The Nicotine Chronicles Page 6

  But now he realized there were no lights on in the lot and no light coming from anywhere. Sol didn’t know it but a quarter-million people in New Jersey and New York were without power. He took out his cell phone to use as a flashlight, but it was dead: he’d forgotten to ask the nurses to charge it for him.

  He fumbled his way to the bed and picked up the motel phone: also dead. So there was nothing to do but strip down, get into bed, and hope to sleep. He got under the covers in the darkness, with the rain lashing the window to his right, and he was very tired and closed his eyes, and as soon he did, he saw in his mind that moment when Lina’s jaw had unhinged and her face had been crucified in pain.

  He figured it was one last electric pulse from her body, a big one, the final charge, and then his mind wouldn’t stop, despite his exhaustion, and he kept seeing it—the jaw unlatching, shifting to the right like an old typewriter; her face torqued and ugly and horrific; a mask of terror.

  And he couldn’t stop seeing it in his mind, that moment, it was on a loop, a terrible loop that wouldn’t stop, and he desperately wanted to sleep, it went on and on, but then something, finally, distracted him: the smell of cigarette smoke. He held the blanket to his nose—there were traces of old smoke in the fabric, but the smell in his room was stronger than that, and he realized it had been there since he came into the room. It wasn’t the stale smell he had become somewhat accustomed to: it was fresh smoke. But where the hell was it coming from?

  He sat up in the bed. It was almost like someone was in the room, smoking, and he wondered if he was hallucinating. Was his dead father in the room, mocking him?

  He got out of the bed—the room was pitch-black, dark as a cave—and he felt his way around, touching the bureau that held the television, and then he made his way, by instinct, into the bathroom and shouted, “Anyone fucking in here?” And he waved his hands around in the darkness, but there was no one in the bathroom as far as he could tell, and the smell of smoke wasn’t as strong in there.

  He then ran his hands along the wall to make it back to his bed and he touched something that felt like a door—it was metal, not like the cheap stucco walls. He reached down and found a knob and turned it. It was locked, and he realized it was the connecting door to the adjoining room. He remembered noticing it when he first checked in, but hadn’t paid it any attention. Every motel room seemed to have one.

  He then got down on his hands and knees by the sill of the door and inhaled deeply, and there the smell of smoke was strong. Very strong.

  Bastard, he thought.

  Some asshole on the other side was smoking, and Sol became enraged and lost control of himself—that early symptom of his growing dementia—and he stood up and pounded on the door to the adjoining room and shouted, “You gotta quit smoking over there! It’s making me sick!”

  But he didn’t hear anything back. He put his ear to the door. Nothing. And so he blundered out of the room, out of the darkness, and into the storm.

  He was going to tell this asshole to quit smoking, to show some consideration, he needed to grieve, and he went to the outside door of the adjoining room and the rain, whipped by the wind, was soaking him—he was in boxer shorts and T-shirt and bare feet—and there was a little bit of diffuse moonlight from the storm clouds above, and he pounded on the door. “Fucking open up!”

  And the door swung open halfway, and a big, angry man, at least six four, was standing in the shadows; some light source inside the room was partially illuminating him. He had a shaved head and a huge distended belly, covered in tattoos, and the only thing on him was a towel around his waist. He looked at Sol standing there, soaking wet, and said, “What the fuck you want?”

  And in the opening of the door, Sol’s eye was drawn to the light source inside the room and he saw that it was a two-foot Maglite—the kind that cops used as weapons—and it was standing straight up on the bedside table, shining its powerful light upward, like a torch, and next to the bedside table he thought he saw the arm of a woman tied to the corner of the bed.

  “What are you doing in there?” Sol said, almost whisper-like.

  “Fuck you,” said the man, and he slammed the door, and Sol stood there in the rain and then he banged his fist hard against the door. He was a cop again.

  And the door swung back open and this time a gun stuck out at Sol and Sol kicked at the door and it flew into the man and the gun jerked to the ceiling and Sol charged, tackling the man into the room, and the gun fell from his hand, and they went down hard onto the carpet next to the bed, and Sol caught a glimpse of the naked woman tied there, she looked young, and Sol scrambled up the big man’s body, he was squirming to get away from Sol, but Sol was strong, very strong, and he stayed on top of the big man and brought down his fist like a mallet once, twice, and then Sol sensed something behind him and he turned and there was another man there, equally large, and he held a second big Maglite in his hand, poised like a steel baton, and Sol knew that because his mind wasn’t so good anymore he had made a terrible mistake, a rookie mistake: there wasn’t one bastard in there smoking, there were two.

  And the big Maglite scythed down toward Sol’s head—he saw it coming—and then it exploded into his left eye socket and there was a sheet of flame in his mind and then there was nothing.

  8.

  An hour later, Sol regained consciousness. He was lying on his belly, and they had rolled him over by the wall.

  His head was facing the bed, and he saw that one Maglite was on the bedside table shooting its light up, and one was on the bureau on the other side of the room, also facing upward like a torch, and it was next to the gun and an overflowing ashtray.

  The two flashlights provided illumination, mood lighting, and the large man with the belly and the tattoos was on the bed, his big body between the girl’s legs. He was thrusting, like an animal, assaulting her, and the other one was on the other side of the bed, smoking a crack pipe and assaulting her mouth.

  Sol’s head was in a pool of sticky blood and he lifted his hand up slowly and felt the left side of his head—where his brow and eye socket and eye should be there was a hideous swelling as large as a cantaloupe.

  But Sol somehow felt very calm and very clear. From all his years of training in the ring, he had a reserve of strength and a tolerance for pain that was not normal, and he rose up quietly and smoothly, he felt a sort of perfection in everything, and very adroitly he stepped over to the bedside table, picked up the Maglite, and brained the one between the girl’s legs, killing him instantly.

  The other man stepped back in fear and shock, trapping himself in the corner, and Sol quickly came around the bed and the man threw up his arm to protect himself, and Sol broke his forearm with the Maglite, and then smashed him on the side of his head when the arm dropped, and the man crumpled at Sol’s feet, almost in a kneeling position, and with two more blows, Sol caved in the back of his head.

  Sol stared down at the bloody heap and then looked up, like a cyclops with his one working eye, and the girl was trying to say something, but she could barely talk with the first man dead on top of her. So Sol hauled the large body off the girl, pushing it to the floor. There were now dead men on both sides of the bed.

  “Untie me,” the girl rasped.

  Sol started with the knot by her left hand, but his fingers were suddenly very thick, he could hardly use them at all, and then he felt incredibly weak, the weakest he’d ever felt in his life.

  “I have to sit down,” he said, and he sat facing away from the naked girl, and he bowed his head and touched the enormous swelling protruding from his brow, and then he looked up and Lina was there, wearing the nightgown she had died in.

  “Sol,” she said.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, and he felt so happy to see her. She hadn’t died after all, which pleased him to no end; it had all been a mistake.

  But she looked troubled. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m cold,” she said.


  “It’s the ice for the medical school,” he said. “That’s what’s making you cold.” It seemed so obvious to him.

  “Oh, you’re right, Sol,” she said. “You’re always right. I love you.”

  Then something was nudging him, and he turned and the girl was poking him in the back with her foot. “Please,” she said, “untie me.”

  She was young, early twenties, a slender brunette, a girl’s figure really, and he saw that there were purple finger marks on her neck, and he turned to tell Aunt Lina that he needed to help the girl, but she wasn’t there now, and he tried to stand to look for her, to find her, but he couldn’t stand and he thought, I never should have looked away, and he felt his heart break, he could feel it snap, he was sure of it, and then he fell to his side, at the girl’s feet, and he was dead.

  9.

  It took the girl a few hours but she managed to untie herself. The two dead men were johns who had gotten too rough, but she didn’t think they would kill her, until the other guy showed up and they killed him. So then they were going to have to kill her, she figured, she was a witness. But they told her she was fine, that they wouldn’t hurt her and that in a little while they would dump the body in the Passaic River, but first they wanted to stick to their plan: party out the storm. Then the other guy wasn’t dead after all—he rose up, his face was a mask of blood, and he had just one eye—and then he killed the two johns with the big flashlight.

  And then the man, some stranger, died again. This time for good.

  Her wrists were rubbed raw by the wet sheets they had used as bonds, but as the sheets dried, it had become easier to escape. She was shaky as hell and close to losing it, but she managed to get her clothes on and she peeked out the door.

  The storm had let up a little, enough so that she could drive away. Her car, a Honda, was still there. No one but her and the two dead men—and the dead stranger—knew she’d come to this place. She hadn’t told any friends and she didn’t have a pimp. She worked solo. One of the johns had texted the address of the motel to her on her burner phone, which she would throw away immediately. She didn’t want anything to do with the cops and she didn’t think they would ever find her. If they even looked.

  She pulled out slowly from the dark motel parking lot and drove out into the storm. No one saw her go.

  When the cops came to the motel later in the day, in the afternoon, when power had been restored, they didn’t know what to make of the crime scene. Three middle-aged men, all with their heads bashed in. Two of the men were truckers from Illinois, their cabs were in the lot. The storm had held them up and they were both listed as sex offenders in Illinois. Rape convictions; one of them with a minor.

  And the other man was an ex-cop from New York, who at some point had joined the party.

  The Leonia detectives in charge of the case didn’t put much effort into it—it was decided after a few weeks that no official report would be made—and a month after Sol died, the NYPD collected his body, which was no longer needed as evidence, and had it cremated and buried.

  Two months after that, the motel in North Hollywood tossed Sol’s bag into their dumpster in the alleyway, where a small homeless man found it.

  All of Sol’s clothes were too big for the man, so he sold what he could, but he did keep the bag itself and one thick blue sweater, which Lina had made for Sol years ago. The sweater kept the man warm at night for the next few months, until he forgot it one day in some bushes by the side of a road.

  Part II

  Smoking May Be Hazardous To Your Health

  Dying for a Cigarette

  by Lee Child

  The producer’s notes came in. The screenwriter saw the e-mail on his phone. The subject line said Notes. The phone was set to preview the first several words of the message, which were Thanks again for making time for lunch today. The screenwriter looked away. He didn’t open the e-mail. Didn’t read more. Instead he backed up and sat down on the sofa, stiff and upright, straight like a poker, palms cupped on the cushions either side of his knees.

  His wife sat down on his lap. She was an hour back from the beauty parlor, still in her afternoon attire, which was a cream silk blouse tucked into a navy linen skirt, which when standing fell just above the knee, and when sitting, especially on a lap, crept a little higher. She was wearing nothing underneath either item. She wondered if he could tell. Probably not, she thought. Not yet. He was preoccupied. She lit a cigarette and placed it between his lips.

  He said, “Thank you.”

  She said, “Tell me about lunch.”

  “It was him and three of his execs. I think at least one of them was financial.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Exactly like I was afraid it would.”

  “Exactly?”

  “More or less,” he said. “Possibly even worse.”

  She said, “Did you make the speech?”

  “What speech?”

  “About dying.”

  “It’s only a line. In the first paragraph. Not really a speech.”

  “Did you say it?”

  He nodded tightly, still a little defiant. “I told him for years I had been a good little hack, and I had always done what he wanted, as fast as he needed it, overnight sometimes, even sometimes on the fly while the camera was rolling. I told him I had never let him down, and I had made him millions of dollars. So I told him overall I figured I had earned the right to be left alone on this one. Because finally I had the one great idea a guy might ever get in his life. I told him I would rather die than see it compromised.”

  “That’s the speech I was talking about.”

  “It’s only a word.”

  “With a lot of preamble.”

  “It’s a strong first paragraph, I agree.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “I don’t really know. I went out for a cigarette. He was okay when I got back. He said at first he thought I was nuts for not seeing his point, but now I had gotten him thinking maybe I was right and he was wrong.”

  “What was his issue?”

  “This has always been about the British Army in World War I. Am I right? Hasn’t it? Since the very first moment I got the idea. You were the very first person I ever talked to about it.”

  “Actually, I think that must have been a previous wife. Or several ago. The idea was already well established when I came on the scene.”

  “Was it ever anything but the British Army in World War I?”

  “Don’t they like that?”

  “He said the studio asked if it was an English-country-house movie.”

  “What was his answer?”

  “He said maybe English-country-house people, but not in the house. Obviously. In the trenches, in France or Belgium, or wherever else they had trenches.”

  “So is it a problem?”

  “He said the studio thinks the audience would relate better if it was the Civil War. With actual Americans involved.”

  “I see.”

  “I reminded him there was an essential story strand involving an airplane pilot. The infancy of the technology. A huge metaphor. It could not be dropped or altered in any way. I reminded him that airplanes weren’t invented yet, during the Civil War.”

  “I think they had hot-air balloons.”

  “Not the same thing at all. A hot-air balloon is automatically a slow-motion scene. We need speed, and fury, and noise, and anger. We need to feel we’re on the cusp of something new and dangerous.”

  “What did he say to all that?”

  “He agreed with me that the studio’s idea was bullshit. He said he only passed it on because it came from the top. He said he never took it seriously. Not for one minute. He was on my side totally. Not just because of the airplanes. Because of the ideas. They’re too modern. This is all fifty years after the Civil War. The characters know things people didn’t know fifty years before.”

  “He’s right, you know. The ideas are modern. You got it through, even to him. That�
��s great writing, babe.”

  “He said the same thing. Not babe. He said it was my best writing ever. He said I could say things in four words other writers would need a paragraph for. He said I could get things through, even to a cynical old moneybags like him, about how the thoughts my characters were having were building the postwar world right in front of our eyes.”

  “Flattering.”

  “Very.”

  “He’s right, you know,” she said again. “It stands to reason. Obviously the postwar world was built from new ideas, and inevitably they were forged during the war itself. But to see history happen in front of our eyes is fantastic. It’s going to be a classic. It’s a shoo-in for Best Picture.”

  “Except that the postwar world he was talking about was post–World War II. The 1950s, in fact. He thinks the story should be set during the Korean War. With actual Americans. And foxholes, not trenches. He thinks foxholes are better. Necessarily more intimate. An automatic reason to shoot a scene with just one or two actors. No extras. No background hoo-ha. Saves a fortune. He said one or two guys alone in a trench would look weird. As in, who are they? Are they malingerers? Did they pull the lucky straw and get to stay behind on sentry duty? Or what? Either way, he figures we would need to burn lines explaining. At the very least we would need to have them say, no, we’re not malingerers. It would be an uphill task to get anyone to like them. But guys in a foxhole don’t need explaining. They’re taking refuge. Maybe there are two of them. They tumbled in together. Maybe it’s a shell hole. Maybe it’s a little small, so they’re resentful of each other right from the start. They have to figure out how to get along. He said the modernity and the futurism in the ideas made no sense in World War I. It had to be the 1950s. He said we could still keep the airplanes. Jet-fighter technology was in its infancy. There were the same kinds of stresses. All we would need to do was give the guy a more modern kind of helmet. The actual lines could stay the same. He said some things never change. Some truths are eternal.”