Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [71]
When it’s over she lies totally still, almost like she’s dead. Or catatonic. But she’s breathing, and she’s soft, and I kind of like her all quiet like this. I fall asleep with my hand on her stomach.
She shakes me awake. Half an hour later? Three hours? I have no fucking clue.
She has that strung-out look again, like the first time she got in my van. I ask her what’s the matter, and she just sits there shivering until I touch her cheek.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You don’t have to worry about him anymore. I’ll take care of you.”
She shakes her head. “I know,” she says. “I trust you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I killed him,” she says.
“You what?”
“I killed him. I really did. He came back here after you beat him up and he punched me in the face, so I took his knife and killed him.”
I rub my face and try to let this sink in, the fact that I just fucked a murderer.
“Okay, so you killed him. What the fuck did you do with his body?”
“That’s what I need your help with,” she says.
13) She leads me up the dirt path to the upper parking lot. She holds my hand the whole way. Sobbing. “He’s up here,” she says. “I pulled the mattress over him.”
We climb further up to the spot, and sure enough, there’s the mattress, all covered in bloodstains, and there’s a big long lump underneath that looks a lot like a body. The girl falls to her knees and starts sobbing again. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking up at me with pleading eyes. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. Fucker had it coming.”
And then from out of nowhere something bashes me on the back of the head, dropping me straight to my knees, my vision crackling with little white fireworks. Then a hard kick to my ribs that knocks the wind out of me.
I don’t even have to look up, I know who it is. But I do look up, and he’s got a gun and I can see that he’s pretty serious about wanting to use it. I laugh. “I know a guy who’ll pay you to shoot him,” I say.
“You stupid motherfucker,” he rasps, the gun trained right on my eye socket.
But then the girl is on his back, still crying, begging him not to.
He shoves her away and I make a move for him, but he stomps on my face. And again. And then again. Somewhere between the time I pounded on him at Mary’s and now he found a pair of heavy boots.
14) I wake up on the mattress, my pulse punching from inside my head. What looked like the shape of a body at first is actually a pile of rocks and broken concrete chunks, which I highly don’t recommend sleeping on. I feel around in my pockets; as expected, my van keys are gone.
15) I wake up again, maybe half an hour later, and Manny has me by the legs. His skateboard’s underneath me like a little hospital gurney, and he’s facing forward, pulling me by both my feet. One of my shoes is gone.
I try to open my mouth to thank him, but it hurts to talk.
He tows me from under the bridge, and out there it’s a bright sunny morning, the first I’ve seen in Portland for a while. I’m looking straight up into the sky, from my one good eye, at the clouds and the sun and lampposts and power cables. Manny pulls me across the street, through a crosswalk, and I can see a lady in a Volvo looking out at us like, What the fuck, this man pulling another man like a rickshaw, both our faces wrecked, mine with fresh blood. I know Manny’s taking me to the hospital, because everyone who skates Burnside knows where the nearest hospital is, and I don’t have to ask about my van because if it was still here he’d be driving me. I picture Sketchy and the girl—I never did learn her name—driving south to California, the way Amber and I used to drive down there in the winter, heading toward