Unleashed (34 page)

"Hi, I called a couple of days ago about some boats."

The woman behind the counter was sitting on a stool, and when I say sitting I mean swallowing with her ass.

"You didn't talk to me," she said

"I spoke to a man."

"What was his name?" She rolled her eyes just to make sure I understood she hated not only her job but also me.

"Joe."

"He's not in today."

"Do you think you could help me?"

"What do you want?"

"Boats. Joe said that he had some boats that could be inflated using a pump and that they would be able to hold the weight of three to four average-size people, approximately a thousand pounds total. He said they were good for whitewater rafting, something about them being easy to navigate in rough currents."

"I don't know." I waited for her to continue, but she just looked down at her nails.

"Is there someone here who could help me?" I asked with a really nice smile on my face.

She found a hangnail and pulled at it with her teeth.  "I'm the only person here," she told me as the skin ripped.

I couldn't help but grimace. "OK. When is Joe going to be in?"

"Not today."

"That part I got. Look, I just want to get these boats. Are you sure you can't help me?"

She rolled her eyes again and then turned around to look at some papers on the desk behind her. "Boats, right?" she asked.

"That's right."

"Joe left a note." I waited. She didn't turn around.

"And?"

"I'm reading it." She swiveled back on her stool and tried to give me an evil look, but the fat around her beady little eyes made her just look constipated. I tried not to hate her. Anyone as miserable as she was deserved my compassion. She looked back down at the note. "Says here he's got it all set up to have them sent over to you if you just pay." She looked back up at me. "It's a lot of money."

"I know how much it is." I pulled one of the envelopes out of my bag and began to count.

"You paying cash?" she asked.

"Yes." I answered looking up from the cash I was in the midst of counting.

"What do you need the boats for?" she asked right before popping a taffy into her mouth. I looked up at her. She was working her jaw hard, and I could just make out the muscles through the fat of her cheeks.

"Taking 20 girl scouts whitewater rafting in the Catskills."

"That what happened to your face? Was it a rafting accident?" I didn't answer her. "Seems suspicious to me you buying these boats with cash," she said through the taffy. I ignored her. "I said it seems to me that you wouldn't want to walk around with that much cash."

I ignored her again. She gave up, and I listened to her cheeks smacking together as I finished counting. I laid it on the counter but kept my hand on it. "I'd like a receipt, please."

She rolled her eyes again. "Fine." She reached for a receipt pad, but it was too far away. She was going to have to get off her stool. I realized it before she did. She kept reaching with her thick arm, her round fingers straining to extend.

"I don't think you can reach it," I said.

Her head whipped around to look at me. "I think I know how to do my own job." She went back to reaching for the pad. I did a terrible job stifling a laugh and snorted. She looked back at me, her face red with effort.

"Did you just make a piggy noise at me?"

"Excuse me?"

She eased herself off her stool. "People like you think you're so great." She muttered as she picked up the pad. It took her a minute, and both hands, to climb back up on the stool. She took her time writing out the receipt.

"Name?" she asked.

"Just write down the product I'm buying, the amount paid, and the date. You could put a note about the delivery if you wanted." She glared at me.

"I know how to do it."

"Then you know you don't need my name." She wrote out the rest of the receipt in silence. She ripped it off the pad, handed it to me, and gathered the money up.

"When can I expect the boats to be delivered?" I asked.

"Sometime today."

"Can you be more specific?"

"No." She smiled, pleased with how unhelpful she was.

On my walk home I decided it was time to talk to Bob. He was walking a block behind me. I stopped. He stopped. I walked toward him. He walked away. "Bob!" I called to him. "Bob, wait up!" He looked over his shoulder and stopped. He waited on the curb, out of the way of pedestrian traffic. "Bob, I'm glad you're here. I need to talk to you." He glanced around, probably looking for Bob. "I want this to be over. I've come into some money. I want to leave town. I want to make it out of this alive." He didn't say anything. "Look, tell Kurt," Bob flinched at my use of the mayor's first name, "that I'm going to get the gold from Charlene, and I will bring it to him on Tuesday night." Bob nodded. "Tell him I'll meet him in his office at eight, OK?"

"Ok," Bob said.

###

I
went back to my room and wrote a letter to Jackie. I explained why her husband died and why she was being blamed. I told her about James and what really happened. I wrote that I was sorry and hoped that this letter would do something to ease her pain. I signed it and dropped it in a mailbox. 

The boats showed up at 5:30pm. I'd told the man downstairs that a delivery for room 1864 was coming to the front desk, and he should call me when it did. He had smiled and nodded. When I went to pick them up, he was smiling at me. "Your delivery." He waved at the three boxes stacked next to the desk.

"Can I borrow a pushcart to take them up?" I asked.

He put a hand on the top box. "We don't usually accept packages in this manner. I mean for rooms that don't exist." I pulled out a fifty and laid it on the desk. He smiled, slid the bill into his pocket, and then went to get me a pushcart. He even helped me bring the stuff to my room. The boxes were heavier than I had anticipated, and I worried that Mulberry and I would have trouble carrying them. Blue could carry one, but that left two. I just hoped that Mulberry could handle two.

I ripped open the boxes and unfolded one of the boats. Made of reinforced rubber, it took seven minutes to blow up with a high-powered pump. The pump had a rugged, all-steel cylinder base with a six-foot hose curling off one end and a power cord off the other. "Speeds deflating too!" I read off the box. Blue sniffed at the boat spread out flat on the floor.

Mulberry showed up around six and stood over the boat with a big nervous smile on his face.

"Can Blue carry one?" he asked. Blue wagged his tail at the sound of his name. It thunked against the air pump.

"That's what I was thinking," I said.

"How much weight can they handle?"

"A thousand pounds each."

Mulberry circled the boat. "What about currents?"

"We should be able to make it."

"How do we attach them?" I showed him where the end of the boat had thick plastic loops to run rope through, then I showed him the rope we would run through it. "You ever used a boat like this before?" he asked.

"No. Have you?"

"No." We both stood staring down at the boat.

"Do you think you can take two of them with two things of gold, if I take the third boat with the jewelry, the other chest of gold, and Blue?"

Mulberry scratched at his stubble-covered chin. "I should be able to," he said.

We spent some more time looking at the boat."I got us life vests," I told him.

"Great." I found them in the box with the rope and pulled them out. They were black and sturdy looking. "This is insane," Mulberry said.

"I know," I said.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.

"Are you?" I countered.

"Yes."

"So am I."

###

B
lue's tail wagged wildly as we walked toward the park. He was carrying one of the boats on his back in a pack I bought for him at “The Canine Camper”, a store for dogs who camp. Mulberry carried a boat, the air pump, rope, and his life vest in his backpack. Mine held one of the boats, a life vest, and extra bullets. The straps hung heavy over my shoulders, pulling me back. Mulberry and I each carried an oar.

My gun was tucked into a holster Mulberry had lent me. He'd taught me how to load the gun and persuaded me to buy an extra clip and fill that with bullets, too. He didn't like the idea of letting me march into the mayor's office to blow his brains out, especially since my experience with guns began and ended with when I shot my molding.

But I didn't care. I knew that I could do it. I had this sick and unnatural confidence in my trigger finger. "Just squeeze it," Mulberry told me, "don't pull it." I repeated this to myself as we walked. Just squeeze it. The night was hot, and sweat pooled between me and my pack. We had the streets to ourselves. Everyone was at home with the air conditioning humming.

Mulberry had trouble getting into the drainage hatch with his bag on, and we shared a moment of suppressed laughter when he got stuck. Blue wagged his tail and barked. Mulberry and I both told him to shut up. Blue smiled at us and thunked his tail through the air.

Once inside, we moved quickly to the room with our booty. I dropped my pack next to Mulberry's and pulled my gun out. I put the extra clip in my back pocket. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"You don't have to do this," Mulberry told me. I opened my eyes and saw him watching me. "Taking the gold and gems is enough."

"It'll be OK. Just leave me a boat." Mulberry nodded, and I turned to go. Blue tried to follow me. "No boy. Stay here." I closed the door in his face. I heard him whimpering softly as I moved toward the room with the paisley couch.

I was surprised by how fast the memories rushed back at me when I opened the door. The place was in shambles. A splattering of blood arched across the floor from when the mayor had hit me with the sign. I tried not to think about how much I had lost since then. I turned the sprinkler and began to drop.

Lots of people kill other people every day. People get drunk and drive into other people. Men kill their wives; wives kill their husbands. Sons kill their mothers; daughters are killed by their fathers. Strangers kill other strangers for sexual satisfaction. Doctors kill patients because their hands slip. Humans are constantly dying because another human fucked up, or got angry, or horny, or bored, or drank too much.

Before that summer I had experienced one death—my father's. He died of cancer. First, he got so thin you could see his skull in his face and then he died. At his funeral, James held my hand and told me that it would be OK. He told me that our father was in a better place, which after watching the cancer eat him from the inside out was easy to believe, especially for a 7-year-old. Our father was gone. We would never hear his voice again or smell his smell. But he also would never yell at us. He wouldn't be around to be disappointed in us when we got to be teenagers. He would never tell us he didn't like our lifestyle or our decision-making. My father remains the father of little children. We never had a fight about curfews or grades. He pushed us on swings and helped us build sand castles. That's what happens when you die. You stop.

And now I was about to stop someone. Kurt Jessup's wife would never hold her husband's hand and feel him squeeze back. His mother was going to be forced to attend the funeral of her child. I was going to do this. I was going to make this happen. I knew that he deserved it, but what I wasn't so sure about was whether his mother did or his wife or his best friend, whoever that may be. Did he have a sister? Did it matter?

I pushed against the wall in the little room and felt it give. I walked down the long hall to the elevator and pushed the button. I held my gun in my right hand. I checked to make sure my extra clip was in my back pocket. My stomach churned. The elevator doors opened. This was it. I stepped inside, the doors closed behind me, and I began to rise.

I raised the gun at the doors that would open into the mayor's study. The elevator stopped. I heard the bookcases slide apart, and then the silver doors in front of me parted. The mayor was at his desk, his eyes were open, his mouth slack. I stepped into the room. He didn't move. I fired.

The first bullet hit his shoulder with a silent, sickening tear. His body twisted with the force, but he did not make a sound. I squeezed again, and this one thunked into a pile of papers on his desk, spitting out shreds into the air. The third shot struck him in the neck. A round, red wound slowly poured blood onto his chest. His eyes looked the same as a freshly caught fish—clear and dead.

I took a step into the room. It was very quiet. I looked at him and saw that there was blood on his left temple. He'd already been shot. The fucker was dead, but I wasn't the one that killed him. Shit.

I turned back to the elevator as it began to close. Sticking my foot out, I made it open. I heard voices on the other side of the mayor's door. I pushed myself up against the side of the elevator, letting it block me from view. The door burst open, I heard yelling, and then someone was firing bullets into the elevator as it closed.

Three bullets smashed into the back wall, leaving deep dimples in the metal. The doors closed, and the lift descended. Racing down the hall toward the small anteroom, I was breathing hard and thinking clearly. I jumped on the couch and climbed into the room above. The sign the mayor had used to mash my face lay on its side. I ran it under the couch. It stretched across the platform, and I hoped it would prevent it from lowering.

I barreled through the door of the treasure room. Blue was waiting for me, standing next to the hole in the floor that led to my escape. But there was no boat. I stopped breathing, and the room swam around me. There was no boat. Mulberry, that bastard, had taken all the treasure and all the boats and left.

I heard a loud banging, clicking, and then whirring sound coming from way too close. They were coming for me. They would catch me. They would kill me.

Blue whined and shifted on his paws nervously next to the hole. "Fuck," I said out loud. I walked over to him and rested my hand on his head. Glancing into the hole I saw my boat, floating on liquid black. In the boat sat three sacks and one oar.