Cowboy Ending - Overdrive: Book One (42 page)

“So what are
you going to do about it?”

I closed my
eyes.

Memories
flashed. Clear as the day it happened.

Donald’s
baseball team was in a weekend tournament at a local community
center. Norwood? Sinclair Park? Not sure. Anyways. Sometime during
the afternoon a kid from another team was upset, his mother was
consoling him. Kid’s father was angry, being very mean to his wife.
Talking about how poorly their team had played that day.
Dad had just finished coaching Donald’s team to victory over this
kid’s team interrupted, shook the kid’s hand and made sure to
congratulate him on his efforts in the game. Making sure to mention
an infield fly he’d snagged. The kid’s father was not impressed,
his face gone red with rage. But Dad ignored him completely, shook
the kid’s hand again and came back to us.

When Donald
asked why he’d done that, his reply was simple:

“Boys, there
are times in life when people around you will need help. And it’ll
be up to you to know when it’s help you can give, and when you
can’t. Today was a time when I could help.”

“Joe?”

My mouth was
dry again.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

Forgive me,
Dad. But this is one of those times!

“I’m gonna do
nothing. They win.”

Chapter
40

Mom wasn’t
impressed when I finally came home at six in the morning.

Thankfully she
was groggy and in a medically induced sleep so I only took a
modicum of shit before she collapsed again.

Couldn’t wait
until she saw my face in the daylight.

I managed to
stumble down the stairs without too much noise, stripped out of the
filthy jeans and had my second shower in as many hours. The aches
and pains that I’d managed to ignore for a time began to reassert
themselves as the hot water scalded my flesh.

After leaving
Tamara’s apartment it had taken me almost an hour to hobble back up
Ellice Avenue to where I’d parked my Windstar. Thankfully the
shit-kicking I’d received hadn’t included theft so I still had the
keys to fire up my poor battered baby and slowly drive it home.

The man staring
back at me in my bathroom mirror was even uglier than usual. My
eyes were red rimmed from fatigue and emotional exhaustion. The
purplish swelling around my left eye seemed to have reached its
peak and was now settling into a steady black color. Tamara didn’t
think I would need any stiches for my lip, but since she was going
to school for massage therapy instead of nursing I probably should
have gone to the neighborhood walk in clinic and waited for …

“No doctors,” I
muttered, turning away from the mirror and the judging look my
reflection was giving me. “No doctors.”

Staggering
weakly into my bedroom I dropped my sodden towel in a heap on the
cracked linoleum floor before collapsing as gingerly as possible
onto my bed.

I was
unconscious within moments.

Dreams.

I hate
dreams.

Mostly because
every dream I’d ever had for myself had been abandoned.

So I figure if
I can’t have any dreams in the waking world, why should I have any
when asleep?

They only let
you down.

I was in a
classroom. Mr. Cooper was at the front of the class droning on
about TV processes and procedures. Something about politics in the
workplace or some such nonsense. All around me were my fellow
classmates as I remembered them. Bright eyed, hopeful for the
future college students.

Cathy sat off
to my right and near the front of the class. Shorter hair up in a
top knot, pink hooded sweater and a rapt expression. Her writing
hand making notes like crazy, which was impressive considering how
infrequently she checked on her scribbling.

Yay.
Dreams.

Mark
stood off to my left, lounging at the doorframe to the classroom.
No door, just the frame. He was in his more familiar
Cowboy Shotz
gear. Long sleeved black
tee, faded jeans and a smirk. Mr. Cooper ignored him completely as
he droned on, full on Charlie Brown’s teacher voice wah-wah-wah-ing
away unintelligibly.

I rubbed at my
eyes with a groan, trying to will away the image.

No such
luck.

My body
squirmed uncomfortably in the desk chair. Damned college takes
thousands of dollars from me in tuition you’d figure the least they
could do in return is have appropriate sized desks for every
potential student. My damned knees were squeezed in tight enough to
make me wince.

Seriously, even
in my dreams the desks were uncomfortable? For fuck’s sake.

The big flat
screen TV that Mr. Cooper was standing in front of and gesturing at
began to flicker and strobe with images.

Not images.

Memories.

Cowboy Shotz
.

Packed dance
floors.

Candace
Cleghorn. Smiling and dancing with others.

Aaron and
Parise looking on from a distance, talking amongst themselves.
Surrounded by Asian businessmen and more well attired young
ladies.

The
Native Posse’s
gang
house. The wall of victims.

Officer Miller,
his brutish face and those massive fists.

Officer Mackie,
his face buried in a glass of whisky.

Cathy – modern
day Cathy – on the screen, her face confused. “It doesn’t make
sense. Not all of the victims are ….”

“Indians?” spat
Posse
member Shaun from off screen.

“…
They
came from all walks of life. All circumstances..”

“So. What do
you think, son?”

To the
immediate right of the big screen stood my Dad exactly as I
remembered him. Ball cap on his head, belly protruding slightly
over his belt line and a lit cigarette in one hand. His face was
wistful and sad.

“Wh …
What?”

He smiled
gently, gesturing with his hand towards the TV. A trail of smoke
flowed in the same pattern of his gesture.

“What Cathy is
saying,” he continued, nodding to young Cathy seated in front of
him. “Does it make sense?”

More images
flashed on the screen. Stories of the missing women of Winnipeg
from the papers I’d read. An affluent lawyer gone missing from her
condo late one night. A mother of three disappeared after dropping
her children off at daycare, her minivan found abandoned at the
outskirts of town. A middle aged grandmother - young for the title
- on her way to the airport; no one knew she was missing until
after her plane had landed in Halifax.

Dad gestured
again. More images.

Young
women, mostly of aboriginal descent - though not exclusively so -
flickered across the screen. These images were added into the
stories about missing women, though now many of them began to look
familiar. Either from the images on the wall from the
Posse’s
hangout or from my own
memories of having seen the girls at the club.

I blinked,
rubbing at my eyes. When I opened them again the screen was black
and filled with static. Dad was enjoying his smoke. Mr. Cooper’s
droning became more pronounced, his hand gestures emphasizing his
points as he paced in front of the class. Mark stifled a yawn from
his position at the doorframe.

“What? Dad,
what are you talking about?”

His
expression became faintly disappointed. I hated that look. Made me
feel like I was twelve years old again and caught in a lie.
I swear Dad, Donald broke the vase!
He touched the screen. Static cleared. Ran through the cycle
again. Clippings to images. The disparity between them. Over and
over it ran in a dizzying blur.

“Enough, stop.”
My hands went up in front of my face, though of course it couldn’t
keep the images out. Nothing could. The images being in my head and
all.

“Does it make
sense?”
“No, of course it doesn’t! Now make it …”

The whole
room changed. Everyone stayed exactly where they were but we were
no longer in a classroom. A large space, completely dark but
everything still perfectly visible. Hell it might’ve been space.
Like, outer space. My fucked up head after all. I wondered if
the
Millenium Falcon
was about
to make a fly by.

Dad was still
there, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into a cloud above
his head. Framing him ethereally, which I suppose was
appropriate.

“What doesn’t
make sense, son?”

“None of
it makes sense,” I muttered. Cathy still sat near the front
scribbling away madly in her notebook as Mr. Cooper continued his
inaudible lecture. “None of it.”
“How so?” That was Mark from his position at the doorframe. Really,
a doorframe and no walls? I hated the
Twilight Zone
.

“Cathy’s
right,” I muttered. Ahead of me I could see Cathy’s head nodding in
agreement. “The missing women reports don’t add up to what’s
happening at the club.”

“What
is
happening at
the club?” Mark asked, somehow sounding curious and disinterested
at the same time.

“Prostitution
for sure. Parise all but confessed to that.” Right before going all
karate class on my fat head anyway. I scratched at my scalp with
both hands, trying to clear my mind. “But that’s the part I don’t
get. Sure, prostitution is bad and all. But why the heavy hitting
on me? Aaron admitted to bringing in a few of the guys to help with
extra security, likely for the girls I figure. So why beat the hell
out of me? He’d wanted to bring me in the fold. All I can figure is
…”

“Would you have
done it?” Dad asked neutrally.

“What?”

Dad’s
expression went cold, faintly disapproving again. “Would you have
gone along with things if you’d been told what was going on?”

Just
like when I was twelve. “I don’t … Maybe. I
don’t know…. Money’s tight, Dad.”

He frowned at
me but didn’t say anything further.

“You wouldn’t
have done it,” Mark said from off to the side.

I scowled at
him. “You don’t know that.”

“I’m not
really here, dipshit. You’re arguing with yourself. So somewhere
deep inside you
know
you
wouldn’t have done it.”

My scowl
deepened. “Fuck you, then. Or fuck me. Or, I mean … shit this is
confusing.”

Dad’s sigh was
as exasperated as I remembered it. He shook his head.

“What?”

“Joe, they
killed a girl.”

“At least one,”
Mark chimed in.

“And now they
know that you know.”

“But
why?” I burst out, smacking my palms down on the desk in front of
me. “Why did Candace die? Was it an accident? Did she threaten to
leave? Turn herself in? And what does whipping my ass and letting
me live solve? They think I’m not going to tell anyone about their
little whorehouse now?”

“They couldn’t
kill you, people knew you were there.” Mark said, his voice
distant. Only vaguely interested again. Seriously, what’s up with
that? “Shelby saw you get attacked. She’ll tell the others. You
turning up dead? Brings too much heat down on the club. Parise and
his crew can suppress your assault.”

“You won’t
tell, son.” Dad’s face was sad now. He took a drag, the cherry
illuminating his face eerily in the already eerie semi-darkness. “
You know you won’t. Your mother needs to be protected, taken care
of. These people … Well. You already know what they are capable
of.”

“What about the
businessmen?” Cathy’s younger form asked, not turning away from Mr.
Cooper’s lecture but entering the conversation. Her voice crisp,
precise and clear. “Those men definitely weren’t local types. Too
much broken English. Chinese? Japanese?”

“What’s
so special about this week?” Mark asked then. “That’s what Aaron
kept saying.
This isn’t a good
week
. Well why not?”

“What makes
this week different?” Cathy echoed.

“What is …
“

“Who cares?” I
blurted out as my frustration boiled over. “Seriously, who the fuck
cares at this point?”

Everybody froze
and turned to stare at me. Mark. Cathy. Dad. Mr. Cooper. Every
person in the class sitting at a desk.

Not creepy at
all.

“Honestly,” I
continued, suddenly less full of vitriol. “Who cares? They’ve won.
Whatever they’re doing, they’ve sent a message loud and clear.” I
shook my head sadly, frustrated tears once again forming in my
eyes. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Everyone
vanished save for Dad. Suddenly I wasn’t in a college desk anymore,
I was standing directly before my old man, looking up at his
towering figure. Which was ridiculous now that I think about it,
since I had been a half foot taller than him before the car
wreck.