by Scott Blade
The first guy stared at the homeless guy from behind the phone's backlight and asked a question.
"This him?"
The voice on the screen replied.
"Turn his head to profile. Let me get a good look at him."
The first guy barked an order at the homeless guy.
"Turn your head!"
The homeless guy did nothing.
The first guy reached a gloved hand out and grabbed the homeless guy's beard on the left side and jerked his head to face the right—hard.
The homeless guy struggled, but it was useless.
The first guy barked, "Stop!"
The homeless guy stopped fighting back and gave in.
The voice on the screen ordered, "Show me his eyes."
The first guy jerked the homeless guy's head back to center, released his beard, and reached up to his eye sockets. He got a grip on one of the homeless guy's eyelids and pulled it open wide as far as it would go. In any other human being, the whites of the eyes would've been what showed up, but not here. The homeless man's whites were too bloodshot to be called white.
All that was visible were pupils, irises, and blood-red veins throughout his eyes.
The voice on the phone said, "He's piss drunk."
The first guy said, "Yes. Part of the plan. It's how we got him alone."
The homeless guy said, "What? What's going on?"
The voice on the phone said, "Hello, Henry."
The homeless man said, "Who?"
"Henry Eggers. I know it's you."
"No one. No one calls me that anymore. Henry Eggers is dead now."
Eggers looked at the face on the phone. He lifted his head off the park bench's metal armrest and squinted his eyes, trying to focus on the face on the phone's screen.
Both the face on the screen and the first guy waited a long moment until they knew for a fact that Eggers recognized the face on the screen.
They knew because terror swept over Eggers' face.
The face on the phone asked, "You remember me, Henry?"
Eggers said nothing.
The face on the phone said, "Yeah. You remember me. I found you. Can you believe it? It wasn't easy. Finding you was hard. And I've got the resources to find anyone. Anyone, Henry."
Eggers swallowed and said, "I didn't know you were looking for me."
"I've been looking for you for a little bit of time now. Months, in fact."
"How are you?"
The face on the phone's screen ignored the question.
"Henry, you look like shit."
Eggers said nothing.
The first guy said, "He smells like shit too."
The face on the phone asked, "What's happened to you, Henry?"
"I'm between jobs right now."
"Funny."
Eggers paused a beat, for a reason nothing other than he was completely blank on what to say next. Finally, he spoke.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?"
The face on the phone stared at him, hard. Then, he spoke.
"I've got to ask you a question."
"Okay."
"Answer honestly, now. This'll all go a lot easier for you. No lies. Understand?"
"Okay."
The face on the phone asked, "What did you do with your money?"
Eggers stayed quiet, but his eyes opened wide. They darted from side to side as if he was tortured by old, unforgotten memories.
A solid minute went by. The face on the phone knew it because he had been watching the time on his phone.
"Henry!"
"What?"
"Where's the money?"
Eggers paused. He tried to grip the bench and pull himself up, but the first guy plunged four solid fingertips into Eggers' chest, shoving him back down on his butt.
"Stay!" the first guy barked.
"Answer the question!" the face on the phone demanded.
Eggers cleared his throat and said, "I don't know."
The face said, "Henry, where's the money?"
Eggers said nothing.
The face said, "Last chance."
The first guy reached into his pocket and pulled out a Zippo lighter. It looked both expensive and familiar to Eggers. It looked familiar because it was. One time, long ago, the lighter had belonged to him. It was a gift from a commanding officer he’d had back in his Navy days.
An engraving on the polished silver casing read his full name and rank and nothing else.
Eggers said, "I'm not Henry anymore. You don't need to worry about me. I'm one of the forgotten now. Like a ghost. I'm nobody."
The face repeated, "Where's the money?"
Eggers said, "I don't got it."
The face on the phone called out for the first guy by name.
The first guy pulled the phone away from Eggers and stared at the face on the screen.
The face said, "He's useless. Do it."
The first guy smiled. Eggers saw it in the light from the phone.
Eggers was drunk and ancient, but once upon a time, he had been somebody. Those old instincts might still be there somewhere, down deep. He hoped they were. He hadn't thrown a punch in more than twenty years. The last time he was in close quarters combat, he’d been more than a decade younger and ten pounds heavier, but it was all muscle. Now, he was a shriveled shell of that guy. He was a husk of someone who used to be a highly trained sailor. He hoped the muscle memory was still there.
Eggers reached down and mustered the strength and the nerve to go for it. He exploded to action and slapped the back of the phone in the first guy's hand and slammed it into his face.
The first guy, not stunned, but surprised, stepped back a foot, unfazed. The effort wasn't the most powerful thing ever, but it had served its purpose.
Eggers didn't need to engage in a one-on-one boxing match with a guy twenty-five years younger than him and built like a brick house. He only needed to surprise him, buy himself a few seconds to get up and run.
Eggers rolled off the bench and stumbled to his feet. Everything was hazy. The darkness and the city lights beyond seemed to blur together like a watercolor painting with the colors running from being left out in the rain.
Eggers might've been drunk-beyond-drunk, but he had experience in this. He knew how to maneuver in the dark, in a state of intoxication. Eggers had been drinking away his regrets for long years. He knew how to live in that world.
He scrambled away from the first guy and took off running.
The first guy reacted. He dropped the Zippo and reached down and jerked a Sig Sauer P226 out of a concealed hip holster.
He pointed the gun at Eggers' back as he ran away.
The face was still on the phone.
He barked, "Don't shoot him!"
The first guy stared through the iron sights. Both of his eyes were wide open. He had Eggers lined up. He could've squeezed the trigger. But he didn't.
"No bullets!" the face on the phone ordered.
The first guy lowered the gun and said, "Roger."
The first guy called out to the other three guys.
"He's heading on foot to Thirteenth Street!"
Eggers ran as hard and as fast as he could, which was to say not very fast at all.
He saw Thirteenth Street's lights just ahead of him. He saw a taxi pass on the street.
"Help!" he tried to call out. But his voice sounded hoarse from not having used it in a long time.
He tried again.
"Help!"
Another car drove by.
He kept running. The exit from the park was right there. The street was so close. He almost made it, but he didn't.
Instead, he felt instant pain in the back of his head. He heard a loud, echoing shatter so close it was like it was inside his skull. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground.
He was dazed, more dazed than he ever felt drunk.
Eggers rolled his head to the side and put a hand down on the brick walkway. He pushed himself up and turned to see what
hit him in the back of the head. It had been a full bottle of Clyde Brothers’ Whiskey, but now it was an empty bottle. It was a broken, empty bottle, shattered all over the brick from hitting him.
He looked up and saw the first guy had thrown it at him.
The first guy approached Eggers from the park bench. A gun was in his hand and pointed right at Eggers' face.
Eggers tried to push himself up and stand on his own feet, but then he saw three other men. They came from three different directions around him. They were all dressed in black, looking like they were up to no good, which they were.
No one came up from behind him, from the street, but that made no difference now. He was never going to make it to the street, and he knew it.
Two of the other guys reached under his armpits and scooped him up to his feet. They kept their grips locked on him. They pulled both of his arms out to his sides as if they were going to put him up on a cross.
He got a look at one of the other guys. He was a massive, bald guy. He had fists like concrete blocks.
The bald guy stood nearby with a gun in his hand. Not a Sig Sauer P226, like the first guy's, but a Glock 34. The thing Eggers deducted about them at that instant, which he should've recognized before, was from their guns.
Special Forces operators are usually trained in as many weapons as possible. The different divisions of the US military services all have their own unique standard-issue weapons. The Army used to have the M1911, back in the day. Then they upgraded to the M9 Beretta for a long, long time. But recently—he couldn't remember the year exactly—the Army had switched to the Sig Sauer P320 after it won a “Modular Handgun Systems” competition.
The thing that Eggers recognized about the weapons these guys carried was that if there was a shortlist for preferred weapons by Special Forces operators, they would both make the cut.
His brain coupled the choice of weapons with the way they were dressed and the way they placed themselves in a perimeter, along with the face on the phone, and he knew—they had been Special Forces at some point in their pasts.
The first guy lowered his weapon but kept it in hand at his side.
He approached Eggers and raised the phone's screen to face him again.
Eggers looked at the face that stared back at him.
"Henry, I'm sorry it's come to this. Take care of him."
The face said nothing else and hung up. The screen went black.
The first guy slipped the phone back into his pocket.
He said, "Hold him tight."
Eggers felt two of the other men wrench out his arms, holding him locked in place.
The first guy twisted back at the waist and rotated fast and forward. He whipped Eggers across the face with his pistol.
The gun CRACKED! across Eggers' lower jaw. Teeth cracked. He spat out two. Blood trickled out of his mouth.
He wanted to beg and plead, but he didn't. The old sailor that he used to be was still there, down deep in his core. Sailors don't beg or plead. They stand tall.
He pushed his feet down into the brick and tried to stand up tall.
He spat out blood toward the bald guy.
"Tough now, are you?" the bald guy asked.
Eggers stayed quiet.
The second guy hit him again with the pistol and then a third time—both across the face. The third one was flat on Eggers' forehead. He felt nothing after that. The blow was hard and dazed what was left of him to daze.
The first guy said, "Drag him back to the bench."
The others lifted Eggers off his feet and took him back to the bench. They forced him to lie flat like he had been before when he was asleep.
One of the other guys took out a zip tie and forced Eggers' wrists between the bars on the armrest of the bench. He ziptied his wrists around it.
The men all backed away.
The first guy reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He took one out and returned the pack to his pocket. He knelt and scooped up the dropped lighter. He flicked open the top. He stuck a cigarette into his mouth, struck a flame, and lit it. He returned the Zippo to his pocket and puffed away on the cigarette.
He smoked it until it was half–gone. Then he stared down at Eggers and asked a question.
"Want a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke."
The first guy nodded and puffed one last time. Then, he said one final thing to Eggers.
"Hooyah, brother."
The first guy took a long step back. He looked into Eggers' eyes, a taunting, sinister look that would haunt Eggers for the rest of his life.
Eggers struggled against the zip tie and the park bench's metal, but it did not free him.
The first guy took the smoked cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it onto Eggers and the bench. The whiskey that covered his body lit up instantly.
The cask strength whiskey did as advertised. It burned and burned.
The other three men gathered around the first, and they all stood around and watched Eggers burn to death.
After he was dead, the first guy took the cigarette pack out again and spilled a bunch of the cigarettes out on the ground, and he dug a store-bought cheap lighter out of his pocket and struck it a couple of times, so it seemed used, and he dropped it over the cigarettes. He did all of this so the cops would find them. He kept the Zippo. Couldn’t leave that behind. It was easier to trace back to his boss.
The cops weren't going to look closely enough and ask the question of how Eggers lit his own cigarette. They'd figure he’d used a match.
One of the others cut the zip tie around Eggers' wrist, avoiding the flames as best he could, but the fire was hot. He couldn't get a grip on the zip tie's remains. It fell somewhere into the flames.
The first guy said, "Forget it. It wouldn't make a difference."
The four men left Eggers' body to burn out on its own. They walked back to their SUV and hopped in. They drove off, following the street signs to their next destination as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Two
Jack Widow didn’t know why he stepped off the bus in Washington, DC. He felt like he’d just been there not long ago. That’s how DC is for anyone who’s ever lived there. You leave for years and then return, and soon enough, you’re ready to leave again.
But he hadn’t been there in about a year. He’d once known a girl in DC. Her name was Kelly Li, but by now she would’ve made Secret Service Agent.
Widow had stayed with her for a few days last year until they both realized the thing that always comes up for him. His life was all about forward motion. And she was about her career. Careers are for people who are metaphorically going places. Jack Widow was literally going places.
On his last day in DC, she took him to the same bus depot that he’d just stepped away from.
Li had asked him a question.
“Where will you go?”
Widow told the truth.
He shrugged and said, “Wherever I want.”
And that had been the last words he spoke to her. They hugged and kissed goodbye like star-crossed lovers at the end of the final act, never to see each other again.
Beyond his memories of Agent Li, Washington DC held a certain reverence for him. There’s a kind of nationalistic veneration the capital holds for every American who ever served in uniform. The city is filled with monuments, representing the foundations of an imperfect country with fantastic root ideologies. Democracy was the experiment; when it would come out of the experimental stages still remained to be seen.
Widow was an American and a former SEAL. He stood tall and proud, as he stared out over the city.
At the same time, the city has evolved into the most crime-ridden place on earth, if you factor in backstabbing and lies as political crimes.
Before Widow noticed the DC architecture, he felt the brisk wind brush over him. He tucked himself further into a Havelock coat he’d bought somewhere along his trip north a couple of weeks earlier. He’d picked
out a coat that was navy blue because the sailor in him couldn’t help himself. No one had ever proposed that you can take the Navy out of the sailor.
Under the coat, Widow wore a warm plaid green shirt and blue jeans. Both were warm enough to keep him comfortable in the windy capital.
Gazing upon the majestic monuments, Widow was filled with a sense of patriotism and pride. At the same time, he felt like he needed a shower.
There was a lot of patriotism in a city filled with lies.
DC wasn’t on his mental itinerary. Then again, nothing much was, but also, everything was. The only everlasting item that never budged was coffee.
Widow wasn’t an impulsive man, not like most people. From the outside, it looked like he didn’t have a plan, like he lived impulsively. He did travel from place to place, seemingly at random. But he did have a plan. It just wasn’t a detailed plan. Life was too beautiful to make detailed plans. Detailed plans were for building houses—things with walls or for prison escapes. Widow’s life was no prison. Not the way other people lived—normal people.
You have to learn to roll with the punches, but you also have to learn to surf the waves. In other words, live life to the fullest. Pretty simple. That’s why it makes for such a good bumper sticker.
Widow’s plan was to wander, to roam, to be free, and to see and experience all the riches the United States’ landscape had to offer. He did this according to his own codes of honor instilled by the Navy SEALs. Essentially all SEAL codes—minus the ones that have to do with combat—boil down to do the right thing.
Widow stepped off a Greyhound bus that had started back in Portland, Maine, passed through Boston and New York City, and had now arrived in DC.
There was no plan. The reason he got off in DC was a simple line switch.
He stepped off a bus with the most detailed plan of the day, which was to step onto another bus and keep on going. But at that moment, he felt hungry.
