James Grippando - When Darkness Falls

No one answered.

“Good. We’ll start with the girls.” He poked his head into the bathroom. “Natasha, how’s your friend?”

“My name’s Natalia. And my friend is in no shape to speak on the telephone, if that’s what you’re asking. She’s still fading in and out.”

“Then wake her up.”

“I think we should let her rest.”

“I think she could use a little cold water in that tub.”

Theo said, “Are you crazy? You’ll send her into shock, for sure.”

“The doctor says it’s okay.”

“What doctor?”

“We don’t do the water treatment unless the doctor says it’s okay.”

“What doctor?” said Theo.

Falcon didn’t answer. He went to the tub and turned on the cold water. It spit out a few drops before going dry. “Bastards! They cut off the water.”

“Must be what the doctor ordered,” said Theo.

“Okay, smart mouth. We’ll start with you, and then the pretty boy next to you. But first, I gotta take a dump. You can watch or look the other way. Don’t make no difference to me.”

With the bathroom door open, Theo had a clear view of the toilet, so he looked the other way as Falcon lowered his pants. The coat stayed on.

The man next to Theo leaned closer and whispered, “I can’t get on that phone.”

“Why not?”

“Because-Can’t you see what was going on here, man? These girls aren’t exactly what you’d call my friends.”

“So that must make you their priest who came here trying to save the hos.”

“Nice try. I’ve already worked that one through my mind, and it won’t fly. But I have to say something when the crazy man hands me the phone.”

“Just tell them that your name is John and that you’re here on business.”

“Make fun all you want. But how would you feel if the world was about to know that you were in a two-bit hotel room with a pair of eighteen-year-old prostitutes.”

“Eighteen?” Theo said with a light chuckle. “You can only hope, buddy.”

“Will you stop being such an ass, please? This could be the death of my career.”

“What do you do for a living?”

The guy didn’t answer, but Theo did a double take. “Hey, now I know. Ain’t you the weather guy on Action News?”

“Weather guy?” the man said, straining to show confusion. “You must be thinking of someone else.”

“No, dude. I watch you every night at eleven. Walt the Weather Wizard.”

“That’s not me.”

“Like hell. Dress you up with some hair gel and one-a those snappy Armani jackets, and you’re definitely Walt the Weatherman. But I thought you was gay.”

“No, I’m married.”

“You mean, was married.”

The weatherman closed his eyes and then opened them, as if in mortal pain. “Dear God, I’m screwed.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Theo. “You are so screwed.”

“I can’t believe this is happening. All over a stupid shopping bag.”

“What?” Theo had heard it all as a bartender, but this was one story that not even a psychologist/mixologist could have been expected to endure without being tied down-literally. It seemed that the weatherman’s teenage daughter needed to return a pair of jeans that she’d borrowed from a friend at school. Stupid husband put the jeans in a regular old grocery bag. Angry wife nearly had a stroke. “You can’t use a bag from Winn-Dixie!” she shrieked as she ran off to the closet. Moments later, she returned, the jeans wrapped in packing tissue and tucked neatly into a signature powder blue shopping bag from Tiffany.

“She was ready to kill me over a shopping bag,” he told Theo, “all because she doesn’t want some rich girl’s mother to find out that we shop at Winn-Dixie. So I look at her and say, ‘When did the funny and sexy woman I married turn into such a pretentious bitch?’”

“Ouch.”

“Was I wrong?”

“You’re always wrong,” said Theo. “It’s in the contract. Read the fine print.”

“You think I should have apologized?”

“Hmmm. Apologize or run out the door and hire yourself a couple of teenage hookers? Let’s call Dr. Phil about that one.”

The weatherman breathed a hopeless sigh, as if hearing it from Theo made things even worse. “What should I do now?”

“You do whatever it takes to get out of here alive.”

“Then what?”

“You do the honorable thing.”

“Which is what?”

“Shoot yourself.”

“Shoot myself?”

“Yes. But not on her duvet cover. She’ll hate you for that. You don’t mess with a woman’s duvet cover.”

The guy nodded, as if it all made sense. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The toilet flushed, and out with Falcon’s waste went the last liter of water left in the hotel room. “All right, smart guy,” Falcon said to Theo. “You’re first.”

The weatherman whispered, “Please, I can’t get on that phone.”

“Don’t worry,” said Theo, “he ain’t gonna get to you.”

Falcon dialed the number, waited for an answer, and dispensed with all pleasantries. Theo couldn’t even tell if he was speaking to Jack or the cops. “Here’s your roll call,” said Falcon, speaking into the phone. He held the gun in his right hand, the phone in his left. “Ten seconds,” he told Theo. “Your name and a contact.”

As soon as the phone was in place, Theo blurted out Falcon’s secret in rapid-fire fashion. “He’s wired with explosives under his coat and-”

“Asshole!” Falcon yanked away the phone and kicked Theo in the belly with the force of an angry mule.

Theo slid to the floor, unable to breathe. He hadn’t been one-hundred-percent certain about the explosives, but he’d felt something earlier when they wrestled on the floor, and Falcon’s refusal to remove his winter coat despite the rising heat only fueled Theo’s suspicions.

Falcon kicked him again, and with all the cursing, Theo knew he was right. The guy was definitely wired.

“I make this promise,” Falcon said, seething as he put the gun to Theo’s head. “No matter what happens, you are not walking out of here.”

E xplosives changed everything-especially for Vince Paulo.

Since losing his sight, Vince had heard all the amazing stories. The guy who blew his nose so violently that his eye popped out. The firefighter whose eye was left hanging by the optic nerve after a blast from a fire hose. The child who ruptured her eye on a bedpost while bouncing on the mattress. Metalworkers with steel shards embedded near the optic disc or with splashes of molten lead on the eyeball. A soldier shot at arm’s length, the projectile entering the inner canthus of the right eye and lodging under the skin of the opposite side. What made these cases remarkable was that in each instance, the ultimate visual impairment was nonexistent or negligible, or so the tales of medical miracles went. On the other side of the spectrum were patients who seemed to suffer only minor ocular trauma, the globe still intact, but whose vision was lost forever. They were the unlucky ones, the Vince Paulos of the world.

“Bomb squad is standing by, Sergeant.”

Vince heard the message over his earpiece, but he didn’t answer right away. Theo Knight’s mere mention of explosives had Vince seeing that pockmarked door again, the opening at the end of the hallway to his personal and permanent tunnel of darkness.

“Vince?” said Alicia. She was standing at his side.

“Yeah, I heard. I was just thinking for a minute.” It was a lie, of course-at least the part about “a minute.” Vince had been thinking and rethinking for months, imagining how different things might have been if he just hadn’t pushed open that door. He keyed his mike and told the bomb-squad leader to stand down until he made one more attempt to reestablish contact with Falcon.