Face of the Assassin

by Bill Brewer

  “Step out of the van,” Masoni commanded. “Turn around, hands behind your back.”

  One zip tie bound his wrists. The other was placed between his hands and around the first zip tie. When the second was pulled tight it further constricted the first, nearly cutting off the blood flow.

  Spun around, Wayne was shoved into a seated position in the open door of the van.

  “Now about that lump on your head,” said Masoni playing doctor.

  Hanging from the black nylon strap, Masoni placed the nut against Wayne’s bruised temple, encircling the strap around his head. Running the strap through the buckle, he cinched the strap tight, forcing the heavy metal nut into the side of Wayne’s head.

  The pressure forced the pain deep into Wayne’s brain where it amplified into an aggravated mushroom cloud of discomfort. Masoni picked up a ball peen hammer, and struck the nut. The shock wave felt as if the hammer had shattered a ceramic vase. Wayne’s skull felt like it had fractured into hundreds of fissures radiating across its surface. The prisoner’s head and neck quivered as his eyes popped wide open, tears pouring over his lids.

  Looking at him with a self-satisfied smile, Masoni said, “I see I have your attention now. Just the right amount of force in the right place can be so effective.”

  Wayne struggled to remain oriented as the recurring pulses of pain magnified the throbbing of each heartbeat. Lifted by his collar, Wayne was pulled staggering to the workbench.

  “Let’s see what else we have here,” said Masoni as he searched through the shop until he found the power tools.

  “Ah, here we are,” he said as he hoisted an impact driver. This concussive power tool uses oscillation to amplify torque force making it an ideal device for driving screws into any solid material.

  Masoni punched Wayne in the guts, bending him forward until he looked like a hunched back little old lady. Wayne felt his head placed on the cold metal of a bench vise. Masoni turned the crank, closing the vise on Wayne’s ear, trapping the sensitive cartilage between the serrated jaws of the cast iron behemoth. The screaming began as the blood flowed from Wayne’s ear.

  Placing the impact driver against the metal nut, Masoni steadied the device, pulled the trigger, and held the tool in place for thirty seconds.

  The concussive force of the impact driver made the ball peen hammer seem like a Q-tip. The pulverizing force upon Wayne’s skull sent magnanimous waves of violent vibration into his cranium. It’s a fact that the brain lacks pain sensors, but Wayne was completely unconvinced as it felt like his brain was being liquefied within the cauldron of agony that was his skull.

  When Masoni lifted the driver from the nut, Wayne felt his scalp enlarge. The pain seemed to grow even greater, as his head was expanding with inflammatory fluid. With his ear still firmly in the vise, he couldn’t believe how badly this whole mission had gone sideways.

  “Now, who sent you?” asked Masoni.

  Wayne had no idea what an ‘out of body experience’ was so he didn’t recognize it when his consciousness departed from its physical confines and began speaking for him.

  “It was Avery… Avery Forsythe.”

  “I knew that fucker was behind this,” said Masoni. “He’s twisted and relentless. What’s the problem? Why is he after me?”

  “You know secrets about Cerberus and Crepusculous. He doesn’t want you talking about the nanocytes that can change a person’s appearance.”

  “What?”

  “Like the guy in China, who could change his face. Please, I’ve told you now let me go.”

  “What do you mean change his face?”

  “I don’t know, nanocytes, proteins, genetics all controlled by a computer. You must know about this. I figured you knew and that’s why Avery wanted you dead. Now let me go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. Now shut up and stay right there.”

  Wayne groaned as he spread his legs farther apart trying to find just an infinitesimal amount of physical comfort.

  After checking his phone, Masoni said, “Tony, that fucking Arnie’s GPS signal hasn’t moved since I called him. He and his dopey friends aren’t going to show up. Get the seats out of the van, we’re putting all these ladies in there.”

  With a set of wrenches, Tony began unbolting the bench seat in the back of the van.

  The woman with short blonde hair said, “Are you planning on stuffing us all in one van? You can’t do that.”

  Masoni scowled as he released the mechanism on the bottom of a bucket seat and removed it through the sliding door. Tony nodded as he worked on the back seat. By the time Masoni removed the second seat from the other side, Tony was extracting the rear bench. With the passenger seats out of the van, Masoni told the women, “Now get in.”

  With surprising efficiency and a deference to comfort and safety, twenty-four unhappy women packed themselves into the van like compressed cargo.

  Masoni stepped over to Wayne whose vision was directed away from the van toward the waterfront. “You tell Avery he’s on my hit list and I’m going to kill him. I don’t want him fucking up my life anymore.”

  “Okay… okay, I’ll tell him.”

  Masoni turned and walked back toward the van.

  “Hey, you gotta let me go. You can’t just leave me here. Hey, HEY!”

  The van’s engine started, Wayne heard the overhead door on the street side of the building pulled open, and then he heard it pulled back down after the van drove outside.

  The hangar was quiet. Masoni must have switched off the portable furnace because its sound was gone along with its heat. The cold would become a problem, but first Wayne had to get free. The pain in his ear persisted as his head throbbed like a marching band drum. Every movement he made to get a different look at what was around him, was rewarded with a twisting, tearing pain screaming in his ear. He never knew the ear was so sensitive, but he was sure learning about all the nerves embedded in the thin delicate sound gathering structures. His legs were tired, his back was killing him and his hands were numb. He didn’t want to vomit, but the nausea in his stomach threatened to erupt at any moment. In spite of all this, his immediate concern was that he was going to piss his pants. Relaxing his sphincters and emptying his bladder felt so good, for such a short period of time. The hot piss running down his leg, soaking his pants and filling his shoes, smelled and felt like shit. He desperately wanted to be free before he had to deal with actually needing to shit.

  Wayne screamed, “HELP – HELP,” but his calls went unanswered. The dark of night intensified, leaving the workshop lit by only a couple of battery charging glow lights. He was alone, in pain, uncomfortable, and completely uncertain as to when he might get some help. He stamped his feet in rage. They were the only things he could move. He feared the night. In desperation, he sobbed like a baby and felt absolutely childish as the tears rolled over his nose, down along his cheek. Adding insult to injury, the saline droplets stung the open wounds on his trapped ear. He realized that if he was still there in the morning he may have to deal with people much more sympathetic to Masoni than to him.

  He knew what he had to do, but it took some time for the desperation to surmount the desire to keep oneself whole. Since the ear had been trapped in the steel jaws for several hours the tissue was degrading. The loss of blood, the reduction in neural stimuli were denying the ear of the nutrients and signaling it needed to stay healthy. The ear was ruined anyway. Now he just had to detach himself from the wretched flap.

  He twisted clockwise. It hurt like hell. Counterclockwise felt just as bad. He moved his head forward towards the workbench. Only a light movement sent searing pain into his head and along his neck. Realizing he was going to have to pull his head up, twisting from side to side, to separate the skin along the edge of the steel jaws meant there was no way this wasn’t going to be the most painful event of his life. He screamed, pulled up, rotated clockwise and twisted his torso. The shredded tissue between the jaws gave way. It was only then that Wayne real
ized the top quarter of his ear was never in the vise. That section was still attached to his head while the chunk of ear was still trapped between the jaws. His scream became more anguished and desperate. He cried again for HELP, but the dark, indifferent night swallowed the mournful plea. He panted away several minutes, hoping time would produce a change. As before, he realized he was going to have to forcibly separate himself from his ear. The fact that he was now losing more blood increased the imperative while weakening his resolve. No time to waste.

  He pulled back away from the workbench, hoping the ear would tear along the far edge of the vise jaws. This happened, but the scalp above the ear tore along the injury, peeling an inch of skin away from his head. With a violent twist of his head and a blood-curdling scream, Wayne tore himself loose, stumbled on wobbly legs, and fell to the floor.

  The value of a victory depends on the circumstances. Wayne felt like he had bested Houdini as he slowly rose from the floor. Once standing, he realized he was still a long way from winning. He found a light switch near the side door. He found a jagged edge on a damaged propeller, which he used to cut the zip ties. He removed the black strap and the metal nut pressed into his swollen temple. In the toilet, he used toilet paper as a gauze pad for his wounded ear. A greasy shop towel went over the paper padding, and although it was at first an instrument of torture, Wayne removed the nut and used the black nylon strap to fasten his first aid bandage over his ear.

  Outside the building, he returned to his car, started it up and drove away without looking back. After five kilometers, he pulled the car into a rest area, parked and cried. He cried and cried. The loneliness of having no back up, no assistance, no one to help at all. The loss of his ear, which he now realized he had left in the jaws of the vise. The anger, the humiliation, the fury all balled up into a violent, pathetic expression of grief, fear and frustration. After fifteen minutes of expulsion, Wayne re-started the car and got back on the road, thinking; Avery Forsythe is going to pay for this. Masoni won’t get to kill him, because I will.

  CHAPTER 21

  Michael Kellerman woke up to find himself in the abandoned retail space in Brixton now occupied by fellow junkies and their greedy dealers. Having already been through two rounds of mainlined heroin, Michael was waiting out his recovery while anticipating his third encounter with opioid euphoria. The building used to be a neighborhood supermarket, but hard times let it become a hangout for addicts of all types. The interior was a sordid mess, but perception-altering drugs could turn it into a beguiling temporary paradise. Michael’s dealer, Spencer was a tall dude with long dark hair and a Fu Manchu mustache. Dressed in a black full-length leather trench coat, dark turtleneck, black jeans, and heavy Doc Martin boots, the guy looked like a soldier of Satan. He had a businessman’s mind, but the appearance of an executioner, which was pretty accurate given the product he was peddling.

  Scrolling on his phone, Spencer checked Celebrizine, where he looked at all the hot women in sexy dresses who were photographed as they entered Vince Kronig’s debut ball. Seeing Michael in a couple of photos he shouted, “Hey fuckin freak, what are you doing at this party?” Spencer stepped over to the ratty sofa where Michael lay and shook his shoulder. Michael stirred, opened his eyes, trying to focus them on Spencer who now sat on the edge of the sofa.

  “What are you doing at this fancy party?”

  Michael looked at the phone’s screen as Spencer flipped through pictures from the Gala event at LPU. He saw himself, with his father and sister. How the hell did these pictures get published?

  “Look that’s you,” said Spencer pointing at Michael. “Is that your old man? It says here he’s one of the richest people in the world.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” replied Michael.

  “Yeah well I definitely don’t believe what fuckin junkies tell me. Who’s that hot number, is she your girlfriend?”

  With the image zoomed in on Julie’s face and cleavage, Spencer stuck the phone in front of Michael.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” repeated Spencer.

  “No… no she’s not. She’s my sister.”

  Pulling the phone away so he could look at it again, Spencer traced his finger over the image of Julie.

  “So you’re really a rich boy not just a fucking freak. All the debt I been carrying for you was completely unnecessary. You lied to me when you said you didn’t have any money.”

  Michael looked at him with fast sobering eyes now that he started to realize the potential consequences of his true identity being revealed.

  “Answer me,” shouted Spencer as he smacked Michael on the side of the head.

  Raising his hands in defense while ducking his head, Michael said, “Okay, okay, you’re right, that is me.”

  “Well since that’s you, you now owe me the twenty grand in debt I been carrying for your habit.”

  Michael had no idea how in debt he was.

  “You either get me that money or we find something else.”

  Michael said with a trembling voice, “I can get you the money.”

  “Right now? You can get me twenty grand right now?”

  “Well not right now, but I can get it.”

  “Bullshit. You've been bullshitting me for years. Always saying you’d pay up in full and always leaving me with an unpaid balance. No, I don’t want your bullshit money.”

  Michael swallowed hard as he looked away from the menacing glare Spencer fixed upon him.

  “What are you going to do,” he sheepishly asked, breaking the long pause during which Spencer had gone back to looking at his phone?

  Turning his gaze back upon Michael, Spencer said, “There’s something else I want, and you’re going to get it here or else your life will be forfeited for your debt.”

  Shaking and on the edge of tears, especially since he had not had his third hit of heroin, Michael asked, “What do you want?”

  Flipping the phone around to reveal a picture of Julie at the party with her hips in profile and her pretty face casting a sexy look over her shoulder, Spencer said, “I want her, tonight.”

  “What? What do you mean?” stammered Michael.

  “I mean I want you to get her to come here tonight.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  With a look of disgusted disbelief Spencer said, “Da, I’m going to fuck her brains out.”

  “Oh,” said Michael.

  “Fucking Oh,” said Spencer as he tossed Michael the phone. “Call her, give her the address and get her to come here and I will give you a hit of pure heroin. Uncut, unadulterated, it will make you higher than you’ve ever been. But not ‘til after you make that call.”

  CHAPTER 22

  At the Babylon restaurant Julie and Vince were seated to dine in the Spanish Roof Garden. Occupying the top of 99 Kensington High Street, this unique eatery, set in a fabulous converted roof garden, evoked the feeling of a holiday in the Mediterranean. The flowers, trees, architecture and flamingoes gave Londoners a break from the English monotony, transporting diners to the Spanish coast to enjoy an exceptional meal. Julie had been anticipating taking Vince to this special place ever since she met him. Tonight the weather cooperated, providing a cool and comfortable evening. The silk dress Julie wore was a deep shade of maroon, its length extending to her knees, while the thin spaghetti straps criss crossed behind her, revealing the smooth muscles of her back. The generous neckline, displaying her cleavage, provided support and coverage of her breasts through a built in underwire with thin padding. She looked stunning and Vince was absolutely gape mouthed when he picked her up. Avery had sent Vince to the Savile Row haberdasher who outfitted Klaus. Dressed in a Desmond Merrion suit of dark worsted wool, Vince projected the image of success and confidence that went with a red power tie, folded handkerchief in the breast pocket, and a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. Amazed with the décor and ambience of the restaurant, Vince felt privileged to be having dinner with this lovely woman in a un
iquely beautiful environment. He looked forward to getting to know her on this fabulous first date.

  Having just ordered drinks, they were discussing the menu when Julie’s phone chimed. She quickly looked at the screen, and it suddenly drew her full attention. She tapped the screen and Vince watched her eyes rapidly scanning a text message. She cast her gaze upon Vince.

  “I’m really sorry but I have to go.”

  Pulling his head back with amazement Vince said, “Really, what’s the matter?”

  Clutching the phone to her chest she replied, “It's Michael.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s in trouble and needs my help.”

  Julie picked up her purse and began to slide back her chair.

  “Whoa, whoa wait a minute,” implored Vince. “I’d like to know, what’s the big problem?”

  Julie responded, “I know this is sudden,” she lowered her voice and leaned in, “but I can’t explain it to you here. We’ve got to go.”

  As they stood up to leave, the headwaiter approached. Vince apologized while settling the bill using his Digival account.

  Once inside Vince’s Audi A5, Julie began. “I think you know Michael likes to party pretty hard.”

  Vince nodded.

  “Well sometimes he goes a little too deep and often ends up in a bar or party from which he needs to be escorted out. I’m the one who gets that call.”

  “How often is often?”

  “I don’t know, every couple of months, maybe more than that.”

  “Like once a month?”

  “The holidays are especially tough. So are the summer months.”

  “Where’s the party tonight?”

  “Up in Brixton. It’s not a very nice part of town. I’ve never retrieved him from up there before.”

  “Should we call the police then?”

  “No, no police. They just bring publicity, which is something we definitely want to avoid.”