Part 12:
Viva Las Vegas
Mo hit the ATM with
Howie’s card in hand, ready to go. Rolling down the window, he slid it into the
slot and looked over at Howie.
“Give me the code,” he
said with a smile, well aware that there were cameras recording his every move. “And why don’t you try and smile?” Mo tapped the gun beneath his shirt as a reminder
to Howie who was in control.
Plastering a phony half-grin
on his face, Howie rattled off the four-digit code and then watched as Mo
proceeded to drain his account. In most
cases, ATMs would only allow an individual to remove up to $200 a visit, but Howie
had long ago signed papers with his bank that would allow him to withdraw an
unlimited amount from any ATM. He was a
world traveler and needed to have his funds available in case of an emergency,
or a wild shopping trip in Europe, whatever the case may be.
Mo typed in some
astronomical amount, wondering if an ATM could even disperse those kinds of
funds. When the machine began rumbling
as it processed the amount, he thought he would shit his pants. Who had that kind of money in their ATM? Who had that kind of money period?
“Jackpot! It’s just like fucking Viva Las Vegas, baby.”
Mo grinned as the slot to the right of
the machine slowly lifted and the crisp green bills shot down, one right after
another. Five more stacks came down
until, finally, the words “WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER TRANSACTION?” appeared on the
screen. Mo lingered, his finger over the
NO and the YES in bold, black letters. Should
he be greedy, or should he learn from past mistakes? After what seemed like an
eternity, he pressed the YES.
***
Kevin sat in one of the
hospital conference rooms, surrounded by police officers, detectives, and
various medical staff. They had
established that he was indeed who he said he was and that he would be able to
give them a positive ID of the bodies if any of the victims were members of the
Backstreet Boys.
While waiting for Kevin to
arrive, the detectives had received calls from the Dorough family, as well as
the Carter family, who were on route, but would not be arriving until the
following morning. Both families had
given permission to the authorities for Kevin to make the ID of their sons.
“Are you ready to go?” Sergeant Cox sat on the table across from
Kevin, not envying the position they had put the young man in.
“These guys are my friends,
my little brothers.” Kevin reached for
the pack of cigarettes on the table and tapped one out. “Can I have one of these first?” he asked,
gesturing for a light.
“You can’t smoke in the
hospital.”
Leveling a look at Cox
that could kill, Kevin placed the cigarette between his lips and grabbed the
lighter from one of the officers at the other end of the table.
“You’re wasting time,
aren’t you?” Cox reached out a hand for
the unlit cigarette and the lighter.
“Wouldn’t you?” Handing over the cigarette and lighter, Kevin
pushed back his chair, hands braced on the table, and sighed.
“The sooner you get this
over with, the sooner we can close this case.” Sergeant Cox walked around the table towards
the door. “Your friends wouldn’t want
their families to suffer any longer then they have to.”
“You’re right.” Kevin stood, his heart beating wildly beneath
his shirt, his palms damp with sweat. “Let’s
get this over with.”
***
They rode the elevator
down to the basement where the hospital morgue was. Getting off the elevator one by one, there
were two detectives, Sergeant Cox, three policemen, the hospital administrator,
and Kevin.
The hospital administrator
led the way down the long hallway that was cold and dimly lit. The only sound was the echoing of their shoes
on the tile floor and the impossibly loud sound of Kevin’s heart pounding in
his ears.
As they approached the end of the hall, the
hospital administrator stopped and pointed to the door marked “MORGUE ONE.”
“This is where the two
bodies are being held, pending an ID,” he said in a flat, clinical tone that
suited his position.
“I’ll escort Kevin inside,”
Sergeant Cox said, waving the officers and detectives back from the door. “I don’t think he needs an audience right now.”
The administrator opened
the door and moved to the side as Kevin tried to walk forward.
He stood there frozen in
the open doorway, his hands braced on the doorjamb, his feet just short of
crossing the threshold. It reminded
Kevin of the haunted houses he used to visit as a kid on Halloween. He half-expected some guy in a hockey mask
with a chainsaw to jump out and chase him down the hallway until he pissed his
pants.
“Do you want me to go in
first, Kevin?” Sergeant Cox asked, as Kevin shook his head no, then nodded yes,
and then shook his head no again.
“I’ll go first, son.” Sergeant Cox placed an understanding hand on
Kevin’s shoulder, moving him to the side so that he could enter the room first.
The man reminded Kevin of his father,
strong and firm, but with a kind undertone that didn’t make him feel stupid. Following behind, head bowed, Kevin hitched
his thumbs in the pocket of his jeans and kept his eyes on the floor.
And then the door closed
behind them.
“Take your time, Kevin.” Sergeant Cox looked up and down the rows of
empty, steel-topped tables, his eyes settling on the two tables near the back
that contained the bodies, covered by heavy white sheets, that Kevin would be
identifying.
Kevin’s eyes followed
Sergeant Cox’s gaze to the same tables.
“I don’t know if I can do
this,” he said, wishing very much for that cigarette he had held in his hands
earlier. “I didn’t even see my fad after
he died; I didn’t want to remember him that way.” He dug the heels of his hands into his tearing
eyes. “I didn’t want to remember him
lying there in a coffin, the life sucked out of him, his body pale and withered.”
“This is different, Kevin.”
“You’re damn right this is
different. This is fucking worse. My friends were shot and killed like dogs. I don’t want to remember them in pain.”
“Maybe these bodies aren’t
your friends, Kevin.”
“And maybe they are.” Kevin took a deep breath, locking his watery
eyes with Sergeant Cox’s eyes, before he walked in the direction of the bodies,
the sergeant following close behind.
***
“So what happens
now?” Howie sat slumped in the passenger
seat of the BMW, dressed in Mo’s oversized black and gray flannel shirt, his
own jeans, and a pair of Mo’s work boots that were at least two sizes too big
for Howie’s feet.
He felt like a little kid
playing dress up, he thought, as he brushed a hand across the rough, pelting
flannel, wondering why the hell anybody in California – or the rest of the
world, for that matter – would even own a flannel shirt.
“So what happens now is,”
Mo cut into Howie’s thoughts, “you and me are going to drive to Mexico.”
“And what, live as fucking
man and wife?” Howie flipped nervously
at the door latch as he stared out the widow.
Mo laughed, slugging Howie
in the arm, making him jump. “That was
funny, Howard. You got a fucking funny
sense of humor.”
Howie winced, grabbing at
his throbbing arm.
“No, we won’t be living as
man and wife, and come to think of it, you may not be living at all. But I’ll decide all of that once we get there.
Once we disappear.”
***
Kevin shifted
uncomfortably from one foot to the other, trying to ignore the heavy, foreign
stench in the room. The stench of death.
Sergeant Cox stood on the
other side of the table, his hands gripping the sheet, as he explained to Kevin
that there had been three victims at the scene of the crime. One was a younger man in his mid-twenties who
was deceased. The second was an older
guy who they believed was the shooter, also deceased. And the third victim was in the ICU upstairs
in a coma, hanging on to life. The first
body Kevin would see was the body of the man they believed to be the shooter.
As Sergeant Cox pulled
back the sheet, Kevin closed his eyes, his brain trying to find a happy place
to hide as he prayed to God to give him strength.
“Okay, Kevin, you can open
your eyes.”
Opening them, Kevin
blinked twice, a shudder of relief going through his body as he realized that
he did not recognize the man lying cold and dead on the table with a bullet hole
between the eyes.
“Kevin, do you recognize
this man?” Sergeant Cox asked.
“No… no,” Kevin said with
a small grin. “I don’t have a clue who
he is.”
Sergeant Cox smiled back
at Kevin as he pulled the sheet up and over Gus. “Okay, son, one down, one to go.”
The two men moved to the
second table.
Standing in the same
position Kevin had stood at the last table, this time he decided there was no
need to close his eyes. Maybe Sergeant
Cox had been right. Maybe this all had
been some big mistake. Maybe Nick and
Howie were fine… maybe they were sitting in some bar in Cancun, unaware that
the whole world thought they were dead… maybe…
Sergeant Cox pulled back
the sheet on the second body.
Looking down at the pale,
gray face of the man lying on the table, Kevin’s eyes widened, and his body
began to shake violently.
He knew that face like he
knew his own. He had ruffled that hair a
million times, had punched those arms in play, as well as in anger. He had thrown countless footballs and
baseballs into those now cold and lifeless hands, and he was more than familiar
with that scar that ran lengthwise over the heart from a surgery that had
nearly taken his life years before.
“Oh Jesus, Jesus…” He repeated it over and over, his mind going
to a place it had never been before, as tears spilled wildly down his face and
his body continued to shake. Reaching
out a trembling hand, he placed it on the forehead of the body on the table and
stroked it lightly like he had when they were kids and his little cousin had
fallen out of the big gnarled tree in Kevin’s backyard…
“Oh Brian,” he sobbed,
“Brian… no.”
“Kevin, who is it?” Sergeant Cox looked down at the body on the
table. The names he had been given were
Howie and Nick. Who the hell was Brian?
Turning, Kevin’s eyes were
like those of a caged animal as he searched wildly for someplace, anyplace to
go, other than where he was. Making his
way to the far corner of the room, he pressed his head against the cold, tiled
wall of the morgue and sobbed uncontrollably.
“It’s my fucking cousin!” he
spat out, in between his gasps for air. “My fucking little cousin.”
***
Kevin would never remember
being lead upstairs to the ICU.
He would never remember
pressing his hands to the glass as he peered into the white sterile room and
declared the body hooked up to the machines to be that of Nick Carter.
He would never remember
being taken by Sergeant Cox into a private waiting room, where he was joined by
a hospital pastor. And he would never
remember picking up one of the heavy orange plastic chairs, violently
destroying the room, before passing out.
But what he would remember
for the rest of his life was the overpowering feeling of emptiness he would
have without Brian in his life.
***
Within a few hours, the
calls had been made, and the families had been notified. Sergeant Cox gave another press conference in
the parking lot of the hospital to a waiting crowd of reporters and fans. There was an audible gasp as he declared Nick
Carter to be alive but in a coma, Brian Littrell to be dead, and Howie Dorough
to be missing.
***
