David Putnam - The Replacements

He’d been planning this for two years. I didn’t know the significance of those two years, what they had to do with his plan, but it showed his resolve. I realized he wasn’t going to give up the information. The sun beat down, draining my strength. Hopelessness crept in. What was I going to do now?

Jonas saw the shift in my resolve. “We done here? What a pussy. That’s the best you can do? I expected a lot worse from you, of all people, a BMF, a Brutal Mother Fucker. That’s right, I did my research.”

His words made the BMF tattoo on my shoulder burn and tingle. Mistakes and poor judgment would haunt me the rest of my life. I could’ve had the tattoo removed, but left it as a reminder.

He used that word again, the one Robby would have used: pussy. I walked over and shot him in the foot.

He screamed and rolled around in the dirt. The dirt stuck to him like a Foster Farms chicken, dusted in flour before Dad dropped it into the hot grease.

I tried one last time. “You going to take me to those children?”

He groaned and continued to flop around. I dragged him back over to the car and shoved him into the passenger seat. What choice did I have?

He tossed around in the seat, fumbled with his prescription bottle, and popped two Demerols into his mouth. I headed down off the mountain. In ten minutes his agitation calmed. “Take me to Mission, west of Central in Montclair,” he said.

“Why? Do you think I’m done with you? I could be taking you to the FBI.”

“Really? We going to keep playing this game?”

“I don’t want you to hurt those children.”

“You do what you’re supposed to do and I promise you-I give you my word-nothing will happen to them.”

No way did I believe him.

We drove on for a few minutes. He wiggled until he got his foot up onto the seat. He gently peeled off his Nike. Blood was everywhere and his foot looked horrible. I felt bad and regretted the course of action I had taken. He took off his shirt and tied it around his foot. The tattoo the old crone from Landers had described, the heart with the bullet scar in the center, covered his left breast. As he moved, I spotted a larger tattoo in Gothic lettering across his abdomen: “Mama Tried.” Right below that: “Patricide, try it.”

“Please, tell me why you’re doing this?” I asked.

His eyelids drooped from the narcotic, the muscles in his face slack. “You’re a smart guy, you’ll figure it out.”

“Tell me.”

Out the window he watched the passing landscape. “I need the money. I need the money because you ruined my life.”

That logic, of course, didn’t make sense. I had saved his life. “How can you be mad over what I did?”

He turned and looked at me, his mouth agape. His missing teeth gave an illusion that his hole went on forever. “We’re done talking.” He laid back and closed his eyes. “Take the freeway to Central, get off and go south to Mission, hang a right then a left on Kadota. Wake me when we get there.”

“Wait. Tell me the name of the boy.”

He opened one eye. “I don’t know why I should. It won’t help you.”

I said nothing.

“Eddie Crane.”

He closed his eye. “From Bell Gardens.”

I drove and looked at him, again and again. I found it difficult to take my eyes from him. I didn’t want to, but I did. I regretted the day I had saved his life. He slept with his mouth open, the eyes behind his closed lids moving constantly as if he was watching a lively tennis match.

Twenty minutes later I turned onto Kadota. I slowed. “Jonas.” He didn’t stir. I reached over and shook him, his skin cold to the touch like a cadaver. He roused, slow, coming up out of a sound sleep, even with a bullet through his foot. He lifted his head, looked around, and waved for me to continue. I drove until he held up his hand and I stopped the car.

He got out with a limp. “Wait a minute.” He went across the sidewalk, through a fence and into a yard with a car parked on the dirt in front of the house, a broken-down, faded-green ’84 Grand Marquis. The house looked abandoned, a derelict. He reached into the Grand Marquis and came back to the street, leaving a bloody snail trail. He tossed a brown paper bag into my car window. “Call me when you have the money. You have one day.”

“One day isn’t enough. How am I supposed to come up with a million dollars?”

“Not my problem. Do what you gotta do. Rob a bank if you gotta. Twenty-four hours.”

I opened the bag and found a disposable phone. I looked back at him, then at the house behind him to memorize it for later.

He smiled a droopy smile. “Won’t do you any good. I covered my tracks. You won’t find a lead here. I’m to meet a doctor of questionable ability, who’s been disbarred or whatever you call it for doctors. He’ll fix me up. But I gotta tell ya, I warned him I’d be a lot worse than this. I’ve been hurt worse falling off my tricycle as a kid. I hope this isn’t an example of the kind of work you do. If it is, I guess I’ll never see my money. You have a nice day, Deputy Johnson.” He turned and hobbled back into the yard.

“You’ll always leave a trail,” I said.

He turned and scowled and shook his head. I pointed to the bloody path he’d left.

“You’re a fool,” he said.

I drove away. Maybe I was .

I woke when the motel door slammed shut with enough violence to shake the walls and rattle the gloomy painting above the bed. If the cops had come for me, they’d have busted down the door. They wouldn’t close it behind them. I put the pillow over my head. I needed to squeeze out another minute or two of sleep. I was so damn tired. Some of the fatigue came from depression, the hopelessness of the situation, the fact the kids had not been rescued and continued to be in serious jeopardy. I brought the illuminated dial of my watch up close to my eyes; I’d dropped Jonas off only three hours earlier.

“Come on,” Mack said, “Get your sorry ass up. Where is he? What’d you do with Mabry?” Mack grabbed my foot and twisted it.

I kicked free, rolled over, and sat on the edge of the bed, my head hanging in my hands as I tried to wake up. The room was dim without the lights on. “I know you’re mad. I just didn’t want to involve you.”

“I know all that. Skip to where you got him on ice. Where is he?”

“We need to get the money. Mabry’s not going to do anything until he gets the money. I’m convinced of that now. Only then will we have a move to make. If we don’t get the money, we don’t have a chance. He’ll give up the children if he gets the money.”

“You squeezed him? You really put the boot to him, and he still wouldn’t give it up?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I guess you didn’t do it good enough, did you, good buddy? Shit.” He kicked the bed, then sat down next to me. I rubbed my face.

“I’m sorry for leaving you hanging like that,” I said.

He didn’t acknowledge the apology and lowered his tone. “You know how this works-the money’s no guarantee. In fact, the odds in this kind of thing go against the kids if we do give him the money.”

“I know, but in this case, I think he’ll give us the kids once he gets the money. I really do. I’ll do the exchange myself, and won’t give up the money without proof of life.”

I wasn’t sure about the kids coming back safe. But I was sure about one aspect of Mabry’s game: He wanted to hurt me any way he could, and I was somehow in his plan to do just that.

“This caper, coming out good, with the kids safe and the asshole dead, is only wishful thinking. You really did your best, beating this asshole?”

He knew better then to ask me that.