by Paul Cleave
I count to ten, eager to rush out there but not stupid enough. Then I count to ten again just to be sure. I make my way to where the car was parked. I turn in a slow circle. Ahead the neon letters of the supermarket have been switched off to save power. To my left the wall of the mall has been freshly painted, covering up a recent attack by graffiti artists-if you can call somebody who scrawls capital letters across a wall with spray paint an artist. To my right at the end of the parking lot is a neighboring fence. The supermarket runs almost the entire distance from the mall wall to that fence, except for a service alley at the far end. None of this inlet can be seen from the road. I walk up to the large glass doors of the supermarket. Hundreds of shopping carts are parked inside, boxes and bags, the sort of stuff you should see when you look through supermarket windows. Frank got out of his car, moved behind it, and came over here. Somewhere.
It only takes me a minute to find the briefcase. It’s sitting in a garbage bin that’s bolted to the ground a few yards to the left of the supermarket doors. I don’t bother opening it, but carry it back to my car, running the entire way. I get into the driver’s seat and pop the lid open and stare at bundles of cash. Lots of fresh brand-new bills. A lot of money looks great. It makes you feel rich, like you’ve achieved something. Even if you haven’t. So that’s how I’m feeling. I’m feeling rich for achieving little. I’m feeling rich for achieving a lot of fuckups over the last few days. I’m also feeling smarter than Cyris and maybe that’s dangerous. Maybe for once the house isn’t going to win.
But I’m also feeling angry, more at Frank than at Cyris right now. Frank is the reason the two girls died, and therefore the reason that Jo has been kidnapped. He’s also the reason Landry got himself shot up and thrown into a river. It all stems from him squirreling away this pile of cash and saving it up so his wife could be sliced up and killed. I feel like driving after Frank and running him off the road. Feel like punching and kicking and even stabbing him, over and over and over till he’s dead, at the same time asking him how it feels. What a bastard. What a piece of trash. I can feel myself burning up. I wonder if this is the full amount, or if it was one of those half now half and half after kind of jobs. I wonder why Frank didn’t pay Cyris earlier, then realize he probably couldn’t-he needed a day or two for things to die down. Making a payment the same day his wife was murdered wouldn’t look too good.
Action Man is angry. And, like I thought earlier, Action Man is no longer a victim.
I spill the cash onto the floor well in front of the passenger seat, creating a pile of cash in different denominations. I pop the glove box and grab hold of the pen the car rental agency guy gave me. Withdrawing a single hundred-dollar note from the pile of cash, I write on it, having to go over the same lines a few times to make the letters dark enough. Then I place it inside the briefcase. I close the lid and click both latches closed. It’s much lighter now.
Still no traffic so I run across the road and this time, instead of vaulting the barrier, I hurdle it. I land running, pumping my legs hard, holding the briefcase in front of me. I round the corner. Same supermarket, same view of shopping carts behind windows, same garbage bin. I put the briefcase where I found it. Before I can head back, tires shriek into the parking lot and headlights wash across the neighboring fence, sweeping toward me. My only chance is the service alley. I dive just as the light behind me comes into view. I hit the ground hard and come to a stop against a chain-link gate that rattles but not loudly enough for Cyris to have heard over the car. My car. I twist around and, staying low, peer around the corner.
Instead of turning the car around as Frank had, Cyris keeps my Honda pointing directly at the garbage bin. He climbs out of the car and doesn’t look in my direction. He looks exactly the same as last night from the scruffy facial hair to the black clothes. The only difference is a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. It really pisses me off seeing him driving my car in such a way that when this is all over and I’ve killed the son of a bitch, I’m going to be buying a new car. He walks to the bin, walking with a slight limp and with one hand against this stomach. He reaches it and grabs the briefcase. He rests it over the edges of the bin, tilts it toward him, and pops it open with his thumbs. The angle is wrong for me to study his expression, but not wrong enough to watch him stand there for a full minute, still and silent. He closes the case, turns it around in his hands, sets it back down, and opens it again, as if he’s the victim of a parlor trick. Then he turns from the garbage bin and carries the hundred-dollar note to the front of the car. Carefully he examines it under the headlights, turning it over so he can read the note I wrote for him. In the end he screws the bill into his jeans and walks back to the briefcase. He picks it up and swings it hard into the bin. The impact clangs out into the night. After two more blows the briefcase starts cracking and the bin begins to fold inward. The headlights isolate him from the darkness as though he’s on a stage.
He stops thrashing the briefcase, swings his arm back, and throws it high in the air. It hits the roof of the supermarket and doesn’t come back down. He leans over the bin and starts shaking it, pulling it from side to side, wrenching it back and forth until it tears from the bolts, leaving jagged holes in the bottom. He holds it high above his head for a few seconds, then throws it at the supermarket doors. It bounces off with a metallic thud, the dents in it stopping it from rolling away once it hits the ground. He picks it back up and throws it harder. This time the glass cracks. The third throw gets it through the glass doors. The alarms are instant.
He walks back to my car, clutching his stomach, and when he pulls his hand away I can see it’s red. He’s bleeding. He leans against the car and watches the supermarket.
I turn around and study the service-alley gate. Ten feet tall and made up of chain-link wire. I’m sure I can scale it without being heard over the alarm. I do just that, climbing it like a large spider. I follow the alley until it circles toward the back entrances of the shops in the mall. I scale another fence and hit the ground in some industrial section, perhaps an auto body shop-it’s too dark to tell exactly. Then over another fence and into somebody’s backyard. I climb into a park, and start to circle my way back toward my car. By the time I get there two police cars are in the parking lot, but probably no Cyris. With thousands of dollars in the car I’m lucky not to be walking home right now. I guess it’s a school night for all those joyriders out there. I do a U-turn, pissed off that I let Cyris get ahead of me, but what could I do? Wait for him to stop breaking glass doors then run after his car?
I keep my foot on the accelerator, hovering between thirty and forty miles per hour. I can’t afford to be too late. Cyris already has ten minutes on me and I doubt he took his time driving to Frank’s. I also doubt there’s anywhere else in the world he’d be going right now.
I wonder if I’m already too late.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
There’s no other traffic, no reason to stop at any red lights. Cyris sure wouldn’t have. He’s fueled with rage just as I was fueled with despair the other night. I’ve raced these lonely streets before, but the fuel that has me speeding is different from the mix that burned through my veins on Monday. I don’t get lost on my way to Frank’s house, not like Monday morning, and when I turn into the street the first thing I see is the silver Mercedes still parked on the side of the road. Maybe it’s purely for show.
I drive past Frank’s house and glance in. Lights are burning inside, but I can’t see his Mercedes. It’s probably in the garage. I pull up two houses further down. My Honda isn’t here, at least not that I can see. Either Cyris has been and gone or he isn’t coming. I kill the engine, kill the lights, and wait. I look around the street for any signs of life, but it seems like life on this expensive street has died since I was here earlier. I look at my watch. It’s nearly one o’clock.
I stroll over to the house, knowing that slow movement attracts less attention. I don’t pause at the cobblestone walkway, I stroll up it as if I live there.
The front door is open. That’s not good. No signs of forced entry. Coming here is tearing open a recent memory.
I step forward and stand on the threshold of the hallway. On the threshold of Monday’s memory. On the threshold of a new horror to come. I stand still and listen, but there’s nothing, so I take a few more steps and repeat the same procedure and get the same result. I put my hands in my pockets where they’ll be safe from touching anything. I could just turn away and read about it in tomorrow’s paper, but I need to see this. I want to see this-to see what has been done to the man who orchestrated the deaths of two beautiful women.
The lights are glowing in the lounge and it’s here that I find him, lying on his stomach with his head twisted, his arms spread in front of him, the carpet beneath soaked in blood. My breath catches at this sight and I suddenly realize why. I have killed this man and the feeling doesn’t make me feel sick or guilty. I have killed him, not directly, but as surely as if the metal stake protruding from his chest was placed there by my hand. I step closer and kneel down. The anger I feel toward him hasn’t diminished at all just because he’s dead. If anything I actually feel like kicking him. I’m not sure what that says about me, and I’m not sure I really want to know.
Frank has that distinguished look you see in middle-aged doctors on TV. His wire-rimmed glasses have been knocked askew, his eyes are open and reveal irises that are more yellowish then green. He wears a grim look on his face that death is managing to hold in place, a look that tells me the end didn’t come easy. There is a thin line of blood and drool slipping from the corner of his slightly open mouth. The edge of a piece of paper is sticking from between his lips. I reach forward and grab hold of it, and when I pull, his mouth doesn’t even move, but his lower lip is dragged forward, his suddenly revealed teeth giving him the smile of a skull. The hundred-dollar note is damp. I unscrew it, my fingers getting wet. I read the message I wrote across it earlier. Come near me and I’ll have you killed.
I hide it in one of my many pockets, then jam my hands into two of the others. I turn around, studying the room. Expensive furniture and expensive gadgetry and nice paintings. . I guess it’s true when they say you can’t take it with you, even though with his arms spread it sure looks like Frank’s giving it a go. I call out for Kathy, but she doesn’t answer.
“You deserved worse,” I say to Frank, and Frank doesn’t answer. He doesn’t concede the point, or argue it. He just lies there looking pissed off, and I guess I can’t blame him. “You probably think I ought to be feeling sorry for you,” I tell him, “but I don’t have it in me. You got off easy. Way too easy.”
I turn my back on Frank. Tomorrow he’ll be all over the papers in the same way his wife was. The cops won’t know what to make of it. First Kathy, then Frank, both of them stabbed in the chest with a metal stake. They’ll track Frank’s movements, and I wonder where that will lead, and can’t imagine them coming to the conclusion that Frank paid off a hit man who turned around and killed him. They’ll be looking for Landry too, and perhaps they’ve already found him-though I don’t see how. Unless the current has swept him free of that fallen tree and he’s on his way to where people go swimming or fishing or hiking.
I drive home. I stay under the speed limit. I’m in no hurry to be anywhere. I pray Cyris isn’t taking his disappointment out on Jo and figure he can’t afford to. In fact figuring he can’t afford to is the only thing keeping me sane. He’s lost his payment from tonight and won’t risk losing the fifty grand he thinks he’s getting from me tomorrow. I knew the risk when I wrote out that note; of course I thought I’d be able to follow Cyris first to Frank’s and then to Jo. I wasn’t expecting him to take out his rage on a supermarket. I was expecting to be sitting in my car waiting for him. When I decided to leave that note for him, well, I didn’t know at the time if that was a good idea or a bad one-it just seemed like the thing to do. Right and wrong can only be decided by how Jo is being treated.
There is little in the way of traffic. None on my street. There’s a big black cat sitting in the middle of my driveway, which plays chicken with my car before deciding there can only be one winner and scampers off over the fence. I load the money into one of the plastic bags from the supermarket where I shopped earlier today. I head inside and brace a chair beneath the handle of the back door in an attempt to lock it. It’s getting close to two o’clock, which, for me these days, is actually somewhat of an early night. I stand in the kitchen drinking a glass of water and I stare out the window at the dark sky, and for once I will be asleep before seeing the purple light of the killing hour. Dawn will arrive and I won’t see it. Evil will be here and I have a really bad feeling that I’m yet to see its best work.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
My cell phone pulls me from a world of dreams into a world of nightmares. I reach from beneath my blankets and walk my fingers over the nightstand until I find it. When I pick it up I don’t bother wasting any hellos. I know who it’s going to be.
“Hey, asshole,” Cyris says.
Cyris isn’t a morning person. I think back to Frank’s body and decide that Cyris isn’t much of a night person either. “Yeah?”
“You got the money?”
“I got it.”
“You better show up, otherwise I’ll. .”
“Yeah, I get the point,” I tell him. “I’ll be there.”
“It’s a hundred grand.”
“What?” I ask, sitting up. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“You heard me.”
“No, because it sounded like you said one hundred grand. That wasn’t the deal.”
“It’s the deal now, partner.”
“I can’t get that sort of money.”
“Get it.”
“I’m not a bloody bank. We had a deal.”
“So did I, with somebody else. Deals get broken, partner. Get used to it.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“No, but it’s your problem. Listen, I’m not an unreasonable man. You come with fifty grand tonight, and I give you an extra couple of days. I’ll keep the goods while you keep on paying.”
The insane-sounding Cyris from the last few nights has been replaced by somebody who seems to be putting more thought into this. I try to think how I could get that sort of money. If I actually had to. I try to sound as if I’m really struggling to come up with an idea, but of course it isn’t a problem. Frank helped me out there. “I’ll take out another mortgage on the house,” I lie. “I’ll get the hundred.”
“See? This is why I have faith in you, Feldman.” He hangs up and my cue to start the day has arrived.
I pull back the curtains to a typical summer morning. I have a fast breakfast containing nothing healthy before dumping the plastic bag of money onto the dining room table and counting it out. It takes me over thirty minutes and the final result is one hundred dollars short of one hundred grand. One hundred grand divided by two. That’s how much Kathy was worth. How much Luciana was worth.
I put the money back into the bag, walk to my bedroom and add another hundred dollars from my top drawer before hiding the bag in the ceiling. The rest of the money from my top drawer I stuff into my pockets along with the note I found in Frank’s mouth. Then I spend fifteen minutes on the phone to various builders, trying to find somebody who can come around and fix my back door. Most of the guys think the job is too small, but can come take a look in another few weeks. In the end I get hold of a young-sounding guy who says he can take a look at it later on today. I tell him if he can come and fix it today, I’ll pay him twice his usual rate. He tells me that’s a deal, and we fix a time.
It’s nearly midday, the sun already well on its way into a cloudless sky. A warm nor’wester blows across my face, suggesting the day will only get hotter. I have so much summer cheer it’s bleeding from my pores.
I climb into the rented Holden and push my thumb in on the cigarette lighter. I back out of my driveway and pause outside my house. I realize
I haven’t even checked my mail for the last few days so I still don’t know what that kid jammed into my letterbox on Monday. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff in there now. Bills, probably. Perhaps some junk mail, crap like pizza vouchers and shop brochures. The cigarette lighter pops back out. I hold it against the one-hundred-dollar bill I wrote on. It starts to melt and I hold it out the side of the car as it shrivels away, surrounded by black smoke. Then it crumbles into small pieces and I set them free into the warm breeze.
For the entire drive into town I contemplate the value of life. Jo is going to cost me a hundred grand, exactly what Kathy and Luciana cost Frank. Saving a life is twice as expensive as ending one. It’s all about supply and demand. Economics. You get what you pay for.
I park directly outside the gun store recommended by the army surplus guy with the flabby upper arms. When I approach the shop I keep glancing around the street to see if anybody is watching me. I don’t know who I’m looking for. Cyris, maybe. Or a cop. Another Landry. Or the way this week is turning out, perhaps even Landry himself. I swing open the door and step inside. A buzzer goes off somewhere letting staff know I’ve entered the premises. There are rows and rows of guns that look impressive, as if guns solve a lot of problems in this world rather than creating them. The air-conditioning is turned on full, the motor humming in the background. There are no customers, just one man behind the counter reading a newspaper with news in it that I helped make.
