almost okay

SEVERAL DEATHS IN
THE FAMILY
Chapter Fourteen: Tijuana Brass Knuckles

When he stood up I held fast to his nose, my teeth clenched hard enough to sink in but not bite it off, his sudden backward motion also rocking me forward and pulling me upright until I was on the balls of my feet, bent at the waist and knees. He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled away hard. That's when I bit down all the way, the gristle giving way between my teeth with a crunch, the flesh of his nose separating from his face, blood spurting as he howled in pain.

I sat back hard against the floor, let my weight come down on the chair and it basically fell apart. By the time I got back to my feet, my hands were still tied, but hanging loose in front of me. There were pieces of the chair back still tied to me with loose coils of rope, and the seat of the chair was hanging at the back of my thighs. The black guy was writhing on the floor, holding the wound where his nose used to be, blood squirting out between his fingers.

I leaped at him, pulled my feet up and landed with the seat of the chair on his head. A jagged piece of broken leg protruding from the bottom of the seat caught him in the cheek and tore through the side of his face, taking off a big chunk of ear.

My sudden attack had caught Hector by surprise and he was just then starting to move. Hector pulled a pistol from the waist of his jeans and I scissored my legs across his ankles, causing him to lose his balance and topple to the floor, firing a shot into the ceiling as he hit the carpet with a thud. I rolled towards the shotgun that was propped against the chest of drawers. With my wrists still bound together, I swung the business end towards Hector, braced the butt into the corner, racked a shell into the chamber and pulled the trigger. Hector had just managed to sit up, barely four feet away from me. The blast tore off the top half of his head.

Meanwhile, the black guy had stopped squirming and had sat up himself, his mutilated face covered in blood. He stared at Felina and me blankly, his mouth hanging open, a steady pulse of blood flowing out from under his ear that slowly ebbed altogether as he bled out right there in front of us, finally falling back to the floor in slow motion. I'd gotten lucky. When I came down on his head, the chair leg must have torn through the carotid.

I was breathing hard, my ears were ringing and I realized just than that I still had that chunk of nose flesh in my mouth. I spit it on the floor.

“Help me with these ropes,” I said to Felina. She got up and walked stiffly over to Hector, reached down and picked up his gun. “Felina...” She aimed the pistol at him and squeezed off a couple rounds, then spit on his corpse. “Baby, we gotta get out of here. Don't shoot any more. He's dead. We might need to shoot somebody else.” She turned slowly towards me, trembling, tears streaming down over her cheeks. I could see the bruises - on her arms, her jaw, her forehead. Her lips were swollen and split. Hector had really roughed her up.

“Help me with these ropes, baby, and let's get the fuck out of here.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

“Do you know where we are?”

After she had untied me, Felina and I had worked our way through the empty house and out onto the porch. A crescent moon hung low in the clear night sky. I could hear the whoosh of highway traffic and the sound of barking dogs from nearby backyards. It wasn't exactly an upscale neighborhood and I was hoping that the sound of gunshots in the night weren't so uncommon as to call attention to this place.

“I was conscious when they drove us here. The LBJ is over there.” She pointed to the right. “We're about fifteen minutes from the Motel 6 where you were staying.”

I could see my rental parked in front of the house. “They brought my car?”

“Lonnie drove it, with you in the back. Hector and I followed you.”

“My stuff?”

“They brought everything. It must be in the house somewhere.”

“Wait here.”

I tore back through the house, re-entered that ghastly, blood-soaked room where they'd held me, kneeled down and searched Lonnie's pants pockets for the keys to my car. Nothing. I went through Hector's pockets, too, pulled out a thick roll of cash, but still no sign of the keys. I looked around and saw an ash tray filled with change sitting on top of the chest of drawers right next to that feeble shadeless lamp. Bingo. There they were, sprawled atop the pile of coins.

My stuff was still on the sofa - my bags, my laptop... even my cell phone and wallet, with all the money and credit cards still in it. I pulled a pair of jeans and my flip flops out of the tote, then put the shotgun inside leaving the butt end out for easy access. I put on the jeans, shouldered the straps on both the tote and my laptop, grabbed my briefcase and ran for the porch. Felina was still there and the dogs were still barking. I'd expected to hear sirens by then, but except for the dogs and the freeway whine, the night was eerily calm.

“Let's go,” I said as I took her hand. “I found the keys.”