Authors: Astrid Lee Donovan
CHAPTER TWO
Samantha walked home through the drizzle of the streets that night from E. 15th all the way back to Florence Park. Even though the walk was almost two miles, she didn’t mind. There was something invigorating about the early nighttime rain in April, a sense of affirmation from the thin mists that cascaded around her. She could be alone with her thoughts. Not even the truck loads of drunken good ol’ boys offering her a lift home with promises of “a real good time”, or the sight of Randy’s beat-up Olds parked haphazardly in the lot of A’s Tavern like a calling card was enough to dissuade her from the solitude. Not even the rain-licked streets soaking through her cheap Mary Janes were enough to refrain her from understanding the luxury and privilege of silence.
She wondered why it scared the hell out of her.
Samantha’s entire life had been marked by tumultuous upheaval followed by brief periods of methodical silence. It was all she had ever known. It had begun with her father—one of the surliest, meanest, snarling shit-kickers the likes of which Tulsa had ever seen. He was bred beneath the looming shadow of the Philtower; and his family stayed there—despite the Great Depression—simply out of spite. He had married relatively late in life at the age of 34 for the simple fact that he was too much of a drunken wretch for anyone but Samantha’s timid, mealy-mouthed mother. Samantha was born only three weeks later.
Cal Linder spent most of his daughter’s early years in and out of the bars and pool halls dotting East 3rd St., gambling away much of the family’s threadbare savings and only rarely gaining it back. A six month stint at Tulsa County Jail for Attempted Grand Theft and Disorderly Conduct after an incident involving a three-day bender, a gas station and a crowbar when Samantha was 4 was enough to dry him out sufficiently for the better part of a year; only to hit the bottle with a vengeance when Samantha was 6 to make up for lost time. He continued this on again/off again pattern for the next eight years, embellishing Samantha’s childhood with violence, threats of suicide and bankruptcy until he finally decided to dry out at a county detox for good. But by that time, it was too late. He died only three months later of acute cirrhosis.
Samantha drifted through her teenage years the same way she drifted through her childhood, detached and alone. In the absence of happy mediums, withdrawal was the only alternative left. It was the only lesson her mother ever taught her.
Still, the streetlights off East 15th seemed to flicker on and off with the unison of Samantha’s steps. She knew enough to discern between her mind playing tricks on her and playing tricks with her mind. She picked up the pace, hoping to make it back to the apartment by 7:30, so she could take a bath undisturbed.
She stumbled through the wreckage of the front yard; an unkempt mess consisting of dead grass, discarded mufflers and assorted bric-a-brac from Halloweens, Thanksgivings and Christmases long past. It was a 2-family house she rented from the property owner, a senile grand dame from Tulsa’s more illustrious past who sent out her son to collect rent dutifully every two weeks. At $25 a week, Samantha knew better than to demand anything more than basic amenities; and considering that more often than not, she was behind she wasn’t about to ask for repairs to the crumbling two-family ranch house anytime soon. She knew virtually nothing about her neighbors on the other side, other than their alcoholism, and she wanted to keep it that way.
“Thank god you’re home… Listen, I know that we’re on a budget, but you gotta let me borrow at least a couple dollars…” Samantha had barely stepped through the front door when she heard her cousin’s elliptical whine. “Me and Clark… We been livin’ off of nothing but crackers and Cheerios the past couple days… We need food, Sam… At least try to smuggle us somethin’ from Sandy’s when you come home…”
“You ask Randy?” Samantha replied, fishing through her purse for some loose change.
“Aw, you know how he is…”
“That I do, Jill. Clark find a job yet?”
“We been lookin’, Sam… Honest we have….”
Though barely 16, Samantha’s cousin Jill had the sort of face and figure that seemed straight out of a
Playboy
magazine. Even if Jill herself wasn’t aware of it, Randy certainly was. And so was Samantha. It was why she took her in after the death of her parents. She knew that downtown Tulsa was the worst place to be for a vulnerable, sweet but none too bright teenage girl. Nor was it any place for Clark, Jill’s boyfriend. Though two years her senior and considerably brighter, Clark was an over pampered Mama’s boy at heart whose lack of worldliness could have easily been preyed upon. Even as her grasp on the outside world was slowly being stripped away, Samantha still maintained one flimsy shred of sympathy towards them both.
There was something endearing about Clark’s shyness that attracted Samantha. Though she’d never act upon it, his feeble, butter-like chin, frizzy afro and desperate determination to seem “with it” aroused a sort of maternal instinct in her; an instinct that was shot through with less innocent curiosity. It was an Oedipal complex in reverse, and Samantha secretly cherished the way in which his eyes would linger on her behind when she bent down to fiddle with the frequently clogged air ducts, or his bashful stutter when she’d ask the most innocent of questions about his life late at night when they were alone in the smokiest, most seductive tone she could muster. Though there may have been a mere three-year difference between them, Samantha’s affection for the timid teenager was somewhat less than pure in intent.
But Clark was the farthest thing from her mind as she made her way to the bathroom, keeping the track lighting low as she lit a soft pink pillar candle and turned on the tub. She reached into her blouse as she unbuttoned it, and withdrew three Valiums. She slid them on her tongue as she washed them down with a palm of warm water, shuddering at the metallic tang of the water. She lit a cigarette as the tub filled up, and slid out of the demure skirt she was forced to wear as part of her uniform. Her legs, once athletic and rippled, seemed like two brittle sticks. She saw her ribs jutting out the still buoyant skin of her torso. She squeezed to try to grasp on to some bit of flesh—anything that would make her feel less naked. More human. More whole. As the small centimeter of flesh slipped away from her fingers, revealing only a slight pink welt, she sighed. She may as well have been thin air.
Much like her flesh, Samantha wanted to disappear. She simply didn’t have the energy.
She took one last puff off her cigarette, before stubbing it out in a seashell ashtray. She shut the water off the faucet, and slipped into the tub. She closed her eyes.
It was 7:39 in the evening, and gravity was a bitch for Samantha Linder.
CHAPTER THREE
Samantha had only been asleep for half an hour when she woke up, though it felt considerably longer. The once tepid water had turned room temperature, and Samantha’s skin greeted the difference by shriveling like a raisin.
But it wasn’t merely the change in temperature which had jolted her awake. It began with a loud thump that reverberated through the cheap wood paneling, but merely stumbled through Samantha’s half-sleep like an old North Midtown wino. It changed into a staccato rhythm of loud pounding, followed by the unmistakable and bloodcurdling shriek of Jill’s voice, followed by a series of loud poundings that shattered any illusion of relaxation. Samantha leaped out of the tub and brushed herself off quickly with a towel, reaching for the t-shirt and jeans she laid on the nearby radiator. She dressed quickly, her heart panic-struck. She could hear a strange and raspy voice growling through the flimsy door.
“Where is he?”
She stayed put. Though she could tell there was a disturbance the likes of which she couldn’t imagine, she hesitated walking out the door. As much as she knew Jill needed her help, as much as she knew she had to confront whatever lurked behind that wobbly barrier, there was something compelling her to stay; an instinct of gravity, weighing her down beyond her conscious control.
“Where… the… fuck… IS HE?” the voice growled again, this time forcing an answer.
“I… I swear to god… I don’t know,” Jill’s voice proffered. Samantha could practically see the tears running down her face. She heard a loud crash, and a stomping of feet.
“I’m gonna look in the backyard. I’m gonna tear this fuckin’ dump to pieces, if need be….”
“J-j-just… leave us… alone… I-i-it’s R-r-randy you’re looking for,” Jill’s voice pleaded. “N-n-not us…”
“If y’all live together, you know how valuable money can be.”
“B-b-but… we d-d-don’t have any… I-I s-swear….”
Samantha crouched in the corner of the bathroom, not wanting to be heard. Her knees creaked as she squatted, a sound that in her paranoid state she was certain could be heard from behind the door. Was her mind simply playing tricks on her? Or was there a confrontation going on elsewhere in the apartment? She couldn’t tell anymore. Her senses had been so stretched out over the past three months that her psyche felt like silly putty dispensed from a can and left to harden in the noonday heat.
“Jesus Christ, Jack,” Samantha heard another voice, nasal and insistent. “How old you think this chick is? 16? They obviously don’t have the fuckin’ money… Let’s split and track down the son of a bitch later. It ain’t worth the risk of assault on a fuckin’ minor…”
“I frankly don’t give a shit. I came for what’s mine, god fucking dammit. One way or another. So, let me ask you again. And I want a legitimate answer this time. Where is the son of a bitch?”
“I d-d-don’t… know. He g-g-goes out drinking a-a-and none of us… k-k-know where—”
“I said, where the fuck IS the son of a bitch?”
It had always been a habit of Samantha’s to hiccup uncontrollably when facing times of stress. It was a reaction stemming from her childhood she could never quite break. She wondered sometimes if it was due to her fear of silence; a non-voluntary need to interject, no matter how minor, no matter how visceral, no matter how nonsensical. It overcame her like a plague at the worst possible time; and as it reverberated beyond the confines of the door, she knew she had been caught out.
“The fuck was that?” the once gruff voice asked in bemusement. “Reg, you wait right here. Keep an eye on the teenybopper. I’m gonna have a looksie around…” His voice took on almost a forced affectation, like something out of an old James Cagney movie, but if there was anything unintentionally humorous about his delivery, Samantha wasn’t laughing.
She could hear him rustling around in the cramped apartment, and she tried to stifle her hiccups by placing her hand over her mouth. She was so aghast it was the only thing to remind her she was still breathing. But it was futile. She knew any second the door would burst open, and she’d be able to put a face to the grave and impatient voice. She wondered why that would have made any difference whatsoever.
She wasn’t, however, expecting the door to be kicked open suddenly and being grabbed by the neck of her shirt. It happened as quickly as one blinding flash of light piercing through the dim, candle-lit bathroom. Samantha tried to shield her eyes; she could feel her face already swelling, her cheeks burning, gradually turning to a deep pink. She could feel tears well up in her eyes as she tried to open her mouth to scream. Yet not a sound emerged as the intruder dragged her, neither kicking nor screaming but mutely acquiescing, towards the now ruined living room. The stranger locked his powerful arm around her limp one; in the other, he brandished a snub nosed revolver.
“Alright, now you listen up. Everyone. Reg, you keep an eye on the kid here. You too, Dim,” he nodded at a slouching and rather bored looking mass of denim and long, stringy hair sitting silently on the cracked naugahyde sofa. “The bitch is taking a ride with me—”
“You can’t!” screamed an uncontrollable Jill, only to have her mouth clamped by the hand of Reg.
“If I don’t get what’s mine, she gets it. So I’m going to remind y’all… one last time… if I find out any of you are tricking me, her life is in my hands. You got it?”
Jill nodded silently.
The stranger edged his way to the door, glaring at all three gathered, smirking one last time and brandishing his gun to insinuate he was fully prepared to carry out his threat. He opened the door with a passive Samantha in tow, limply being dragged into the now umber hues of the Florence Park dusk.
As the front door opened, a dazed and heavily battered Clark Simmons came to, only to find himself hog-tied on Samantha’s bedroom floor.
CHAPTER FOUR
As the stranger dragged her helplessly shuffling along, Samantha tried to catch a peek of him underneath the crackling streetlights. He did seem vaguely familiar; not seem, she knew instinctively that she had seen him before. But she couldn’t place where exactly. Her adrenaline was curdling through her sleep-starved nerves, and she was in no place to trust her memory.
He finally led her to a bronze-colored Trans Am parked just a few houses down from hers. His beady eyes peered nervously into the night; but past 7, not even the drunks bothered to walk around Florence Park. His body seemed to exude a tautly wound anxiety, and she was almost moved to giggle by his chivalry as he opened the passenger door and buckled her seat belt for her.
Now, as he glared at her in the light of the car, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had not only seen him before, but had actually met him. Faces tended to blur into one another for Samantha, mirrors reflecting mirrors of congealing wax; but his stuck out like an open wound. It was a face that could be called handsome in only the most violent manner, a face hardened by cruelty, fear and cunning precision. It was a face of sharp angles that denoted a lake of shadows. His beak-like nose was crowned by deeply set, sunken eyes whose sensuality was only belied by the telltale signs of detachment, even of madness, all of which seemed to contrast to his broad, thin mouth bedecked by pursed, flesh-colored lips. A thick shock of dull black hair stood up an all ends, seeming to crackle with both anxiety and purpose. It was a face that could only be described as feverish in its intensity. Samantha wondered if he was Italian.
Finally, he spoke. “Now look here, honey. You don’t know me. But I sure as hell know you, you understand?”
Samantha nodded obligingly.
“Now, I know I may have thrown you for a bit of a scare back there. Didn’t mean to. Ain’t out to hurt you. All I want is my money, OK? You tell me where to find your boyfriend. So long as he gives me what he owes me, I’m out of both of your hair for good. Deal?”
Samantha nodded, this time even more nonchalantly. A silent pause seemed to envelop the Trans Am, which only served to exasperate the stranger.
“So, what’s it gonna be? You gonna tell me where he is or you just gonna play dumb all night?”
“Have… have you been by A’s Tavern on 15th Street?”
“That’s where he is?”
“Most nights. Well, can’t say most. But that’s the main place I know where he’s at.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, you two. I’m out over a grand and you mean to tell me your boyfriend is getting drunk and riding a mechanical fucking bull?”
“I’m not… I’m not his mother….”
“No, but I’ll assume you’re the one holding a job, aren’t you?”
Samantha shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, but he helps out when he can—”
“You mean when he’s not getting drunk on other people’s money, is that it? Of all the…. OK, we’ll check there. Point me in the quickest direction. C’mon…” he muttered to himself as he sped away, fiddling with the radio. “Of all the fucking misplaced trust…”
“He’s good at heart… Sometimes.”
“Being good at heart doesn’t exactly pay me what he owes me. Jesus… ‘Sometimes.’ You don’t even sound too sure of your own fucking boyfriend. You two, I tell you… You two might be meant for each other, do you know that…”
“Look, just because he owes you money doesn’t mean you have to be insulting towards me—”
“If someone owes me close to $1100 don’t you think I might have every right to be upset?”
“How much?” Samantha asked, legitimately incredulous.
“$1100. You think dope just grows on trees?”
The way they bickered at one another, they could have passed for any other tourist couple trying to navigate the streets of Tulsa with no success. Except they were two total strangers, both of whom knew downtown Tulsa like the back of their hands. And one of those hands casually had a .38 snub-nose pointed at the stomach of the other.
“We’re not a couple of junkies if
that’s
what you think,” announced Samantha indignantly.
“Don’t know. Don’t care at this point. Right now, all I want’s my money. Your boyfriend gives me what’s mine, and the both of you can blow your brains out for all I care.”
“You’re a real charmer.”
“15th Street, right? Lemme make this quick left…” The Trans Am swerved the car ahead as it sped, running a red light to a cacophony of horns.
“Why the hell did you do that?” screamed Samantha.
“Just tryin’ to make time, honey. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I let you go.”
“And if Randy don’t have your money?”
“Well, I guess I just have to keep you as a little… consolation prize… until he pays me back in full.”
Samantha glared at him, her insides twitching with disgust. The stranger smirked, and continued.
“Now, now honey… It ain’t like that. I’m a married man, y’see. Besides… it’s not like I know where you been.”
“You’re disgusting, you know that? Who in their right mind would marry someone like
you
?”
“Someone out there for everyone. Even ol’ Randy, looks like. Next left and I’m pullin’ in…”
A beaten, white brick building with a rusty metal sign announcing cold beer and live entertainment belied the savage melancholy that was A’s Tavern. A single window was left open at all times, day or night, to ventilate the haze of perpetual smoke and regret that served in lieu of wallpaper at A’s. Only the mechanical bull—a frequently temperamental and forlorn fixture—prominently displayed in the corner served as diversion from the endless stream of 25 cent draft beers and surreptitiously sold bourbon that flowed through the collective bloodstream. The aura of patently male umbrage was so thick, so impenetrable, that an unwritten rule allowed a maximum of three females per week to step foot on its premises; and their presence better be damned well there for (as one patron artfully put it) “commercial transactions only.”
Samantha Linder was now the fourth.
The stranger walked arm in arm with Samantha, nodding discretely at the crowd of oblivious faces mulling over steins of lukewarm beer. Finding two empty stools at the end of the bar, he bade Samantha to sit down. He beckoned to the bartender, who waddled his 300 lb. girth to their end, his frown indicating he was none too pleased to be serving a stranger tonight, or his old lady, for that matter.
“What can I do for ya tonight, son?”
“Two beers if you could. And maybe you can help me out. I’m lookin’ for an old buddy of mine named Randy Cox. He been in here tonight?”
“Never heard of him,” snapped the bartender, pulling the tap back for the order. When he returned, he saw that the stranger had left a ten-dollar bill on the stained Formica top.
“That help?”
“Now that you mention it… What did you say your friend’s name was?”
“Randy. Randy Cox.”
“Was in here earlier, but left about an hour ago. No idea where he went, but maybe one of his buddies can help you out. Hey Wayne,” the bartender screamed above the din to the other end of the bar towards a hulking brute with greasy hair hanging below his shoulders and a full beard practically down to his chest. “This here fella wants to know where Randy took off to.”
“That so?” said the behemoth, slowly skulking off his seat and marching towards the inquirer in practiced aggression that even to Samantha’s young eye seemed summoned up out of the bad B-movies she had caught at the Admiral Drive-In. Still, there was no denying that given his sheer size alone, Wayne had likely inflicted legitimate damage to more than a few bodies in his life. “Who wantsta know,
friend
?” he growled, emphasizing the last syllable bitterly, looking down from a vantage point of 6’6” as he made his way to their end of the bar.
“I’m an old friend of Randy’s,” the wiry interrogator asked, sarcastically sneering in response.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your name,
friend
?”
“John. John Mud.”
“Cute, there, uh… John Mud. Where you know Randy from?” The mammoth was all but two feet away from the both of them, and already the scent of gasoline and pique was all but intolerable.
“Let’s just say…. the coast.”
“Oh, yeah? Which coast is that?”
The questioner slunk to his feet, slowly addressing the lurching mass with his own studied machismo. He reached into the pocket of his denim coat and pulled out the revolver. “The same goddamned coast you’re gonna find yourself clear on the other side of if you don’t answer my question,
friend.
”
“Look out!” screamed Samantha. The stranger turned and ducked underneath a nearby table just in time as the bartender ran buckshot with a twelve-gauge shotgun in his immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, he was too slow on the draw, for the stranger returned his shot with lightning reflex, hitting the portly bartender straight above his chest and knocking out the dusty mirrors behind him. The bartender fell to his knees, his shotgun now discarded as if it had been a child’s teddy bear.
The stranger saw a flare of blinding light from the corner of his eye and heard another pang of bullets, this time from another .38. He shot wildly in their direction. He was unable to hit their target, but did succeed in shooting out the sole window of the bar, forcing its heavy pane to shatter on impact. Another hail of bullets just barely grazed his left temple, before he jumped, once again shooting wildly in their direction. This time, he was successful; his would be assailant collapsed to the ground, having been struck twice. The first hit him square in the throat, while the other stuck him right in the stomach. The girth of Wayne toppled to the ground in shock, leaving behind the scent of failure and waste. Which was just as well for the stranger; he was now out of ammunition.
He pulled Samantha off her stool and ran out of the tavern, leaving behind the smell of spent casings and soured ambitions. They ran to the car, jumping in and gunning the engine for all it was worth. The few stragglers who weren’t left altogether speechless by the crossfire struggled in vain to take down the license plate of the Trans Am, but were unable to do so. The sedan’s wheels had kicked up a cloud of impervious dust as it sped out of the parking lot. Within minutes, they were heading north on to the Cherokee Expressway; and within seconds, they were heading east onto Rte. 66, heading east towards a sun that wouldn’t rise for hours.