Sawbones

Chapter 7

“Where the fuck you two been?” asks Jack when we get back to the car. The wind’s getting up again, rain speckling the ancient Ford’s windscreen.

Henry smiles. “Had to talk to an old army buddy.”

I climb back behind the wheel. “Did you have to dangle the poor bastard off the roof?”

Shrug. “Jogged his memory, didn’t it?”

He has a point. I put the car in gear — getting a nasty grinding noise — and pull out onto the road.

“Christ,” says Jack from the back seat, “not another one. We’re leaving a trail of bodies all over the place. . Someone’s going to notice!”

“Relax.” Henry lights up another one of his stinky cigars. “He’s not dead. Just needs to change his underwear. And now we got something the Feds don’t.” He smiles and opens the passenger window, letting the smoke spiral out into the cold night. “Seems that Winnebago had Iowa plates — Polk County — with some sort of little man on them. And up front, on the dashboard there’s a little statue of Jesus and one of them hula Elvises.”

He grins, saving the best for last. “And a bumper sticker: ‘In God We Trust’.”

Yup, it’s amazing what being dangled by the ankles sixty feet above a car park can do for a guy with a bad memory who doesn’t want to get involved.

Jack leans forward, all excited. “We gotta tell the cops. Call the Feds or something — they can chase down the plate!”

Henry takes a good long draw of his cigar. “Fuck the FBI.”

“Oh, come on, you gotta be kidding me! We want Laura back, don’t we? They got contacts and shit — computers. They can track him down!”

“And then what? Arrest him? Lock him away somewhere nice and safe where he’ll get three square meals a day, Oprah and Doctor Phil on the TV? Pert little nurse with big tits giving him fuckin’ sponge baths?” Another lungful of smoke. “Ain’t going to happen. You and me both know Laura’s already dead. Yeah, she looks like butter wouldn’t melt, but I seen her kick the shit out of guys twice her size. Mr Jones taught her all that stuff we learned in basic training — ninety ways to kill a guy with your bare hands. No way some weirdo grabbed her and bundled her off in his shit-brown Winnebago. He’d have to kill her first.”

Henry takes the cigar from his mouth and stares at the glowing red tip. “This ain’t a search and rescue mission, Jack, this is revenge. We’re going to find this Sawbones asshole and we’re going to take him back to New York. Where Mr Jones will make sure he spends the last few months of his miserable life in a shit-heap of pain.”

I point the car west on the Interstate, coaxing it up to a lumbering fifty miles an hour. Damn engine sounds like it needs the last rites and a decent burial.

It’s a shame about Laura — she was a good kid. Smart. Bit kooky, but nice with it. I’ve known a lot of guys like Mr Jones, and their kids are always assholes. They see their dads with all this power and people afraid of them and shit, and they think they deserve some of that too, just ’cause they’re the boss’s son or daughter.

Laura was always like a normal person. And she’d make you coffee if her dad was on the phone or something and you had to wait. I liked her.

But Henry’s right — if this Sawbones guy has got her, she’s dead.