CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Stick Davis I knew was no hero, but it seems like he did plan to do at least one semi-heroic thing in his sorry-ass life.

From what my captor tells me, Stick acted as if he was kind of taken with his new Purity pals down in the islands.

“He knew some of us were from Virginia,” Randall tells me. “We hooked up with him at this bar we all liked to go to, up on this little mountain in the middle of the island. Wasn’t anybody much up there to bother us, not so many mud people around like there was down below.”

Stick had been in Virgin Gorda for about four months, the best I can do the math, when he started hanging around with these creeps.

“He seemed like he was all in,” Randall says. He has a pint of Jim Beam with him, and he’s nursing it.

He seems hurt by Stick’s betrayal, even though he and his cronies have settled my old pal’s hash pretty good already. “I mean, he said all the right things, about how we had to stop the niggers and the spicks from taking over the country and all.”

He doesn’t bother to say “no offense.”

I don’t deny that Stick Davis had few redeeming qualities, unless he developed them well into his adulthood.

However, it never seemed to me that he was a bone-deep racist. It doesn’t jibe with anything we did, drunk or sober, back in the day, and it doesn’t mesh with anything he said to me when we were trying to ghostwrite his memoirs. I mean, he did choose a guy with an African American father to write them.

“I suppose, if we had known he used to hang out with the likes of a half-breed like you,” my captor says, “we might have suspected that the bastard was a traitor.”

Apparently the Purifiers were happy enough with Stick to make him privy to their unholy plans.

“He knew all about what we did in Charlottesville, and he acted like he thought it was kind of cool. And he knew what we were planning next.”

He doesn’t say what the “what” is. I figure he’ll get around to it.

“There’s plenty more of us,” he says, “and when we make our little statement, they’ll come out of the woodwork. Then you’ll see what kind of country this is.”

Yeah, I think, that’s what I’m afraid of.

While Stick was working for Whit Charles and generally having a fine old time getting stoned and banging teenagers, he also was going to meetings with his new buddies in rooms that no doubt were festooned with the same kind of flags I’m looking at now.

The Purity gang knew Charles, through Stick.

“I think that he might’ve known something was goin’ on, but Stick said he was cool, or at least dumb.”

I ask Randall about the DVD.

He frowns.

“I hate a fuckin’ thief,” he says.

We all have our standards. Some people hate thieves. Some people hate bigots.

The Purifiers had been making plans for some time when Stick didn’t show up for one of their meetings. That was about a year ago, not long before he popped up back here in Richmond.

It wasn’t until the next week that somebody realized that something was missing.

“We’d made this DVD,” Randall says. “I suppose you’ve already seen it, so you know what it’s about. We’ve made several copies, and we’re going to mail them to the governor, both senators, the newspapers, so they’ll know what we did after we do it. So they know they can’t fuck with us like they did in Charlottesville.

“So you see why we didn’t exactly want ol’ Stick tipping everybody’s hand, spoiling our party.”

“How did you know he’d taken the DVD?”

“It was gone, and he was gone. We ain’t stupid. We also heard rumors that he’d stolen a bunch of money from Whit Charles. We figured he’d gone back to the States, and we knew he was from Richmond.”

They had those other copies, of course, but they knew they had to make sure the one Stick stole didn’t fall into the cops’ hands and tip everybody off.

The Purifiers thought maybe Stick had just decided to forget all about them.

“But then we got this letter.”

Stick wanted money in exchange for the DVD.

“He was an idiot. He said he wanted fifty thousand dollars for it, or he’d give it to the fuckin’ feds.”

Randall laughs.

“Hell, you drove a harder bargain than he did, although it didn’t turn out so good for you either, did it?”

I have more important things to worry about than Stick Davis’s motives, like how I’m going to keep breathing awhile longer, but the whole thing does intrigue me.

“We knew we had to do something,” Randall says. “It was time to come north anyhow.”

He pokes the gun in my face.

“So you’re the goddamn Shakespeare who was going to help make Stick Davis famous.”

I hasten to assure the guy that Stick didn’t reveal anything more to me than what the Purifiers have already gleaned from the pages they took. Even to me, it sounds like bullshit.

“Well,” Randall says, “I don’t guess it matters much whether you knew what he was up to or not. Your ass won’t be around to see how it’s all going to end. Suffice it to say that it won’t be a happy ending, not for you and your kind anyhow.”

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find Stick. Once the bad guys figured out where he was, they packed up and came back to the States.

“It was almost time anyhow,” Randall says. “Oops. Don’t want to give that away, even if dead men don’t tell any fuckin’ tales.”

The two Purity members charged with ensuring that Stick didn’t give away their plans broke in that Friday while their prey was out drinking and waited for him. They used suppressors to keep the neighbors from hearing.

“But the numb nuts didn’t get the DVD,” Randall says, shaking his head. “They got the damn book, or the part you’d written, but who gives a shit about that? They got a little too enthusiastic and killed Stick before they could get him to tell them where the disc was. Then when I came Sunday, it wasn’t there.”

When the Purifiers couldn’t find the disc they so badly wanted, they tried to figure out who Stick might have shared it with.

They found out that Whit Charles had come back to Virginia for the funeral, and they thought he might be in on whatever Stick was cooking up.

My captor says they knew about the place where I met Charles out near Zion Crossroads.

“We followed him out there the day you and him met,” he says, “but nobody stuck around long enough for us to do the deed then.”

He laughs.

“Shame, because we could have taken care of the whole damn bunch of you right there. Instead we had to ambush him and that damn bodyguard, whatever, at the house he was staying at.

“But he couldn’t tell us nothin,’ and believe me, if he’d known, he’d of told us, by the time we got through with him.

“And so that left us with you. And when you tried to shake us down, well, that’s why you’re in the fix you’re in right now.”

Where the fuck, I’m wondering, are the cops?

I have two pressing needs right now. I could use a cigarette, and I have to piss like a racehorse.

I ask for the Camel first. My captor is kind enough to take one out of my pocket. I figure that by the time I’ve smoked it down to the nub, my number will be up.

“Can’t deny a dying man his last wish,” Randall says, taking a swig from the pint. “Do you want a blindfold too?”

He seems to think that’s funny.

So he puts the cigarette in my mouth, lights it, and I puff away, not much concerned any more about the possibility of future lung cancer. Cindy, Peggy, and everyone else who’s warned me about the perils of puffing can rest assured that, in the end, my lungs weren’t the problem. It’s always the thing you don’t count on that gets your ass.

When I inquire about taking a leak, Randall is a little less charitable, suggesting that I probably won’t be needing my present pair of trousers much longer anyhow.

My request seems to trigger my captor’s urinary urges though.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells me. “Now don’t go anywhere.”

He’s cracking himself up.

The bathroom seems to be at the far end of the building. Randall wanders in that direction, pint bottle and gun in hand.

My captors haven’t gone to extreme lengths to keep me immobilized. Duct tape secures my legs to the chair, and plastic ties bind my arms behind me.

The good news: I can tell that the ties aren’t connected to the back of the chair.

There are very few advantages to being double-jointed. It can make for amusing demonstrations, and it always tickles my grandson, young William, when grandpa can bend his thumbs all the way back to his wrists. Andi isn’t happy that I’ve shown her son that particular trick, because he keeps trying to do it himself, which, not being double-jointed, he can’t.

There’s another thing old double-jointed Willie can do that probably didn’t occur to the goddamn Purifiers.

If the twist ties have enough leeway, I can clasp my hands behind my back and lift them over my head—which I am relieved to find that I can do as soon as Randall walks into the bathroom, which must be at least one hundred feet away.

Randall, not being the shy type, leaves the bathroom door open, but I can’t see him, so he can’t see me.

I spit out the cigarette.

The other slim hope in my arsenal lies in front of me. The Purity boys have been a little sloppy, and there are pieces of broken beer bottles on the floor not two feet away.

I very quietly lean forward, still attached to the chair at my ankles, until I’m on my knees. I am able to grab a piece of glass, maybe two inches across, and heave myself back up. And I start sawing.

Randall is still in the bathroom, either taking a very long piss or maybe, as long as he’s there, going for number two also. At any rate, I’m sawing like a bastard, trying to free my right wrist with my left thumb and forefinger. I draw blood, but somehow that doesn’t seem to be a big issue right now.

The tie goes pop just as I hear the toilet flush. I’m still duct-taped to a goddamn chair though.

One thing occurred to me, however, as I was moving back and forth in it: The damn chair is rickety as hell. I could feel it trying to give way.

Something makes me recall Bones MacNelly. Bones was a regular at the Chuck Wagon back when Oregon Hill had places like that, joints where you could find a whole set of teeth scattered about the parking lot after a particularly enthusiastic Saturday night.

Bones was called Bones much in the same way Australians sometimes nickname redheads “Blue.” He weighed well on the far side of three hundred pounds.

One night when I was barely old enough to buy beer, Bones was at the Chuck Wagon, in his usual seat. He started complaining that his chair was, in his words, a piece of shit.

“It’s all wobbly,” he said.

The manager begged to differ, offended that someone was casting aspersions on his establishment’s furniture. He suggested that perhaps the chair had not been well-served by having Bones’s fat ass weighing down on it every night.

“I’ll show you what a piece of shit it is,” Bones said.

He lifted his butt up a few inches and slammed down, more or less turning the offending chair into firewood.

I don’t weigh but about half what Bones did, but it’s worth a try. And I’m out of alternative fucking ideas.

Randall is starting to head back my way. All I’ve accomplished so far will just piss the Purifiers off if they catch me, but I do have that little piece of broken beer bottle in my hands, and I do have my last hope, inspired by Bones MacNelly.

I put my hands back behind my back, hoping my captor won’t notice the splotch of blood among the broken glass and the smoldering cigarette butt on the dirty floor in front of me.

“Peed your pants yet?” Randall asks, throwing in the obligatory racist slur. Still the comedian. He’s zipping up as he walks back in my direction. He sets the gun down on the floor beside him.

When he checks his cell phone to see if he’s heard anything yet from his fellow goons, I try to make the most out of the only chance I can see.

Randall doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening when I lift myself out of the chair as high as I can with my arms still behind me. He starts to say something, no doubt humorous, possibly about my unrequited need to urinate, when I slam back down as hard as I can.

The first time, the chair starts breaking apart. One leg falls off, and I can feel the seat starting to separate from the other legs.

On the second try, the whole thing just turns to splinters, allowing me to stand. The chair legs to which my own are duct-taped are now independent of each other.

Randall, maybe because he’s drunk most of that pint already, is a little slower than he might have been in reaching for the gun on the floor beside him. And he’s a tad surprised when he sees that my hands are also free. He doesn’t notice the piece of glass until I’ve managed to give him what I hope is a very nasty cut on his right arm.

When he grabs his arm and falls to his knees, I move a few steps forward and kick the damn gun as far as I can. It goes sliding across the pine floor, halfway to the bathroom.

As I try to get around Randall and head in the general direction of freedom, he reaches for my right leg. I kick him in the face as hard as I can and run for it, the two chair legs still attached to my taped ankles, banging against the wood floor.

I probably have a twenty-foot head start. I’m no sprinter, but desperation makes Usain Bolts of us all. Stumbling and bumbling down the stairs in my semi-shackled state, I expect to hear Randall behind me, but I hear nothing, and it occurs to me that he must have decided to go back and get his bang-bang before pursuing me farther.

Seldom has air smelled as sweet as what hits me when I burst out the door.

And there, the next building down, is that strip club from my tomcatting days, its neon sign no less welcoming than a lighthouse to a storm-tossed sailor.

I run in the front door. There’s a cover charge, the fat guy at the counter says. Then he looks at me and decides that maybe I’m not gentlemanly enough for a gentlemen’s club, what with my bleeding hand, plastic ties hanging from both wrists, and part of what once was a chair taped to my ankles.

I manage to get past the “what the fucks” and explain to the guy that there’s a man with a gun who might be coming in the door presently, looking for me.

This encourages him to call 911 and get out his own weapon. In the meantime, it appears that Randall has decided to go in another direction than the front door of the Pussycat Lounge.

I borrow a phone from a bystander who finds me more interesting than the winsome ladies making love to the pole in the next room.

L.D. answers after the first ring.

“Man,” he says, “where are you?”

I tell him, and then I ask him where the fuck he and the Keystone Kops have been.

The chief tries to explain how it happened, but I’m not in the mood. I suggest that he get his ass over here now. When he seems to take umbrage at my attitude, I further suggest he engage in sexual self-gratification.

Then I hang up.

“Dude,” the guy says when I give him back his phone, “you’ve pissed your pants.”