Short Story:
DROP OFF
by Philip Beloin Jr.
I met Sarah in a bar, the neon glow highlighting the streaks of red hair and casting a sheen on skin so white she looked ill. Her eyes were a rich brown, but they were a drunk’s eyes; fuzzy and drooping with each drink. I bought her all the sweet cocktails she could hold while I stuck with the aged grains, and we downed our glasses until the bartender shouted last call.
"Where do you live?" Her breath had spilled into the autumn night, but I didn’t even feel the cold.
"Around the block," I said.
She took a wobbly step, and my hands grabbed her waist, hoping to keep us both from keeling. Linking her arm through mine, I felt like I was leading her down the aisle at a wedding.
That made me chuckle. I had been married twice; the first when I was twenty-one, believing the spark would last forever. Valerie was a freckled carrot top with a fiery temper, and I was a rookie beat cop who took nothing from nobody. Our pitched battles and frantic lovemaking left me with drained.
On my second go around I picked a woman who looked similar to Valerie. Jill had red hair and a short frame flaring in all the right spots. Jill wasn’t a hothead. No, she was a sophisticated snob, right down to her professional core; giving private flute lessons to spoiled brats. I was off the force by then and our lifestyles never meshed.
"What’s so funny?" Sarah said.
"I’m just drunk," I said.
Sarah wanted it dark, but I could still see the cruel cut of time; legs and sides filling in and breasts sagging towards her armpits. It didn’t matter none. I had lived here with both Valerie and Jill.
Her snoring drove me from bed before the sun did. I brewed a pot of coffee and had a cigarette for breakfast. I checked for messages, but the machine held none.
I was thinking about going back to bed for an encore when she shuffled out, wrapped in a bed sheet. Static had invaded her hair, leaving behind a red beehive. Her pale cheeks looked like they were filled with air and her eyes were slits that the light prodded.
She looked terrible, just like Valerie used to after a night of sauce.
"I forgot your name," she said. "I’m Sarah."
"It’s Frank."
Sarah surveyed the apartment; old furniture facing an even older TV, the dark brown walls filled with cracks and pits. Her eyes settled on a painting Jill had brought home of the sun rising over a beach and lighthouse. It was the brightest thing I had.
"I don’t see you running off to work this morning," Sarah said.
"I’m self-employed."
"Doing what?"
"Odd jobs," I said. "Limo driver, bodyguard-stuff like that."
I thought she was going to ask a bunch of dumb questions, and I wished I had lied, said something like a stockbroker, but the apartment wasn’t a stockbroker’s apartment. My pad was a shambles, covered in layers of dust and bittersweet memories.
"I know this is going to sound strange," she said, "but I think I might have something for you."
"Let me hear it," I said.
"Let me have one of your smokes."
I got two going, but left mine smoldering in the corner of my mouth. She exhaled a blue cloud and then started babbling about a Russian hood named Ivan Kuleshov.
"He’s called Ivan the Terrible," I said.
When I was a rookie cop and married to Valerie, Ivan ran several whorehouses, using girls who wanted out of Russia as communism collapsed. I got a free ride on the commie sluts, and Ivan got a free ride from the department.
"Well," Sarah continued, "he owns this after-hours club."
"I heard it was a gambling hall," I said. Jill had played baccarat there and lost thousands.
Sarah dabbed out her smoke. "Have we met before, Frank?"
The tale was always the same: bored girl looking for excitement, a new adrenaline high. She was already weak for booze. Why not cards, too? She had lost the house’s dough and now the house wanted their dough back, plus interest.
"How much do you owe Ivan?" I said.
"About twenty-five K."
"I’m not robbing any banks for you, lady."
"I’ve got the money, Frank. That’s not the problem."
"What is?"
"Ivan wants what you got from me last night," she said. "I can still feel his sweaty hands on my shoulders when I was at the blackjack table, and him leaning over to look down my blouse. He says I’ve got to pay up, and he wants it tonight, on some bumpkin road outside of the city. I’m afraid to go alone."
"Don’t blame you."
"I told him I’d like to bring my brother along. He said fine. I’m an only child, but Ivan doesn’t know that."
Sarah left, saying she was going to get the money. I took a shower to scrub away the dregs of my hangover. I thought about Ivan the Terrible-I didn’t like the idea of messing with a guy who used ex-KGB thugs to do his dirty work. If Ivan wanted his vig in flesh, well, I can tell you Ivan, Sarah’s paid the tally.
As I was toweling off, someone pounded on my door. The peephole revealed a distorted face with a pointy nose and a cartoon sized jaw below a long mouth. When I was on the force, Danny Fitzgerald and I had ridden together, and now nearly two decades later, he had made detective sergeant.
I ignored him and got dressed.
Sarah had done her best not to look inviting to Ivan; hair pulled back in a bun, no makeup, and loose fitting sweats. Valerie wore bum around clothes to clean house, and I always started grabbing her ass when she dressed down.
"You got it?" I said.
She tapped her waist. "Money belt."
"We’ll take my car."
"You think so?"
"If we get into any trouble, I’ll feel better about driving mine."
We left hers parked on the street, and I drove to the highway, a two-lane road that shot us into the suburbs. I lit a smoke and thought how I would handle things tonight. Sarah was quiet, too, staring at a pink and purple horizon that my car would never reach. Behind us, a full moon was coming up as if on a seesaw with the sun.
"Where’d you get the money?" I said.
"I’m on a trust fund till I’m thirty."
"Ah."
"On the first I’m rich again."
"Not this month."
"Thanks for reminding me, Frank."
A half-hour later, the sunset had faded to a deep blue stripe under a black sky. Our exit dumped us into farmland, the moon glowing over vast fields of shriveled cornstalks and rotting pumpkins.
I had been out this way with Jill once, getting her away from the city on a drive that lasted hours. I remembered her red hair being long and straight, her face milky smooth. I confronted Jill about her affair then, but she said nothing, only turning her brown eyes on me.
"I followed you, Jill," I had said. "I saw everything."
"Frank!" Sarah said. "You’re in the wrong lane!"
A horn blared in an increasing echo, and headlights blinded me. I yanked the wheel to the right as a pickup trunk barreled past. I turned too hard, the car bouncing along the roadside. As I stopped in the breakdown lane, Sarah gasped, her hand over her chest.
"Are you okay?" she said.
"I think I blacked out for a second."
We sat there a minute catching our breaths. After another car zipped by, I pulled back out.
"Ivan won’t be there," I said. "His muscle will try and take you."
"And you’ll stop them?"
"I’ll stop them," I said.
Her hand squeezed my thigh.
"But I want you to stay in the car, behind the wheel," I said. "If there’s any trouble, take off. Okay?"
"But Frank..."
"Don’t worry about me. I can handle whatever happens."
Another squeeze. Sarah had been a fool to agree to a drop off in the middle of nowhere. Anything could happen and there would be no witnesses.
"You seem to know where you’re going," she said.
"Been out here a couple times before," I said. "Years apart, though."
"What made you come out this way?"
"My wives," I said.
"You don’t wear a ring," she said. "I look for that sort of thing."
I told her how Valerie had found out about my visits to Ivan’s brothels.
"We fought over it," I said, "and Val threatened to go to the Police Commissioner, the mayor, the media, anyone who listen about police corruption."
Years later, I met Jill at a concert in the park.
"Jill wanted this uppity lifestyle that threw a wedge between us. When she stopped sleeping with me, I started to tail her. Sure enough, after teaching this kid how to blow into a flute, she’d blow the kid’s father, who happened to be one of my ex-partners."
"That really sucks, Frank. So you’re divorced?"
"There was only one way to stop Valerie from blabbing," I said. "I slugged her so hard her head cracked when she hit the floor. I watched her bleed to death in the living room where you woke up this morning."
Sarah didn’t move at first-almost as if she hadn’t heard me. She then threw her shoulder into the door, but I had locked it from the driver’s side. I grabbed her shoulder and yanked her closer.
"Jill sat right where you are now," I said. "She didn’t even deny she was fucking Danny Fitzgerald." I had used the butt end of my pistol-the one I hand in my hand now-to smash Jill’s skull into her brain.
I braked hard and dragged Sarah out of the car. Once on her feet, she didn’t try to run or scream. She only said please, her breath stale in my face. Her eyes, brown and tearing, pleaded into mine.
There was no blood, the bullet leaving a black hole through the front and back of her coat.
***
Valerie had disappeared near our first wedding anniversary. The police didn’t like the circumstances, and I was forced to hand in my badge. I started working for myself then. When Jill hadn’t been seen or heard from in a week, Danny Fitzgerald pulled me in me. But he had no evidence.
Fitzgerald had loved my wife-or maybe he just loved her head in his lap. A year later, he was still harassing me.
I had to backtrack, getting lost on some side roads. Nothing looked too familiar but as I drove around, passing a few stray cars, a feature grew out of the darkness, and I knew I was in the right spot. It looked like a half-oval bump set back in a rolling field of grass and wildflowers.
I parked in a thicket well off the road and popped the trunk, grabbing the round shovel I had tossed in there that afternoon. I went over to the passenger seat and picked up Sarah, draping her across my arms like I had Valerie and Jill. Sarah was a little heavier than they were, but we were all getting older.
It was cool out-not as bad as last evening-but the air froze my lungs and sweat soaked my back, forcing a chill throughout my muscles. The tall grass whipped against my pants with each step I took towards the rise in the land. A path fed into the ridge, winding along rocks and small trees. I needed a breather when I reached the top.
I had marked the spot with a rock shaped like the head of a hatchet. I worked at the hard soil until the hole was a few feet down, and Sarah went on top of the bones that I had buried nearly fifteen years apart.
As I tossed some dirt on top of the bodies, I remembered the money belt. A fringe benefit-no more. I yanked it free. After the spadework, I sat on a downed tree trunk and had a smoke.
Down on the road a set of pinpricks crawled through the dark. I waited for the headlights to fade before I headed back to my car.
About the Author:
Phil's fiction has appeared in Short Stuff for Grownups, Words of Wisdom, The Storyteller, and monthlyshortstories.com. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, children, and one crazy dog.