Ghostman

by Roger Hobbs

  I was maybe fifty feet ahead. Come on.

  I milked the accelerator for all it would give me. The gearbox shifted up, then up again as I spun through a red light on the corner of Pacific and Chelsea. It was a big dirty turn that threw me through three lanes of light traffic. The other Suburban corrected course and kept after me.

  These guys were no cops, that’s for sure. They were gunning for me.

  I followed the map in my head. Southbound on Pacific would get me westbound onto Providence. There was a parking lot that I could cut through there as a shortcut onto Atlantic. From Atlantic onto Albany. Albany to O’Donnell Park. A few more blocks, then the ramp to the freeway. There were over three hundred streets in the city and I’d memorized all of them.

  Each of my senses was in overdrive now. I could hear the sound of the tires on the pavement. I could feel the treads gripping the small bumps in the road. I could smell the exhaust.

  I skidded onto Atlantic and switched directions. Initially the light traffic had seemed like a problem, but now that this had become a flat-out chase it was beneficial. We got nearly ten blocks, blowing through every red light along the way.

  I spun through a cloverleaf past a billboard for the Atlantic Regency and took the overpass onto the highway. The engine drowned out the horns of the cars I blew past at nearly twice the speed limit, which is insane in southern New Jersey. I swerved through traffic like it was standing still.

  Still, the Suburban was gaining on me. They tapped my rear bumper and I felt the sickening tug of my wheels sliding uselessly on the pavement. I wobbled between two lanes for a moment, nearly hitting a car as we blitzed past.

  I briefly thought of putting the car into the highest gear and trying to outrun them, but that idea faded just as quickly. The engines were evenly matched, and they were more familiar with the SUV’s handling than I was. They could run me down in a matter of minutes.

  The Suburban came around until we were neck and neck, then the driver lay on the horn and swerved into my lane, trying to bash me. I ran over the rumble strip and nearly spun out in the emergency lane. The Suburban roared by, then slowed, the driver still blowing the horn. I could see the person in the passenger seat gesturing at me. He waved his hand toward the side of the road. Pull over. The next tap nearly launched me into the guardrail.

  The next exit wasn’t for another five miles, and clearly these assholes weren’t interested in following me around. I didn’t really have any choice. Either I pulled over or they’d run me over. It was as simple as that.

  I put my flashers on, reduced my speed and started to pull over. Their Suburban drifted behind me for maybe half a mile in the emergency lane. It reduced speed until it was twenty yards back. When my car came to a stop, so did theirs.

  Silence.

  Nothing happened for a moment. I sat there without turning off the engine or moving my foot away from the gas. They turned on their high beams, so I couldn’t see what they were doing in my mirrors. I listened to the quiet rush of the cars next to us, and the crickets in the pine forest to my right. It was a waiting game now.

  I took my gun out of its holster and placed it under my thigh.

  A few moments later, the driver’s door opened and a man got out. His boots made such crunching sounds on the gravel between us that he might as well have been wearing spurs. He came into focus after about ten feet. He was a short man with bleached-blond hair and skin the color of porcelain. He walked with a swagger, like he was coming up to tell me the air in my tires was low. I could make out the number 88 tattooed into his neck. Where I come from, eighty-eight was code. Eighty-eight was the numerological equivalent of HH, because H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. HH was code itself. It was an abbreviation of a common phrase in prisons all over the country: Heil Hitler.

  The blond rapped his knuckles on my window and motioned for me to roll down the glass.

  “We’d like a word,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything, just kept my hands on the wheel.

  He pulled a small gun out of a little holster in his belt. It was a slick draw. In one quick motion he had reached for it, pulled it out and pointed right at me through the window. He had a bead on my head before I had time to even think about reaching for my heat.

  “A word, please,” he said.

  If I wanted to, I could’ve slammed down the accelerator and shot off like a rocket. I could have run over the blond’s big toe before his pea-brain reflexes could manage to squeeze the trigger. A Suburban has a pretty good pickup for a big car, and I was still in gear and my engine was all warmed up. By the time he knew what was happening, his bullets wouldn’t hit anything but air and glass. He’d maybe get three shots out at me, all wide, all unlikely to hit, before I’d be halfway off down the highway with enough of a head start to lose the tail. If I wanted to, I could drive off right now. But what would that get me?

  I still had no idea who these guys were.

  I rolled down the window and he gestured that I should get out. I slowly reached forward and took the key out of the ignition and opened the car door. I slid my revolver up my thigh and into my pocket at the same time. A smooth move, I thought. It must have been, because the blond didn’t say anything or frisk me or anything. He stayed about a yard back and kept his gun on me. Once I got out, he shut the door and waved the barrel of the gun behind us toward his Suburban. I could smell his breath. Garlic and menthol cigarettes. He marched me back, then opened the back door on the passenger side and nodded for me to get in.

  As soon as I did, the man in the front passenger seat turned around and swung a sawed-off shotgun in my face. This guy was twice the size of the blond and had the same neck tattoo. One load of triple-aught buckshot at this range would blow my head clean off.

  “You’ve got the wrong guy,” I said.

  The blond closed the door and got back in. “No,” he said, “we don’t.”

  “I’m just here on vacation. I’m an insurance investigator.”

  “We know who you are.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “You checked out Ribbons’s storage unit yesterday afternoon. You’re no insurance investigator. You ain’t even a cop.”

  I was silent.

  “You’re Marcus’s man,” the blond said.

  “I’m not anyone’s man.”

  The blond went silent. I watched as he put the Suburban into gear and pulled out from the side of the highway. He drove carefully and with great precision, so I wouldn’t be tempted to try to get the better of them. The gun felt heavy in my pocket.

  “Where are you taking me?” I said.

  The blond jeered at me like I was stupid.

  “You’ve got an appointment,” he said.

  23

  The drive in the back of the SUV was mercifully short. They took me along the highway out into the salt marsh. I watched my assailants as we drove. The headlights reflected light back into the cabin that mixed with the faint light from the computer screen in the center console, giving everything a strange white glow. The blond had eyes the color of an old rust stain and arms that looked like they were carved from wood. The other man’s eyes were bright blue, his hair was red, and he was younger than the blond by maybe ten years. He didn’t stop staring at me the whole ride. He didn’t even blink. Along his knuckles he had a tattoo that read Fourteen Words. Someone had told me what it meant once. It was something to do with white people and their kids, like, We must secure an existence for white people and a future for white children. The exact wording differed depending on what prison you grew up in.

  The guy with the shotgun took out an old prepaid cell phone. I saw him punching in numbers, but I couldn’t make out which ones. He held the phone very close to his face but never took his eyes off me. He didn’t speak much, and when he did, he spoke softly so I couldn’t hear. Even so, I could tell what he was doing. He was informing his employer that they’d found me. He was asking for orders.

  “What do you want wi
th me?” I said.

  “Shut up,” the blond said.

  He then turned off the highway onto an old dirt path that led into the vast empty marsh. We drove along for maybe ten minutes until we were out in the wilderness. The tires sunk into the loose, sandy ground and the SUV bobbled up and down. The going was painfully slow. We were in the middle of nowhere near the mouth of the Absecon Bay. I could still see the Regency tower glowing off in the distance, but the highway sounds and the buzz of civilization were fading. All I could hear now was the wind blowing across the marsh.

  We came to a slow stop.

  We waited there for a few minutes with the engine running. The darkness surrounding us was unsettling. I listened to the sound of the two men breathing in front of me, closed my eyes and wondered what would happen next.

  Were they waiting for orders to kill me?

  I banished the thought as soon as it came into my head. If that’s what they had in mind, they wouldn’t have put me in the backseat. It would involve too much cleanup. No, they would’ve thrown me in the back of the rig, because that’s easy to clean. The blond would have put a knife through my ribs as soon as I stepped out of the car. Then, when I started to fall, he would have caught me and carried me the rest of the way to their Suburban. He’d have thrown my body in the back, and that would be that. By now I’d already be in four pieces, separated down the spine and across the stomach, and wrapped up in garbage bags or something like that. If they wanted me dead, they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. They wouldn’t have taken the risk of leaving me alive. Every minute I kept breathing increased the chances that I might turn things around on them.

  Suddenly headlights flashed through the back window. I turned around, shielding my eyes from the high beams, and took a better look. Another black Suburban was rumbling up across the marsh. It took a good five minutes to close the distance, but when it did, it parked across from us on the other side of the trail.

  The blond didn’t give me a second look. He pressed the button that unlocked my door and said, “Get out.”

  I pulled the door handle and climbed out. The path between the cars was worn deep with car tracks. In every direction stretched miles of empty marsh with nothing bigger than a shrub between here and the highway. I watched my reflection grow larger in the tinted windows and then opened the rear passenger door of the second vehicle.

  The man waiting for me inside had very dark features. Dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. Eyebrows like caterpillars. He looked like one of those guys you see on the news walking around in a palace in some oil emirate, doing business with the Saudis or buying tanks from the Russians, not dealing crank. His charcoal suit was probably worth twenty grand. But the most striking thing about him were his eyes. Even under the bright glow of the cabin light, he had eyes the color of black ice.

  I knew exactly who he was.

  I’d heard countless stories about him over the years. In some, he was a barbarian. In others, he was a sophisticate. But one story in particular stuck with me. It was the story I got from Marcus himself, back when we first met in that Oregon hotel five years ago. After he’d made his selections, he leaned over the table where a group of us were sitting and told us all about a man he knew. They’d been childhood friends, Marcus said. Classmates from kindergarten on up. They’d dated the same girls. Ate at the same restaurants. When they were still in school, the man he knew started selling cocaine, and soon subdued the dealer for his corner and shoved him into an abandoned warehouse. Broad daylight, no mask. He’d knocked the guy out with a wrench and then duct-taped a plastic bag over his head. It wasn’t a suffocation move, though. The bag had a few holes in it for air. The kid then waited for the man to come to. When he did, he pressed the nozzle of a can of purple spray paint into one of the holes. He sprayed and sprayed and sprayed until he could hear the metal ball rattle around at the bottom of the empty can. The paint went into the bag, and the fumes went into the guy’s lungs until he couldn’t scream. There’s plenty of nasty stuff in paint—butane, propane, industrial solvent, heavy metals. He breathed all of it into his bloodstream. The kid tore the plastic bag off and left. The man survived, somehow, but the solvent in the paint had crossed his blood-brain barrier. When he got out of the hospital, he could only sit and drool and take shallow breaths. He’d gone blind and needed dialysis. To the higher-ups in the cartel, it was a simple and brutal message. If the kid wanted to, he could run an empire with a can of royal-purple spray paint.

  And for the next forty years, he did. He was born with the name Harrihar Turner, but nobody ever called him that. He had another name, one that only a few drug dealers dared to say aloud. A name that, once heard, nobody ever forgot.

  The Wolf.

  24

  “I was wondering when we’d meet,” the Wolf said as I slid into the backseat next to him. Even out here in the summer heat, the leather was cold as winter. The air conditioning must have been set to arctic. The Wolf wasn’t armed because he didn’t need to be. The skinheads with the shotgun were parked right next to us, and there wasn’t anywhere to run. His driver probably had a gun too. I looked at the Wolf like I didn’t have anything to say.

  “You’re not exactly what I expected,” the Wolf said. “From what I was told, I thought you were a much younger man.”

  “I don’t know what you were expecting,” I said. “I am who I am.”

  The Wolf nodded meaningfully. “Indeed. And you also know who I am, yes?”

  “I do,” I said. “Your name’s Harry Turner.”

  There was an abrupt silence. He wasn’t expecting this answer, either. “Who told you that?” he finally said.

  “People,” I said.

  “Marcus.”

  “Just people.”

  “Your people are right, that is one of my names. But I’ve never been a fan of Harry. It is a corruption of my real name, Harrihar. Do you know what Harrihar means?”

  “No idea.”

  “It’s an Indian name. It is one of the names of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, who, according to some sects, is the supreme god of the Hindu religion. Vishnu is the preserver, the all-knowing and all-powerful protector of the universe. Harry doesn’t quite capture the full meaning, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “But maybe you know me by yet another name. Something a little more memorable.”

  “They call you the Wolf.”

  “Good.” The Wolf shifted forward in his seat. “Then at least you understand who I am.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Come now, I can’t tell you that. You might try to stop me. Suffice it to say, however, I can follow you anywhere.”

  I sniffed.

  “You’re Marcus’s ghostman, are you not? I can tell. I can see it on your hands. The pads of your fingers are as smooth as the skin of your nose.”

  “I don’t work for Marcus,” I said.

  He smiled. “I’m sure you don’t. You’re a free agent. You only work for yourself, don’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Do you watch a lot of news?” the Wolf asked. “In my home there is always a television on. My wife gives me no end of grief about it. In every room I step in, I turn it on, and sometimes I forget to turn it off. It is almost an unconscious habit. I eat my breakfast and I watch the news. I go to work and I watch the news. I talk on the phone and I watch the news. I hardly notice it anymore, but she does. We are talking and I am listening to her, but I am also listening to the news. She gets upset. But I have to watch, understand? You never know what they’re going to show next. This hour it might be a story about a girl who went missing somewhere, and I can tune it out of my mind like it was never mentioned in the first place. The next hour, it will be something else. It could be a story that could change the whole course of my day, or maybe even my life.

  “You see, I was on the news once. They didn’t show my face or say my name, but a local affiliate was doing a story that involved one o
f my businesses. A little girl had wandered off from her parents and gone missing for a few days. They’d found her, after a while, passed out in an empty lot next to one of my mechanic shops. She didn’t look hurt at first, but when they checked her out, they saw something was wrong. Her eyesight had gone blurry. They did blood tests and found she’d been exposed to massive amounts of phosphine gas. It was a mystery because there were no aluminum phosphide pellets—you know, rat poison—anywhere around where they found her. Just the odor of rotting fish. The news people were baffled. What they didn’t know was that this mechanic shop had a meth lab in the basement. The fumes had been ventilated out through a pipe into the empty lot the night before. The little girl had been playing there and accidentally breathed in a huge lungful, enough to cause her to pass out. The cooks hadn’t noticed what had happened, so they finished the batch. The fumes dissipated, but the little girl was still lying there, not fifteen feet from the ventilation duct. If the news people had found out about the vent, it would have set my operation back almost a quarter million dollars.

  “So as soon as I heard about it, I got in my car and drove out to the abandoned lot. From there, I circled through the neighborhood and drove and drove and drove until I found the little girl’s brownstone. Then I parked down the street, walked back to the brownstone and climbed in through one of the windows. I went to the parents’ room and did them both with a stun gun, so they wouldn’t wake up. Then I went to the little girl’s room and told her not to scream. She cried and cried, but then she listened to me and didn’t make a sound. She was so scared that she could hardly move. She could only take heaving breaths and cry silent tears. I carried her down to the kitchen in my arms and set her down on the counter next to the sink. I poured a glass of milk and gave it to her, and she drank it. The next glass had drain cleaner in it. With milk it has the right texture. She drank half of it before she had to stop. It gave her blisters on her tongue, so I held her little nose and forced the rest of it down her throat. After that, it took another twenty minutes for her to die. Choking and vomiting blood as the drain cleaner dissolved away her insides. She stopped crying after a while. She just sat there and looked at me with those big soft brown eyes, taking shallow breaths. She slumped over in a bit and didn’t wake up. Her face covered in blood, her eyes bleeding, her brain dissolving. I left her body right there, next to the open chemical cabinet. After that, the news people didn’t say another word about the mechanic shop.”