Operation Blackout

by J. L. Middleton

  “But, uh, I remembered what you said, and I thought that maybe it didn’t matter how I did it as long as I did,” he stuttered. He was honestly uncertain why Mr. Lionhart had selected him for the job, aside from his affinity with locking mechanisms. The crux of the plan was to kill some man, whose name Tom had purposely forgotten, by filling his apartment with carbon monoxide and suffocating him. Disconnecting tubing in the stove and heaters was not an especially effective plan for an assassination, but it was necessary for the death to appear accidental so that the police would not become overly involved. Stranger still, the victim should not suspect that he had been subjected to a homicide. The whole scheme seemed irregular, as if Mr. Lionhart was setting him up for failure, but he wouldn’t dare question the patrician’s motivations; if Tom was being sacrificed, then he would accept it quietly because the alternative would undoubtedly be more violent and painful.

  Mr. Lionhart made a noise deep in his throat as he finished the remainder of the alcohol in his tumbler. “Go on,” he encouraged perfunctorily. Divested, he rose from his seat to remove a crystal bottle from a cabinet behind his desk. He plucked two ice cubes from a polished wood bucket, uncapped the bottle, and splashed his liquor into his refreshed tumbler. He took a swallow, pausing long enough to savor the taste, and turned back to Tom. He nodded impatiently, signaling that the younger man should have continued after all.

  Tom cleared his throat. “He doesn’t leave his apartment that often, but I did follow him to the grocery store late one night,” he continued. He stuttered over his narrative; his nervousness in meeting Mr. Lionhart was compounded by the memory. He was not a violent man—after all, picking locks was technically a victimless crime—and being a small man, he shied away from physical confrontations. He’d made his peace with the suffocation—he was only required to witness the victim’s demise, not participate in it—but unfortunately, his new plan had required more of an active role. “After he left, I sorta cornered him and faked a mugging. I sorta stabbed right in the… uh…” He struggled with the word, stopping his fidgeting long enough to circle his torso with his hand. “Stomach… so he might not realize that I was trying to kill him. A few times.” He grimaced, feeling his gorge rise, and jammed his hands in his pockets so they wouldn’t give away his squeamishness by cradling his treacherous stomach. He’d used a small pocket knife no more than three inches long to puncture the victim’s abdomen. He’d immediately realized that the minor wound hadn’t caused significant damage, so he’d torn the knife downward and twisted it around the area until he’d been certain that the viscera had been sufficiently torn apart. The victim had fallen backward, slid down the alley wall, and struggled to keep the blood in his body. Tom had retreated behind a dumpster, watching the scarlet pool expand and mix with the grime of the street, until the young blond had stopped jerking and twitching.

  “I stood there and watched him bleed out… or I think I did. But he came back to life like you said, so maybe I didn’t do it correctly. But no cops were involved!” Waiting had been the worst part; police sirens were constant in the city, and he hadn’t been able to tell whether they’d been approaching or moving further away. Though he’d tossed the knife into the dumpster behind which he’d cowered, he’d still had enough blood on his hands to cast him under suspicion if they arrived on scene.

  Tom crinkled his nose and then rubbed his eye with his palm. “Then he kinda just brushed himself off and went back to the apartment,” he finished. Upon waking, the victim had scanned the alleyway for his assassin, but since Tom had never pocketed the wallet, opting to discard it nearby rather than possess incriminating evidence, the young blond had reclaimed his property from the ground and had gone on his way. Tom had not been brave enough to follow him further and had escaped back to his own residence.

  Steepling his fingers, Mr. Lionhart regarded him with a dubious scowl. “I suppose I should give you some credit for your ingenuity,” he announced magnanimously. Tom folded his arms in front of him, stifling the impulse to wring his hands as he waited for the patrician’s verdict. Mr. Lionhart shook his head with indifference and waved his hand dismissively at him. Tom glanced at the door guard, who didn’t move to intercept him, and swiftly fled from the room.

  - - -

  It took three hours for Sitara to get her brother, Nihar, back to her apartment without detection. The majority of that time had been spent with first responders and explaining the accident to the police while Otis Cole had been carried out on a stretcher. The accident would be hell on the gallery’s insurance, and she would need to file a lot of paperwork in the morning, but Mr. Kabamba could afford the increase. Otis, on the other hand, might never be able to walk again, and she regretted that Nihar had played a part in that.

  She had managed to lock her brother in a nearby closet before the police had arrived, obscuring his bare, paint-splattered footprints on the floor with her own, and he’d somehow remained unheard throughout the ordeal, despite his traumatized crying. When she’d been released from the scene, she’d ushered her brother into the privacy of the gallery bathroom, where she’d gratefully discovered that all the paint had disappeared. Extended contact with Nihar’s skin rendered anything invisible, and she wouldn’t have to traverse the city with disembodied feet. With the most noticeable problem solved, she set about comforting her brother long enough to convince him to return home while not allowing him to unbottle his emotions yet; in the end, she had to promise him a sizable sundae and two hours of television to persuade him to calmly travel back to the apartment.

  Once they were home, she had to wrestle him into the bathtub, which earned her accusations of lying and being unfair, but she needed to wash the paint and other accumulated grime from his skin. Over the years, she’d learned the rules that governed Nihar’s condition: Objects that he sustained contact with would disappear and would then reappear hours after he’d released them; only he remained in a constant state of invisibility. He was still tangible, which she knew from experience after dealing with his tantrums, and he refused to wear clothes or bathe like any toddler, but at least it was not difficult to feed him.

  After bath time, there were sundaes and television, and now it was time for bed. She’d given up on convincing him to wear pajamas years ago, so the difficulty lay in moving a hidden, unconscious adult male from her couch to his bed without waking him. By her estimation, Nihar outweighed her by eighty pounds, and since there was no easy way to transport him, she usually allowed him to rest wherever he fell asleep and hoped that she wouldn’t trip over him or bark her shins on the momentarily concealed couch in the morning. However, things had to be different this time: Nihar had confessed during his bath that he’d thought the scaffolding was like the jungle gym at the park—to which she’d promised to take him ages ago—and that he’d climbed the metal framework, causing it to tip over. While thankfully he had not been injured, the event had revealed that his current care arrangements were no longer practical. Since she could not place him in a group home or hire a professional to watch him, she’d carted him back and forth to work with her and kept him as entertained and quiet as she could. While he was generally well-behaved, this was not the first accident he’d caused, and she couldn’t allow someone else to be injured like Otis.

  Moreover, she was exhausted. She had cared for her brother every day since he’d first vanished twenty-two years ago. The police had concluded that his disappearance had been a family abduction, though they’d had no strong suspects aside from distant relatives back in India, and her parents had come to believe that her brother was dead. So when Sitara had begun to play with her new “imaginary” friend—coincidentally named Nihar—she had been forbidden from speaking his name. In time, she’d nicknamed him the more agreeable “Billee,” but she had never been able to convince her parents that she knew the real whereabouts of her brother. With no family support, she’d tended to Nihar’s needs as best she could,
slipping him food from the kitchen, dressing him in her old clothes, and keeping him safe. When she’d grown up and moved out, she’d had no choice but to take him with her.

  She felt around for her brother, finding him passed out on the floor in front of the television. She patted his body, finding his arms and folding them across his chest. She slipped her forearms beneath his armpits and around his ribcage, cautiously lifting him and dragging him toward his bedroom. He stirred, moaning in his sleep, and she rested, whispering a lullaby until he again fell into a deep slumber. The move was a painstaking process, but she gradually reached his room, gently laid him on the floor, and covered him with a blanket; she would never be able to place him on the bed without his assistance. She quietly shut the door behind her and then latched the new steel lock she had just installed. She finished by shoving a medium-sized plastic tub across the entryway and filling it with water. She didn’t honestly believe that Nihar was a ghost—which had been suggested to her as a teenager—but she still took the precautions against them that her grandparents had taught her to assist with keeping him contained just in case.

  Finally, she collapsed against the wall and released a long, relieved breath. Her life had been much easier when they’d both been younger; her brother’s childish behavior had been similar to her mind-set, making it easier to tolerate. Once she’d become a teenager, she’d had to balance Nihar’s needs with her own, and her life had become more complicated as the years had passed. She knew now that confining him to one room was a temporary solution until she could develop a more permanent one.

  - - -

  It was a slow night for Isabelle Martin as she made her rounds. Several of her patients had been discharged that morning, and the remainder were recuperating quietly in their rooms. The rest of the patients she’d seen had experienced routine clinical problems, and she’d been able to diagnose and treat them with little difficulty. All that remained were the final two hours of her shift, which would end at around ten in the evening, after which she could go home and get some rest.

  When she’d been younger and fresh out of med school, she’d resisted working the evening shift because it would have prevented her from experiencing the nightlife. Raised in a poor neighborhood, she’d initially believed that nothing good happened after dark, but her college years had converted her views and attitude: She’d become more sociable, and she’d come to miss the club scene after she’d graduated.

  She now managed her own shifts, switching with other residents, while she finished her internship, but the nightlife began to appeal to her less and less, so she ultimately switched to the mid-shift. It fit her seniority—there was competition for her work schedule of choice, but not too much—and she enjoyed the slower pace and lessened supervision; after a certain time, she seemed to be alone, apart from the nurses and a handful of other residents, though that phase generally started only an hour before the end of her shift.

  She was freshening up in the bathroom when she heard her name being paged over the intercom, so she finished up and headed to the nurses station, where she met with Sharon. Though Sharon was a younger nurse, she had many years of practice under her belt, and Isabelle tended to consider her an expert when paired with her on shift. Despite keeping a professional distance, they had grown close over the years, and seeing the twinkle in Sharon’s eyes, Isabelle anticipated a good tease.

  “You have a gentleman caller at the front desk,” she said in a sweetened mock Southern accent. “Carla says he’s very dashing,” she added, fanning herself playfully.

  Isabelle gave a small smile. “Who is it, Sharon?”

  “She said he would only give his name as ‘Mr. Lionhart’ and that he had a very attractive accent.”

  Bemused, Isabelle cocked her head; he rarely contacted her directly, especially not at the hospital, where there would be many witnesses placing them together. But as it had been several months since they’d spoken, she wondered whether he’d decided on some sort of spontaneous visit. “Did she say what he wanted?”

  “Well, he had flowers, so we thought he might be a secret admirer,” Sharon explained. “Did you want to go down to the lobby to meet him?”

  She shook her head. “No. Have Carla send him to my office,” she said, deciding that caution might be prudent. She flashed Sharon a bigger smile. “Have him be discreet,” she added coyly.

  Sharon grinned. “You got it,” she replied as she picked up the phone. Isabelle headed back to her office, which was a small room with a desk just tiny enough to fit in it. While a bit cramped, it was an improvement from her previous accommodations—a subdivided room shared with three other doctors—and before that, she had shared one desk with all the interns. She’d recently taken the time to personalize it with a handful of colored office supplies and a framed photograph of her parents, but there were few other items in the office that truly differentiated it as hers. Behavior like this was where her rough childhood came into play: She had to move often because her parents couldn’t afford to pay rent, and they often ditched their personal belongings to avoid landlords and litigation. She had also developed a complex relationship with the police, who had been the boogeymen of her childhood but were now trusted partners in her adult career.

  When Mr. Lionhart appeared, he smiled warmly in greeting and embraced her as affectionately as if she were his child, which she supposed was somewhat true. Shortly after arriving at a new apartment complex when she’d started to bud into a young woman, she’d developed a habit of going to the rooftop, where an old woman, one of the building’s hoariest residents, kept cages upon cages of plump, docile pigeons. Isabelle had enjoyed lingering there, imagining herself as a bird that could fly away from her life and start somewhere new, and she’d spent much of her free time among the soiled coops, petting the birds while the old woman had taught her how to care for them. It was during one of these excursions that she’d found herself alone, abandoned by her uncaged pigeon friends that had taken sudden flight, save for the blond before her. He had looked then much as he did now: baby-faced with gorgeous, immaculately styled hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to have seen too much. Short—barely taller than her adolescent self—he had been dressed more casually than he was today. He’d explained to her that he was a philanthropist, and he had chosen to sponsor her: She would finally find stability in her family situation since they would be provided with a small stipend, and he would pay for her college intuition, no matter where she chose to attend, provided she put the appropriate effort into her public school education. While he had never explained why he had chosen her, he’d visited often enough to be considered a distant uncle, and she’d always held some affection for him.

  “These are for you, poppet,” he said, handing her a bouquet of purple and blue hydrangeas. She took them, commenting on their beauty, and felt her cheeks burn despite the paternal feelings she had for him. He had been the only one to ever give her flowers, and they were nearly always the exotic types that could be purchased only from fancy boutiques. The first bouquet that she had ever received from him, shortly after she’d begun to receive his patronage, had been a lovely combination of flowers that she’d later determined were amaranthus, mignonette, and monkshood. Despite being fond of the draping curtain effect of the magenta amaranthus blooms, she received the unusually shaped purple monkshood on most occasions when he brought her flowers. “I regret to say that my visit isn’t merely for pleasure,” he said. “I was hoping we could discuss business over dinner, though I suspect that for you, it would actually be lunch.”

  She’d often met Mr. Lionhart in open spaces to ensure that she was seen with him. She knew of his iniquitous reputation, though he had never threatened her directly, and she believed that being in public view increased her chances of survival. Conversely, she inferred what business he wanted to discuss because he was visiting her at work, and she did not want witnesses to their arran
gement; it was difficult to secure privacy in a public restaurant, so she overrode caution in favor of discretion. “I’m afraid I won’t have time for an extended lunch.”

  “Ah, pity,” he replied. “I had a nice restaurant picked out; I think you would’ve enjoyed it.” He shook his head regretfully, and she, too, felt disappointment at the missed opportunity. He often treated her to what she knew were mid-range restaurants, but against the backdrop of her impoverished upbringing, they were five-star quality. “Well, it’s at your pleasure, Miss Martin,” he added, waiting for her permission. Her office was positioned in a crook of a formerly open bay that had been converted into private offices using plywood and attractive paneling, so the likelihood of being disturbed there was low. She nodded, and he continued, “It’s about your debt.”

  Her smile thinned; despite suspecting this would be the topic of discussion, she’d still held hope that their business would never broach this uncomfortable subject. “What about it?”

  The corners of his lips turned down subtly, and he folded his hands in front of him, assuming the pose of a reluctant tax collector. “Your payment plan has worked out beautifully, of course, but I’m afraid there’s been a change in the conditions.”

  “Why would that be?” she asked nervously. She wished that she’d had the forethought to record this conversation, but she hadn’t been prepared for a meeting, especially not a fortuitous one during which the terms of their agreement could be documented in a manner that might strengthen her position against him. She wrote prescriptions for Mr. Lionhart’s minions to get filled, and those medications were then sold on the street for a tidy profit. The arrangement earned her a small commission while yielding a sizable income for Mr. Lionhart, in effect repaying him for his past sponsorship of her and her family.