The Original Alibi

Chapter 25

It would only get worse after he came back to deliver another pummeling. I took the first minute to hang free, my weight fully on my wrists, willing the rest of my body to relax. The hook I hung on had to look like the others. The hook itself was the curved bottom end of a rod that extended up until it became part of the conveyor system that ran across the ceiling.

I swung back and forth a bit, and with the momentum I tucked and lifted much like a gymnast pulling up chest high on an overhead bar. Of course, the gymnasts didn’t do it with a broken rib. Then again, the gymnasts weren’t motivated to prevent another beating.

On the third swing I was able to lurch my hands upward to grasp the upper part of the rod rather than simply having the cord that tied my wrists suspend me from the hook. With that hold I swung higher, tucking my knees on the forward swings, and my hips when swinging backward. The tape on my mouth suppressed my groans from the pulsing rib pain. After a half dozen swings I got the necessary height and tried to loop one heel through the slope of the hook in front of me. Missed. The hook swung away and I went back to regaining the momentum I needed for a second try. Missed. A third. Missed. On the fourth, my right heel seated into the hook and I twisted my foot to put my toes behind the rod above that hook.

The heel of my left foot had been gouged as it cut across the hook which had seeded between my feet. I resembled a fighter plane with one wing sheared off. Still, much of my weight was off my hands. That had been the idea. The next move was critical. I needed to leverage enough of my weight onto my stirruped foot to allow me to pull my hands away fast enough that the cord tying my hands would not slide down to again snag onto the hook. If I succeeded I would fall to the floor. I hoped to land on my feet, but I had no idea how I would accomplish it. That would require a flip I was wholly incapable of doing, first starting toward the floor with my head and then flipping to my feet. Yeah. Right. Still, I had very few, make that no, options at this point. I pushed down with my right heel while releasing my hands from the rod. Almost simultaneously, I violently yanked my hands back and away from hook. The floor was about seven feet from where my nearly horizontal body began the fall.

I hit the concrete. The impact absorbed by the side of my buttocks and my upper arm. The pain from my rib was piercing. The tape across my mouth was all that kept me from crying out. I lay there stunned, knowing I had to get moving or the fall to the floor would have been endured for nothing. I was free from the hook. That alone meant only that my personal skier would need to rehang me should he come in before I was ready to receive him.

Before my bad gymnastics bit, while I was just hanging around, I had put together a plan for overpowering my jailer, a plan which might kill him. Ask me if I cared about that. Fortunately, he had tied my hands in front before lifting me high enough to impale me on hook number eight. Yes, they all had numbers. My foot had been suspended on hook seven.

I needed more time. I needed more luck. I needed my plan to work.

After rolling over a few times I got to the sidewall. There, I leveraged myself into a standing position by inching my body up the wall. The first thing I did was to pull the tape from my mouth. Next, I picked up a spare hook from the floor and wriggled my way over to a metal chair. There, sitting, I held the loose hook in my hands and poked and tore at the cord around my wrist until the hook had weakened it sufficiently for me to pull my hands free.

I hadn’t been able to keep count of the seconds due to the effort and concentration of getting off the hook and onto the floor. If my jailer stayed on his prior schedule, I might be ready. I had to be ready. I didn’t want to again play punching bag to his Joe Palooka. I needed a couple more minutes to get things set up the way I wanted. In case he returned before I was ready, my hands were free and I still held the spare hook. But I wanted it to go the way I had it planned.

My feet were still bound so I stayed in the chair and worked the tape until I got them free. I could move faster now. I took down the lamp and unplugged it. Next I yanked the cord out of the lamp. That got me a bare wire, two wires actually, holding each I pulled them away from one another stripping the wires from the insulation that had been around them.

The lamp cord was about eight feet long and I had stripped back about six of those feet, using my teeth to bite and pull off the wrapping so I had exposed wire. I wrapped one of the two wires around the metal handle of the all metal door and the other end around the pin that protruded about a half an inch above the lower hinge. Then I put the chair near the wall socket, held the plug in one hand and the loose hook as a weapon in the other, and waited.

*

Axel and Buddha had only been watching Eddie’s car for about three minutes when he came out of the biker bar, got into his car and drove away. Forty minutes later, Eddie pulled into the general’s driveway. He parked in garage four of the Whittaker’s five-car garage, giving the impression he had roosted for the night.

*

After what seemed five minutes, the metal knob on the steel door into the room where I waited turned and the door dragged along the concrete as it swung in. When I saw clearly that it was my jailer with his hand still on the metal knob, I slid the plug into the wall socket. While I did this he noticed I was no longer impaled on the hook. But his realization lagged behind my plug in. The lamp stayed dark, but the jailer, his body now part of the circuit, went onto his toes and seemed to shimmy there. I was enjoying watching his wattage dance, but after a minute or so I pulled the plug back out.

He dropped to the cement floor. Not moving. I pulled out the plug, then removed a gun from his waistband and went out to look into the outer room. There was no one else. I went back inside.

For good measure or perhaps just for sheer joy, I folded the metal chair closed and slammed it into his head, then I did it two more times. I had seen this done on televised wrestling matches and it always looked to be such fun.

He wasn’t dead, but I doubted he would give me much in the way of trouble. I put the spare hook I had used to tear my hands free into his hand and wrapped some fresh tape from the roll he had left on top the file cabinet, around both his hands. Next, I pulled the metal door over near his body and spun him around so I could raise his hands far enough to suspend the metal hook over the metal doorknob. This kept him part of my makeshift circuit, allowing me to plug him back in should he give me reason to do so. I admit to hoping he would. It wouldn’t take much.

I went through his pockets and found a wallet and a few hundred dollars. I took the cash to tip waitresses or whatever. Hey, I took a beating from this guy. I earned it and still felt underpaid. I reopened the chair. It was bent, but it worked well enough.

I pulled off his ski mask. He had the face of a bully, nasty, the grown up face of a lunch money thief from the seventh grade.

I sat down to go through his wallet. The end of the cord over my leg in case he needed to be plugged back in or in case I just felt like plugging him back in. His driver’s license showed his name to be Ernest Podkin. He looked like a Podkin. I say this having no idea what a Podkin should look like. For me, from this day forward, a Podkin would look like Ernie who lay on the ground before me, the front of his Levis wet from his waist to his knees.

Podkin was about my size, an inch shorter and a couple pounds heavier. He had huge hands with big knuckles, but his palms looked soft except for the calluses on his fingers where he would grip the handlebars on a motorcycle. Like his jacket suggested, he was a biker, maybe a friend of Cliff’s.

After finding a box of old invoices on the floor from the company who had apparently occupied the building before vacating it, I stepped outside to find the address on the building. It matched the invoice. I called Fidge at his home, gave him the address, and asked him if he could please get down here as fast as possible. He said it would take him about thirty minutes. Podkin wasn’t going anywhere. We’d wait.

Podkin eventually came around and opened his eyes, maybe ten minutes later. “Don’t move, I said. I have you wired to be plugged back in.” He cranked his head around and saw how I had him connected. He nodded. He understood.

“I’ve got some questions. If you answer them to my satisfaction, I’ll let you get up and leave. If you lie or take too long I’ll put this plug in.” I held it up for him to see. “Then wait until you come around again, if that next time doesn’t kill you, then I’ll repeat my questions. We’ll continue like that until I get my answers or you drop out of the game, permanent like. Understand?”

He nodded. His eyes followed the hook he held up to the metal doorknob and the wire from the wall to the hinge bolt.

“Who paid you to work me over and what were your orders?”

“I was to work you over hard. Keep you here two or three days. Then let you go. Hurt enough that you’d be down the rest of the week.”

“Who?”

“I have no idea.”

I motioned toward the wall with the plug. “No!” he screamed. “No. I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. I never saw the dude.”

“Tell me all about it.”

“He came up on me while I slept in my bed at home. I live alone. He kept a fucking flashlight in my face and showed me your picture. Said you’d be at that office building downtown today in the afternoon. I was to follow you and take you somewheres else. He wanted you out of commission for a week, but not killed. I don’t do murder.”

The general and his family knew I was going to the attorney Franklin’s office so it could have been any of them.

“Sure. You’re the sensitive type. Go on. I want it all.”

“He dropped a wad of hundreds on my chest and said, ‘If you don’t take him out of commission today, I’ll return and kill you in your sleep.’ He warned he knew me and my hangouts and he knew where I lived. He promised me eight thousand more if you were out of it for at least a week. Then he walked out of my room with the flashlight still on my kisser. After he left, I flipped on the light and counted the money. There were ten hundreds, with a promise of eight more big to come. Nine thousand for a beating, that’s good money, man. Hey, it’s not like I know you. You know?”

“I just went through your wallet, Ernest. You had four hundred, where’s the other six?”

“I had some bills man. Stuff I had to pay, you know.”

Ernest was telling the truth. He had been hired by the same guy who eleven years ago had paid Cory Jackson and Tommie Montoya, using the same method. The difference being that with the economy in a tough stretch right now, Ernest would have ended up with only nine thousand when Jackson and Montoya each got ten thousand. I felt like the blue light special at K-Mart.

I put the plug back in just long enough to make Ernest spasm. I wanted to leave it in and walk away, but Fidge would be here soon and I didn’t want him looking at me for some grade of murder. He might agree it was justifiable homicide, but I didn’t want to put him on the spot because it wouldn’t be. My killing him would not be to save myself or anyone else so the justifiable part would be too much of a stretch.

Five minutes later Fidge came through the outer door. I went out and told him what happened, speaking low so we wouldn’t be overheard. Then I took him back to meet Ernest Podkin who had kicked free the end of the wire wrapped around the hinge pin, disconnecting the circuit. His hands remained taped.

“Ernest, may I introduce Sergeant Terrence Fidgery.” Fidge showed him his badge. “The sergeant has confirmed I can file a complaint for kidnapping, and assault and battery. Are you interested in avoiding the arrest?” Podkin nodded his head. “Okay, here’s how we’ll do it. If you don’t go along I’ll go down and see the sergeant and file the complaint.”

Fidge said, “After speaking with Mr. Kile by phone, I pulled your sheet. I’d recommend you avoid this if at all possible.”

Podkin looked at me. “What do you want from me?”

“I keep your jacket and your hat, and you leave town. Right now, from here without speaking to anyone, even by phone. Don’t return until next month.”

“What about my other eight thousand?”

“Ernest. Ernest. You told me he promised you the rest if you kept me out of commission for a week. You didn’t do that. You also said he promised you a bullet if you didn’t get it done. Seems to me you’ve earned the bullet. I’d recommend you leave town rather than wait around for a bullet from a stranger. You wouldn’t see it coming. Only feel it. Briefly”

“This guy’s bought other beatings this same way, on the cheap.” Fidge lied. “He’s never paid any of the others. He wouldn’t pay you, even if you had earned it.”

“Podkin,” I said, “these are your choices. Take this deal, or the sergeant here hauls your ass downtown.”

“With an added charge of attempted murder,” Fidge threw in for good measure.

“Why do you want my jacket?”

“Podkin, we’ve talked all we’re going to. Do you take what’s behind door number one or behind door number two?”

Podkin stared at me; his face blank.

I simplified it. “Jail or leave town. What’ll it be?”

“I’ll split man. Lemme go.”

I cut the tape from around his wrists. He took off his jacket, put it over the seat of the bent chair, dropped his hat on top, and walked out. We followed him to the door and watched him drive away in the van he must have used to bring me here from behind Russell’s restaurant.