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11:11 – Chapter 18
Dec. 1 to 3, 2011
I got a strong sense as to what was going to be required, if we were to escape, 10 minutes into the next day. We had to be patient and wait for the right moment.
Carrie and I joined a group of men for breakfast in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express and they were discussing the day’s activities, which amounted to – nothing.
Remain vigilant, get stoned and drunk, hang around and watch movies, and have more time contemplating Carrie. So we decided that’s what we should do, save the get drunk and stoned part, as much as I wanted to. Gusts of snow swirled outside when I parted the curtains. The buildings of downtown Spokane across the river were obscured by a freezing light blue.
After breakfast we were invited to join Larry and Mike on a reconnaissance mission. Carrie gave me a desperate look that carved into my spine, freezing the tips of my nerves. At least I was still armed, I thought.
They took us west along the river to the falls and pointed out where they had men stationed with sniper rifles, keeping an eye on the bridge for anyone who may try to cross it. There were guys on the other side, too, they pointed out. We couldn’t see a soul. Wind battered at us in unfriendly gusts. Adding to the deep chill was the sight of a crow and raven ravaged corpse lying in the middle of a stone bridge crossing the Spokane River, leading to what was once a teaming city park.
By mid-afternoon, we were back in our room, keeping clear of everyone. Our guard had moved down the hall to take up a position near a window that looked out over the Division Street Bridge. It was his usual post.
We agreed that we couldn’t risk flight and kept to ourselves that evening. Stone cold sober in the netherworld.
The next day was much like the first, as was the third. We didn’t feel threatened by our loosely-coined captors, but we feared having to leave them for two reasons. The first was they would likely chase us or hunt us down, just because from insult, and second, they might be the best of the lot out there.
While Carrie felt the eyes of the men, for some reason they kept their distance. That we were allowed to maintain our weapons gave me a sense that Larry wasn’t lying — that the guys across the river were substantially nastier than he or Mike or anyone else on our side. There was fear in his voice when he spoke of them, as well as hatred.
I spoke more with them, trying to gain insight into why they were the leaders of this motley crew (“because the rest of ‘em are useless assholes”) and gleaned more about what kind of crimes they committed.
Larry came from a middle class upbringing in San Jose, California. He had good grades in school and contemplated university before he was led astray by foul and intemperate peers. He was even the same age as me — 42 — and was once married. After he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, thanks to a string of armed robberies that ended badly, his wife left him, with their three-year-old daughter.
“That was when I went bad,” he said. “I was robbing stores and shit before then. But when that whore took my baby girl, I started going for bigger scores. I didn’t give a shit anymore. And that’s when I began robbing banks. Me and another guy linked up and hit a couple of big downtown banks in San Francisco, over a couple of months. We scored a nice chunk of change. And then he tried to stiff me, so I shot him in the face. It was as easy as pie. Never killed nothin’ before him but when I found out how easy and, I know, as bad as it is to say, fun… to kill someone, especially someone who had it coming to them. I really lost it. On my next job I shot and killed a bank guard. The old coot didn’t even have his gun drawn. I just sawed him in half. It was all on bank video, too, fuck sakes.”
He told me his story like a friend recounting a weekend that went bad – where perhaps the worst thing that happened was a nap in a drunk tank and some creep named ‘Luther’ goes for a ball squeeze when you’re not looking.
“They caught me a couple of weeks later – in a motel in Reno and I shot one of the cops who came through the door for me. He lived but I guess he was pretty messed up after that. They threw me in jail and tossed away the key, as they say. Said I was a ‘mad dog’ and all that.”
He laughed deeply and his eyes smiled as he looked three-quarters of the way past my soul.
I said I couldn’t see it, and I meant it. He seemed like a contrite man. He didn’t come across, at first, like someone who had done what he said he did. The small time criminal stuff was easily processed by my brain. Yet, the news that he was a somewhat addicted killer also didn’t unnerve me. Of course he was. Why wouldn’t he be?
Carrie, who had been holding my hand for two days straight, squeezed hard, telling me to ‘give it a rest.’
“Don’t blow too much smoke up his ass. He’s a smart guy,” she said later. “And I think he’s done more than he’s letting on.”
Later that day, Mike confirmed her suspicion when an alarm went up. There was motion down near the falls bridge and men scrambled to arms.
Larry told Mike to stay with us and hold down the Division Street Bridge. We took up a safe position with him, along with the burly lad who had been ‘guarding’ us, and waited. A few minutes went by when we heard distant popping sounds — gunfire — and then silence. Even the crows, which had been cawing ceaselessly along the Spokane River since we arrived, went quiet.
“Man, you don’t wanna fuck with him,” Mike said excitedly, flicking a cigarette butt into the fresh snow. “He’d kill you as easily as he’d smile at you and he’d smile while he was killing you,” he laughed.
“He said he only killed a couple of guys,” I said.
“More like two dozen, I’d say,” Mike snorted, sounding like a baseball freak correcting someone quoting stats about a player.
Not being able to help myself, I said, “Ya think so?”
Mike looked at me with his cold, dark, brown eyes and lit another cigarette. Inhaling, he said with a huffing voice, “I know so. I’ve seen so.”
Larry told us earlier that Mike had also killed two men.
“Something about a bar fight and a woman. He stabbed two guys to death with this pocketknife he keeps on him. As soon as we hit an outdoors store to get guns and shit, the first thing he did was get this big, fold-up blade. He’s a better shot than me, so that means he’s dangerous from a distance and up close.”
Mike was three feet from Carrie and I, smoking and scanning his cold eyes southward, occasionally lifting a hand to shield the sun from his eyes. Every few seconds, his eyes would scan back to Carrie and settle on her with focused, horrible intent.
Three weeks earlier, Carrie and I would have been at home, fiddling about with words and images and the most dangerous people we would have been exposed to would have been nameless strangers passing by. Now we were holding down a defensive position against a band of murderers and worse, with a bigger gang of murderers and worse.
I know I keep going on about that but the extreme pressure our heads were under cannot be overstated. Think about it. Put yourselves in our shoes.
Carrie told me at dinner that night, after we learned about how Larry had shot and killed “a sniveling gang-banger punk” who was trying to sneak across the river that “it is amazing how human beings can adapt.”
Perhaps foolishly, I suggested the punk might have been trying to defect.
“He had two hand grenades and a shotgun, much like yours, on him,” Larry said. “The best way to defect isn’t to sneak across an opening, taking cover now and then. You guys did it right. It was pretty easy to suss out what you two were doing. Not that tacohead. No, he was going suicide crazy.”
Mike said the next alarm was “his” because Larry got “all the fun.”
With that jolly thought ringing in our heads, we bid everyone good night and went to our room.
As soon as the door clicked shut – Carrie grabbed my arm and blurted, “We have got to get out of here. I feel something terrible is going to happen. They’re going to kill you, Rob and then they’re going to…” her voice quavered silent.
She was right. This weird play was heading to the final act and we had to vamoose tout suite.
The stupid part of me wanted to believe Larry. He really did seem genuine; a man who was just doing what he had to do stay alive. But what did I know?
Mike was too forthcoming with information about Larry; trying too hard to scare us or shock us. And I was starting to feel the urge to tell him to keep his frigging eyes off my wife.
The smart part of me knew that telling one of the head killers in a pack of cutthroats to do anything with even the slightest hint of demand or threat in one’s voice was inviting the end game to begin.
We had to bolt the theatre before that scene unfolded.
Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
