Sondra and the baby were safe. We didn’t have to run anymore. That was the important thing. That was all that mattered.
The thunder returned, but it was fainter this time. The storm was moving away—losing steam. But it brought with it a new sound; police sirens. The cops knew where we were. I started to reach for the key and shut the forklift off, intent on turning myself in when they arrived, but my hand froze in mid-air.
Whitey’s eyes snapped open again. He stared at me, and then blinked away the rain, as if to prove he was still alive. Maybe it was a final act of defiance. His gaze moved in the direction of the wailing sirens and then slowly drifted back to me. Slowly, he twitched his arms. Then he grasped the forks and gripped them tight. His knuckles bulged. His tendons stood out. Still staring at me, he began to pull himself closer, no longer trying to escape. Instead, he was trying to reach me.
“Whitey,” I said, “you’ve been a bad, bad boy.”
The hydraulics whined as I grabbed the controls. Whitey’s eyes grew wider. Trembling, he clung to the forks and shook his head in denial.
I was still staring into his eyes when I separated the forks, widening the space between them again. I did it slowly, and my eyes never left his.
The chains clanked and the hydraulics shuddered. Then, after a moment’s pause, the forks ripped through Whitey’s torso, tearing his chest open and cutting him in half. Internal organs sailed through the air. Blood sprayed in all directions. His legs and abdomen fell into the water with a splash, sending a plume of spray across the pier. Pink-tinged foam lapped at the forklift’s tires. Even with his lower half missing, Whitey held on tight. Then his fingers started to slip. His arms sagged and his body dropped. He dangled from the forks. I thumbed the controls, spreading the forks apart the rest of the way and simultaneously raising them higher. Whitey lost his grip and he hung with one hand.
He still stared at me, his eyes expressionless and boldly defiant. I got the impression that even now, he refused to accept his fate—refused to acknowledge that this was it, that he was dying. Then his other hand slipped off and he plunged into the lake. The last thing I saw before he slipped beneath the dark water was his vengeful glare.
And then he was gone.
“Rest in pieces, you son of a bitch.”
The thunder roared.
The sirens grew louder now, drawing closer. Tires squealed. Red and blue lights flashed across the surface. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, but even in that ultimate blackness, I saw Whitey’s stare reflected over and over. I opened my eyes and turned the forklift off. Behind me, I heard car doors slamming and running footsteps. A radio squawked with static. Someone shouted at me, their voice audible over the thunder, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying and didn’t really give a shit. Fuck them. I was so tired. Weak and dizzy, I climbed down from the driver’s seat and collapsed onto the pier. The boards dug into my back. The rain washed over me, soaking me to the bone. I wanted it to feel like a baptism, wanted it to wash away my sins and carry off my troubles. Instead, it just left me cold. I was alive but empty. Alive but dead inside. Nothing mattered anymore and death would have been a welcome release. I wondered if that was how Whitey had felt, and if so, had I granted his wish? Was that what he had wanted all along?
I lay there on the pier and began to scream.
And that was where the police found me. I was lying there covered in the dried blood of my dead friends and the man who had killed them, howling at the wounded sky, my teardrops lost in the rain.
twenty-four
In some ways, that all seems like it happened a long time ago, and to somebody else. Another Larry Gibson. But then late at night, when I’m totally alone, it seems just like yesterday.
Alone. Hell, I’m alone all the time these days. It’s hard to find someone when you don’t trust anybody.
The cops arrested me at the lake and charged me with a whole shit load of stuff. The news cameras were there, filming the whole thing. I’m glad they were. Whitey had left a lot of dead officers in his wake, and if the television crews hadn’t been on the scene, I’m pretty sure the cops would have put a bullet in my head right there on the pier.
The rampage hit the national news—wall-to-wall, non-stop, twenty-four hour coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. How could it not? It made for quite the sordid tale. At first, when investigators had arrived on the scene at my apartment, they’d thought it was a domestic disturbance. Then it turned into a workplace shooting. Then a car chase. Then the wholesale murder of several police officers, the destruction of several police vehicles, and the downing of a police helicopter. And finally, the cherry on top of the media’s ice-cream, the bizarre and grisly forklift pursuit, in which several witnesses reported seeing a man impaled by a forklift while its operator calmly drove down the road. Oh yeah, the media loved me. I was a ratings bonanza. Within six hours of my arrest, they’d camped outside my parent’s house, interviewed several of my co-workers, and tracked down some of my old schoolmates. My parents had no comment. According to the rest, I’d seemed like a nice guy. Quiet. Hard-working. Never in a million years would they have thought me capable of doing something like this. I didn’t date much, true, but I had recently been spending a lot of time at a strip club, so obviously, that meant I was a secret weirdo suffering from some long pent-up rage or desire. All of which was bullshit, but it sounded good on television.
I told the cops my story, but of course, they didn’t believe me. If I were them, I probably wouldn’t have either.
The District Attorney was up for re-election, and he threw a bunch of charges at me—all kinds of felonies and offenses. But by the second day, the FBI and others were involved. Turns out they’d had several informants inside Whitey’s organization, and they’d confirmed that a lot of what I was saying was true. I hadn’t killed Darryl or Yul. I wasn’t with Jesse when he disappeared. The murders of Otar and the other mobsters had been purely in self- defense. Ballistics and eye-witness accounts verified that.
Within a few days, things started to turn around, and the media fell in love with me all over again, painting me as a solid, blue collar citizen who’d just happened to mistakenly run afoul of a Russian organized crime group. I had no prior arrests or felonies other than that old traffic fine. I was a working man—a decent member of society who’d had the bad judgment to get involved with a stripper, who had since disappeared.
Yeah. We’ll get to that in a minute.
Believe it or not, I escaped murder and manslaughter charges. My parents used their retirement money to get me a good defense attorney. The DA, wanting to get re-elected, didn’t press too hard because public sentiment was on my side, thanks to the media and how they spun the story. In the end, I got sentenced to time served, with seven-year’s probation and a big ass fine that will probably take me the rest of my life to pay off. As part of my deal, I pleaded guilty to discharging a fire-arm, trespassing, evading and resisting arrest, theft of industrial property, and abusing a corpse.
At least they didn’t nail me for improper disposal of a corpse, while they were at it.
The day after my release from prison, a bunch of terrorists shot up an elementary school in Florida, killing over one hundred children, and the media—and the rest of the country—forgot all about me. It was like I’d ceased to exist.
Sort of like Sondra did.
Oh, she didn’t cease to exist. She wasn’t dead, at least, not that I know of. But she did vanish and as far as I know, nobody has seen or heard from her since. According to a few law enforcement officials who were sympathetic to my case, she skipped town immediately. Probably made a break for it while Whitey and I were still at the lake. The FBI made several arrests, rounding up what was left of Whitey’s crew, and then confirmed that a large amount of cash had been stolen that night. Stolen by a pregnant stripper named Sondra. Like her, the money’s whereabouts were unknown. Nobody ever told me what the amount was.
The investigation continued, even though I was no longer a part of it. Witnesses were interviewed again. I found out that several of my neighbors had placed Sondra at my apartment shortly after the incident at the lumber yard. The yellow police tape on the door, warning people that it was a crime scene, had been cut and the door had been forced open. They theorized that Sondra had hidden the money in my apartment all along. They said that she’d
