The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller))

by Tom Lowe

  of art. With only one color, the color of your blood, sweat and finally…your tears. Because in the end, you will be on your knees in your blood and piss crying.”

  Salazar walked to the ropes and said, “Because they – turn up the lights – they like to see art in motion, the physical and psychological process of creativity.”

  The ring was surrounded by about thirty people. All men. Some Japanese. Some Hispanic. Businessmen. Others looking like they might be attending a function at their country club. They sat, whispered, and placed bets.

  Salazar slipped on a pair of fingered, black leather gloves. The leather cut off at the center joint in each finger. He said, “See there, O’Brien?” He pointed to a camera in the ceiling, one on a tripod at one side of the ring, and another camera on the other side. “The art will be captured on video, packaged for international sale on DVD and on a password protected Internet site.” He turned to speak to a man that O’Brien didn’t see when he entered the Sixth Street Gym. Salazar said, “My face.”

  The man tossed a rubber mask into the ring. Salazar pulled the mask over his head. It was a Japanese Noh mask—pale white, depicting the face of an elder Japanese man, goatee, white hair, red lips. Salazar said, “Let the fight begin.”

  The house lights dimmed. A single light illuminated the ring. O’Brien saw the small, red lights now glowing from the three video cameras. He hoped there were microphones recording the sound. Maybe he could get Salazar to incriminate himself.

  O’Brien said, “Russo’s laughing at you. Call’s you his horse. Says you’re a little smarter than a mule he uses to haul his coke, but you don’t have much horse sense.”

  “I got you in the ring, dude. Who’s the dumb ass, huh?”

  “You are Carlos, you are because Russo’s going to put you through a tree shredder and chum for fish off the back of his yacht with your body parts.”

  “Fuck, you cop! That’s bullshit. You got nothing.’”

  “Really? FBI has sixty-seven hours of digital conversations on one of their secure hard drives. It’s amazing how the bright boys at NSA work so well with the FBI. This Patriot Act has given them a license to stick a chip in you while you’re sleeping. They know where you eat. They stake it out. Pay off the right people—people in the finest South Beach restaurants. They slip a little ‘medicine’ in your Caesar Salad, you can’t taste it. Delayed effect, until you get home. Usually kicks in three hours after ingesting. You drift into a heavy sleep. Then, about 4:00 a.m., the pros silence your home alarm, pop the locks, and walk into your bedroom. Takes them less than three minutes to insert the microchip just under the scalp. It’s equipped with both GPS and an Internet broadcast of up to fifty miles. You wake up. Don’t feel a thing. Maybe an itch now and then, but your think it’s dry scalp. The feds tell me for the first week, when Russo scratched his scalp, it sounded like a cat in a trash can.”

  “There was a collective murmur from the crowd.”

  O’Brien said, “I’ll spare you the details about some of what the feds are getting ready to hang on Russo, but chances are they won’t go to the grand jury until you’re out of the picture. Russo has a contract out on you, Carlos. Sorry, pal.”

  “You’re full of shit!”

  “Bet the name Vincent Pitts might mean something to you.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Maybe you’re heard his professional name. Pit bull. They say Pitts got that name, because just like a pit bull, he goes for the throat. Likes to use a garrote. Prefers rope to piano wire because rope takes a little longer to kill. ”

  “Shut up! ‘Cause you’re sayin’ this shit, I’m gonna take a little longer with you before I kill you.”

  O’Brien could see the tiny red camera lights glowing. He said, “Is that what you told Father Callahan before you killed him? Russo says he told you to tell Sam Spelling ‘because he was,’ and I’m quoting here, ‘because he was a greedy fucker and this was his last bedtime story.’ So did you follow Russo’s orders and tell Spelling it was his last bedtime story?”

  Salazar grinned, danced in the ring, threw an air punch at O’Brien and said, “Russo doesn’t tell me what to do. When I take somebody out, I say what I want to say! This Spelling, dude. You want to hear what he heard, huh? It’ll be right before I hit you with the final blow—the death punch.”

  SIXTY-NINE

  Ron Hamilton sat in stationary traffic. The wipers did little to clear the rain off the windshield. He watched a cluster of flashing blue lights at an intersection. He tried Sean O’Brien’s cell phone. No answer. Hamilton was stuck in a three-car pile-up on rain-sliced Dixie Highway. Hamilton could move the single blue light from his dash, stick it on the car roof and try to maneuver and bump stalled traffic out of the way. But he was still fifty yards from the intersection. There was no turning around.

  He tried O’Brien’s phone again. It went to voice mail.

  #

  SALAZAR CAME AT O’BRIEN and danced around him. Jabbing. Faking. Weaving. The dark eyes laughing behind the mask.

  O’Brien turned. He was still groggy from the earlier hit to the head. He countered Salazar’s every move; the wind from Salazar’s punches fanning O’Brien’s face. Salazar connected with a blow to O’Brien’s forehead, cutting him above the eye.

  Blood splattered on the mat. Salazar danced to the ropes and said to the crowd, “I give you’re the first stroke of the brush!” The crowd cheered. Salazar pranced around the ring like a rock star. Then he ran straight for O’Brien. He stopped abruptly, spun around and kick boxed, landing his foot in the center of O’Brien’s chest. Nausea rose from O’Brien’s stomach into his esophagus. The blood ran into his left eye. He shook his head, causing a stream of dark blood to splatter across the mat.

  Salazar, shouted, “Art in its purest form!” Applause and laughs from the crowd. Salazar dropped into forward stance and then did a flying kick, his heel grazing across the tip of O’Brien’s nose. O’Brien jerked backwards as Salazar followed with a second spinning kick, connecting with O’Brien’s jaw. He felt a tooth loosen. His mouth filled with blood. He spit it out and wiped the stinging sweat from his good eye.

  “The painting grows my friends!” shouted Salazar. There was applause and a few jeers directed toward O’Brien. Salazar looked up at the ceiling camera and said, “Capture the canvas. I will call this painting ‘Dance of the Butterfly!’” There was a burst of applause and laughter as Salazar did a back flip and crouched low, arms extended, eyes following O’Brien.

  Salazar moved in a slow circle around O’Brien. “Don’t run out of paint just yet, there is still much canvas to cover.”

  Salazar charged, throwing a full roundhouse kick. His right foot missing O’Brien by an inch. O’Brien hit Salazar hard in the ribs. The crowed yelled for more.

  Salazar trotted around the ring twice. He stopped and moved like a cat, low, sizing his pray. He sprang toward O’Brien with a triple butterfly kick, his left heel catching O’Brien on the jaw.

  O’Brien saw nothing but white for a second. He closed one eye to stop the double vision. Blood poured from his mouth.

  “This may be my best painting yet!” Salazar raised a clinched fist. He turned his back to O’Brien, the crowd now on its feet. The cheering was deafening.

  O’Brien focused on the blue and red tattoo on Salazar’s back. He concentrated on the image of the muscular winged beast with hoofed feet, the scaly tail of a snake. He stepped forward. Closer. O’Brien drew back, ready to plant his fist right between the horns—right in the center of Salazar’s spine.

  Salazar spun around, his left connecting with O’Brien’s lower jaw. The contact knocked O’Brien to the ropes. Salazar laughed. He jabbed. He danced and heckled O’Brien. Then, Salazar made the mistake of looking toward one of the cameras.

  Focus. O’Brien told himself. He shut out the noise of the crowd. He heard only his own breathing. He saw only one spot—Salazar’s chin. When Salazar started to turn, O’Brien plowed a powerful ri
ght into the chin. The impact spun Salazar in a circle. As he turned, O’Brien waited for the exact second when the mask would face him again. Then the slammed a hard left into the rubber lips. Even through the mask, O’Brien knew he’d taken out some of Salazar’s front teeth. Blood flowed from below the mask. Salazar stumbled. The audience screamed for more.

  Salazar shook his head, regained his footage and landed a blow in O’Brien’s stomach. O’Brien slammed his forearm into the center of the mask. The sound was like stepping on a Styrofoam cup. O’Brien hit Salazar with all of his strength, driving his fist deep into Salazar’s solar-plexus. He bent over, vomiting behind the mask. O’Brien brought his knee up hard, connecting to Salazar’s chin. The strike caused Salazar to fall back like his legs disintegrated. He dropped to his knees.

  The crowd chanted, “Kill…kill…kill…”

  O’Brien took a few steps toward Salazar who was still on his knees, his arms dangling powerless by his side, like a puppet with the strings severed. Blood rained from beneath the mask, dripping over the image of the Virgin Mary. O’Brien used his left hand to pull the mask from Salazar’s head.

  The crowd chanted louder. Salazar’s eyes were rolling back. O’Brien steadied Salazar’s floating head with his left hand. He tuned out the chants. Heard only the gurgling, sucking sound of Salazar trying to breathe through the blood.

  Focus. No sounds. Nothing but Salazar heaving for air.

  O’Brien drew back his right fist. He said, “What did you tell Sam Spelling before you killed him? What did you tell Father Callahan before you shot him? Tell me!”

  Through shattered teeth, pulverized lips, and bloody gums, Salazar tried to smile, his face muscles jerking, lips trembling. He coughed and said in a raspy voice, “I beat up the girl. But those others, that’s something between you and Russo, ‘cause I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about, cop.” Then Salazar fell backwards, his back flat against the mat, the demonic image pressed into the bloodied canvas. He stared up at the overhead camera, breathing heavy, the tiny red light glowing dimly like a distant planet in a universe of black.

  O’Brien staggered across the mat. He steadied himself on the ropes. His right eye was swollen. He tried to climb down through the ropes, faltering on the edge and dropping against the concrete floor. Nausea rose in the pit of his stomach. He felt someone pick him up, carrying him on a set of massive shoulders.

  Through his left eye, O’Brien saw a shiny black eye, an earring, attached to an earlobe. O’Brien batted weakly at it, the earring falling to the concrete. Then the room grew dark, he fought back the bile and vomit. The last thing he heard was an Irish accent. “You’re one tough motherfucker, dude. Bet you killed him.”

  .

  SEVENTY

  O’Brien awoke to the guttural sounds of feral cats challenging each other. Their long, throaty snarls and hisses echoed off the brick walls in the alley. The shrieks reverberated, like two cats at the bottom of a well, backs arched, falsetto cries calling out in the dark. He opened his eyes. Through one eye, he could see the gang graffiti painted all over the walls. Through the other eye, the graffiti was blurred, like looking through a keyhole to read an eye chart where the letters were in soft focus.

  He was lying on his back in an alley, having been tossed between leaky plastic garbage cans and wet newspapers. The stench of cat litter, acrid urine, and feces came from a broken, black plastic bag near his head. His shoe and sock were soaked. He lifted his foot from a pothole filled with rainwater. A single light bulb burned above the back entrance to a place called Lucy’s Lounge.

  O'Brien touched his face, feeling the dried blood around his mouth, eyes and nose. He touched a torn piece of flesh, the size of a nickel, which hung over his eyebrow. He struggled to sit. He could feel the Glock under his belt near the small of his back. Somehow he had slept with the pistol grip pressed against his spine. He propped himself up against the wet brick wall and wondered if he had suffered brain damage. He whispered: “Name: Sean O’Brien. Birthday: December twelfth…mother’s…maiden name…Lewis…”

  He looked at his watch. It was 5:29 A.M. How long had he been lying there? Where was he? Where’s the car he borrowed? What happen to Ron Hamilton?

  Salazar. Was he dead?

  O’Brien looked at the flesh torn off two knuckles on his right hand and one knuckle on his left. He tried to stand, inching himself against the wall. He checked his pockets. His car keys and wallet were still there, and so was his phone.

  All the witnesses. The video cameras. If he’d beaten Salazar to death, it was self-defense. As he leaned against the wall, he could feel the rain begin to fall, the cool water rolling down his sore and bloodied face. O’Brien started to walk, slowly, his ribs on fire. His head pounding, and his body felt like it had been beaten with a mallet.

  When he got to the end of the alley, he stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked for a street sign. Biscayne Street. O’Brien knew where he was. He stood more than ten blocks from the Sixth Street Gym. Somebody had dumped him there, dumped him in the garbage far enough away from the gym to keep an ex cop out of their trash.

  O’Brien went to the right. He was less than a block from the ocean. At this point, the sea would be his best friend, his best place to begin recovery. He walked through the deserted streets, an occasional car trolling by—buyers and sellers—slowing and moving on when they saw O’Brien’s bloody face.

  A black man, homeless, crouched near the front door of a closed print shop. He sat under a yellowed shower curtain he’d wrapped around him to keep off the rain. As O’Brien walked slowly by, the man said, “Hey, my man. You look like somebody’s walkin’ bad dream, dog. You covered in blood, dude. You need some hep. Hospital ain’t that close enough for you to be walkin’ to it. You might bleed out.”

  O’Brien nodded and turned to walk. The man said, “I hate axkin’ you this, seein’ is how you look worse than me, but you hap’en to have a dollar, cap? I can get me a doughnut in an hour or so when the shop opens.”

  O’Brien’s hands were sore, bloodied, and he could barely open the wallet. He pulled out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to the man who stood up. “Thank you so much, I do appreciate your generosity.”

  O’Brien nodded, walked on, following the sound of the sea in the distance.

  #

  IT WAS A BLUE WORLD—at least fifteen minutes before the sun crept over the Atlantic Ocean and the sea and sky merged in a palette of cobalt. O’Brien stood alone in the diffused morning, no wind, no people, and few cars passing. He stripped to his boxer shorts, folded his clothes neatly, covered his gun and phone, left them at the base of a tall palm tree, and then he walked out into the flat ocean. When he got to where the warm water came up to his chest, he leaned back, lowering himself into the sea. He held his breath and let the salt water soak into every pore on his body. Then he floated on his back, gazing up at the sky that was beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn.

  The moon hung over the South Beach skyline like a pumpkin, a perfect chamber of commerce poster. O’Brien looked at the face in the moon and thought about what Dave Collins had said: “You have to see this.”

  What was the moon going to reveal that the death match he somehow survived had not? Was Salazar lying when he was down? He admitted beating Barbie, but said he never heard of the others. “That’s something between you and Russo…”

  O’Brien dropped back under the dark water. The warm thermos in the shallows felt good. The gentle swells scrubbing the poisons, the potential infections, from his open cuts. He knew the cut above his eye would require stitches. His rib cage needed to be held in place. He walked out of the water, back to the tree. O’Brien sat on a park bench and used his cell to call a friend’s home—a man he hadn’t seen since Sherri died.

  Doctor Seth Romberg answered the phone in three rings. “Dr. Romberg, here.”

  “Seth, it’s Sean O’Brien.”

  “Sean, how are you?”

  “I’ve had better m
ornings. I need a few stitches. Maybe a tetanus shot. I would have waited a little later to call you, but I’m on a deadline.”

  “Deadline? I know I spent a lot of time with you and Sherri. But you might want to try the emergency room. I don’t –”

  “Seth, I never would ask you this if it were not a life and death situation.”

  “Are you hurt that severely?”

  “No, but someone else will be if I’m delayed. Please, meet me at your office.”

  “Forty-five minutes, my office.”

  O’Brien disconnected. After he was stitched up, he would call Ron Hamilton to see if they found a body—Salazar’s body. And he would learn if they were going to charge him with murder.

  But now he would see a Sunday morning sunrise. The horizon was building in soft strokes of orange and deep scarlet reds. The flat sea was indigo blue. A pelican flew

  across the purple sky, flapping its wings only twice and sailing the rest of the distance as an ocean dressed in colors for a new day.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Doctor Seth Romberg was sewing up O’Brien’s eyebrow when Detective Ron Hamilton entered the small office less than two blocks from the hospital. Hamilton looked at O’Brien. “Sean, what in God’s name happened? How bad are you hurt?”