Mondo Crimson Read online

  ANDREW POST

  Mondo Crimson

  FLAME TREE PRESS

  London & New York

  PART ONE

  BEASTLAND

  Chapter One

  Now

  The open nothingness of this country, all those houses for sale or left abandoned, unsold, slipping past the Greyhound’s windows, the small towns and nowhere crossroads standing dark and rusty and accumulating stillness.

  With a long trip, the road could sometimes become like a sensory deprivation tank. The bus was packed but no one was talking. She didn’t want to go where she was being taken, but money dictates the venue.

  The landscape streaming past might as well have been one of those painted backgrounds for cartoons that repeat. You can run, but you’ll never get anywhere. It was snowing again.

  The bus passed a line of people walking on the road shoulder, not a single visible face under their many layers, carrying on their backs everything they owned. They did not try waving down the bus, they weren’t looking for help, the world had turned its back on them and they were now out under the elements, taking their own path, assigning purpose to their lives after being robbed of the one they’d had. Still, she felt bad for them. It took a while for the bus to pass them all; the wanderers stretched for miles.

  Then it was dawn and Minneapolis closed in around the bus and her dread hardened.

  I don’t want to be here.

  Tough shit, she could hear him say. Her boss, though it wasn’t much of a choice. It was more like indentured servitude than employment in the traditional sense.

  She checked her pockets before stepping off the bus, making sure she had everything she’d need during what she hoped would be a brief visit to this city – phone, money clip, smokes, lighter, multitool, lockpick.

  Deboarding, Melanie Williams was reintroduced to the idea of a polar vortex as a concept, as a misery. She dropped her backpack right there and scrambled for her gloves, struggling to squeeze the right one over the end of her cast. It got cold back home in the Chi, but nothing like this shit. Just the couple of seconds outside made her run for the bus terminal doors, eyes watering and toes going dead and waxy in her boots.

  She spent close to an hour watching people standing in lines – for a bus away from here, for a cab, for a loved one to come pick them up. She had no one meeting her. On the bus, she’d started listing reasons it’d be a bad idea to call Dani. Maybe just a text. No. She put her phone away, again. I’m not going to be here long.

  If she and Dani ended up talking for a while, perhaps drawing out their breakup even further and going over who was to blame in detail, Mel didn’t want to have to go find a place to charge. That’s the excuse she decided to roll with, why she wasn’t calling Dani.

  She went and used the bus depot bathroom, which was an ordeal because she was still getting used to doing simple things with the cast swallowing her right arm. It was scuffed and dirty and smelled bad and itched like a motherfucker. There were no signatures or get well soon messages scrawled on it. End to end, a lonely, undecorated green.

  She refilled her water bottle at the drinking fountain. She opened her phone and looked at it sidelong, afraid that it’d tell her the address Felix had given her would be far away. Six blocks. Far, yes, but not too far. Workable.

  She didn’t have the money for a cab or a Lyft. She had eighty bucks in her pocket, the whole of her checking account, and that was for meals and a ticket back. Felix had only paid to get her to Minneapolis. The idea of a one-way trip on someone else’s dime was suspicious, yes, and she’d spent a lot of the ride thinking about that too, but he’d sent her out here to work, for a job as he called them – not that she considered herself, you know, a gangster or whatever. Felix would refer to himself as ‘just a businessman’, and then wink.

  Besides, if he was going to kill her – or have her killed – the bus ticket would be a waste of money. And that was one thing, among many, that Felix did not like.

  Keep telling yourself that, girl. Safety is only ever a temporary status.

  The sky was orange. Maybe it’d be a little warmer outside now, she thought. She tried it and immediately felt her chest burn with the first inhale but decided not to go back in – she had to get moving. She’d just have to trust the walk would warm her up. She leaned into the wind and pretended it helped.

  Like back home, they did a crap job of keeping the sidewalks clear of snow here too. She had to step out into the street a few times. Keeping her head down so her eyeballs wouldn’t freeze to marbles in her head meant if a car skidded on some ice and collided with her knees, it’d come as a complete surprise, the splice between being alive and dead comfortably abrupt. Well, it’d beat freezing to death.

  Keep moving. Think about warm places. Lounging on the beach that time you and Dani went to LA to visit her sister. Okay, maybe try to erase Dani from the memory. It’s just you, under the sun, back when it seldom snowed in Los Angeles.

  The shanty towns were as common in Minneapolis as they were in Chicago. Any spare park or empty lot. Cookfires using trash for fuel. Tents these people once slept in when taking their families camping now their full-time homes. A blanket spread out on the sidewalk, someone trying to get whatever they could for their extensive sneaker collection. A dull surprise still hanging in every pair of eyes, people who had the ground fall out from under them, once living paycheck to paycheck, now trash can to plate. From the higher floors of the buildings, out front of which these people asked for change, they were all probably too small to notice. Drifting specks of insignificance. Unless you have something in your pocket to spend, you are less than nothing.

  The implosion-afflicted never believe you when you say you can’t spare any money. She wasn’t lying. She really couldn’t. Mel weaved through them, apologized and apologized, categorically useless as far as those above would be concerned. Mel was only slightly better off. She hated Felix, there was no doubt about that, but if it weren’t for him, this would be her life too.

  Washington Street.

  Down a couple blocks and there it was, the brick building, 81813. And next to 81813 Washington was a fenced-in parking lot crushed in on all sides by other brick towers. No attendant and no security cameras – that she could see, hanging back at the corner, scoping the place out. The parking lot was half-full, most of the vehicles were beaters, covered by a thin layer of snow. One car in the back corner was buried, with mounds of gray slush piled and frozen all around it, suggesting it had been parked long enough that the plow driver had to maneuver around it more than a few times. Mel opened her phone and checked her texts from Felix. The address where the car would be found, the license plate number of that car, and the address where she was to take it. Nothing more.

  Mel entered the parking lot through its open gate and acted – in case anybody was watching – like she was just looking for her own car, nonchalantly checking license plates. AKI-112. AKI-112. Nope, nope. There was only one car left to check, the white Ford Escape standing buried in the back corner of the lot, looking like it was trying not to be noticed.

  She knelt to brush the snow from the car’s front plate. Minnesota, AKI-112. She went to the driver’s side and cleared the window with her sleeve. There was no one sitting inside. She cupped her hands to see past her own reflection. Clean within, spotless.

  Mel knew that a person taking stock of their surroundings was usually a sure-fire way to announce to someone I’m about to be up to no good, but it was still necessary. You can think about committing a crime, you can toe the edge between legal and illegal, but until that line is crossed, they can’t say you were attempting to steal a car if you don’t begin said a
ttempt.

  Seeing no one, not even anybody in any of the buildings towering over the lot around her, she brought out her kit and got to work. She hadn’t broken into a car since getting her cast on and even then it was to help someone out who’d locked their keys inside. But now, doing it for a different reason, she wondered how much time the cast would add, time she couldn’t spare. She became acutely aware of every sound around her. It felt like the car’s owner was always walking up behind her. But there was no one.

  She knelt again. The burning coldness of the blacktop bled through her jeans and made her kneecap feel like it was fusing in place. She ignored it, probing the driver-side keyhole with her tools, feeling clumsy with how restricted her right hand was – the cast allowed little room to move her fingers. Plus she couldn’t feel as acutely with her left hand in a glove. But she scraped and prodded, waiting for that wonderful tick of the lock’s surrender.

  None came. She gave up on the lockpick, pocketed it, blew into her hands as she looked around again, nonchalant. Still alone, no spectators.

  Mel took her backpack off and reached inside, drawing out the slim-jim – a handy tool, sixteen inches of flat, flexible aluminum with a hook on the end. Operating one usually made its user highly obvious, requiring you to make a motion like someone had drawn ‘breaking into a car’ playing charades, but a slim-jim tended to do quicker work than a lockpick. On the Greyhound, she’d used it to scratch down inside her cast.

  She slid the hook past the lip of the rubber window gasket and fed the door the slim-jim to its handle. Again, a lot of scraping and probing and blindly feeling around. She looked at herself in the driver-side window, saw a different woman than what her parents probably expected or wanted for her – and she also saw the person standing three steps behind her.

  “Can I help you?”

  Mel whirled around. The slim-jim snapped out of her hand and remained lodged in the door, making a diving board sound.

  She had not heard the middle-aged woman approaching. It was like she’d materialized out of thin air. Posture reading no hostility, hands at her sides. She had dark hair with a silver skunk stripe at the part. A lean face absent of makeup, a strong nose, chapped lips. Black wool overcoat, unbuttoned. Black dress pants, wrinkled. One of those coolers that you can carry one-handed, the type you see construction workers use as lunch pails or being stuffed into overhead storage bins on an airplane where you sit there and wonder what human organ might be inside, stewing in dry ice.

  There was nothing – nothing – in the woman’s cold blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Mel said, unable to think of anything better right then. “I’ll just go.”

  Mel ripped the slim-jim out of the door and snatched up her backpack.

  The woman sidestepped into her path, Mel nearly running into her.

  She tried to move around her and the woman sidestepped again.

  “Look, you saw I couldn’t get in there. I’ll just go, okay? I’ll just go.”

  “Try it,” the woman said.

  Mel looked at her. The woman’s face remained giving nothing. Her voice sounded tired, mildly annoyed, but she was not in any way afraid. She looked like she’d never been afraid.

  “Go ahead. Try it.”

  “Are you going to call the cops?”

  “Just try the door.”

  Mel didn’t take her eyes off the woman, expecting this was some way to get her focus on something else before the scary chick brained her with something. Mel felt around the cold sheet metal until her fingers brushed the door handle. She pulled on it. The car door opened.

  “Wasn’t even locked.”

  “Wasn’t even locked,” the woman said. “You see anything in there worth stealing? I mean, it’s a rental. Got almost two hundred thousand miles on it. So the car itself can’t even be worth much at this point.” The woman looked Mel up and down, her eyes lingering on her cast. A slight crooked smile, as if finding all this curious. She met Mel’s eyes again. “Unless you’re that hard up for a means of getting around. No, that’s not it. You’re too pretty to be homeless.”

  “I was told to come here,” Mel said, knowing better than to give Felix’s name. “I was told to find this car and take it somewhere. I’m just doing a job.”

  “Get in. See how you like it.”

  Mel made no moves to do so. It was as if her feet had frozen to the asphalt – which, right now, didn’t seem that unlikely. But the woman, if she was cold too, gave no indication.

  “Go ahead, get in. We’ll take it for a little spin.”

  On an episode about kidnappings, a true crime podcast warned to never let them take you to a second location.

  “Lady,” Mel said, “I got no problem with you. This wasn’t anything personal. I was just told to come here at a certain time, find this car, and—”

  “Yeah, you said that already.” The woman glanced around and reached into her coat, drew out a snub-nosed revolver, and let it hang casually at her side, finger curled inside the trigger guard. “Get in the car. Wasn’t a question the first time and sure as shit isn’t one now.”

  Mel raised her hands. Her bladder filled. “Okay, all right. Let’s just take it easy.”

  “In.”

  Keeping herself facing the woman, Mel started to move around the front of the car, to get to the passenger side, figuring that’s what the scary chick wanted.

  “The fuck are you going? This side, shithead. This side.”

  Mel came back, moving slow, her hands staying up. She hesitated at the open driver side.

  “Go ahead,” the woman said. “Hop in.”

  Mel got in and the woman slammed the door shut on her. It was as cold inside as it was outside. She watched the woman grab her bag and become a vague shadow behind the curtain of snow covering the windshield. She got in on the passenger side, shoved Mel’s bag into the back seat, and pulled the door shut. In the silent, cold car she sat there with the cooler resting on her lap, looking ahead at the wall of white covering the windshield, the gun in her hand resting on her knee. Blinking, breaths making drifting ghosts.

  “I suppose you’ll need these,” she said and brought out a ring of keys, the Rover Rent-A-Car logo on the keychain that Mel recognized from their commercials. The woman reached across and put the key in the ignition and twisted it, the car coming to life.

  Mel was saying, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, I’m just doing a job,” until the woman started shaking her head with her eyes closed, and Mel shut up.

  “You got X-ray vision, shithead?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Neither do I. Run the wipers.”

  Mel couldn’t find the switch right away. Her fear had caused her to forget how to understand all the symbols that she knew how to interpret before she could read. The wipers struggled to push the snow and ice off the windshield. After they batted it all away, what little sun could peek through the heavy clouds filtered in on them, the gun’s shiny metal, and the speckling of red dots across the front of the woman’s jacket, like tiny dark sequins.

  “All right,” the woman said. “First things first. Seat belts. Hold on, you do know how to drive, right? Your license up-to-date?”

  Mel managed to nod.

  “Okay, good. Seat belt.”

  Mel put on her seat belt, struggling to buckle it with her cast getting in the way.

  “Now,” the woman said, “we’ll hang a left out of here and then we’re going to want to stay in the turning lane, okay?”

  “What’s in that?”

  “What’s in what?” the woman said, then tracked Mel’s gaze to the flip-top cooler standing on the woman’s lap. “Oh, this? Nothing you need to worry about. Take a left out of here, like I’ve already said, and stay in the turning lane.”

  Mel swallowed. “Where are we going?”

  “Right pedal’s the gas, l
eft’s the brake. Go ahead. Give the brake a try.”

  Mel pressed the brake.

  “Well done.” The woman reached over and dropped them into gear. A crack as the car lurched forward an inch, the tires getting caught on the mounded ice surrounding them.

  She stepped on the brake again and held it. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Nowhere.” The woman motioned ahead. “Let’s move.”

  “Ma’am, just let me walk away. I didn’t do anything to you. You saw I couldn’t get in here. You can check my bag, I swear I didn’t take anything, I—”

  “First, stop calling me ma’am,” the woman said. “Second, I said take a left and stay in the turning lane. So let’s do that and let’s go.”

  “I’m nobody. I’m just here because I was told to be here.”

  “That’s pretty much life as an adult,” the woman said. “Left. Turning lane. Use your signal.”

  Mel released the brake. The car climbed the low hill of ice, crushed it apart. She felt sick. She might throw up any second or shit her pants. She wasn’t cold anymore. Quite the opposite. She was sweating. She kept seeing her dad, her mom, her uncle, all these various points in her life, and it felt like such a fucking slap in the face to not be allowed to know that it was always going to lead to this, here, now, her last day of being alive.

  She put on her turn signal, turned left, and stayed in the turning lane.

  Chapter Two

  Before Now

  Florida’s heat was a different animal. To Brenda, just trying to take in air was like receiving it mouth-to-mouth, the oxygen thin and tasting pre-breathed. The rental car’s AC only worked when it felt like it, which was seldom. So, similar to when a bad flu was coming on and the brain boiled and the thoughts turned soupy, it took her longer than it probably should have to realize she’d been driving in circles.

  She didn’t fucking know Orlando, okay? That and her stupid goddamn phone could not pinpoint her current location so, therefore, it could not give her directions anywhere away from that unknown location.