A Dangerous Man ht-3

by Charlie Huston

  I can feel his fingers on my face, but not the one that rests on the patch of wrinkled, white skin.

  – Yes.

  – Yes, we have. And you try. I know this. I know you take these pills not just for the pain in your face. So today, this job? It was a gift for you. A man to hurt that truly deserved to be hurt.

  He smiles at me, crinkles the corners of his eyes. You see how I care for you, how generous I am with you?

  – But you must do better. You must get back the taste for this work.

  His hand drops from my face.

  – Soon.

  He walks to the bed, sits.

  – You understand this?

  – Yes.

  – That is why I ask to talk to you. So you understand this. I am being unreasonable?

  – No.

  – Good. That is good. Then.

  He settles back into his nest of pillows, crosses his legs at the ankles and picks up the remote.

  – The flight was long and I will take a nap now.

  – Sure.

  I get up and stand there looking for a place to put my nearly full bottle of juice.

  – Take it with you. For your blood sugar.

  He smiles. I nod and walk toward the door. I have it open when his voice floats up the hall.

  – There will be more work for you this week. You are free?

  I stand there with the doorknob in my hand.

  – Yeah.

  – Of course you are. Go home and rest. You are tired.

  I nod back down the hall toward the room, where all I can see of him are his stocking feet.

  – Yeah. Thanks.

  I step out into the hotel corridor, and before the door is closed I hear the sound of the TV click back on, chattering about the artificial beach behind the hotel. I walk to the elevators and push the button and stand there wondering how long I have left before David Dolokhov sends Branko to kill me, and whether he’ll send him to kill my parents before or after I am dead.

  MY APARTMENT IS shit. But that kind of goes with the territory. The territory being my shitty life.

  I shouldn’t be doing this. But I can’t help myself. I type in the address and wait while my shitty dial-up connects and loads the home page for www.sandycandy.com. It takes forever because the main feature of the page is a huge glamour shot of Sandy in one of her stripper outfits. Once the entire image of her embracing a chrome pole has resolved, I run the cursor down the menu. I start with public appearances. Not much. She’s doing another Howard Stern, but things have certainly slowed up for her in the last six months. No more afternoon talk shows or Court TV interviews, and just the same entry that tells her fans to keep looking for her E! special, but still no date. That one was probably bull anyway. Like the 60 Minutes interview that never happened. I skip going to the merchandise page, I’ve seen it all: Sandy Candy hats, T’s, panties, DVDs. I could check out the discussion forum. It’s been a week since I’ve been here and there will be plenty of new posts. Then I see she has a new entry in her diary. I click over.

  Wow! Tough couple of weeks! I just got back from a tour of clubs in Florida. South Beach rocks! I was the guest dancer at Club Madonna (no relation to Madonna!), Club Pink Pussycat, and Coco’s Lounge Living on the Edge! I was dancing topless and totally nude (which you know I love. So much freedom!) And I had a great time and everybody was great! Special thanks to Sissy and Aura for letting me crash at their place! The fajitas were great! I just posted some pics of me on the beach in my bikini (don’t worry, spf 30 for Sandy Candy’s sensitive skin). Members can log on to the pay site and see pics of me with some of the other girls doing our thing! If you’re not a member yet this is the time to join. Trust me, these Miami girls are hot! I also added links on the links page for all the clubs I was dancing at. Check ’em out when you’re in Miami. So much fun!

  On a more serious note. I want to thank all you guys who have been writing in to check on me and asking how my counseling is going. I still have some nightmares, but I really think I’m getting better and I’m learning to forgive and let go. Being kidnapped and seeing people killed just isn’t something you get over easy. But having all you great guys (and girls) looking out for me sure helps.

  Well, that’s enough of the serious stuff. I’m gonna take a couple days off (“me time!”), but I’ll be back out there real soon. All you guys in the Big Apple should keep an eye out because I’ll be dancing there this weekend at Private Eyes, and then get ready for me out in Kansas City, guys, cuz I’m coming your way!

  Everybody take care and I’ll see you soon!

  Luv,

  SC

  Kansas City. That’s as far west as she’s come since she moved to Pennsylvania. How far is it to Kansas City? I almost go looking for a map, but really, what’s the point? After all, I’m the kidnapper she’s talking about. Anyway, it’s not like we were friends or anything. She was just a stripper with some connections, someone in Vegas who T thought could help us. So what if she ended up setting us up instead. She didn’t know how bad that was gonna turn out. Besides, what do I think I’m gonna do? Drive out to KC, find her in a club and say, Hi, remember me?

  I log off and head for the bathroom and my medicine cabinet.

  The mirror on the front of the cabinet is broken. I broke it six months back when I mixed up my meds a bit too much. The Xanax I’d been taking was starting to bring me too far down so I’d started cutting it with some straight Dexedrine. I looked in the mirror one night and saw the face that isn’t mine and got pissed at it and tried to punch it out. Proving yet again, thinking is bad for me.

  So the mirror’s still busted and I never got around to pulling the shards of glass out of the frame, just taped over them with black gaff tape. It worked out fine, now I don’t have to look at myself when I go to the bathroom.

  I open the cabinet and take out the two Ziploc bags full of pill bottles. I was right about going on Sandy’s site, it was bad for me. Now bad thoughts are creeping into my head. Thoughts like, maybe I should contact her, just send her an e-mail and ask her what happened to T. That’s all I really want from her anyway, to know where T is; to know if he’s OK. But thinking about Sandy and T just starts up thoughts about New York, about what happened there. Thoughts about the people who’ve died. And that gets me thinking about what I’ve been doing since then. About the jobs for David. Next thing you know, I’m thinking about ways to get out of this shit. And those are the worst thoughts.

  I have no business thinking that I could just cut and run. If I ever tried that, David would send Branko to my parents’ home. That’s the deal. So maybe the trick is to get rid of David and Branko. Except I don’t think I could kill David and Branko. They would smell it on me the second I walked in the room. I could go find Mom and Dad and we could all run away together. I could make their lives worse than they already are. I could go to New York, find the money that started it all, the 4 million dollars. Except I have no idea where that money is. Tim hid that money. Hid it for safekeeping, to keep it safe for me. That was right before I killed him. I thought he’d taken the money for himself. How could I have known what a friend I had.

  I could die. I could peel off a strip of this gaff tape, pry a shard of glass from the bent frame of the medicine cabinet door and start slashing my wrists. Just fall to the floor in here and bleed. But David has closed that door as well. He closed it the day we met when he spelled out our contract. My parents live, and I work for him for life. And I don’t get to decide when that life is over.

  And so here I am again.

  Thinking.

  Well, I know how to stop that.

  I peel open the Ziploc that has the downs in it. I fumble through the bottles looking for something I haven’t taken too much of lately, something that will work. The Vics took the edge off the pain in my face back at the motel and helped deal with the shakes I had, but I need something for my head now. I pop the cap on a bottle of Demerol, toss one in my mouth and swallow.

  I
put the bags back in the cabinet and close the door. I look at the mess of black tape, the occasional glimmer of fractured mirror peeking out. I pick at a loose end of tape and start to tease it away. It comes off, a few slivers of broken glass stuck to the back. I see my right eye and the patch of scar reflected back at me in mosaic. My face pulses once, twice, and I press the tape back down.

  THE APARTMENT IS shitty, but it’s still a step up from the Budget Suites of America. That was grim. A pay-by-the-week chain motel at the ass end of Las Vegas Boulevard. Half the tenants at the Suites were families, pulled to Vegas by stories of abundant employment and cheap housing, crammed into one bedroom. The other half were the families that had already crapped out and were trying to scrape together enough to get out. The Budget Suites, serving as the mouth and ass of Las Vegas. That was the first place David stuck me after the bandages came off. After the butcher he hired to give me a new look got done busting all the bones in my face and moving them around and slicing the skin and sewing it back up so it fit. Sort of.

  It’s not like I look like Frankenstein’s monster or anything. He changed the shape of my forehead, moved my hairline back, broke my cheekbones and pushed them up, filed the point of my jaw down, flattened my nose and thinned my lips. It’s not even that the face looks bad. Probably would have been a good job all the way around if I hadn’t had those burns when he operated.

  Turns out that performing impromptu plastic surgery on a man with a severly scalded face is a bad call. Things never quite healed as they should have. If I cover the outer half of my right eye with the palm of my hand it just about perfectly eclipses the scar. A patch of dead, white, wrinkled skin, its circumference cutting across my eyebrow, temple and cheekbone. The scar is a problem, not because it makes it hard to pick up chicks, but because it makes me easy to remember. The scar means David can’t use me on many jobs. Only the kind that involve people you don’t have to worry about identifying you later. Hard guys who fight back but know to keep their mouths shut when they come out on the losing side. Or people who just aren’t ever going to talk to anyone again. I’ve met some of those people.

  The scar is also why David stuck me in the Budget Suites. The Suites was perfect. Nobody looks at anyone at the Suites. Head down, mind your own business, that’s the rules. Besides, there are so many scarred and gimped losers crawling in and out of that place, no one notices one more hacked-up face.

  Anyway, the scar’s not the issue. The issue is the nerve damage, it’s the job the surgeon did when he reset the bones after he broke up my face. He didn’t do a good job. Something in there is fucked up. Most of the time it hurts like a bad headache, but in your face. Sometimes it’s worse. Like when a big guy crams my face into a mirror or something. So I take pills. I take them for the pain in my face. But I also take them to keep me from picking at the tape on that medicine cabinet mirror.

  I sat on my shelf at the Suites and ate the pills I scored off one of the dealers who lived there. Some of the pills took care of the pain, some of the pills erased the nightmares from my sleep, and some of the pills got me in the car with Branko when he’d come by to pick me up.

  We’d drive someplace where someone who was used to being the scariest dude around needed to be scared. And Branko would send me through the door first. And it was fine. The pills made it fine. I didn’t hurt, I didn’t care. And that was fine. Then the pills stopped working so good. Now I have to take so many of the goddamn things that I’m usually a zombie by the time I go in. Branko tries to sic me on some guy and there I am, leaning against the wall with little ropes of drool hanging out the corner of my mouth.

  David doesn’t like that.

  David thought I had all-star potential. I was gonna be his ghost, the guy no one knows about. The secret weapon in his organization. And no one does know. Just him and Branko. I’m the gun he can pull and wave around, the gun that nobody knows he has. He thought I’d serve my apprenticeship with Branko and then I’d be able to go it alone. When he found out that I’d moved from Xanax and Vics to Demerol and OxyContin, he had me moved from the Suites and into this shithole in North LV. I just keep dropping by the Suites to score. I’d like to think David and Branko don’t know I’m still popping the heavy stuff, but they aren’t stupid. I’m the only stupid one around here.

  And now I’ve started getting sent on the shitty jobs, jobs that are a little more visible. The kind of jobs Branko usually arranges with some guy they fly in from out of town. It’s starting to feel like maybe David is less and less concerned about having me around for the long term. Like maybe he just wants to get some value back on his investment before he cuts me.

  I try to care about that. I try to care whether I live or die. Because that has an awful lot to do with whether my folks live or die. But the Demerol’s kicking in now and I’m starting to stop caring about anything at all. Just the way I like it.

  I go back into the living room. I flop on the couch and the Demerol makes it a slow-motion tumble from a rooftop into one of those huge air bags stuntmen use. I watch my hand pick up the stereo remote. I flick through the CDs in the changer until I find some Elvis Costello, and then song-hop, listening to the opening notes of each track until I find one that suits my mood: semi-suicidal, but chemically numbed. “Shipbuilding” seems to have it covered.

  This is good. This is just fine. More to the point, this is as good as it gets for me anymore. Demerol, some tunes, and the hope of dreamless sleep. That’s the mountaintop for me. How the mighty have fallen.

  Used to be the mountain was swinging a bat, smacking a ball, watching it fly away, knowing it was a sure hit, and sprinting around the bases. That was a long time ago. That was another world. Baseball. I haven’t played baseball since I was a kid. Shit, I can’t even watch baseball. A bottle of Demerol wouldn’t get me high enough to handle a ball game. I try to watch a baseball game anymore and I just end up rocking back and forth on the couch, arms wrapped around myself, whining.

  The Demerol rushes.

  I melt into the couch.

  I SIT ON the couch with the little rule booklet, trying to figure out how it works. The Kid comes back into the room. There are strands of spaghetti in his hair and a mess of sauce on his face and neck. He’s carrying a couple Buds. I look at the beers.

  – Where’d you get those?

  – My dad’s.

  – Won’t he get pissed?

  – He won’t notice.

  He hands one to me. I open it and take a sip. It’s good. Only after the first sip do I remember how long it’s been since I last had a drink. Shit. Fucked that up. Oh well. Gonna have to start from scratch anyway, may as well finish it. I take another sip.

  The Kid sits down next to me and points at the booklet.

  – You ready?

  I toss the rules to the floor.

  – No way. There is no way I can play this. I’m terrible at this shit.

  – I thought baseball was your thing.

  – Yeah, baseball, the real game, that was my thing. But this is different.

  – But you were good?

  – Yeah. Yeah, I was good.

  – So this’ll be easy.

  – Look, can’t we just go out back and have a little catch or something. I mean, if we’re gonna play let’s play.

  He pushes open the curtain to show me the heavy rain outside.

  – C’mon, just try it.

  I groan, but I pick up my controller and he turns on the game.

  He pushes some buttons and team logos start appearing on the TV.

  – Who you want to be?

  – Giants of course.

  He pushes more buttons.

  – Guess I’ll have to be the Dodgers.

  I groan again.

  – Don’t do that, man. You know you’re gonna beat me. Don’t do it with the Dodgers.

  He laughs.

  – Can’t take it? Here, you can play a Giants All Star club. Ott, Mays, McCovey, Mathewson.

  – No. No. Just giv
e me the team.

  – You want the last World Series team?

  – No, I never got to see them play. Give me, give me that team that almost made the Wild Card. The one that had the one-game playoff with the Mets.

  He pushes buttons.

  – OK, you’re up.

  We play. I suck. By the third inning he’s ahead 15-0.

  He hits another homer and I throw my controller at the floor.

  – This sucks!

  He’s laughing.

  – OK. OK. Come on. We’ll play something else. I got something that’s more your style.

  – Fine. Whatever.

  He gets up from the couch. I pick up the rule booklet and try to figure out what he did to make his guy slide into my second baseman and take him out.

  – Here we go.

  I look up. He’s over by the TV. He has a plastic gun in each hand.

  – First person shooter. That’s more your style, right?

  I run my fingers over the glossy pages of the booklet.

  – I don’t know, man. Let’s just keep playing ball.

  – No, you were right. You suck. C’mon, you’ll be good at this.

  He lifts one of the guns and points it at his head.

  – C’mon, you’re a natural. Bang! Bang!

  He pulls the plastic trigger, and smiling, turns around and shows me the huge hole where the back of his head used to be.

  WHEN THE PHONE rings I’m sprawled on the couch in my underwear, one foot on the floor, resting on a cold, half-eaten pizza, a half dozen half-empty one-liter water bottles jumbled around me. I’ve been zonked on the couch for over forty-eight hours. The first Dem I took didn’t keep the dreams away, so I took two more. Those were so sweet I decided to keep going.

  The phone is still ringing. It rings and rings and rings until I figure out it’s not an effect Moby mixed into “One of These Mornings.” I come to, my nostrils clogged with snot, a huge gob of mucus at the back of my throat. I try to stand, my foot smearing the cold pizza onto the carpet, and get hit with a head rush that sends me dizzy to my knees. I hawk and spit the yellow wad of mucus onto the pizza box and crawl to the cell lying in the middle of the dirty shag carpet. The number of the incoming call is blocked, but only two people have this number and they both have blocks. The phone keeps ringing as I fumble the top off one of the water bottles and chug it down, easing the dryness of my lips and tongue and washing away the foul taste of my own phlegm.