22 West Books

Short fiction from the characters of Sin and Vengeance. 

   November 2006  

Sebastian’s Misfortune

 The first time Sebastian saw himself on television was in a truck stop in Western Pennsylvania. Hundreds of policemen were searching for him in Massachusetts. Marston was dead, hung in his foyer in front of his wife and son. The pictures were too brutal to show on the news, but no one in the diner cared. They talked of loads and fishing and NASCAR without a glance at the fugitive pictured on the screen.

In two days the Buick carried Sebastian to Spearfish, South Dakota where a fierce thunderstorm slowed his progress. Wipers swished full speed bringing the twisting road back into view for an instant before streaking rain blurred it away again. He hugged the white line ever vigilant of the steep drop over the guard rail on the left.

A shattering rod reverberated like a gunshot over the sound of the rain and the thumping wipers. The engine ground to a halt, locking the front wheels and sending the old blue sedan spinning across the slick roadway careening off the guardrail before slamming to rest against the rocky outcrop that lined the uphill side of the road. Rain hammered the roof. Lights on the dash glowed, but there wasn’t another light to be seen at 2:00 am on Tuesday. He felt a few sticky drips of blood on his forehead. Exhausted, but otherwise unharmed, he was lucky to escape the plunge down the mountainside. He couldn’t leave the case, and he couldn’t go lugging it in a downpour. He’d sleep a few hours and get going before the police spotted the disabled car on the road. He leaned his head against his window and closed his eyes to wait for the rain to pass.

Tapping on the glass woke him to glowing lights behind a bearded man with a brown cowboy hat. An old green Ford pickup stood behind him at the roadside, its driver’s face just a foot from Sebastian’s. His eyes hunted about the car like a vulture checking to see if Sebastian was dead so he could swoop in and scavenge the car’s contents. Sebastian offered fifty dollars for a lift to the next town and a minute later the Ford pulled away carrying Sebastian and his two cases. One case held his remaining possessions, the other over a half million dollars of Charles Marston’s money. Sebastian watched fifteen miles of twisting mountain roads in the dawning light before the country station lulled him to sleep. He never felt the truck ease onto the gravel or the driver slip around to his side. Sebastian awoke to the point of a switchblade under his chin. Slowly guided from the truck, Sebastian handed over his wallet. The man took four hundred thirteen dollars and threw back the leather shell.

The truck raced away with Sebastian’s bags. He read the license number, but it would be no use. He couldn’t go to the police. If they discovered who he was or what he’d lost, he’d be on his way back to Westport in cuffs. He walked down the slope assuming the next town had to be in the direction they were headed. Five miles later he found a new break in the guardrail and the old Ford upside-down engulfed in orangey-red flames. It took an hour to climb a hundred feet down the mountain. Charles Marston’s shiny case sat up on a flat rock with a good view of the devastation, a perch impossible for Sebastian to overlook once he’d climbed down. He reclaimed the case and continued down the mountain leaving the remains of the driver sizzling in the wreck.

 For thirty-five thousand, the Nissan dealer agreed to mail the title and overlook the registration paperwork. Sebastian retrieved the plate from the Buick, spun around and made his way to California. The 350z hugged the curves like a race car and he savored the next two hard-driving days. The Nissan zipped into a little neighborhood of low-slung, vinyl sided homes. Sebastian parked and stood at the curb taking in the scene with a wide arc. This was not what his father deserved. He’d single-handedly built the Joyet’s brand. Marston wrecked and resurrected it changing little in the process. The fancy houses Marston enjoyed, the vineyards he jetted to – it was all bought with father’s hard work. The single story house on this dingy narrow street was another sign of Marston's thievery. Father's reward was in the case. Sebastian removed a hundred thousand and hid it under a blanket he’d bought on the way. This would finance his new start. The rest would repay his father for the suffering Charles Marston caused.

Eduardo Leonard and his wife Maria had just finished dinner when their son knocked on their door for the first time in three years. Eduardo greeted his son with a critical eye and led him into the living room that faced the tiny front yard. Maria kissed her son and sat in a worn armchair she might have occupied every evening. Eduardo peppered his son with questions about his job at the winery and why he’d come unannounced in the middle of the week. Maria departed for the safety of the kitchen without a word of support. Eduardo sensed trouble and Sebastian’s evasive answers did little to persuade him otherwise. Luckily he hadn’t seen the story on the news.

Finally Sebastian did the only thing he could to change his father's mind. He lifted the briefcase and clicked open the dual locks. He spun it and offered his father just compensation for Marston’s ill treatment; an opportunity to reclaim what he’d lost when Marston forced him to uproot without warning.

Eduardo shot up from the couch when he saw the money.

“How'd you get this?”

“From  Marston. He didn’t deserve it. He took it from a half dozen winery owners and people like you. You worked for this, you deserve it not him.”

Eduardo bought none of it. He forced Sebastian to relate the events and his role in them. Sebastian left out the shots he fired from the vineyard to scare the Marstons back into the house. He’d taken the money and torched the barn, but he was gone before Oliver killed him. Father saw it differently. Sebastian ushered the staff away and created the setting for Oliver’s revenge. Without Sebastian, Charles Marston might be alive. Sebastian quickly found himself on the front steps holding his blood money. He had no place to go and with the police hunting him, he couldn’t use his ID to get a job or an apartment. He could afford plenty of time to put his life back in order, but he needed a safe place to begin. As he looked at the 350Z he wondered if this choice wouldn’t single him out wherever he went. In the sort of place he might end up, this car was a clear sign of someone running afoul of the law.

A briefcase full of hundreds is life-changing. Securely stored it ensures one’s lifestyle. Held in hand, it generates an electricity that originates in the stomach and manifests in jittery eyes and nervous glances that identify its holder as prey. Sebastian couldn’t escape the targeted feeling day or night. The rickety motel that accepted cash offered no security a firm kick wouldn’t countermand. The 350Z that carried him and his windfall during the day cried out to every aspiring joy rider he passed. He desperately sought a secure place to fade into anonymity. Each day’s paper offered at least one quiet room over someone’s garage. The neighborhoods turned out to be decent, but each inquiry ended with a request for references and a promise from Sebastian that he’d never return to fulfill. No one trusted a man alone in the world.

Sebastian spent the next month in a bar called Trip Eights on the outskirts of the city. The basement held storage for the restaurant and a few private rooms for a select group of regulars. The bouncer at the thick metal door made clear that this area was off limits to all but a select few. The main floor had been separated into a dining room and bar at one time, but now these areas flowed together with a small stage at one end that was grimy with disuse. The upper floor held two apartments. Sebastian secured one for five hundred a month and no questions. The bar manager occupied the other.

The building held everything Sebastian needed save a confessional, but anonymity proved lonely. The locals had jobs, families and hobbies to joke about. They met raucous friends around the televisions and shared rounds until the public areas of the bar closed. Sebastian could tell no one about his past, his work, his home; just showing his face outside was a risk. He sat at the bar and kept strictly to himself, drinking, watching and growing evermore weary of his isolation. Each night he dragged himself upstairs more desperate than the night before.

Sebastian defied categorization in the bar. The bartenders, waitresses and the kitchen staff became familiar, their purpose clear. Other regulars were idle or retired and tended to be tight fisted. The sporadic visitors came in hordes after work. They clumped together in the bar and left together in groups. There was another group of rough looking characters that took up residence in the far corner of the dining room. The waitresses and even the bartenders were afraid of them. After a few days, Sebastian saw the pattern of people that came to the table, stayed less than five minutes and headed out. He avoided any sort of interaction with them. He didn't need to see the drugs or the guns to know they were there.

Sebastian knew no one in California except his parents. He hadn’t grown up here, hadn’t worked here. Other than the stool he occupied in front of the television half the day, none of these people would ever have seen him. He did his best to fit in with the idle crowd, keeping to himself, buying only what he needed and trying to conceal his cash each time he had to break a new hundred dollar bill. One of those times he casually slipped the bartender a hundred for dinner, he caught a strange look from Liz, one of the waitresses. She was the only one comfortable delivering drinks to the rough crew in the corner. She had long straight hair and long toned legs to match. She was curious, but too busy to ask.

The next day she pulled up on a stool beside him before the dinner rush. She asked how he’d come here and why he never went outside. He let his imagination go and weaved a history as a stock broker from New York who’d cheated on the boss’s daughter. He invented a story about a wedding turned violent outside the church and death threats from his jilted fiancee’s family. He asked her to keep the story to herself and she seemed willing. He turned the conversation to her background and a minute later she was back to serving tables. She smiled at him a few times in the next three days, but never showed more interest than that. Mike, a leader of the corner gang, had a thing for Liz and that was enough to keep Sebastian from getting any closer.

The next week he spoke to no one until Liz slipped up on the stool next to him after her shift. Mike hadn’t been in the bar all afternoon and Sebastian was glad for the company if a little uneasy at first. They shared a drink and another until Liz showed signs she wouldn’t safely find her way home. She accepted his invitation to stay the night and he led her up to his room. He was spellbound when she loosed her hair and several buttons of her uniform. He kissed her right there by the door, his hands exploring her taut rear end until an incongruous noise had him backing away and taking in her face again. The light from the hall glowed through the open doorway. She shoved him back. Wobbling, he felt his own drunkenness for the first time and saw Mike’s hulking figure step inside the room. Sebastian was in trouble, his mind ordering his body to run, but the alcohol had him wobbling in place. Mike’s fist crashed into his temple and Sebastian hit the floor.

His sideways view of the room was hazy and dark. His body was too heavy to move and his head thumped loudly in his ears. Mike’s sneakers and Liz’s bare feet wandered all around. Drawers opened, sheets ruffled, the bathroom door opened and closed as did cabinets in the kitchen. Powerless to do anything but watch, he lay flat until they found the shiny case hidden among the blankets in the closet. It was only eight feet away, but he couldn’t will his body up to protect it. Mike buried his foot in Sebastian’s ribs on his way to the door. The last he saw of them was Mike’s hand at the small of her back ushering her to the stairs.

Charles Marston’s money was gone. The case had brought him nothing but grief from the second Marston handed it to him and part of him was glad to be free. Without the money, there was nothing to do but go back to his father and beg forgiveness and advice. He slowly gathered himself, mounted the 350Z, glad Mike and Liz hadn’t known about it and taken it, too. He headed home to find Eduardo was out. Rather than wait, Sebastian tore off to meet him at a club a few miles down the road where he watched baseball with the neighborhood guys. Out of the Z and standing in the wide street Sebastian witnessed a horrific site. A bus approached the crest of a steep hill with Mike in the window. Liz was at his side and Eduardo was a few rows back. The bus stopped briefly at the curb and Sebastian jumped into traffic waving his arms to get his father’s attention, but the window was now in shadow. Charles Marston, the cowboy, and Sebastian had all met trouble when they held the case. Mike had it now and Sebastian could imagine the bus losing control on the hill, flipping over and killing everyone on board. Father didn’t deserve to pay for Sebastian’s mistakes. He lived a good life, worked hard and even found forgiveness for Charles Marston, something Sebastian was unsure he’d ever do.

He chased awkwardly down the hill, still wobbled from the effects of alcohol and the pounding he’d taken. The bus pulled away as he dodged cars in the dim light. A sharp intonation of ‘Sebastian’ jolted him to a stop, his feet on the double yellow lines. Eduardo stood on the curb in front of the bar wondering what nonsense his son was involved in.

The bus accelerated away downhill.

Sebastian watched the tanker grind to a stop in the intersection, the bus still accelerating despite the catastrophe in its path. Some malfunction in both vehicles had the gasoline tanker stalled in the road and the bus hurtling downhill toward it. The bus never let up until the two mammoths collided. The front end of the bus plowed deep into the center of the tanker, rupturing the tank and sending the brownish liquid bubbling and gushing in all directions. When it found a spark, hundreds of gallons of gasoline ignited in an instant. The explosion jarred Sebastian from a half block away. Mike’s charred remains blew through the rear door of the bus and bounced lifelessly on the pavement. The case skipped twice and landed softly on the street side grass, taking in the scene and looking none the worse for the experience.

Sebastian didn’t dare touch it again. Eduardo retrieved the case and led his son home. They stood together as Sebastian dialed the Westport police. Soon he’d be reunited with Oliver Joyet to continue his journey.

  © 22 West Books 2006.

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