The Legend of Kareem (13 page)

I closed my eyes. “I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t kept anything from you and I’ve never been to El Paso. I don’t know what El Paso has to do with anything, and I don’t care. It’s none of my business.”

A blast thundered in my ears. For a second, I was sure I’d been shot, and I waited for the pain to follow the shock. But I opened my eyes to see Carl slumping onto the steps in front of me, blood spurting from a hole in the back of his head. He blinked a couple times, a look of confusion on his face. His jaw moved up and down, trying to talk, but only rasps escaped his lips.

“What the fuck,” said Jed, pivoting toward Vanessa and raising his shotgun at her, who was holding her smoking pistol at arm’s length.

She seemed as cool as could be. With a scowl, she reached out and smacked the barrel of Jed’s shotgun down.

“Cut it out,” she said.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Jed said.

“I’ve had enough of his shit,” she said. “He been on me for weeks about this and that, always testing me. It was gonna happen sooner or later.”

“Christ, woman, you didn’t have to shoot him.”

At my feet, Carl gurgled and writhed. In a few seconds, he stopped and his head slumped to the side.

That weird desire to laugh bubbled up through me again. Laugh, or maybe crap my pants, or something.

Jed picked his shotgun up from the floor, brushed a bit of dust off the barrel, and wandered off into the kitchen. He came back a minute later with it slung over his shoulder and two beers pinched between his fingers. He handed a bottle to Vanessa.

“Hell of a mess,” Jed said. “I still can’t believe you did that. You oughta consult me before you go shooting anybody else.”

“I’ll clean it up later,” she said. As she crossed the room, she nodded at me. “I have an idea for you two. I can make a phone call in the morning and get both of y’all fixed up. Sit tight, and you’ll be good to go in a couple hours.”

Jed glared at her back as she walked away. As she closed the door behind her, Jed sipped his beer, belched, and said, “you shouldn’t have done that.”

Then he went into the kitchen and brought a chair back to the foyer, and placed it next to the front door. He sat, with his shotgun across his lap, and glared at me.

***

Omar and I went back to our room since Jed was now guarding the front door, but we didn’t sleep. I stared at the water-stained ceiling and punished myself over and over again for letting all this happen.

Maybe Vanessa was a good person, as Omar had said, but she was as much a lunatic as Jed and the newly-deceased Carl. Who would shoot their own brother, or husband, or roommate? I didn’t even know how those three were related.

Omar sat up in his bed. “I cannot believe I involved you in this. I am so terribly sorry.”

“You didn’t know. What matters now is that we get out of here safe, with all of our limbs intact.”

Omar gripped the bedsheets so tightly that his hands shook.

“We should leave,” I said. “Stick to the original plan and just go. Every minute we stay here is another minute one of these savages might decide to come up here and skin us alive. We can go out the window if we have to.”

Omar ran his hands through his wiry hair. “I am afraid of Jed. I do not think he will let us leave. If he sees us outside, trying to escape, he will shoot us. Maybe we should wait and find out what the idea Vanessa spoke of was. I still believe she can help.”

I thought about this, and it did seem like the only reasonable solution. For all I knew, Jed had moved from the foyer to the front porch and was now waiting for us to try to flee.

“Okay. But if she can’t come up with something good, then we’re out of here. We’ll just wait until Jed goes to take a crap or something, then run for it.”

An hour later, as the sun was rising, a knock came at the door. Vanessa poked her head in. “Told you I could get y’all fixed up. I got something for you, and I think you’re gonna like it. Follow me.”

We got up and followed her down the hall, Omar and I sharing a look that was some mix of hope and terror. Carl’s body was no longer sprawled on the stairs, but the smears and streaks blood and brain matter remained. Funny how desensitized I’d become to dead body spillage after seeing a few of these over the last month.

Vanessa led us to the kitchen, where a plastic rotary phone sat on a table. The phone was off the hook.

She pointed at it. “Go on, then.”

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is this Candle?” said a man with a strong Hispanic accent.

“Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

“You don’t need to know my name. Vanessa said you are looking to make a permanent trip down south?”

So he was some kind of coyote. “That’s right. Quickly and quietly.”

“One person, or several?”

“One. Just a friend of mine. I’m staying.”

“Then here is what you are going to do, amigo. You are going to drive to the city of Laredo, and then—”

“Can we do this in Brownsville instead?” Laredo was too far west. Brownsville got me closer to Susan Palenti, where I needed to end up. I still didn’t know how to find her, but that was a problem for later.

He paused for a few seconds and I heard some papers shuffling. “That will cost extra.”

“Okay, that’s fine.”

“So instead, you will go to South Point. It is part of Brownsville. You will meet me east of town, where Alaska Road ends. There is a pond there. I will be in a truck. You will bring me five thousand dollars, and I will take your friend across the border.”

My chest constricted. “Five thousand dollars?”

“This is what it costs.”

This sounded crazy. Delivering five grand to some voice on the other end of the phone. What the hell was I buying?

“Are you there?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Okay. Meet me there tomorrow evening, at sunset. Don’t tell anyone else you are coming, and that money must be in cash and in US dollars, do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Okay then. Tomorrow at sunset.”

He hung up, and Vanessa crossed her arms, grinning, looking pleased with herself.

“All good?” she said.

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

“What’s he charging you?”

“Five grand. I don’t have that kind of money, though.”

Vanessa sighed. “You best figure out how to get it. I’ve worked with this guy before, and he ain’t gonna take you if you show up with less than that.”

“I can get the money,” Omar said. “I can pay the five thousand dollars.”

I heard a creak in the other room, the sound of a recliner shifting. Then the sound of Jed groaning as he stood up. He appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, a grin on his face. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help but hear y’all talking about how you can get five thousand dollars. And I started thinking about how interesting that is.”

Omar gaped at me, open-mouthed.

“Beat it, Jed,” Vanessa said. “This don’t concern you.”

He stepped into the kitchen, raising his shotgun at her. “You know what, you fucking bitch? Since you killed my brother last night, I kinda think it does concern me. You brung these assholes into my house, and you’re giving them all kinds of special treatment and taking their side on everything. I’m sick of it.”

“Shut up,” Vanessa said. “Why don’t you go on and lower that shotgun before you do something—”

The shotgun went off, and Vanessa flew back across the room, a spray of blood misting the rest of us.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Omar stumbled over himself, knocking over a chair next to the table. He backed against the wall, trying to flatten himself against it.

I dropped the phone, wiped some blood from my eyes, and put myself between Jed and Omar.

Jed whirled around, pointing the shotgun at me. “Now, let’s talk some more about how you can get five thousand dollars. Tell me, right now, or you’re both going to go splat, just like that bitch dribbling blood on my kitchen floor.”

“Listen to me, Jed,” I said. “Please lower the shotgun. If you want money, we can get it for you. We just need to go for a drive into town.”

He lifted the barrel of the shotgun to the ceiling, stepped through the archway, and jerked his head. “Let’s go, then. I ain’t got all day.”

With my hands out in front of me, I eased toward the archway. Had the vibrant realization that Jed was going to kill both of us, money or no money.

I had to do something.

When I was close enough to Jed, I grabbed at the barrel of the shotgun with both hands and thrust it into his face. I heard his nose crack.

The shotgun blasted, and my ears rang instantly, like a shrill whistle rotating through the air. Bits of plaster from the ceiling rained down all around us.

Before he could recover, I thrust a palm into Jed’s chin, which knocked him back and to the side, against a window. His hand went through the glass, and he slipped, cutting himself deeper. Blood streaked his arm from the cut as he wailed and tried to pull his hand free from the jagged remains of the window.

“Omar, run!” I said.

We both bolted for the front door as Jed got to his feet.

Outside, I scrambled down the porch steps. Omar kept up, but I could hear him wheezing.

I eyed the collection of cars in the front yard, wondering if any of them might have keys in them. Or if any of them were even still running. Jed’s monster truck worked, and Carl’s motorcycle would, but those keys would be inside.

A shotgun blast echoed behind me, peppering holes all over the garage, a few feet to my left. I pushed Omar in one direction and intended to race in the opposite, to make Jed choose.

An impulse hit me, and I dashed to the garage. I caught Omar out of my peripheral, running east of the house. If Jed took off after Omar, he’d kill my companion. But if I could make him think I was going to go in after his drug stash, that should get the redneck’s attention.

“Get away from there, goddamn it!” Jed shouted, but his voice was like the whine of an airplane miles above in the sky.

I threw open the door to the garage, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next.

A man covered in streaks of dried blood, with his face a mess of bruises and cuts. He was wearing a gray cop uniform, with the words
El Paso Country Sheriff
emblazoned on the chest. No illicit drugs anywhere.

The man’s wrist was handcuffed to a pipe jutting from the wall, and in the other hand, he held a hacksaw, ripping it back and forth across the pipe. The metal on metal screeched, barely audible in my still-ringing ears.

He turned when I entered, his eyes shot wide open, and he thrust the hacksaw back and forth a couple more times until it finished sawing through the pipe.

He grabbed the length of cut pipe in his hands, raised it above his head, and bared his bloody teeth at me. “I’m free, you fucks! You’re all dead.”

He rushed at me, and I backpedaled as fast as I could, out the door, to where Jed was waiting for me. I ducked, and another blast of the shotgun came over my head and hit the sheriff square in the chest. He took one more step and collapsed into the dirt.

I changed course and dashed off in the direction I’d seen Omar run, but I couldn’t locate him anywhere in view. Nothing but yellowing grass, a few minor hills, and a smattering of trees. The morning sun was rising above the plains, casting an orange glow on the landscape around me.

I aimed for the trees. Ran as fast as my legs would carry me, thinking maybe I could climb up in one before Jed could get there, then I’d drop on top of him and wrestle the shotgun away. Or, he might spot me, then I’d have nowhere to run while he blasted me.

But then I saw the chalky gray of a gravel road cutting across the pasture and followed it to where it ran perpendicular to a ditch, with a small raised bridge. Below that raised section, a culvert poked out.

I dropped down into the ditch and found Omar crouched next to the rusted corrugated pipe of the culvert. His eyes were blazing, full of panic. He breathed in snatches, his hands clinging to the pipe.

“I thought you were dead,” he said. “I thought I might also be dead.”

“Not quite.” I lifted my head out of the ditch as Jed ran across the field toward the group of trees to the north of us. With no weapons, we couldn’t take him on directly.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll circle back to the house, find some keys, and make a dash for the truck. I don’t think that escaping on foot is a good choice.”

“What if Jed is at the house?”

“He’s in the field. But that’s why we need to go, right now, before he figures out we’re not there too.”

He didn’t move, and I saw the hesitancy in his eyes. I wanted to say
trust me
, but he probably still didn’t have faith in me. And did I have a right to ask that of him after he’d caught me lying about who I was?