The Fixer

by Woods, T E

  Savannah sat quietly. Lydia wondered if she was contemplating how much more to reveal.

  “Did you read about that guy at the university? The animal researcher?” she asked. “The one who died right before Christmas?”

  Lydia raised an eyebrow. “Are you talking about Fred Bastian?” Her breathing relaxed. “Savannah, he died of a heart attack. It was all over the papers.”

  “There’s lots of ways to cause a heart attack.” Savannah reached for her jacket. “But whatever the cause, you’re just as dead, aren’t you? Besides, there are worse things than killing people. Far worse.”

  Lydia watched her patient stand and cross the room. “Savannah, you didn’t kill Fred Bastian. Please sit down.”

  Savannah glanced over her shoulder as she walked away. “Not today. I’m exhausted.” She stopped and turned before walking through the door. “Thanks for seeing me, Dr. Corriger. I feel better.” She bit her lower lip to stop its quiver. “And I didn’t think that was possible. You’ve come to my rescue yet again.”

  Lydia tilted her head. “You’ll come back? And you’ll call me if you feel like hurting yourself? Or anyone else?”

  Savannah gave a tentative nod. “I promise. On both counts.” She looked down at the door knob before looking back. “I really would like to see how this turns out.”

  Lydia bent over, hands on her knees, breathing rapidly. She’d been unable to shake thoughts of her morning meeting with Savannah despite throwing herself into a rugged workout regimen. She tried to make sense of the contradictions but couldn’t. Was Bastian’s death a surrogate for some guilt Savannah was experiencing? Or was it all a game? Lydia recalled her first meeting with the beautiful stranger. Savannah promised lies and conundrums. She challenged Lydia to make sense of the nonsensical.

  Lydia grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off her neck. There was something about Savannah that nagged in the back of her mind. She’d overlooked something major. She glanced at the clock on her basement’s wall. Nearly midnight. Her sixty minute workout was over ten minutes ago. Lydia crossed over to the heavy bag hanging from a rafter and gave it a strong side kick. One more hour. She needed to clear her head of the taunting tune of inadequacy that was stuck on repeat since Savannah’s session. She needed to stay away from the pink box in her bathroom.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Fixer checked the papers the first Thursday in January and saw the personal advertisement requesting her service. But Bastion was only two weeks ago and she had no intention of responding. Her eyes dropped to the box just below the ad.

  Thank You, Miss Carr

  Rage sprang her to attention. She ran downstairs and placed a call.

  “Fuck this shit, Wally.” She snarled into the headset when she was greeted by the same digitally disguised voice that had initiated the fix on Fred Bastian. “Lay off the toys, damn it.”

  She listened to mechanical clicks and a feedback squeal before Walter Buchner’s nasal voice greeted her.

  “I’m so sorry, Ms Carr. But I have to tell you.” He sounded scared. She hoped to ratchet it up to terrified.

  “A man is dead because you bought him that way and you reach out for a Hallmark moment?” The Fixer looked at the timer on the computer that bounced her call around cell towers in nine states. She had seventy-two seconds before the connection would automatically end. “This call is my one courtesy, Wally. This is over. You clear on that?”

  “Meet me at the warehouse Sunday noon.” Walter’s voice was a blend of tears and terror. “You killed the wrong person.”

  He hung up.

  The Fixer yanked off her headset, threw it across the cinderblock room, and instantly regretted it. She hated extremes. Especially emotions. She closed her eyes and rocked, still seated behind her communication console, hoping for a moment of calm.

  What did Buchner mean, she’d killed the wrong man?

  Sweat pooled under her arms. Metallic bile collected in the back of her throat as her swallow reflex shut down. She clenched her rectal muscles, trying to slow her loosening bowels.

  She remembered this feeling. Naked, primal fear. A documentary of prior experiences with the elemental emotion played across her closed lids. The shadow of a man slipping into a darkened bedroom. The stench of whiskey churning her ten-year-old stomach. The sound of a belt clearing his trousers. His massive hand reaching for her hair, pulling her from beneath the covers and throwing her to her knees. The belt around her throat. Tighter. Her head yanked back against the ridge of leather at her neck. The stinging slap forcing her mouth open. The slippery flesh jammed in deep before a scream could escape.

  “Suck, Little Cracker. Suck Daddy’s cock real good.”

  She snapped her eyes open and spun her chair around just in time to avoid covering the console in vomit.

  The Fixer never resurrected a character and she never saw a client twice. She broke both rules that Thursday when she pulled on latex gloves and picked the lock on Walter Buchner’s back door a few minutes before midnight.

  She’d rented a vehicle as Darlene Ritz, a pregnant redhead with a taste for Pucci prints and faux fur. But it was Carr, the young Goth, who parked the green Subaru three blocks from Buchner’s University District bungalow. He’d demanded she meet him at the Seattle warehouse on Sunday. Perhaps he was allowing her travel time from whatever arctic lair he imagined served as her headquarters. He didn’t know she was less than seventy miles down I-5. She’d give him two minutes to explain. His story would help her decide what role the Ruger .380 holstered in the small of her back would play.

  The Fixer eased the back door open and slipped into Buchner’s darkened kitchen. The glow of a television played in an unlit room straight ahead. She stood in the shadow of the refrigerator and listened as David Letterman and Paul Schaffer traded one-liners about Madonna’s latest adoption. A studio audience laughed. No other human sounds. Buchner was alone. She let her eyes adjust and surveyed the room. Pizza boxes and soda cans littered a table to her right. Dirty dishes filled a small sink. A gallon milk jug, uncapped and two-thirds empty, sat on the counter next to a stack of junk mail and two rotten bananas.

  The Fixer reached behind her, released the Ruger’s safety, and left it in the holster. She entered the living room as quietly as her work boots would allow. Buchner was on the couch, facing the television. Feet propped on a coffee table covered with beer cans and text books. The back of his head tilted to the right. The acrid odor of marijuana filled the room.

  “Turn the television off, Wally.” She planted her left foot four inches in front of her right, ready to kick if Buchner got frisky.

  Letterman urged the audience to stay tuned for Tom Hanks but Buchner didn’t move. The Fixer snapped her attention to the large window that dominated the east wall of the room. Curtains pulled closed. She spun, pulled the Ruger free of its holster, and gripped it with both hands as she headed down the short hallway.

  She shoved the first door open and leaned aside. Nothing. She reached in, clicked on an overhead light and saw an unmade bed, orange crate nightstand, and fiberboard desk. An aromatic pile of clothes covered the floor of the closet. She stepped inside the empty room, pulled Buchner’s driver’s license from her jacket pocket, tossed it on the nightstand, and made her way to the second door.

  Buchner’s bathroom made the local Texaco toilet look like a photo shoot for Architectural Digest. A dingy yellow curtain was pulled halfway across the filthy tub. Her first instinct was to fire a shot through the mildew-stained plastic on the chance someone was hiding there. But a bullet in a wall would leave a trail. Spending a shell was always a last resort. A can of shaving cream sat on the side of the sink. Steadying the Ruger in her right hand, she heaved the can with her left. The curtain offered no resistance as the can clanged to the tub floor.

  She opened the third door and found a room filled with boxes and cheap bookshelves. More books on the floor. A black Telecaster and amp sat in one corner, covered with a heavy layer of dust. The Fixe
r closed the door, confident she was alone.

  She knew Buchner was dead. She just didn’t know how. Any speculation of suicide, overdose, or natural causes was eliminated when The Fixer rounded the sofa and faced him. Wally had been restrained. Duct tape bound his hands together in a ragged silver ball. Heavy white plastic cord trussed his legs and feet. Lifeless grey eyes stared straight ahead. A golf ball-sized hole where Wally’s nose should have been left a cruel exposure of tissue, muscle, and bone. The powder residue on Buchner’s bruised and bloated cheeks showed he’d been shot at close range. The black plastic handle of a cheap steak knife protruded from his chest about an inch above his shirt pocket. A gelatinous sheet of blood made it impossible to determine the death blows’ sequence.

  She’d learned as a child that if she could unplug her essential core from the torture that was rained upon her she could survive. Like flossing her teeth or driving a standard transmission, The Fixer viewed the skill necessary for day-to-day living. So it wasn’t the grisly detritus of Buchner’s body that brought the bead of sweat to The Fixer’s upper lip. Nor was it the savagery of his slaughter that rang the tinny pierce in her ears. It was the legal sized sheet of yellow paper held in place by the knife in Wally’s chest. She read it and reminded herself to breathe.

  Hello, Fixer

  Warehouse.

  Come now.

  Taped to the paper was a photograph of the very pregnant Darlene Ritz standing at the airport Avis counter, smiling as the agent handed her keys to a green Subaru.

  The Fixer lay in the mixture of ice and rain that collected on the roof of the Pier 37 warehouse opposite the one to which she’d been summoned. It was nearly 3:00 in the morning and her body ached from the frigid forty minutes she’d spent watching. No one entered. No one left. No light flickered inside. She rolled onto her back and stared at the starless sky.

  Someone had tracked her. She bit the inside of her cheek until the warm metallic taste of her blood filled the back of her throat. She spit and reviewed her vulnerability. Buchner hadn’t been dead long. It was unlikely whoever took the photo of her at the Avis counter would risk Wally’s body being discovered by somebody else. How many people were involved? Had they staked out the airport rental agencies? How did someone know she was posing as Darlene Ritz?

  The cold penetrated her wet clothes and numbed her from ankle to shoulder. The thought crossed her mind that she could stay there on the icy roof. Let the frigid rain pelt her body until she drifted into sleep. Be done with it.

  You killed the wrong person. Wally’s frightened words echoed in an unending cry. But Bastian was a butcher. Untouchable. Unstoppable. He met every criterion The Fixer set for her assignments. You killed the wrong person. She’d seen Ortoo’s beheading. The disc hadn’t been edited or staged. You killed the wrong person. More than thirty targets over six years. Never a doubt. Never a mistake. You killed the wrong person. Always justice. Never revenge. You killed the wrong person.

  The Fixer willed herself to stand. It was time.

  She jimmied a side door and a pinpoint beam picked her up four steps past the threshold. She froze mid-step and reached behind her waist for the Ruger.

  “Raise your hands, Ms Carr.” Barbara Streisand’s voice called out from overhead speakers. “Or shall I address you as Ms Ritz today?”

  The Fixer stood still.

  “There are several automatic weapons trained on you at this moment.” Now the synthesized male voice with the Boston accent spoke to her. “Raise your hands or die.”

  She lifted her arms to the side and squinted into the black expanse of the warehouse.

  “Pull your gun out slowly with your left hand. Hold it high so we all can see it.”

  A chill colder than the night’s sleet raced up her spine. She shivered once and pulled the Ruger free with her left hand.

  “Very good, Ms Carr. Now slowly place it next to your right foot.”

  The Fixer did as she was told. Humiliation burned behind her eyes.

  “Now kick that gun as far as you can, Ms Carr.” A chuckle crackled through the speaker. “Simon Says.”

  Her instinct was to turn and run into the frigid night. Escape through the pre-dawn darkness of the abandoned wharf. Find her way back home. But the images of automatic weapons and the insistence of a “we” held her in place. She gave the gun a kick and heard it skate across the concrete floor.

  “Good girl,” Boston Accent continued. “Now come along.”

  The pinpoint moved forward three feet. The Fixer stood in darkness.

  “I said come, Ms Carr.” A squeal of feedback punctuated the demand.

  She stepped toward the beam. As she moved, so did the pinpoint. She followed it in darkness, keeping her eyes on the tight circle of light as it weaved past crates and boxes. When it stopped moving, so did she.

  “Have a seat.” The speakers now offered the synthesized voice of woman. Warm and comforting. The circumference of the pinpoint expanded and softened, revealing a folding metal chair. The Fixer peered beyond the focus of light. Nothing but black void. She took four short steps, sat, shielded her eyes with her hands, and looked up.

  “I’m here,” she called. “Tell me why.”

  A soft chuckle came over the speakers. “So defiant. I find it as unattractive as I do futile. I suggest you adopt a more respectful tone.”

  The Fixer had spent her adult life constructing a world in which she held the power. The emptiness of her efforts crushed her as she sat on the cold metal chair. She was defenseless. Waiting for the pain to begin. No longer curious as to the form it would take. Knowing only that it would come. She closed her eyes and waited.

  “So tell me, Ms Carr.” Another laugh from the speakers mounted around the warehouse. “What brings you in today?”

  She kept her eyes closed.

  “You’ve visited Mr. Buchner.” The callous tone couldn’t be erased by any mechanical disguise. “It was kind of you to accept my invitation.”

  She opened her eyes but the effort proved pointless. There was nothing to see beyond the dusty rays of the spotlight. She swallowed hard and blinked away the image of Buchner’s bloodied corpse. “I saw your gracious note and couldn’t refuse.”

  A laugh rang through the warehouse. “Now that’s more like it, Ms Carr. A sense of humor brightens even the dreariest moments. I imagine you have a few questions.”

  “I do,” she called out to the emptiness. “For starters I’d like to know why Bastian was the wrong target.”

  “For starters, Ms Carr?” Taunting now. “You have other questions?”

  She knew she had nothing to lose. “Two more. How’d you find me and are you going to kill me?”

  The speakers transmitted a laugh more suited to witty cocktail chatter than the situation at hand.

  “Kill you? Would I have gone to all this trouble if I intended to kill you?”

  The Fixer paused. “No. I imagine you’d be more efficient if that was your intent.”

  “Exactly. Now tell me another thing, Ms Carr.” The voice took on a sense of genuine curiosity. “If I did intend to kill you, would it matter?”

  The question surprised her. She gave herself a moment. Time to reflect on how she got there. The faces of her targets. Her erstwhile efforts at justice. The epic loneliness of her life. It was all for nothing.

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t think it would matter at all.”

  “So there you go.” The woman’s voice replaced now with what sounded like a teenaged boy. “Your scariest question asked and answered. Now, let’s get on with the other two. Let’s take the easier one first. What did Walter mean when he said you’d killed the wrong guy?” The speakers went silent for several seconds. “Relax. Bastian deserved to die. Everything Walter told you, everything you saw on that recording was true. Bastian was a butcher. And perhaps that was the least of his sins. Nothing could have stopped him. You deserve a round of applause.”

  Relief washed over her. “Then why did he say t
hat?”

  “To get you here, of course.” The voice of someone teasing an old friend. “I had to think of some way to bring you back.”

  “Why? And why did you have to kill Buchner?”

  The sound of an impatient tongue tsk’ed over the speakers. “Will you let Walter go, Ms Carr? He hired you on my behalf. I’m your employer, not Walter. And I have another job for you.”

  The Fixer snapped her head up. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not a gun for hire. One fix. It’s done.”

  Successive claps of thunder boomed out of the speakers at louder-than-rock-concert levels. Sound waves pounded against The Fixer’s chest. She heard the wooden crates quake in the surrounding darkness. Concrete vibrated under her feet. She covered her ears and felt the roar rattle along her jaw bone. She bent forward, head on knees, covered her head with her arms, and waited for the roof to collapse.

  The thunder stopped. Echoes rumbled through the warehouse. The Fixer’s ears rang in panicked pulses, taking their time allowing sounds to register again. After several minutes the speakers broadcast the resonant tones of no-nonsense masculinity.

  “That was your one rebellious move. I’ll tolerate no other. You are in my employ, Fixer. You’ll do what I say when I say. Make no mistake about it.”

  The spotlight washing her went dark. The same wide screen Buchner used in their earlier meeting glowed to life on the catwalk above her. The Fixer blinked her focus toward it and felt the vomit rise in her throat.

  There was Monica O’Leary in her red beret. Stumbling across Fred Bastian’s deck balancing the potted poinsettia. There she was slipping on the steps of his deck. A cutaway shot revealed her walking into his sunroom. Sharing a drink with the drunken professor. Teasing him. Reaching into her boot for the syringe. Plunging it into his neck. Standing by, waiting for him to die. Tidying up. Leaving.

  The screen went blank. The spotlight returned. The Fixer tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t respond.