Because it had already been established that he was going to kill me if the suitcase didn’t have his cash, this threat did not encourage me to reveal my ruse.
“I can wake you up, no problem,” said Zeke. “You want me to twist this doll’s arm around a few times? That what you want?
How about just the wrist? How about a twist of the wrist and then I keep twisting until its entire arm looks like a Red Vine? You cool with that?”
I wasn’t cool with that at all, but I didn’t say anything. This was my only chance. (I told you it wasn’t a brilliant plan.)
Here’s the psychology I was hoping for: Zeke was not a bad guy at heart. He was no sweetheart. He wouldn’t be winning any Best Person Ever awards, but deep inside, he tried to be a decent human being. But he was struggling financially, and the opportunity presented to him by the voodoo doll along with his natural fury over the fact that we couldn’t pay our fare was too much for him to resist.
Yes, he was the kind of jerk who would make my ear explode. But that was from a distance. When he did that, he couldn’t see the results of his nonhumanitarian behavior. Could he really turn my arm into a mangled mess with me right there in front of him?
It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know the guy at all. Maybe he could turn my arm into a mangled mess with me right there in front of him. Maybe with a great big smile on his face. Maybe he’d buy some balloons afterward.
I remained motionless.
I heard the door to the cab open and then close again.
“I’ve got the doll in my hand,” Zeke informed me. Was that hesitation in his voice? Was he discovering the kindness in his heart?
“I’m going to twist it,” he reminded me.
I remained motionless.
“You’re not going to like it when I twist it.”
I suddenly felt as if I needed to hiccup. That was kind of weird, because I’d never felt as if I needed to hiccup before. I always just hiccupped. The body does odd things in moments of severe stress.
I resisted the urge to hiccup.
The other thing I hoped was that Zeke would decide that the injured teenager lying on the sidewalk did not pose a threat. I sure didn’t feel like a threat. If I were Zeke, and I saw me lying there looking the way I looked, I would’ve just strolled on over and grabbed the suitcase.
“I mean it,” said Zeke.
Oh yeah, he was totally hesitating. I had him exactly where I wanted him. I was the king of faking unconsciousness because of blood loss.
As I heard his footsteps, I silently summoned every ounce of strength I had. It wasn’t many ounces.
“You’re about to feel a lot of pain,” he told me.
And then I did.
But—j oy, joy, joy—it wasn’t because any body parts were going kablooey or detaching themselves. He was stepping on my hand. Hard. It hurt bad enough to make me wince and give away that I was faking, but not bad enough to keep me from grabbing the suitcase and bashing it into his knee.
He let out such a loud bellow that you would’ve thought half of the poor guy’s ear had exploded. I swung the suitcase back the other way, connecting with the same knee.
The doll dropped onto the sidewalk.
Zeke lunged his foot toward it, trying to squish it flat, but I bashed him with the suitcase again. The suitcase popped open, spilling crumpled up newspapers everywhere.
I hit him again, and Zeke fell.
I quickly got to my feet, raised the suitcase above my head with both hands, and then.well, you can’t beat somebody to death with a suitcase, even if it’s a scumbag blackmailer like Zeke. It’s just not right.
“Get out of here,” I told him.
Zeke got up and ran, limping badly. I wanted to throw the suitcase at him, knocking him down in a hilarious slapstick manner, but then he might pick up the suitcase, say, “Ha ha, now I’ve got the weapon!” and come back and beat me to death with it.
So I let him go.
He ran, slipped, fell, got back up, then ran some more. I picked up the voodoo doll, brushed some dirt off it, and let out a happy little cheer.
I had it back!
If I’d had full use of my feet, I swear I would’ve danced a jig right there. Instead, I settled for a quick, funky shuffle.
I looked over at the minivan and (very gently) waved the doll in the air. The minivan’s engine started back up. It pulled away from the curb and drove.. .away from me.
Hmmm. That was odd.
I wondered why they hadn’t come back to pick me up, and then I remembered, oh yeah, Kelley and Adam were trapped in a minivan with a pair of psycho killers.
CHAPTER 23
There are many difficult decisions in life.
For example, let’s say that you’re working in a coal mine, and it collapses. You and five other miners are trapped in a small pocket, and you have about one hour of air before you all suffocate. Rescuers will never reach you in an hour.
One other miner, Jimbo, was separated from everybody else in the collapse. He has plenty of air, enough air to last for weeks, even if he pants a lot.
There’s a small gap in your pile of rocks.
You have a hand grenade.
Do you throw the hand grenade through the gap, blowing up Jimbo but ensuring your own rescue? Six lives versus one. But can you kill an innocent man to save your own lives, especially knowing that Jimbo would almost certainly be rescued?
Actually, I guess that any gap big enough for a grenade would be big enough to let in air. And a grenade wouldn’t actually clear out fallen rocks; that’s really a job better suited for dynamite. I don’t think this is the way the hypothetical dilemma is supposed to go. I remember that when a friend posed it to me once, I was like, “Wow, that’s a really difficult decision!” but the way I’ve got it doesn’t make much sense.
Okay... so ...eating one of your fellow miners. A difficult decision, right? You don’t want to do it too early, because if you get saved, you all look like a bunch of jerks, but if you wait too long, you could all die with perfectly good arm meat available.
I see that I have completely botched the point I was trying to make, but basically, what I’m trying to say is that life is filled with difficult decisions.
The decision to go after the minivan was not one of them.
Kelley and Adam needed my help. Yeah, I needed help too, but I was going to rescue them, no matter what.
I got in the taxi. He’d never shut off the meter, and we owed him over three hundred dollars at this point. Maybe when all of this was over, I’d write him a check.. .in blood! (Sorry, but that’s as badass as I get.)
I’d never driven a taxi before, but I assumed it was just like a regular car. I fastened my seat belt, floored the accelerator, and sped down the street in the direction the minivan had gone.
They weren’t gonna get away.
Not a chance.
When I looked back on this evening, I knew I was going to have a lot of regrets (see everything else that happened in this book), but one of them was not going to be that I’d let Whack-Job Mildred and Totally Bonkers Glenn get away with Kelley and Adam.
The camera flashed as I sped through a red light.
Ha! Ticket for Zeke!
The minivan was a few blocks ahead. Now that I’d found it, I had to solve the more difficult problem of how to stop it.
Did I need to stop it? What if I just followed it until it stopped on its own? They were probably headed back home to pick up Donna and Franklin.
But if they knew I was following, Mildred might crawl into the backseat of the minivan and kill Kelley and Adam.
If I tried to follow without being seen, I might lose them.
If Mildred killed them, it might not be a simple stab-stab- and-it’s-over death. Human sacrifices could linger.