor, a red stain spreading on her tennis dress, blood pooling around her, gurgling in her throat. Odin eases up when he sees the results of his first shot. He casually walks over and pumps two bullets into her chest. Then reflexively looks for surveillance cameras. Sees one mounted above the liquor wall pointed at the door. Knows he's going to have to destroy whatever it's feeding to, but figures he might as well blow out the lens, too. He's getting a bead on it with his gun when the counterman pops up like a jack-in-the-box with a sawed-off,
boom
, sonic, ear shattering through the store and Odin grunts in pain as the buckshot tears flesh off his left arm, neck and the side of his face. Glass splinters in the refrigerator case, beer, soda, gingko-infused iced tea shoot out of the perforated cans bathing the floor. Odin pivots toward the cash register, squeezing the trigger and puts two bullets into the counterman, one in the head, one in the neck, blood spurting backward baptizing the whiskey bottles red. The counterman drops like a bag of laundry. Odin looks at Nadine's prostrate form. Her right leg twitches and then she is still.

“This was not the fuckin plan.” House Cat surveys the damage from the door. His voice has sawdust in it now, the anxiety coursing through his body dropping the register as he tries to remain cool. Wheezing from the run. Eyes riveted on Nadine's body, he looks up, gasps when he sees Odin, the left side of his face like hamburger.

Blood drips to the just mopped floor where it shines brightly in the fluorescent glow. House Cat staring at Odin, not moving. Odin staring at House Cat.

“Whore fuckin tased me,” Odin says in a strangled voice, the shock having driven his register up an octave.

“She have a gun, too?”

“There's a dead guy behind the counter with a sawed-off.” House Cat peering over the counter, groaning, calculates the years a second dead body could add to a prison sentence. House Cat's future: a three-time loser looking at life. Wrong! It was death this time, lethal injection. A Niagara of curses pours forth. Odin receives them like an indictment. He rubs his bleeding arm, says, “What the fuck you expect me to do? Motherfucker's blasting like it's the road to fuckin Kandahar.”

“Clean the wound,” House Cat says, aggravated at the whole situation. Grabs a water bottle from the refrigerator, twists the top off, hands it to Odin who tilts his face and pours it over the torn skin.

“They got band-aids in here?” Odin asks.

“Band-aids won't do squat.”

“Ain't going to no hospital.”

House Cat pulls a bulky package off a shelf, throws it at Odin, who catches it with both hands. It's the size of a small suitcase.

“Diapers?”

“Put one on your head.”

“You want me to put a fuckin diaper on my head?”

For a moment, House Cat thinks if Odin has a problem with the suggestion he might just blow the dumb shit's head off, let the cops sort that one out. Nadine, the counterman, and Odin with his prison record, shotgun wounds and a bullet in his head. Good luck figuring out what happened. But Odin says nothing, just wipes blood from his eye with the heel of his hand. He jams the revolver into his belt.

“Half your face is torn off,” House Cat says. “It'll stop the bleeding.”

Odin is considering this when a pair of headlights slices through the night. Both men stop talking and stare at the road until the car moves past and disappears into the darkness. Then Odin rips open the package, pulls out a diaper and, after examining it from several angles, places it over his head with the crotch at the crown. He resembles a bloody Q-tip, but the soft absorbency of the diaper, snug against his leaking face, arrests the profusion of blood.

After a brief debate about whether or not to remove Nadine's body and dump it where they had originally planned, House Cat steps over the recumbent corpse of the counterman, averts his eyes from the lifeless face, and opens the cash register. Grabs the bills and shoves them in his pockets. Tells Odin they need to make it look like a robbery. Odin demands half the money now. Exasperated, but not wanting to create additional problems, House Cat counts it, singles, fives, tens, twenties, and hands a wad to his bandaged partner. Tells him they need to clear out before another customer shows up. Odin shoves the bills into his pockets. Steps behind the counter, spots a VCR. Presses ‘eject' and removes the tape. Then he aims the gun at the security camera and fires. As pieces of the obliterated camera rain to the floor, he grabs a fifth of Southern Comfort from behind the counter and they're out the shattered door.

The headlights of the Impala throw off a long glow creating stretched shadows as House Cat and Odin make for the car. House Cat asking Odin if he's going to be all right and Odin, the blood-soaked diaper clinging to his head, swigging from the Southern Comfort, tells him to shut the fuck up and not worry about it. House Cat takes the vinegar as a positive sign.

Because the headlights are shining in their eyes, it takes a moment for the pair to realize someone is standing next to the car.