The Devil_s Garden

THIRTY-NINE

There were four vehicles in the parking lot. A pair of Fiestas that looked like rental cars, a ten-year-old van, and the blue Ford.

Michael walked slowly over to one of the Fiestas. It was parked three spaces away from the Ford. He glanced quickly at the Ford and saw that the man sitting in the driver’s seat was black, perhaps in his twenties, earbuds in his ears. He had most likely seen Michael emerge from Room 119, but had paid no attention to the man in the baggy raincoat, tweed hat, and sunglasses. He had his eyes closed, his head bobbing to the music.

Michael stepped over the low guard-rail fence behind the cars. He searched the area near the expressway for something, anything. He found a short length of steel rebar, the material used to strengthen concrete. He picked up the pipe, slid it into his waistband in the back, then dropped to the ground behind the Ford. He waited a full minute. The man in the car had not seen him in the rear-view or side mirrors. Michael crawled along the ground, along the right side of the Ford, then circled in front of the car. When he reached the left front tire, he took out a small piece of the broken mirror. He had wrapped it in a washcloth, but it had cut through the fabric. His hand was bleeding. He began to cut along the tire, right at the rim. After a minute or so, he heard the air begin to leak out.

Two minutes later, with the tire almost flat, Michael crawled to the back of the car, stood up, and made his way back over to the Fiesta.

When he reached the car, he dug into his pocket as if he was fishing around for car keys. He glanced over at the driver of the Ford. The man looked over. Michael pointed to the front tire on the Ford, mouthed a few words. The man just stared at him for a few moments, then rolled down the window.

“You’ve got a flat tire.” Michael said. He knew the man could not hear him.

The man opened the door. He was about Michael’s size, but younger. He was dressed in green camouflage pants and a black hoodie. Michael knew that once the man got out, he would only have a few seconds to act.

The man stepped out of the car, pulled the headphones out of his ears. He regarded Michael with suspicion. “What?”

“Your front tire,” Michael said, doing his best southern accent, the word tire coming out tar. “It looks like you’ve got a flat.”

The man considered Michael for a few more moments, then walked around the open car door. “Goddamn it.” He stood for a few seconds, hands on hips, as if willing the tire to inflate. He then reached into the car, extracted the keys from the ignition. He walked to the rear, opened the trunk. Michael sidled up.

“You want me to call Triple A or something?” Michael asked. “I got the Triple A.”

“I’m good,” he said, with a look that said back the fuck off.

At the moment the man turned his back on Michael, Michael slipped the pipe out of his waistband, and brought it down on the back of the man’s neck, pulling back at the last second. This was far from his area of expertise, and he didn’t want to kill the man. It was a mistake. The man grunted on the impact, and staggered away a few steps, but didn’t go down. He was strong.

“Motherfucker.” The man reached behind his head, saw the blood on his fingers.

Before he could turn around to face him fully, Michael stepped in, raised the pipe again, preparing to deliver a second blow, but when he brought his arm down, the man raised an arm to block it. He was fast. The man then wheeled around, shifting his weight, and caught Michael on the side of the face with a glancing blow. Michael saw stars for a moment. His legs buckled, but he maintained his balance.

When he recovered he saw the man reaching into the trunk, coming back with a handgun.

There was no time to react. Michael brought the pipe up and around as hard as he could. He caught the man on the bridge of his nose, exploding it into a thick mist of blood and cartilage. Michael saw the man’s eyes roll into his head. His legs sagged, gave out. He fell backwards, half-in and half-out of the trunk. The gun, a small-caliber revolver, fell from his hand onto the pitted asphalt of the parking lot.

And it was over. The man did not move.

For some reason, Michael was frozen with inaction. He was afraid he had killed the man, but soon got over it. He realized that he was standing in a motel parking lot, within sight of the avenue with a bloodied steel pipe in his hand, and a man’s body laying in the trunk of a car in front of him. He gathered his wits, his strength. He threw the pipe in the trunk, picked up the gun, stuffed in it into his pocket. He glanced around, turning 360 degrees. Seeing no one watching him, he pulled the spare tire and the jack out of the trunk. He then lifted the man’s legs, and maneuvered the body fully into the trunk. He closed the lid, grabbed the keys out of the lock.

Ten minutes later, with the tire changed, he got into the car. He found that he could not catch his breath. He glanced around the front seat. An MP3 player, a half-eaten Whopper, an unopened forty-ounce. The smell of cooked meat and blood made his stomach churn.

He opened the glove compartment. A pair of maps, a pack of Salems, a small Maglite. Nothing he could use. What he needed was a cellphone. He looked in the back seat, in the console. No phone.

He grabbed the keys out of the ignition, got out of the car. He walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk. The man had not regained consciousness, but his face looked all but destroyed. Michael reached in, touched the side of his neck. He found a pulse. He began to pat the man down, searching his side pockets, his back pockets. He found a small roll of cash, a small bag of marijuana, another set of keys. But no phone. He tried to turn the man onto his side, but he was heavy, and a dead weight. He tried again. He couldn’t budge him.

Suddenly, the man began to moan. Michael reached further into the trunk, retrieved a long steel crowbar. He slipped it beneath the man, began to roll him over. The man coughed, spitting blood into the air.

“The fuck, man…” the man managed. He was coming to. And getting louder. Michael reached into the pocket of his raincoat, got out the now bloodied washcloth. He rolled it into a ball, stuffed into the man’s mouth.

Michael then went back to his task of prying the man’s body onto its side. After a few more tries the man rolled over. Michael reached into the pocket of his fleece hoodie, and found a cellphone, along with a few hundred in cash, and an ID that identified the man in the trunk as Omar Cantwell. Michael took the phone and cash, slammed shut the trunk, got back in the car.

With his hands surprisingly steady, considering what he had just done, what he was about to do, he opened the phone, punched in the numbers, and called Tommy Christiano.

Tommy fell silent. Michael knew enough to wait it out. His head throbbed, his eyes burned.

“Is he dead?” Tommy asked.

The truth was, Michael had no idea. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

He had told Tommy everything, beginning with the phone call from the man called Aleksander Savisaar.

“You’ve got to come in, man.”

“I can’t, Tommy.”

“You have to. This is getting worse and worse. How long do you think it will be before Powell adds it up?”

“This is my family, man. We can’t call in the cavalry. Not until I know the play.”

“You can’t do this alone.”

“It’s the only way.”

Tommy quieted again. Michael glanced at his watch. He had three minutes to get back inside the motel room.

“Powell just called here,” Tommy said. “She was asking about Abby.”

“What? Abby? Why?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

Michael tried to anticipate the course of the investigation. “What did she ask?”

“She asked about where Abby worked. About where she used to work.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her the truth,” Tommy said. “It’s not like she couldn’t get the information elsewhere.”

Michael tried to process it all, but everything seemed to bottleneck.

“What are you going to do?” Tommy asked.

Good question, Michael thought. “I’m going to go back into the room and wait for the call. Then I’m going to my house.”

“You’ll never get there in thirty minutes.”

“I’m going to try,” Michael said. “And Tommy?”

“What?”

“Promise me you’re not going to make a move.”

Tommy took a moment, perhaps weighing all the odds. “I’ll meet you.”

“No,” Michael said. “Look. I’ve got this phone. Have you got the number on that end?”

Michael could hear Tommy scribbling on a pad. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

“Okay. Just put your ear to the rail and call me the second you know something. If Powell gets any closer, you call.”

“Mickey,” he said. “You’ve got to -”

“I know, man. I know.”

Michael closed the phone, put it on vibrate, slipped it into his pocket. He listened. There were no sounds coming from the trunk of the car.

He looked into the rear-view mirror. The sight he saw there unnerved him. His face was dotted and streaked with blood, slightly swollen and bruised. He reached into the Burger King bag, pulled out a handful of napkins. He opened the forty-ounce, dampened the napkins, and did his best to clean his face.

He looked again. Clean enough. His ears were still ringing from the blow he had taken to the side of his face, his heart was pounding, his head ached. He said a silent prayer, put his hand on the door. He had sixty seconds to get into the room. He prayed his watch was accurate – that Kolya’s watch was accurate – and that he had not missed the call. He opened the car door, got out.

“Put your hands where I can see them!” the voice behind him shouted.

Michael spun around. Flashing lights dazzled his eyes.

He was surrounded by police cars.