Kick

  Almost defensively, he said, “I had to tape broomsticks to the arms like that so she wouldn’t fall over.” He tapped the man with a finger. “And I couldn’t keep that motherfucker up no matter what—too damn fat. That’s why he on the floor and she on top. Wanted to put them on the bed, but…”

  I nodded.

  “She got some big titties don’t she?” he said, laughing, nudging me with an elbow. “They got kids somewhere—told me about it right away, ’for I offed them, like that get me to stop. Be cool if the kids walked in on it. I need to get a video camera, for next time.”

  “Jerry,” I said. “Just when I’d begun to doubt myself, along you come and deliver me from the lie of moral relativism. For that alone, I thank you.”

  “Thanks, Kev,” he said. “That’s prolly like the nicest thing you ever said. What’s the name again of that book you reading?”

  ***

  Back downstairs, I laid out my plan for dealing with Mr. York.

  “Jerry,” I said. “It’s about time you and I got what’s coming to us.”

  He nodded.

  “Most definitely. What do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you what I mean: we’re taking over. From here on, this is our operation. Why do we need Mr. York, anyway? We both know what to do. You came up with that duct tape idea, all on your own. Right?”

  “Damn right,” Jerry said, getting into it.

  “And you came up with that calling card too, right? You think Mr. York could come up with a calling card like that?”

  Shaking his head, Jerry said, “Nope. All Mr. York care about is money—he got no appreciation for artistic shit.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “Yet for some reason, Mr. York gets all the money. Mr. York gets to drive around in a big RV, not letting anyone sit on anything and making everyone listen to his music. That sound even a little bit fair to you?”

  Jerry cocked his head and looked at me, as if seeing it all for the first time.

  “You know…I never thought of it that way. You absolutely right. Me and you do all the work, take the risk, and he act like he doing us some big favor driving us around.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “But what we gonna do?” Jerry said. “Just take off? All we got is a stolen car. Soon as the cops find the bodies we won’t even have that. And we just gonna let Mr. York roll off with all that money?”

  “Not if we do it my way, we don’t. I got a plan.”

  I spent the next ten minutes going over what we needed to do. How I’d lay low in the back seat while he drove back to the RV park. We needed Mr. York to think I was dead if this was going to work. Together, we rehearsed how Jerry would go in first and distract him, and how I’d sneak in after. I even drew a little map out on paper showing where I wanted Jerry to stand, where I expected Mr. York to be if we did it right, along with the path I’d take up the stairwell. Jerry may have been a sociopath, but he proved an able study. Sort of a dipshit savant. We only had to go through his lines twice before he successfully memorized them.

  “All right,” I said. “You nervous at all?”

  “Hah, no—ready as a motherfucker.”

  I held up my hand.

  “Hold on, there’s one more thing.”

  “Shit, you serious? Let’s just figure it out when we get there. Sometimes you just gotta flow with the—”

  “Nope, not for this. Mr. York’s been around a long time, we don’t wanna underestimate him. He’s a wily old bastard.”

  Jerry rolled his eyes, but he seemed ready to hear me out.

  “We’re going to need the bad dope he gave you,” I said. “The needle too.”

  “Really? What for? Oh…yeah, I feel you. Good idea.”

  He ran out to the car and brought back both, then handed them to me. The vial was warm from sitting in the car. I read the label: “Pancuronium Bromide, 100 mg/10 mL.” A powerful muscle relaxant with a variety of uses, in the right hands.

  “Excellent,” I said, sticking the syringe into the foil cap and drawing as much as I could.

  “You ain’t gonna try that shit, are you?” Jerry said, a bit wild-eyed. “Mr. York said it’d mess you up.”

  “Relax—I ain’t stupid.” I covered the syringe with the plastic protector. “Ok, when I sneak up behind Mr. York—wait, turn around, you be Mr. York for a moment.”

  He turned around.

  “Ok,” I said. “So here I am, sneaking up behind, and when he least expects it—”

  I pulled the cap off and jabbed the syringe deep into the side of Jerry’s neck while pushing the plunger as far as it would go. Jerry screamed and spun around. With his free hand, he jerked the spent syringe out, staring at it in mounting horror, then over to me with an expression of shocked betrayal.

  “What the fuck you do that for!” he screamed, then ran at me, fists flying—and careened sideways into a table, knocking it over and bringing the lamp on top crashing down on his head. He started to get up, then fell again, yelling something about me being a backstabber. I didn’t bother to correct him.

  I leaned down in front of him.

  “Jerry? Listen to me. Before you go into the dark, I need to tell you something: I’m not the Kevin you knew. I’m someone else inside his body, here against Kevin’s will. You’re a really bad person, one of the worst I’ve ever known, but even you shouldn’t die thinking your friend killed you when he didn’t.”

  He started to cry, staring at me, his breathing loud and irregular.

  The other thing about pancuronium bromide, or more commonly, Pavulon, was its use in lethal injections to stop an inmate’s breathing, eventually killing them through suffocation. Normally, another drug was administered with it, to put them to sleep, but all I had was the Pavulon.

  “…h-hospital,” Jerry said, barely managing to get that one word out. His breathing came in small bursts, spaced seconds apart.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t think that’s going to help you, Jerry. You’re too rotten to stay in the world anymore. That calling card of yours is pretty twisted. What if your mom knew you were doing stuff like that?”

  His eyes fluttered open, focusing on me. He heard that, all right. I may have imagined it, but I thought I saw a hint of guilt in his expression.

  When his face began to turn blue, I knew he’d stopped breathing.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “After you’re gone, I won’t do anything to you like that. When you get to the other side, think about your mom and what she’d say about all this. It might help.”

  After a few minutes, I checked his pulse. Jerry was dead.

  R.I.P.M.F.

  Chapter 17

  The way my memory works, if I haven’t died or gotten kicked out I’m just as likely to forget a phone number as anyone else. Or in this case, Jerry’s super secret door knock.

  Knock knock knock. Pause. Knock knock. Pause. Bang! Bang!

  When the lights of the enormous RV blinked twice and the door unlocked, I breathed a sigh and stepped inside.

  Cautiously, I climbed into the living space with the sacred couch and other furniture. I hoped Mr. York would opt to make me wait for him again, and I was in luck—the room was empty. The image of him completely losing it when he saw I wasn’t Jerry almost brought a smile to my face, but the moment was ruined by this growing anxiety I’d felt since leaving the island. I considered slouching back on the couch, crossing ankle-to-knee and acting as if Mr. York had fallen into my clever trap, but chickened out. I was in Mr. York’s lair, not the other way around. He’d been a professional scumbag for more years than I’d lived and he hadn’t earned Jerry and Kevin’s respect by being a pushover.

  From the bedroom, I heard a small crash followed by a muffled curse. Shortly afterward, the door opened and in lurched Mr. York, stinking drunk. He just stared at me, bleary-eyed and blinking.

  Finally, he said, “What the hell are you doing here? Where’s Jerry?”

  Poetishly, I intoned, “T
hen word goes forth in formic: Death’s come to Jerry McCormic.”

  “What did you say? You smart-mouthing?”

  As he’d done before, he came in a rush, hand raised to deliver a slap. But he was drunk, I wasn’t afraid of him, and I expected the attack.

  Rather than flinch or block his blows, I stepped in, pulled him into a hug and clipped my right leg behind his ankle. He went over easily. Mr. York’s breath wooshed out under my weight, filling the air with the stink of sour mash. He started keening in a high, agitated pitch, mindless in his fury. So I slapped him. Repeatedly. All it did was get him madder, but the funny thing is, it got me madder too. Slapping him like that and having him resist awoke something wild and hot within me. I let it out of its cage and watched it slap him again and again until his face turned red and my fingers stung down to the bones.

  Something sharp bit me on the back of my left arm, high up near the armpit. Frantically, I angled to see what it was and saw Mr. York’s fist clenched around a short blade. There was just enough handle exposed to reveal a familiar, cheap, fiery motif. Kevin’s pocket knife. It had been in my pocket the whole time and somehow Mr. York had gotten it out. Slapped around and drunk as he was, he kept it together enough to notice it in my pocket during the struggle and snagged it. He even opened it one-handed. If I’d seen it in a movie I would have rolled my eyes.

  When he pulled back for another stab I grabbed his wrist and forced the knife away. With my right hand, I converted my slaps into closed fists and repeatedly beat his head into the floor. He took the opportunity to land about eight shallow punches from his prone position while I kept up the barrage. After a while, he stopped punching. Just in time, too—I was spent. Fighting on the ground is about as tiring a thing as you can do, and doubly so for a junkie like Kevin.

  Mr. York was still breathing. Wheezing in and out. Kevin may have been a junkie, but Mr. York was older and unconditioned. I got to my knees and looked at him. His nose was broken, his lip had split, and one eye was starting to close.

  I reached over and picked up the knife, then clambered shakily to my feet. I turned my arm over, trying for a better look at the wound. It was bleeding, but he hadn’t nicked anything important.

  “I don’t suppose you have any bandages?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I went to the bathroom, then the bedroom, looking for something to staunch the bleeding.

  I’d expected something like the queen-sized bed I found taking up most of the floor. But what I didn’t expect was the trouble I’d have getting to the closet without walking on it. Along the left side, a set of planks were bolted into the wall as shelves, starting about three feet up. Three large, plastic tubs rested on them. These, in turn, were held in place by bungee cords. They’d be just the thing to keep the tubs in place while the vehicle was in motion. For such an expensively acquitted RV, the shelves looked about as out of place as could be. Ugly and utilitarian, they didn’t fit in at all with the sleek modernity of the other room.

  I wanted to look in the tubs, but the cool trickle down my arm kept me focused. Stepping over the bed, I opened the closet and grabbed one of Mr. York’s nicer shirts. Then I cut the arm off and tied it over my wound, biting one end while pulling the knot closed with my free hand. I made sure not to pull too tight, to allow some blood to flow.

  My hands started to shake. I was pretty sure I was about to have an adrenaline crash. Quickly, before it got too bad, I popped the cords off the shelves and pulled a tub down onto the bed, where it sagged deep into the mattress. I took off the lid. Resting inside floated a paper sea of crisp, green money, layered in twenties as far as I cared to dig. If I wasn’t so tired I would have whistled.

  What I wouldn’t have given to have this money at the beginning. Instead, I’d found it after Kevin mugged someone who might have given the cops a description, and now I’d messed up my arm. Just once, couldn’t I come back in the body of a healthy person who also had this kind of money? If I thought it would work I would have prayed for it. But the Great Whomever sucks at prayers.

  I looked at the other two tubs, both the same size. In mounting horror, I pulled another one down. It was just like the first, stacked high in twenties. I pulled down the other one and opened it, and it was filled with cash too. Unbelievable. Could all this really have come from killing and robbing geriatric vacationers?

  Moments later, I noticed my hands were aching—from clenching my fists. Who knew Mama Jenkins had raised such a hot head? I left the money and returned to the main compartment.

  Mr. York had finally regained consciousness. From his spot on the floor, his good eye met mine. Knife in hand, I clambered on top of him, straddling both arms. I considered borrowing the boat from the white house, taking him out into the Gulf as far as I could and throwing him in the water—but only after cutting him. Perhaps “a few fingers” since he liked that idea so much. I imagined the sharks would come in quick for anyone bleeding. My only problems were: one, it was way too much work and two, I’d talk myself out of it a hundred times before we ever got to the island. I suppose I wanted him to feel something of the terror he’d put so many people through.

  “Don’t worry Mr. York, I’m not going to feed you to any sharks.”

  He didn’t reply, but his eye widened.

  “Oh, that scares you? You should be afraid, but not of sharks. I think you’re going to find a much deeper pit than even your ‘selfless forager Jerry.’”

  Mr. York coughed. Wait, no, he’d said something.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “Frost.”

  Then I understood. He’d said, “Robert Frost.” That surprised me. I’d been dropping clever quips about the dead ant in Frost’s poem, “Departmental,” since discovering Dipshit’s name was Jerry. Mr. York had just reminded me I wasn’t necessarily the smartest person in the room.

  “What a late-in-coming pleasure,” Mr. York said, with gathering strength. “You remembered something from my class after all.”

  “Wow,” I said. “So that’s why we keep calling you ‘mister.’ I wondered about that. I just assumed you thought you were a big shot crime boss. So, you were a teacher? And I was your student? What about Jerry?”

  “Christ. Get off of me and we’ll split the money,” he said, straining to free one of his arms.

  “I don’t want the money.”

  I did want the money, but he didn’t need to know that.

  Mr. York grunted.

  “Of course you want it. Everyone wants it. It’s the only constant in this stinking cesspool world. Now get the hell off!”

  He twisted back and forth, with surprising vigor, nearly toppling me before he ran out of energy.

  I leaned in close.

  “Mr. York,” I said. “I’m going to fill you in on something profound and sad all at the same time. The only constant in this world is that it keeps plopping out slimeballs like you. All those people you killed—would taking a government pension have been so awful?”

  Mr. York squinted at me.

  “Wait a minute. Why are you asking me about my pension? And how did you remember that poem? And since when did you learn to talk like a human being? You’re supposed to be a moron.” He called me a moron the way people talked about sacks of grain weighing exactly fifty pounds.

  “Just answer the question,” I said. “I’ll be Barbara Walters and you be someone fascinating. What got you into this line of work? There’s people at home who want to know.”

  “You’ve been faking it all along,” he said, almost to himself. “I’m impressed. I always assumed Jerry was the smart one.”

  Letting the knife rest on his throat, I said, “Answer the question or I may stop asking it.”

  “You already know the story—what are you, recording this? Think someone’s gonna cut you a deal after all you’ve done?”

  I pushed the flat of the knife against his neck.

  “All right!” he said, then took a moment to gather his words. “I waste
d my life teaching the same lessons year after year to unappreciative simpletons like you. I earned this money. And no, for your information, the pension is shit. Hardly worth all I had to put up with for thirty years. Now get off me.”

  “Language, Mr. York,” I said. “So why’d you do it for thirty years if you hated it so much?”

  He snorted.

  “The teenage girls, of course.” He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I even got lucky a few times, when I was younger. One year, damn near every afternoon with the same one. She was afraid of her father more than she was me.”

  His good eye took on a wistful, faraway look.

  Jesus.

  “So, uh…what, after you retired you decided to start offing old people? Where did that come from?”

  “I saw it on the news a long time ago,” Mr. York said. “It always struck me as a brilliant idea. Bunch of geezers rich enough to go on vacations and nobody expecting to hear from them until they got back. Thought about doing it for years. Then, after I retired…”

  “You went chasing your dream,” I said, nodding.

  “Dreams are important.”

  “Something to live for.”

  On that note.

  Swiftly, before I could think about it, I swiped hard through Mr. York’s throat. Then I got up, went to the sink and washed both the knife and my hands. There wasn’t much I could do about the arterial spray soaking my shirt, so I took it off, along with my makeshift bandage.

  Still not thinking about it.

  There were myriad tiny cuts all over my hands from hitting Mr. York and they stung when the soap touched them. Nothing felt broken, but I’d need to ice my hands down later. And my stabbed arm would be sore for the remainder of my stay.

  I turned my arm over and checked the knife wound. Though I could probably use stitches, I didn’t need them. Mr. York had punctured me good, but the wound was even, not jagged. Direct pressure and bandages would do nicely.

  Still not thinking about it.

  Hours later, driving north into Georgia wearing one of Mr. York’s shirts and hauling the three tubs from the bedroom, I allowed myself to think about it. Killing Stump was different from what I’d done to Jerry and Mr. York. As different as hot blood is from cold. The thing that worried me wasn’t that I discerned the difference, but that I couldn’t be sure if it mattered.