The Man Who Cheated Death

Chapter 18 Monkey Toes

It had all happened so quickly.

“Do you have a map?” the driver of the van had asked the cabbie. He wore a gray uniform, a hat, and black wraparound shades. “I’m lost.”

“Oh, yes. I have a wonderful map!” the Iranian cabby said enthusiastically, slipping the driver a spiral-bound street guide through a crack in his window.

“Thanks. I’ll give it right back.”

“Take your time,” the cabby said.

Lifting the front of his shirt, the driver had drawn a gun and stuck its barrel to the window. There had been a loud Pop! and the cabby had lurched forward on the wheel.

Crystal had lost it. Only moments before the cabby had told her about a cereal commercial his six year old daughter was starring in. He wanted her to be on TV, then the movies. The United States was a great country, he proclaimed.

The driver pulled her out of the car at gunpoint. It was the same crazy killer who’d attacked them in the desert.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Crystal begged.

Death dragged her across the street. Opening a sliding door on the side of his van, he shoved her into the darkened interior, where she landed face-first onto an enormous pile of sheets that smelled like paint. Straddling her, he snapped a handcuff around her wrist. He was talking under his breath, whispering obscene things about her breasts and the sweet curvature of her ass, and Crystal thought Please God, Help me.

Death pulled her up and handcuffed her wrists around the top shelf of a metal rack that was bolted to the ceiling. Forced to stand on her tip-toes, Crystal got a good look at him: he was her father’s height, a flat nose, and had the strangest skin she’d ever see on a man, his face smooth and creamy white. He produced a nylon stocking from his pocket and gagged her.

He climbed up to the front and got behind the wheel. Turning the radio on, he burned rubber down the street. At each traffic light, he glanced in his rear view mirror, watching her.

“Having fun, little girl?”

Crystal waited until he was watching the road before she gave the handcuffs pinching her wrists a look. They were standard issue Smith and Wesson, nothing a bobby pin wouldn’t open. Except her pins were in her purse on the floor. When he wasn’t looking, she slipped off both her shoes.

Thank God she rarely wore socks. Working in unison, her two big toes unzipped her purse, then nimbly picked through her stockpile of gum, mints and hair clips. Houdini had taught himself how to untie complicated knots in pieces of rope using his toes. Her father had refined the technique so he could hold lock picks between his toes and open doors. Crystal wasn’t that adept, but she could use her feet as well as most people used their hands.

“Hey — what are you doing!

Death ripped off his shades, his eyes popping wildly in the rear view mirror.

“I’m talking to you, sweetmeat!”

He did not sound like the same person. Like he had a demonic amplifier in his chest.

“Go... hell,” Crystal mumbled through her gag.

With her toes she lifted her open purse a foot off the floor and shook it. A dozen pennies and a single bobby pin tumbled out. Pressing down with her big toe, she made the bobby pin stand on end, clenching it before it fell to the floor.

They were coming to a red light. Crystal saw Death shift in his seat as he slowed the van down. She jammed her right heel against the edge of the sliding metal door that separated them.

Death hit the brakes hard. Throwing the van into park, he jumped out of his seat and came for her. Crystal viciously kicked the sliding door, trying to catch him with it.

The door flew by his face, missing it by a fraction and shutting with a resounding bang! Crystal heard him laughing heinously on the other side and shrieked through her gag.

“I’m going to mutilate you!”

Death tried to open the door. When it did not slide free, he kicked it. Suddenly he was pounding his fists against it, and Crystal realized the door had locked itself.

“Rock and roll!” she screamed through her gag.

Lifting her foot up to her face, her right fingers plucked the bobby pin from her toes.She twisted it into proper lock-picking shape while trying to brush away the grime it had attracted in her purse. If the pick wasn’t clean she could jam the lock and permanently screw herself.

Her shoulders were going numb, and she stuck the pin into the keyhole and wiggled it around the ratchets and steel pins. Finding the sweet spot, she pressed as hard as she could in such an awkward position.

The cuff sprung open, freeing her.

Death’s fist had turned purple from striking the door.

THE KEY! his dark mind screamed, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE KEY!

He turned around, seeing first the green traffic light, then the ring of keys in the ignition. What an idiot he was! He turned the engine off just as traffic started to flow around him.

Immediately he heard horns, and when he did not move the van, some choice profanity from the car behind him. He caught the driver’s face in his side mirror; a big bullet-headed black driving a beat-up Lincoln.

“Nigger,” he shouted without thinking, having suppressed the word for so long in the mental hospital where he’d been part of a white minority that it was now part of his everyday language.

The Lincoln’s driver got out of his car. The man was huge, and looked ready to kill him. Death jumped behind the wheel and threw the van into drive, vaulting ahead.

He could no longer think clearly. Downtown L.A. had turned a muted gray, and he drove as if lost in a fog, his breathing labored and painful.

Death bit down on his lip, tasting blood. The pain brought instant relief and slowly — as the grayness surrounding the van lifted — clarity. He leaned his head out his window, listening for sirens. Hearing none, he told himself everything was fine. A few blocks later, he pulled down a side street, and backed the van into the alley where he’d parked the Firebird.

Jan drove while listening to the thumping of her wildly beating heart. She raced down 18th Street, each passing second forcing her to imagine life without Crystal, and the shattering effect her loss would have on all of their lives.

The van had turned, but where? On a chance she pulled down a deserted side street, and inched down the block. A white van was parked at the end of an alley next to a Mexican restaurant. Was that the right vehicle? Her instincts told her that it was. She jumped out of the cab, and ran down the alley.

The van was empty. Coming around the driver’s side, she heard a muffled scream. Crystal lay on the pavement with a man straddling her, his hands working feverishly to tie her wrists with a piece of twine. Taking a stutter step, she threw a roundhouse kick at the man’s head.

His hat flew off, revealing a bald, misshapen skull. Falling off Crystal, he rolled out of harm’s way and jumped to his feet, a dark stream of blood flowing from his nostrils into his mouth. His eyes bulged out of his head, making him look like a freak.

So this was Death, she thought.

Pulling Crystal off the ground, Jan shoved her forward.

“Run!”

Her stepdaughter hesitated. “But Jan...”

“Damn it! I said run!”

Crystal took off for the street. Death lunged at her, unconcerned by Jan’s presence. Jan sent her foot into his solar plexus, and he dropped helplessly to the pavement.

“And keep running,” Jan yelled after her.

Hearing a distant siren, Jan glanced toward the street. In the split-second it took to look away, the beast within Death swelled up, and his strength returned. Jumping off the ground, he threw his body into her, and slammed Jan against the van.

“Bitch!”

Jan shouted, expelling air as she drove her knee straight into his groin. It was a blow that could break bricks, and he staggered backward, moaning in pain.

“You... hurt me.”

Jan touched her side, felt a cracked rib. The gentle teachings of the master at the dojo where she trained in Vegas had taken their toll. She had gotten careless; sloppy. No more.

She moved toward him, ready for the kill.

“Leave me alone,” he said.

“I’m not done with you.”

“But I’m sick. I have problems.”

“I’m sure you do.”

He backed himself into a corner, cowering in fear. It was pathetic how quickly killers turned into spineless pieces of jelly when captured. Garbage was strewn across the ground. Picking up an empty bottle, he threw it at her head.

“Go away,” he screamed.

“Stand against that wall. Do as I say.”

“No. Leave me alone.”

She decided to take him down, and threw a vicious roundhouse kick at his head. She heard the rustle of the newspaper she’d inadvertently stepped upon, and felt her legs shoot out from under her. Her head snapped as she hit the ground. Black curtains came down around her, and she lost consciousness.