REG HART SLUMPED behind the wheel of his ‘72 Olds NinetyEight, which reeked from the stench of dogs and rotting upholstery. His dark, greasy hair fell down over his high forehead in tufts each time he nodded forward, drifting closer to a drunken stupor. Clear, thick fluid oozed from his pointed nose–a rather grotesque appendage that flattened and widened as it spread down on his grim face. The residue clumped to his unshaven, deeply creased upper lip, then coursed sideways, making its way down over his chin to form long, rubbery strings on his grungy designer shirt. Between drinks he raised his head, blinked his dark, bloodshot eyes, and combed his filthy fingers through his stringy hair to pull it away from his face. Muttering aloud the jumble of words scrawled on the columns supporting the overpass, he desperately fought to stay awake. Vulgar utterances slipped from his wet lips between each gulp from the bottle he kept wedged tightly between his legs.
He’d long since stopped calling on God for help in overcoming his problems. His response to the summons and complaint filed by his estranged wife’s attorney had been due three days ago. There would be no answer. His third–and last–attorney would no longer represent him without a minimum $20,000 retainer, an amount that wouldn’t even cover his past-due bill.
The lime green wreck was parked under the I-15, Rio Grande bridge, the dirty recesses of the city’s arm-pit. The dim light of a nearby street lamp burned at his blurry eyes as a passing train rattled the rusty doors on the car and shook the ground as it rushed on its way, thundering past him under the bridge. Earlier that morning he’d stopped by the house to drop off his final paycheck so the children could eat. Linda had told him the trustees’ sale of their home would be on the front steps of the county courthouse by ten the following morning.
The near-empty bottle of vodka was only the second thing he’d stolen since he was 14. Those days were 25 long years behind.His thoughts turned to his father: he wondered if the old man had yet discovered that he’d stolen the gun. Then the tears welled up again and spilled down his cheeks, the alcohol apparently refusing to give him the courage he’d hoped it would. He coaxed another sip from the bottle and waited for its full effect to take hold. He’d never been a heavy drinker, and each swallow burned less and less as he drew closer to the last.
Car tires, commanded by drivers clearly oblivious to his pain, whizzed by on the concrete bridge above, thumping the joints in an echoing, rhythmic tone as they advanced and passed overhead. Glancing down at the pistol resting on the passenger seat, partially obscured by his wrinkled jacket, Greg’s eyes began to droop and his thoughts wandered. He needed to do it now before he drifted into an inescapable sleep.
Suddenly there came a knock at the driver’s side window. “Excuse me,” interrupted a muffled voice. “Do you know who owns that old car?” A young man in his early twenties, bent over, his face nearly pressed up against the smudged glass, was peering into the car. Apair of deep blue eyes strained in the dim street light to see inside. Greg’s response was slow as he turned over the ignition key to roll down the power window just a crack.
“What?” came his slurred reply. The brunt of the young man’s ice-blue stare shifted from the broken man and honed in on the gun. Then, hit by the blast of rank air wafting from the car, he pulled back several inches to escape its staggering force. His face–and stomach–turned momentarily sour.
Recovering somewhat, the fellow pointed to a beat-up, rusted-out ‘65 Mustang parked in front of the Olds and repeated, “That car; I was wondering if you knew who owned it.”
Greg wagged his head and reached to cover the butt of the gun as, in the cloud of drunkenness, he fumbled for the “up” button. “No,” he grumped.
“This car you got might be a classic some day,” the young man pressed, his voice crackling through the narrowing gap. “How much would you take for it?”
Greg hesitated, then brought the window back down a bit. “Are you nuts? This’s a piece ‘a junk.” His words were garbled as they tripped off his thick tongue.
The young man’s stubborn enthusiasm caught the drunk off guard. “Is it running the big block four-fifty-five, or a small block three-fifty?”
“I don’t have a clue what your talkin’ ‘bout, kid.”
“The motor . . . is it a big block or small?”
The furrow in Greg’s forehead deepened. “Don’t know; leave me alone.”
“If you’ll let me take a look at the serial number on the dash, I can tell. If it’s a small block, the motor’s worth at least five hundred bucks.”
In truth, Mitch Wilson didn’t want the car, or the motor. But it was clear what the inebriated man was about to do. Mitch’s mind winced as it raced back to a time 16 years earlier when he was a happy-golucky seven-year-old–back to a day that had changed his life forever. His father had been a builder in Vegas, constructing mostly upper-end homes. The recession of the eighties had hit him hard. Having funded the building of seven or eight expensive spec houses, he’d found that he was unable to sell them and recoup his money. Over the ensuing months the interest had choked him until he finally snapped from the pressure. To make matters worse, young Mitch had been the first to walk in on the grisly scene.
Mitch blinked hard as he tried to shake the last reflected glimpse of his father from his mind. The spectacle, however, didn’t budge, continuing to slam against the battered door of memories he had tried to keep tightly shut. “Maybe you could buy your wife a nice gift and get you a cheap motorcycle to get around on,” he blurted out. Greg just stared at the young man, a puzzled look creasing his face. “The ring– I noticed you’re married. . . . Have any kids?”
Greg lowered his gaze to take in the wedding band clamped onto his finger. “She filed for divorce . . . been more than a month.”
“And how many children do you have?” The moment it escaped his lips Mitch feared he’d asked the wrong question.
“What makes you think I got kids?”
“You look like you’d be a good dad.”
“Two . . . two kids.”
“You have any pictures?”
“Listen, kid, I got something I’ve gotta do. Just get out of here and leave me alone.”
“Show me their pictures . . . and I’ll leave you alone,” he lied.
Greg wasn’t one to be rude. “If you promise to leave,” he sighed, reaching to his back pocket, fumbling for his wallet.
“I’ll leave as soon as we’re finished. If you’ll roll down the window, I’ll give you a hand with that.” Greg again hit the button to the automatic window, which descended and stopped just six inches from fully open.
The door remained locked; Mitch nonchalantly scanned the opening to see
if he could get through. His six-foot-two, 195-pound body would fit, but
could he move fast enough to snatch the gun before the drunk did? Greg
folded back his wallet and eased it toward the open window. At that moment Mitch lunged forward, one hand seizing the wallet and the other to
introduce himself, latching onto the listless man’s wrist.
“Mitch Wilson,” he breathed as casually as his voice could manage. Mitch
hadn’t expected such a struggle. Greg came to life as Mitch launched himself through the partially opened window. His belt buckle hung up on the
glass as his feet kicked awkwardly, almost as if he were swimming in midair. His long arms groped blindly for the gun; the man struggled to reach it
first. Mitch’s fingers found its mark as, covering the trigger with two fingers,
he wrenched it free in his viselike grip.
The blast of a train whistle ricocheted back and forth between the overpass walls, drowning out Greg’s cursing. Mitch felt the window roll down
under the unbalanced load of his body, now mostly in the car. Somehow the
drunk had managed to open the car door, swinging his flailing foe away
from the auto. With the hand he’d been holding onto the drunk, Mitch thrashed
to his left and latched onto the steering wheel, yanking himself back toward
the automobile. But in the meantime, Greg–remarkably spry for the state he
was in–had slipped out of the car. Mitch struggled to lower the window and
drag himself from his precarious position. Glancing around to see where the
drunk had gone, he spied the droop-shouldered figure making for the train
tracks.
A second train, slow-moving, blasted its signal again as Greg staggered onto the tracks and blinked up into its lights. Mitch didn’t stand
a chance to reach him before the train would meet him head on. Reflexively he turned his head, protecting himself against the inevitable
gruesome jolt of steel on flesh.
And then, in the echoing cacophony around him, unfolded in Mitch’s
mind a slow-motion, frame-by-frame scenario. Having turned away,
his gaze fell on the wallet, which lay open on the ground. The street lamp
under the bridge cast a surreal, eerie, luminescent glow. Mitch’s eyes took
in the photo, revealing a family of four . . . a boy who appeared to be nine
or ten . . . a little girl, probably five or six. Like the samples one sees on the
walls of photograph studios, they stood in front of their proud parents,
smiling for the camera–the perfect, all-American family.
Then the train’s horn blared again, a long and piercing blow that disengaged Mitch from his dreamlike state. He spun around once more to witness the jumbled display. Massive steel wheels locked and screeched as they sparked and skidded down the smooth metal rails. Even as Mitch bent and picked up the wallet, he could see the wild look in Greg’s eyes, eyes now trained on him, fixed on the young man holding his wallet. Between blasts of air coming from the train’s horn, Mitch felt the air rise from his lungs in a discordant, caterwauling scream. “Your son!”
In that split second, Greg crouched, apparently in a bid to lunge free. Mitch looked on in horror as the drunk pushed off from the heavy metal locomotive as the force of its onslaught hurled him from the tracks. He disappeared from view in the far shadow of the hundred-car train, the big engine sliding past, coming to rest another 300 feet down the track before the heavy load rattled to a complete stop.
The train’s engineer scrambled down to see what was left of the man who moments before had stood on his track. The big engine bearing down on its victim had obscured his view; the entire sequence of events had happened too fast. Mitch’s eyes locked onto those of the engineers, then both peered out into the darkness, between rail cars, toward the opposite side of the locomotive. The drunken man had disappeared from view.
“He jumped off!” Mitch shouted over the rumbling engine.
The old engineer’s glassy-eyed gaze now centered on the objects gripped tightly in Mitch’s hands: a gun and a wallet. “You better give those to me, son,” he demanded, stretching out a hand. “You don’t need to make it any worse than it already is.”
Mitch stared dumbly down at the gun, then back at the shaken engineer. A second man was running toward them from the locomotive. He knew exactly what the engineer was thinking. And it wasn’t going to happen to him again. Mitch instinctively stuffed the wallet in his front pocket and jammed the gun under his belt. He turned and pulled himself up between two rail cars, then, hopping down on the other side, ran– just ran. A beautifully restored ‘66 red Chevy Camaro was parked behind the old Mustang; he jumped in and sped away, squealing tires knifing into the still night. The heavyset engineer struggled to squeeze through the cars. He couldn’t get over in time to see the sporty car pull from under the bridge, out of sight.
Mitch gunned the car several blocks down the deserted road, then turned, going south on Las Vegas Boulevard. His heart raced as he wondered–as he had thousands of times before–what could cause a man so much pain that he was willing to die by his own hand, leaving his loved ones behind to suffer the loss. Spinning the wheel to the left, he veered down a dark street, where he pulled to the curb and opened the wallet again. “Greg Hart,” he read on the driver’s license. The accompanying address indicated he lived in a ritzy part of town near the country club.
Leaning back in the seat of the car, Mitch closed his eyes and allowed the flood gates to open. It had been a cool winter day, at least by Las Vegas standards. He was seven years old. His mother had picked him up from school. His second grade class had just finished the final performance of Scrooge–and his dad hadn’t made it. Mitch, disheartened, had played Marley, the ghost who visited Scrooge in chains. He’d desperately wanted his father there–to feel his approval, to sense that he cared.
When the garage door didn’t open, his mother had parked on the driveway. The two of them stepped onto the front porch. Mitch, the corners of his mouth turned down, waited as his mother unlocked the fine, carved wooden door leading to the hallway of the 6,000-square-foot custom-built home. She suggested he call his dad using the two-way radio in her husband’s office. Mad at him for not having shown up, Mitch refused. After all, his dad had promised.
His mother had paused in the kitchen to read a note from his father, while Mitch plodded on through the house to the garage to see if he could open the door, his young mechanical curiosity getting the better of him. His dad’s pickup truck was parked in its usual spot, and after turning on the light, the boy noticed his father slumped over the wheel, seemingly asleep. Mitch promptly trudged down the steps to give his dad “what for.” His mother had come to the doorway and screamed the same moment Mitch opened the truck’s door.
Mitch drew a deep breath before he opened his eyes. The putrid smell filling his nostrils was almost as thick as it had been 16 years earlier. He leaned forward and brushed the stinging tears from his face, once again slamming the memories behind the battered door of his mind. Then he clambered out of the car and opened the trunk. Within three minutes he’d replaced his car’s license plate with one he conveniently kept inside. He knew it was against the law, but rationalized using someone else’s plates by telling himself he’d have to stay out of trouble or lose his car to impound. He could trade the car for one of his others, but didn’t think the old engineer had seen what he was driving. He’d wait to make the switch until the weekend when he saw his grandpa.
Climbing back behind the wheel, he slipped the gun and wallet in the glove box before firing up the engine. Glancing at the gauges, Mitch remembered where he had been going in the first place. The gas gauge read below empty. He turned onto Washington Street and headed east toward Rancho Drive. It was late, and Bino might have already headed home. Still he went. Mitch had entrusted Bino with selling his cars. How he did it Mitch wasn’t sure, but Bino could sell electric heaters on a hot summer day.
Mitch was anxious to get home. He hadn’t seen or talked to his wife, Stephanie, all day. She had scheduled a visit with the obstetrician at four to see if they had misjudged her due date. He couldn’t stand to be in the room while she was being examined. He turned ill and defensive every time he saw the doctor get close to his beautiful bride. Stef had told him she didn’t mind a bit that he didn’t go with her. She was too polite to tell him what she really thought: that he was being childish, not to mention rude. He probably could have gone today, since a sonogram isn’t an invasive procedure. Stephanie had promised to bring back pictures–if, that is, the technician or doctor would give them to her.