The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  Although there had been times in his life when he wished he could have pressed a reset button and done things differently, those desires were always predicated on the notion that he was the one who dictated the terms of that rewrite of his life. What Schultz and Fujikawa were doing to him, with the help of Jacob Stone, was seizing control of his destiny into their hands and making the rules. He hated the fact that he had to play by somebody else’s rules, and this move that he was about to make was his way of announcing to the world that he bowed to no one and that he was not a man to be taken lightly.

  As the time quickly approached for him to get into his car and drive off into the unknown that was his immediate future, he felt a sudden pang of fear and despair.

  He was not a religious man in any way whatsoever, but he now found himself wanting to pray and ask for the help that he so desperately needed. Maybe a guardian angel could be sent to him as his guide, and that, if it was not too much trouble, the Lord could guide his hand when writing his new script.

  He was being foolish he knew, but for now, this was the best and last chance he had at seeing things from outside the box. His friends were of very little help, so maybe the deity that he had often ignored throughout his life would be magnanimous enough to consider helping the poor schmuck that he was.

  He grabbed the last of his suitcases and locked the door on the way out; he only hoped that when he came home, there would be a life worth returning to.

  * * *

  The sheriffwas snooping around again; why was he always snooping around? Nobody was breaking any laws, nobody was causing any trouble. What business did he have here?

  These were all questions that the ghost asked himself as he watched from the master bedroom window and contemplated the reasons why the sheriff had been so intent on sticking his nose into matters that did not concern him.

  It was probably because she sent him. She was always nothing but trouble and could not leave well enough alone. Why was she so vindictive? It wasn’t as if what had happened had not been a long time coming. She had been asking for it from the moment that she had first stepped foot into this cabin and started all of that dark magic mishegas. She was nothing but a troublemaker, and the ghost knew she had to be the one behind the sheriff ’s daily arrival to wander around the property.

  What made matters even worse was that he was stealing the newspapers, so now there was nothing to read. He was left to his own devices in the spacious surroundings of this absolutely majestic locale where the cabin was situated. He had all of God’s glory to appreciate and the wonders of creation to marvel at, but what he wanted more than anything was to be up-to-date on who was wearing what and when Jeffrey David Rothstein would be arriving.

  The ghost could barely contain his excitement and knew that he would soon be the best of friends with this writing savant, but he feared that the rubes of Zion, New York would somehow ruin everything. They always took things too far.

  Just a couple of days ago, when he had ventured into town, he noticed that many of the shops were now sporting menorahs and mezuzahs, embracing their newly adopted culture of the Jewish people. There was even a sign outside of the local barbeque joint that invited everyone to join them for the midnight Bris-ket dinner. The Bris, of course, being the ceremony in which a male Jewish baby is circumcised; these schmendricks were going to ruin things for him, he was sure of it.

  He continued to watch the sheriff poke around in the front yard as if he owned the place, and was overcome with the desire to charge out of the house and put a proper scare into him like he had done to her when she came back with all of her hocuspocus doohickeys. She had made a mistake by crossing the ghost, and if the sheriff wasn’t careful, he would be making the same mistake.

  * * *

  Jeffrey drove in silence to his new future. By his measure, he was about an hour away from Zion, and the feelings of anticipation grew in him with every passing mile. He hoped he was making the right decision and was really hoping that he could quietly blend into his new community without anyone recognizing him by name or by face. He wasn’t about to change his name, because that kind of deception would require too much thought and was too likely to fail, so he decided that he would just be himself and hope for the best.

  He ate the rugelach that Anders had brought him and had to agree with Yvonne that it was not very good. He dumped it for the birds at the next rest stop and continued on toward his new home, his place of exile.

  Like Napoleon, he would plan his triumphant return and his revenge on those responsible for his current state of affairs. He only hoped his return would not end the same way.

  Chapter Fourteen: Missing Persons

  “It’s as if he’s vanished off of the face of the earth,” Jacob Stone announced as he entered Heinrich Schultz’s office.

  He had been staking out Jeffrey’s apartment for his new benefactor for the last couple of days in hopes of figuring out a schedule that his employer could work with for the next phase of their plan, but try as he may, he could not find any sign of him.

  He tried everything; he went by Rachel’s home and her office, he visited Borough Park and spied on his grandmother and saw no one except a Mrs. Glassman from Marine Park, who he also followed and turned up nothing. Jacob called the Village Voice newspaper and asked a couple of his inside informants if they had heard anything about Jeffrey leaving town, maybe to work on a new project, but everywhere he searched, he turned up nothing. It was as if the man had truly vanished like a puff of smoke.

  Heinrich gave his displeased expression as he gently stroked Herman, who was sitting on his desk, and he turned his attention to Mendel Fujikawa. The little man seemed to be more concerned with the photo shoot that was taking place on the balcony across the street of some male models than he was in this minor crisis that they were all facing.

  “Mendel,” Heinrich boomed. “Can you focus for a few moments? We have a bit of a problem on our hands.”

  Mendel giggled like a schoolgirl in that high-pitched whine of his and said, while staring through his binoculars, “You have nothing to worry about. Even if he left town to start writing again, nobody in the business wants anything to do with him. He is as good as dead for all intents and purposes, and in a few weeks he will be dead.”

  This talk about Jeffrey being killed was very uncomfortable to Jacob. He had never wanted to see his former mentor come to any physical harm, just monetary and maybe personal. But this talk about kidnapping him and dragging him to some demented island for the Euro trash who loved the thrill of hunting a human being was a bit much for him, and he was struggling with the knowledge of it.

  But what could he actually do? If he tried to warn Jeffrey in any way, and either Henry or Fujikawa found out about it, he would be the one running for his life from blood-crazed hunters. He could try to reach out to Rachel, but he knew that the way she felt about him right now would make it almost impossible for him to get in contact with her, let alone be listened to.

  He thought and thought and decided that it would be best to just sit back and watch as the events unfolded. Perhaps, if enough time went by, his new employer and writing partner would lose interest and move on to their next conquest; maybe they would finally turn their attention to Jacob writing again.

  He poured himself a drink and sipped it slowly as he listened to the back and forth between these two increasingly twisted and disturbed men.

  “Listen to me, Henry,” Mendel was saying. “If it is bothering you that much, call him in to handle it.”

  Jacob must have missed something, because he had no idea who him was. He sat silently on the sofa and hoped that a name would be mentioned so that he knew what was happening.

  “I don’t like to use him for such mundane tasks as this one,” Schultz replied.

  “Tsk, tsk, you can’t have it both ways, my dear friend. If you really want to make this man suffer, you are going to have to use all of the tools at your disposal to bring him into your possession, like all
of your other toys.”

  Heinrich thought furtively about what Mendel had just said and realized that his friend was right, but he never liked using certain men for jobs like this, and even though he knew that this would be an easy assignment for him, he was reluctant to play that card.

  “Do you really think this is the best way to go?” Henry asked.

  Mendel lowered the binoculars and said to the window, “My, oh my, dear boys. It must be getting chilly out there.”

  “Mendel!” Schultz barked.

  The little man turned with a stunned expression on his face; he was obviously not used to being yelled at.

  “Is this my best option at finding Rothstein?”

  Mendel Fujikawa thought about it a moment, and then, turning toward the window, he lifted the binoculars again and said, “He has never let us down before. Make the call.”

  Heinrich pushed the intercom button and said, “Kathleen, get me Louis Grecko’s number.”

  * * *

  The music boomed in the small apartment of Louis Grecko. He was a lover of music, but more specifically, musicals. It was his true passion, that and dismembering people for Heinrich Schultz.

  Louis had been a very talented soprano when he was younger, and his size made that all the more impressive. A massive man of nearly seven feet tall and almost four hundred pounds of muscle, he was an intimidating sight to behold. When the mood struck and he started singing in those classic high notes that he was so adept at hitting, you didn’t know whether to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the scene or to tremble in fear of committing a potentially fatal faux pas.

  His face was pockmarked from severe acne as a child, his hands were raw and graveled from years of hard work in construction, among other things, and his knuckles were arranged like some sort of odd jigsaw puzzle that wasn’t put together properly. Across those knuckles were tattooed the words Cats and Rent, the names of his two favorite plays.

  He read the text and smiled to himself; it was from Heinrich. He loved working for Heinrich; it was one of those rare opportunities when he was allowed to use his special brand of talent that most people could not appreciate and let it bloom into the beautiful flower that it was. Louis did not just enjoy his work, he didn’t even love his work. He was his work; it defined him, it was who he was, and it separated him from the masses of blind and hopeless minions who wandered around through his world clueless as to what their real purpose was in this crazy game of life.

  He had discovered the talent at a very young age and was encouraged to explore his gift by his mother, of all people. She was his number-one fan and biggest supporter, and wanted nothing more than to see her son succeed at anything that he set his mind to, whether it was making lead soprano in the church choir or breaking the neighborhood bullies’ legs with his bare hands. “Everything worth doing is worth doing right,” she told him, and he took those words to heart.

  When he was six years old, his abusive father had left his mother and young Louis to explore his own passion of miming and left them with nothing. So Louis was forced to devote all of his non-school hours to helping his mother at the illegal child daycare facility that she ran from the back of a deli in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York.

  He kept the children entertained with his stirring renditions of Ave Maria, and when that didn’t work, they lured derelicts in from the street and Louis put on a demonstration of such physical ferocity that it left most of the young wards speechless and a bit catatonic by the time their parents picked them up.

  By the age of eleven he had already beaten four men to death for very little more than fun and to see what it looked like, and when that grew old and tiring, he advanced his talents to hunting down people who his mother selected from nothing more than the evening news reports or from the paper.

  Occasionally it was to hunt down fugitives who the police were looking for, or a corrupt politician who was caught with an underage prostitute; sometimes it was just to hunt down and bring to his mother a missing child. Those were his favorites, because they always confused his rescue of them for their salvation when, in actuality, it was nothing more than the beginning of their nightmare, as they would spend the last days of their young lives as little more than punching bags for the twisted and evil young Louis.

  Now in his thirties, he had already been in jail five times for various crimes ranging from assault and battery to exposing himself to blind beggars. His docket was as long as his muscular arms, and he took much pride in keeping his body in top form. His mother expected nothing less, and as long as she was calling the shots, he did exactly as she wished, except when Heinrich called.

  Heinrich Schultz had a very special relationship with Louis and his mother. Louis, not being the smartest man in the world, often looked at Heinrich as a sort of Santa Claus figure who came around once a year and gave the jubilant Louis the gifts that he had been wishing for, hoping for, and being a good boy for all year.

  He loved when Heinrich came around to see him and his mother, and his mother was especially pleased to see Heinrich. She was so happy that she sometimes stayed up all night and yelled “yes” over and over again because she could not control her happiness. Louis loved it when his mother was happy, and Heinrich made her happy. Louis sometimes wished Heinrich could make him that happy, but his mother had told him that he would have to be very good for that to happen. So far, Louis just assumed that he had been bad.

  The text from Heinrich had been very short and to the point: Time to catch the gopher.

  That was the code they used to let Louis know that there was someone who needed to be found, so they could hear Louis and his lovely singing voice, get ready to go to the island, and test Louis’s skills at hunting.

  It had been a while since he had hunted anyone for Heinrich, and he was beginning to think that the older man had forgotten about him, but seeing this text brought such joy to him that he immediately turned the sound of the music down so that he could do all of the solos himself and delight his neighbors with the sound of his voice.

  His mother came into his room when she heard the music turned offand sat down on his bed, waiting to hear the performance. She had a glass of peppermint schnapps in her right hand and a lit cigar in the other. She closed her eyes and opened her bathrobe as he sang, revealing her naked body, and began scanning Louis’s phone for the text message that Heinrich had sent.

  She found the picture of the mysterious Jeffrey David Rothstein and pleasured herself to his picture while her son sang from Madam Butterfly.

  * * *

  “Do you think he told his mother about the call?” Mendel asked Henry as the two of them and Jacob sat at the latter’s desk discussing what they thought Louis might do to Jeffrey when he found him.

  “Are you kidding? She’s probably half naked by now and torturing Louis with stories of how evil his father was.” Henry chuckled and continued, “That woman is the single most deranged individual I have ever met.”

  “And that includes himself,” Mendel said to Jacob, who had listened intently to the horror stories they had just shared with him about this hired gorilla who was going to find Jeffrey and deliver him for God knows what.

  “You know, Jacob, you should write a play about him and his mother. That would surely sell tickets,” Henry said.

  Jacob swallowed hard and said through a cracking voice, “I’d love to. Maybe I could meet them one of these days.”

  Mendel broke into laughter and said, “Oh my dear little titsellah, you do not want to meet either one of them, but especially the mother. Cloris is a piece of work that should have been condemned.”

  “And they thought that the Nazis were bad,” Heinrich exclaimed, and he and Mendel broke into riotous laughter.

  Jacob sat uncomfortably in his chair, thinking of the stories that they had just shared with him, and worried that perhaps he might be involved in the eventual murder of Jeffrey. Or even worse, he knew if he ever displeased his new boss, he too would someday b
ecome the hunting target for Louis Grecko.

  Chapter Fifteen: Zion

  Mayor Elmo Baker was busy locking up his home goods store for the evening before heading over to the town hall. This was an exciting time for the citizens of the small town of Zion, New York. Word had spread that a real-life, honest-to-God celebrity was about to join their midst, and word had it that he was going to use his time to write yet another in his long line of successful plays; perhaps, he would use their little town as his muse.

  Whatever the reason, Baker had organized multiple town meetings to see to it that the people of Zion made him feel welcome without smothering him. It was important that he was able to gradually coast into life in this small and peaceful town nestled in the crook of one of New York’s Finger Lakes—Lake Keuka to be exact.

  He checked the lock to see that it was holding, even though Zion had little to no crime rate to speak of, and he kissed his fingertips and rubbed his brand new mezuzah that he had just recently hung on his doorpost.

  All around him, the town of Zion was beaming with excitement and joy at the arrival of Jeffrey David Rothstein. Word had come as quite a shock that a man of his stature and celebrity would choose their out of the way hamlet to take up residence, but Mayor Baker was also confident that their guest would soon consider Zion his new home.

  He began walking up what was once called Main Street and was now referred to as Abit El Lane. Most of the streets and cul-de-sacs had been renamed with Yiddish, Hebrew, or historically Jewish names, so that their new brother would feel at home. Surely a man, no less a Jewish man from New York City, would feel honored by the fact that his new place of residence had embraced his culture so deeply and had even gone through the trouble of imposing a town wide observance of the Sabbath.