John Locke - Saving Rachel

I allow myself to relax the slightest bit. At least this isn’t about Karen. I give him a defiant stare. Who the hell does he think he is? If not for the complete absence of humor, I’d have sworn this was all a big, unfunny joke. In the background, I hear the limo driver talking softly into a wireless phone device. “Four minutes,” is the only thing I hear him say clearly.

Four minutes? Till what?

Chapter 2

The gangster’s voice contains no hint of inflection. “Rachel’s bra size, Sam,” he says. “Last chance.” I shout, “Fuck you!” We pull off the interstate and turn onto Cannons Lane, heading for Seneca Park.

“Are you trying to kidnap me?” I ask, wondering why it took so long for this happy thought to enter my brain. They’re not answering, but it doesn’t feel like a kidnapping—not that I’ve ever been involved in one. But no, whatever this is, it isn’t a kidnapping. If it were, they’d be kidnapping Rachel, not me. They’d kidnap her and hit me up for the ransom. And if they knew what I did for a living, we’d be talking seven figures. Anyway, the only demand I’d received so far was my wife’s bra size. Rachel’s great looking, but I seriously doubt this bit of personal information warrants my kidnapping.

My name—Sam Case—isn’t well-known, even in Louisville. Even our closest friends have no idea what I do. They think I’m a computer whiz, a guy who corrects the glitches and circular references that plague new software applications prior to launch. I do that from time to time, and those jobs bring in a quarter mil each year, which is nothing to sneeze at. But even Rachel doesn’t understand what I really do. Of course I tried to explain it to her a hundred times. When you’ve done something amazing, you can’t wait to tell your wife, right? I put in thousands of hours, poured my heart and soul into this, and the day I finally made it work, I tried to turn it into a big night. I planned a huge celebration; I couldn’t wait to see the look of pride and admiration in her eyes. But she couldn’t have cared less. To her, it was another possible paycheck at best. Lockdown T3, that’s the name of my electronic money program, the one that constantly shifts funds from one bank to another, all over the world, three times per hour, seven days a week.

Rachel barely made an effort to comprehend it. Two minutes into the explanation, she goes, “How can that possibly be true? Banks are closed on weekends and holidays.”

“It doesn’t matter if American banks are closed on certain days,” I say. “It’s always the next day somewhere in the world—or the previous day.”

“You’re hysterical,” she says.

“Hysterical?” Of all the comments she could have made, who’d have guessed she’d come up with that? Then she says—I shit you not, “Pass the salt, please.”

The appearance and demeanor of the gangster sitting across from me suggests serious wealth, but not at the level sufficient to make my client list—not that I’m seeking new clients. He appears cool and calm. His voice comes across in a practiced, matter-of-fact tone, and he’s trying for sophisticated, but not quite pulling it off. His hands are meaty, his knuckles gnarled, and I see traces of scar tissue around both eyes, remnants of battles waged and won. This man strikes me as one who fought and clawed his way to the top of a very dangerous ladder. Though he is middle-aged and unarmed, something about him makes him more frightening than the muscle-head sitting beside him.

Speaking of the muscle-head, I notice he hasn’t so much as twitched the entire time I’ve been conscious in the car. He’s a beast of a man with a sheath of muscles that bullies the fibers of his suit. He has a dull, don’t-give-a-shit look that marks him as a primitive man, one who could snap at any moment and morph into the Incredible Hulk .

I look away and quickly look back to see if he flinches. He does not. He just continues staring at me through vacant, unblinking, reptilian eyes—as if daring me to venture just a wee bit closer so he can feed.

“Rachel’s got a sister,” the gangster says, “name of Mary.”

I look at him but say nothing.

“I’m telling you this about Mary because I want you to know I expect answers from you, regardless of the question. You might think the question is silly or personal or … whatcha call … irrelevant to the situation at hand. But I don’t give a shit what you think about my questions. They will be answered, or there will be … whatcha call … consequences.” “Like what?” I sneer, showing him my tough side. I flex a bit. He sighs. “Oh, please.” With that, the driver pulls up to the curb near the jogging trail and parks the car. He keeps the engine running.

The gangster shakes his head from side to side, pretending to be overcome by a heavy sadness. He says, “Sam, you disappoint me. It’s clear you’re not ready for the discussion I wanted us to have. So for now, I’m gonna let you go.”

I blink a couple of times and rub my calf to get the blood fl owing. From the moment I entered the parking garage, nothing has made a lick of sense. But I figure if I can get out of the car in one piece, maybe I can find my way back to the planet Earth. I wonder if he’s teasing me or if this is someone’s sick idea of a joke. Either way, if he intends to let me go, I intend to exit the car sprinting.

“We’ll wait here a minute,” the gangster says, “in case you want to catch a ride back to the hotel with us.”

Fat chance.

To the driver, he says, “Turn the car around, and unlock the door.”

When that’s done, he says, “Okay, Sam, off you go.”

I’ve always lived my life by a simple rule: don’t spend more time in a limo with a crazed gangster and a T. rex than you have to. I follow my own advice and jump out of the car where the jogging trail loops between Rock Creek and Reece. I hit the ground running with a specific destination in mind and move toward it with all the speed I can extract from my legs.

I’m running to the cop on Reece, the one who’s talking to Rachel’s sister, Mary.

I’m full throttle now, yelling and waving my arms like a castaway trying to flag down a passing ship. They turn toward me, and several things happen all at once: A look of surprise registers in Mary’s face as she recognizes me. A shot rings out. Mary falls to the ground. The cop hits the street and starts radioing for help. I stop in my tracks. The cop quick-crawls to Mary to check her pulse. Another shot rings out. The policeman’s head explodes.

An engine revs, a car door slams in the distance, and tires squeal on pavement as an Audi R8, red with a black vertical stripe, races away from the scene.

Chapter 3

I need to … what? Run for cover? Run to Mary’s side? Call Rachel? Get help? What the hell is going on? I feel a surge of panic overloading my brain circuits. My feet seem bolted to the ground, and I remain this way until the screaming starts.

I look around. People are pointing at me, screaming the two words I don’t want to hear: “Get him!”

I hold up my hands in protest. “It wasn’t me!” I yelp. Why would they even think that? I’m her brother-in-law. They couldn’t possibly think I was involved in the shooting. I don’t even have a gun, for Chrissake.

I’m selling, but the park people aren’t buying. Worse, they’re becoming a mob. A mob full of angry, athletic men and women who suddenly start running toward me, converging on my position at breakneck speed from both sides of the field.

I turn around to check for the limo and see it hasn’t moved. I put my faith in my legs and make an all-out burst, hoping to get back to the car before the crowd can overtake me. While I run, I shield my face to make it harder for them to identify me later.

The bad news is most of the younger guys are lean runner-types and there’s no way I’m going to outrun them in a normal footrace. The good news is I’m in great shape, I have the lead and the angle, and this isn’t a normal footrace; it’s life and death.

I press on.

Now the limo is less than a hundred yards away, and I’m closing fast. But my breath is coming quicker and my lungs start to ache. The faster runners close in on me like a pack of jackals. What made them so flippin’ brave all of a sudden? Sheer numbers? The fact that I’m unarmed?

Two runners appear out of nowhere, cutting me off. I spin around. There’s no place to go, nowhere to hide. The park people slow down and begin forming a circle around me. I put my hands up, ready to surrender.

What happens next seems to unfold in slow motion. Behind the runners, I see the limo door open. Mr. Clean emerges with an enormous gun. He slowly lifts it, takes aim, and seamlessly fires two shots that strike both of my would-be captors in the back of the head. My eyes are transfixed on his face as he watches them fall, and I can tell you there is no change in his expression. He could be watching two men die, watching traffic, or watching paint dry. Then Mr. Clean lowers his gun, turns, and climbs back into the limo.

The stunned mob veers away from me in a single motion, like a school of fish encountering a big-eyed predator. Somewhere behind me, a woman shrieks. The two runners between me and the car appear to be dead. I’m horrified, but not so horrified that I can’t hurdle their bodies and run to the open door of the waiting limo.

Inside, Mr. Clean is sitting, pointing his gun at my face. I start to enter the vehicle, but Mr. Clean cocks the hammer. I freeze where I am, which is halfway in and halfway out.

The crowd behind me is starting to reconsider their retreat, a decision that bodes poorly for me. Mr. Clean places his index finger on the trigger, and that bodes worse.

The gangster says, “You need a lift?”

“I do,” I say.

The gangster says nothing. Behind me, I feel the crowd moving toward the car, slowly at first, like Night of the Living Dead , but with a growing confidence that the shooting might be over. “May I please have a ride?” I say. No response. Then it hits me. “Thirty-two B,” I say. “Rachel’s bra size.” The gangster says, “Jump in.”

The driver guns the engine, and the big tires squeal as we roar out of Seneca Park. We hit the freeway doing ninety and head back downtown, toward the hotel where Karen Vogel and I had sex less than thirty minutes ago.

Chapter 4

Igag and retch, but manage not to throw up in the limo. When I’m able to speak, I shout everything that’s on my mind. “You killed Mary! Oh, my God! And the others! What the hell is going on? What do you want from me? And what the fuck does Rachel have to do with this?”

The mobster remains calm in the face of my outburst.

“You brought this on yourself,” he says. “Maybe you answered my question ten minutes ago …” He turns his palms up and shakes his head. “… none of this happens.”

My brain cells spin like slot-machine tumblers as I try to process his words. If I heard him correctly, this goomba wants me to believe that the closely guarded secret of my wife’s small titties has caused her sister’s death. If he’d said he played pinochle every Tuesday with an eggplant, that would make more sense.

“You’re insane!” I shout. “You’re freaking insane!” The tremor in my voice tells me I’m shaking.

He shrugs. “Don’t talk for a minute,” he says. “You been through a lot just now. Take a deep breath and think about some things, like how you’re not going to tell anyone about the time we spent together today.”