She was as far
as she could be on her side of the bed without falling onto the
floor. She wanted to be closer but at the same time was worried
she’d scare him away. All she really wanted to do though was hold
his hand and look in his eyes, to hug him tightly, to just say
thank you.
Carl wasn’t
sure what to say to Anna. He had so many conflicting thoughts
running through his head. To him she looked so beautiful and sweet,
so pure and kind. And she also looked so beautiful… lying there on
the bed with her wet hair tumbling off the pillow. Her body even
looked glamorous with the cheap motel towel wrapped around
her.
He wanted so
badly to be closer to her but he kept his distance and made sure
not to touch her. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was
some sort of sexual predator that kidnapped her for his own
pleasure. Looking at her bruised limbs as they fell out from the
towel he felt that he wanted to buy her beautiful clothes. He
wanted to make her feel pretty for once in her life.
“
So are you sad?” Anna asked with wide eyes.
“
I guess I am… well kinda,” his furtive words were guarded. He
didn’t want to have to explain.
“
Well why’s that? Are you missing your family?”
“
I have no family….” Carl spoke heavily.
“
Well that makes you and me alike. We’re both orphans in an
evil world,”
“
How old are you?” Carl had to ask, her mind seemed so much
older than her face.
“
19,”
“
At college?”
“
No… I wasn’t allowed to go,” she sighed.
“
But you wanted to I take it?”
“
Always wanted to study anthropology, call it a pipe dream I
dunno….” she looked away awkwardly.
“
Hey you’re still a kid! You’ll get yourself back to school
someday,”
“
I hope so…. but stop changing the subject. I can tell you’re
hiding something you’re bursting to talk about. Your eyes betray
you,”
“
Well….” Carl didn’t have to tell her but he thought he’d like
to. “You just remind me of someone I use to know,”
“
Oh yeah? Like an old girlfriend?”
“
Kinda….”
The truth was
that she couldn’t have been more like Eileen unless she was her
ghost. Pale and curvy with red hair, he used to have a crush on her
when they were neighbours as children. She was the quintessential
girl next door, all smiles and flirtatious chatter. Carl and she
used to meet up on their front lawns and wile away the summers
together listening to classic rock on the radio and eating ice
cream. They even found a novel way to get drunk. Raiding their
parents’ liquor cabinets they’d freeze vodka in Popsicle holders
and tell everyone it was lemonade. But they didn’t have to lie
because her parents never asked. They didn’t care whether she drank
or not.
Behind the
closed doors of idyllic suburban life Eileen hid a dark and violent
secret. Only her bruises told Carl the story and each day he saw
her, another one would be added to her collection. Her father, who
looked not too dissimilar to Thomas Martin, was a brute. An
alcoholic and ex-Vietnam veteran, he ran his home like a prison
camp. And he obviously had little trust in women, as he brought his
fists down on his wife and daughter at even the slightest hint of
disobedience.
Eileen never
said a word though, and Carl never asked. But he desperately wanted
her to explain everything. It wasn’t like he didn’t care. He was
just emotionally ill equipped and too young to articulate that he
wanted to help. Often at night he’d lie in bed and look across at
the house next door.
But one night
he didn’t get to sleep and the pleasant dreams never came. Instead
sirens alerted him to the fact that he was too late. If he’d only
made his dreams come true one night earlier everything would be ok.
He watched in silent tears from the darkness of his bedroom as they
took Eileen’s body away. Her father said it was an accident, a
mistake.
In a moment of
drunken anger he’s struck her hard, and she’d lost her balance.
Stumbling into the fireplace she’d hit her head against the cold
marble and died. Carl’s father tried to claim that it was a fluke
accident, a one in a million chance, there was nothing he could
have done, but he knew better. Luckily, the judge disagreed.
Here in the motel he looked to the flaming, red hair of Anna
and knew that he’d done the right thing. She was
his
Eileen and this time
he’d made her dreams come true.
“
You’ve drifted away in thought again,” Anna smiled. “Do you
always do that?”
“
No, I don’t think so,”
“
Maybe it’s your pain meds?”
“
Maybe….I dunno,”
“
Why do you take those anyway?” she asked with genuine
concern.
“
My back… It got hurt real bad when I was on tour,”
“
In Afghanistan?
“
Yuh….”
“
What happened?”
“
I’ll tell you sometime,”
There’ll be a sometime….
Anna
thought.
I guess that means he won’t kill
me….not too soon anyway
.
They lay in
silence for a long while, just listening to the television and
resting. Anna didn’t know if there was a protocol for a hitman the
morning after. What were they supposed to do? She wanted to know
more about the Mob, to know more about this mysterious man… but she
also didn’t.
“
So you know why my father had to die?”
Carl rolled
over to face her. “Cops pulled him over drunk and he had mob money
in his car,”
“
Oh…. It almost seems too tame,”
“
What do you mean?”
Anna rolled to
face away into the sunlight. “I always thought if he had to die it
would be over something more dramatic but I guess he didn’t deserve
it. He wasn’t exactly an interesting man,”
Carl thought
it was an odd thing to say but he didn’t have time to mull it over
because he suddenly caught something out the corner of his eye. It
was a shape, a fleeting movement. He sat bolt upright and
immediately put his hand on his gun.
“
What’s wrong?” Anna was worried. “Is someone here?”
“
Shhhh…. Stay there…”
But Anna
didn’t want to stay there. In a panic she grabbed her coat and ran
into the bathroom slamming the door shut. She sat on the floor and
doubted her minimal weight would be able to keep the door closed if
an intruder attempted to open it.
She tried to
hear what was happening but all she heard were the muffled
footsteps of Carl as he edged his way to the window. Then silence…
It seemed to last forever. A thousand scenarios ran through her
head as she worried about what could possibly be happening. Was it
just Carl’s paranoia? Or was someone actually there? Someone
dangerous… But her questions were answered when she heard two
popping sounds that could have only been bullet’s travelling
through a silencer, then the sound of a body falling onto the
venetian blinds… and then the floor.
She felt
incapacitated with fear. She never was any good in a crisis.
Creaking the door open gently she looked for signs of a body but
all she could see was the back of Carl as he stood cautiously next
to the window. As she got up she finally saw it. Obscured by the
bed and lying lifeless in a heap was a body. She screamed and
reeled back, jumping on the bed.
“
Be quiet!” Carl barked.
She instantly
shut up and sat shaking in her coat.
“
Who is that?” she whispered ever so quietly as if talking to
herself.
“
This,” Carl pointed his gun to the ground. “This is
trouble….”
She could see
the redness in his cheeks and hear the panic in his voice. His eyes
were wide with worry and he was losing his calm demeanour. He began
to pace nervously with his gun still in his hand. Every minute or
so he’d look through the blinds into the parking lot as if he
thought someone would arrive any second.
“
Are there more of them comin?” Anna asked
innocently.
“
Fuck I don’t know. Fuck. FUCK!” he paced even quicker and in a
frenzy of panic began to kick frantically at the dresser. The TV
toppled and fell to the ground. Smashed pieces of screen glittered
all over the carpet.
Anna wanted to
run straight back to the bathroom but couldn’t move. She just sat
there huddled and shaking with tears in her eyes. Carl looked to
her and saw the fear in her eyes. He could smell her sweat, feel
her fragility
“
Right. Quick. Move. Into the car,” he ordered.
Carl grabbed
his backpack then his dog tags and hurried out the room while
dragging Anna by her coat sleeves. As they climbed in the SUV Anna
hadn’t even closed her door properly before Carl had begun to drive
away. He pulled out quickly onto the freeway and sped as fast as he
could out of Chicago.
CHAPTER 6
“
Shit! You’re supposed to be dead, shit!” Carl was so angry as
he drove that Anna was petrified he’d start head butting the
steering wheel.
“
What are you saying?” she whimpered.
“
You were supposed to die! You were meant to die too…. I wasn’t
supposed to leave a witness!”
“
Is that why they came to the motel?”
“
I think so….I mean yeah! Of course! Why else would Lucas be
there? I knew there was something weird about that kid…knew he
couldn’t be trusted,”
“
Who’s Lucas?”
“
Just one of the Don’s boys, a foot soldier,”
“
What are we gonna do?”
“
Be quiet….just let me think….” and they drove in silence for a
few miles until Carl could regain his breath.
“
Thank you…” a timid little whisper suddenly came from the
passenger seat.
Carl looked
over to see if he’d heard right. “What?”
“
Thank you,” it came again.
“
What the fuck for?” he was confused, stressed.
“
For keeping me alive,”
“
Oh….” he didn’t think of himself as a good person to be
thanked. “You’re welcome…”
“
But why? I mean why didn’t you kill me like you were paid to.
It was your job after all,”
“
I had my reasons,” and he didn’t elaborate.
Anna took the
hint to not ask more questions and instead lay her head against the
window and looked out to the country. They were far out of the city
now and speeding headlong into obscurity. She’d never been out of
Chicago before and she guessed that he knew where they were heading
as much as she did. She wondered how long it would take for Carl’s
boss to find them. She knew nothing about him but she could guess
that he was incredibly rich and insanely dangerous. She thought of
all the gangster movies she saw with her Dad as a kid and knew
people like her and Carl didn’t live long. She closed her eyes and
began to pray.
Carl looked
over to her and guessed she had fallen asleep. Poor kid, he
thought. She’d been through so much recently. She looked so
beautiful lying there against the window and he felt the compulsion
to lean over and stroke her hair, to tell her everything would be
ok.
~
The door to
the abandoned motel room was flapping in the night time breeze. The
Don never came to do his own dirty work never mind attend the scene
of a crime but Lucas was family…or at least it felt that way. He
stood over the corpse with a cigar in between his chunky fingers.
He blew out smoke into the moonlight.
“
And you’re sure no one else has been here?”
“
No…. just me,” the motel manager was having a panic attack in
the presence of the Don and his cronies.
“
Good…You better not be lying to me,”
“
Never! I wouldn’t do that,” his voice was shaking and his
hands were trembling. He was growing paler by the
second.
“
Well you better get this cleaned up, we’ll take the body,” and
a quick nod in his men’s direction made them sprint into action and
take Lucas away and into a nearby van.
Angelo stood in the room for a moment longer feeling more
angry than upset. What had that dumb bastard Carl got himself into?
He was supposed to be one of the good guys!
Urgh never mind
, Angelo thought as he
chucked the end of the cigar away and thoughtlessly left the carpet
to singe. He’d be taken care of. He pulled a wad of fifty dollar
notes out of his blazer pocket and threw an indiscriminate amount
onto the floor next to the motel manager. He was scrubbing
nervously at the carpet with ammonia.
“
Here….keep ya mouth shut,” and Angelo walked away.
~
“
Urgh….where are we?” Anna woke up with a stiff
neck.
“
We’re somewhere near St Louis I think,” Carl yawned and
fidgeted in his seat.
It was pitch
black outside and they were parked at the side of the road. Too
tired to drive anymore, and having no idea what to do, Carl had
eventually given up and pulled over for the night.
“
Do you know where we’re going?”
“
Nah….” was all Carl could say. “They’ll be onto us. They’ll be
looking for our car and they’ll have every bagman and hitter in the
state looking for us,”