Ferocity

by Michael Callinglast

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  He offers me a cigarette.

  I take one.

  “Name’s Sunset,” he says. “William Sunset.”

  “Jack,” I reply. “Jack Ti-”

  “Jackson Wellesy Tide. I know.”

  It’s the way he says my name, the slight amused glint in his dark eyes, the confidence of his posture, it doesn’t speak of evil intent but it’s not good either. I’ve never seen this character in my life but he smiles at me like we’re old enemies.

  I walk over to the ledge and place both hands on the round, metal railings. Traffic is light across the viaduct and beyond that the Puget Sound glistens. Somewhere behind me a kid is laughing.

  Sunset stamps out his cigarette. He stands and walks over to me. His footsteps are light, well-practiced in the art of the quiet.

  And then I notice two more of his men standing by the railing. They’re wearing dark wool jackets. One of them is tall, a totem pole of a man, equally dark, and equally cut with stark shadows. I think they’re… they’re full blooded-

  “Native Americans,” Sunset says, “used to walk these shores here. Once, a long time ago, the tribes would canoe out there, where the Bainbridge ferry glides, hunting whale, spearing fish. You can almost hear them if you close your eyes and listen. Listen to them chant the downward stroke of the oars.”

  I don’t know what I should do. Worse comes to worse I do have my Glock 17 in my bag. There is a knife strapped to my leg. But... judging by the way his two friends are standing, the placement of their arms, I’d say they’re carrying weapons too.

  A scan of the crowd and I see another one of them. She’s sitting on the picnic tables, her hair is fanning out behind her. It looks as though she’s admiring the waters, breathing in the clean scents, but she’s only paying attention to us. Her hands are gloved in brown leather. She carries a tan messenger’s bag and it looks heavy. One of her hands rests too close to the opening.

  “Once,” Sunset says, “before the plagues. Before the Caucasians. Before the wars.”

  “That’s a beautiful story. Like poetry,” I tell him, “but it’s got nothing to do with me, friend. I’m from Kansas.”

  He laughs.

  “We have a few questions we’d like to ask you, if you’d come with us.” He places a hand on my shoulder.

  I shrug his hand off.

  “I think you have me mixed up with someone else.”

  He turns me around and looks at me. The way the thin sunlight slants down like a sheet of orange foil and glances off the smoothness of his cheeks, he was made for the twenty-first century. He’s not of the kind that used to ride around on horseback with a bow and arrow. No. He’s slick and geared for suits and silk shirts.

  Sunset grins and nods. “No. You’re a killer, Jack. I can see this in your eyes. Looking in your eyes is like looking at a shattered mirror, a thousand shards of something brilliant and sharp.”

  “And you,” I tell him, leaning in, “aren’t.”

  He laughs again. “You’re right. Haven’t harmed a hare. Violence is beneath me, reserved for the primates. I got my weapons right here.” He nods to his men.

  That’s when I notice a red targeting dot on my chest. The totem pole of a man is smiling at me, and from the black shadows of his jacket I see the gun flashing out red.

  “Come with us,” Sunset says.

  “I’d love to but number one; I have no clue what you’re talking about, and number two; I have a lot of studying to do.” I nod towards my open biology book.

  Sunset walks over and swipes the book up, then hands it to me.

  I start to put the book in the bag and I know I can pull the gun out and have two bullets in the totem pole guy, and three in Sunset, before I exhale once.

  Sunset touches my arm the way a friend would. “Jack. Don’t be a stupid Cauc.”

  Okay Jack, this is just great. Now what? Now what you motherfucker? You got yourself ambushed in the park in Seattle for crying out loud! Great! Nothing to do now but to follow them and hope for the best.

  We walk across Western Street, up Virginia, where there’s a silver Escalade waiting for us.

  “I’ve never been in a Caddy before,” I tell Sunset.

  “Helluva ride,” Sunset agrees.

  Very palatial seats. It’s like sinking into a cozy, good smelling, leather hug. I misjudged these guys. They are cool. And just as I fasten my seatbelt and everyone’s in, they chloroform me.

  #

  I wake up to the sound of water dripping and realize that my hands are tied. Also I have quite the headache. I’m staring at my knees.

  Someone clears their throat and I look up. It’s that bastard Sunset.

  “Good morning, sunshine!” he says merrily. He’s still wearing his shades even though… well it looks like I’m in a death-room. I call it a death-room because there are no windows, it’s all concrete, there’s a rusty drain in the center, and it looks like a metal roller-cart in front of me with all sorts of torture utensils. It can only be a death room.

  “Where am I?” I ask, instantly wincing. What a stupid cliché thing to say. Come on Jack, you’re better than that.

  “How predictable,” Sunset says.

  Two people enter the room. The door is thick steel, painted lime green, and makes a metallic thud as it closes.

  The girl looks very alluring. Red hair, pale skin, dark green eyes that are heavily mascara’d. She’s dressed in blue jeans and a tight fitting cammo shirt with the word; Punk, scribbled across her pretty breasts. She has a tattoo on her left arm and a lip piercing. I would like to sleep with her but I have the feeling this will never happen. She looks at me like I’m already dead.

  The man that walked in with her is scary. He’s short, a full-blooded Native American, with his head completely shaved. His arms are drenched in tribal tattoos and knotted with savage muscles. This guy doesn’t look at me but walks directly to the cart of sharp objects like he’d just found his wallet. He smiles and I know this day is not getting any better.

  “You’re going to do a job for us,” Sunset says. He stops in front of me and sits down in the only other chair in the room.

  I wriggle my hands but they aren’t budging.

  “Listen man,” Sunset says. He wipes his face and removes his sunglasses. His eyes are friendly, charming almost. “You see this room? It’s a nasty room, completely unnecessary for you. You’re going to do a job for us and when it’s done, we’ll pay you quite handsomely. But first I want to ask you a question and I want your honest answer. Can you do this for me?”

  “Who are you guys?” Goddamn. Another freakin’ clichéd line.

  Sunset blinks, then smiles. “I want to know who you work for. I want the man’s name.”

  Who I work for?

  “What do you mean? I don’t work for anyone.” Unless he means Rico Dyson, the owner of the cheap seafood dive on the pier. Is that what this is about? Did Sunset get some bad chowder?

  “I want the man’s name,” he says. “We know a bit about you. You’re Jackson Wellesey Tide, age 27, born in Missionary, Kansas. You moved here six years ago and trained under a man named Chavez Elan ValVerde. I believe your first hit was on Bainbridge Island. A man named Robert Shortman.”

  How the hell?

  “You go to college,” Sunset continues. “West Forest Community College. Your current G.P.A. is a straight four point. You drive a 2008 Fahrenheit and live in the Fremont district. All this we know and have known for quite some time.”

  “Who the fuck are you guys?” I’m trying to keep the hysteria out of my voice and I’m failing.

  “Relax, Tide. We’re not the feds or the cops. We’re better. We’re Indians.”

  Oh well Christ.

  “Now, who do you work for?” His voice is a little more severe this time.

  “I don’t work for anyone. Honest.”

  Sunset nods. He stands up and motions for the short bald guy.

  The short
bald guy picks up a little battery powered instrument that resembles an electric toothbrush minus the bristles.

  “What Shark has in his dapper little hands is an electric manicure tool. What he likes to do with it has nothing to do with your cuticles.”

  I feel sweat starting to run down my cheek. My heart’s acting up, regressing, wanting to ball up inside my chest.

  The man with the curious name of Shark steps closer and thumbs the tool on. Immediately the little cylinder at the end begins to whirl. It looks harmless but the sound is very intimidating. He smiles and slowly moves the tool towards my ear.

  “Now you can lead a normal existence,” Sunset says, “with the hearing in only one ear. I assure you, losing the hearing in your right ear, though, will be very, very painful. What is the man’s name that you work for? Who gets your hits for you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honest. If I did… hell I’d tell you.” I’m trying to crane my head away from the sound.

  “We could take away all your hearing,” Sunset says. “You can still perform jobs without hearing. Who knows, they say when a person loses one sense, the others are heightened. We could be doing you a favor.”

  No.

  Not my hearing! I love music! I’d never be able to hear the Beatles again, or Bob Marley.

  “I DON’T WORK FOR ANYONE!”

  Sunset signals the man named Shark to back off.

  There is silence.

  “I’m going to believe that this is what you believe,” Sunset says, “although know that this is not the truth. In any case, here is the job I want you to complete.”

  “Okay.”

  “The man we want you to dispose of is Mike Ruttleby.”

  Mike Ruttleby?

  “You mean Senator Mike Ruttleby?”

  “Yes,” Sunset replies. “At the end of which you will be paid one million dollars. You have one week to complete the assignment or you will find yourself back in this room Jack, and we will all be very ill-tempered.”

  “A million dollars?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sunset nods to the red-headed girl.

  I smile at her. “Hi.”

  She raises a dart gun, squeezes the trigger, and a dart smacks my neck.

  #

  I wake up in my Fahrenheit, three hours later, and there’s an envelope lying next to me. Inside the envelope is five thousand dollars and a flash drive.

  I drive home.

  This is not good. This is all I’m thinking.

  #

  “You what?” Vic’s voice is a quick chop of sound.

  I’m driving across the bridge, early morning, and the sun is just a vague impression of something the day wants to be.

  “Vic, I didn’t really have a choice. They kind of just showed up out of nowhere.”

  “Jack, you stupid... I told you to stay away from them! ValVerde warned you!” She’s in a mood. “Jesus Christ. What happened? Wait, don’t tell me. Where are you right now?”

  “I’m on my way to classes. I got home about midnight last night and didn’t even get any studying done. Why?”

  “Jesus. Okay, I’ll call you after class and set up a time to meet. I can’t believe you, Jack. I just can’t.”

  #

  ValVerde warned me about the Indians.

  I was three months into living here, the Pacific Northwest, having moved from Kansas, and I was in ValVerde’s basement, in Belltown. There was rain slapping against the windows and a steady grayish white light that shot down. ValVerde’s badly lit small place smelled like gun oil and grease. ValVerde was wearing his customary army jacket that he never took off, and his greasy brown hands were carefully constructing a bomb.

  “Vato,” he said, “you wanna watch what that wire connects to. Like this, see. Detonator to charge, like this. Now,” he took the small bomb and held it up to the light, “you see, the trigger fixes to inside of the car door lock. Key pushes in and touches this,” he pointed to a small spot on the bomb, “and boom. No more backaches.”

  “This is for the Westersons,” I asked. He’d recently been hired to take out a guy named Edward Westerson, some big shot banker working for Wamu. I was his apprentice. This was six years ago.

  ValVerde nodded. He sweated a lot too, come to think of it.

  “Now another thing I want you to remember,” he said, keeping his eyes on his work, “there are certain jobs you never do. Mob jobs. Organized crime, you know?”

  “Yeah, like in the movies.”

  He looked up at me, shook his head, and continued. “El es un tonto. No, not like the movies. Listen, my little mierda. There are certain people in the world that you stay away from. You are becoming one of those people as we speak. But, we are like the ocean, vato, and there are always faster sharks, predators that do not sleep, and you may be something dangerous, but you are stuck with what you are. Entiende usted?”

  I nodded. It didn’t make sense.

  “The Italians are sharks, vato.” ValVerde shaved a wire down with his switchblade, then he set the wires down and brought out a soldering torch. “But they have a code of conduct. The Russians are... you cross them and you are in for a warrant of pain, my friend. Ooh. I wouldn’t want to see you after they get done with you.” He laughed.

  I was busy adjusting the sites on ValVerde’s rifle. There’s something beautiful about a scope, the way it brings into focus, clarity, the darkened confusion of the world. The scope is built for one purpose and one purpose only.

  “These guys will kill me just because?”

  “No, you have to do bad business with them.” Bad business, in ValVerde’s terms, meant anything that went all to fuck in a matter of minutes, regardless of who was at fault. It could mean a botched kill, an innocent bystander gets hurt, not completing the job on time, any random factor that has a habit of sneaking into practically every job. “This is why good planning means good life. Bad planning means no life. But with these guys, you watch out for.”

  “I will.”

  “But the Indians,” he said.

  “Eastern Indians? Dot on the forehead Indians?”

  “No,” he said. “Not them. They’re into different organized crime, vato. Microsoft. No, I mean the Indians. Feathers in the head. Bows and arrows type.”

  “Oh. Native American Indians.”

  He shrugged. “Them. Man, you even talk to them and you dead.”

  “They got a mafia too?” Jesus. Does everyone have one now? What the hell kind of organized crime could the Indians be involved in anyway? Illegal firework rackets?

  “Some,” he said. “Anyway, you won’t have to worry, vato. I hook you up with Victoria. She’ll flush out all bad deals for you.” He turned and smiled at me, grabbed my shoulder and gave me a friendly shake. “You stay with me, Jacky. I keep you safe.”

  ValVerde was old friends with my father. They did some work together back in Missionary, Kansas. I remember him coming out to the house when I was just a kid and watching them go out back, shooting their rifles. I guess ValVerde was some big guy expert in the military a while back. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just the jacket he wears. Anyway, when Dad died my uncle said I should come out here, find ValVerde, and work with him a little while.

  He warned me about them. Vic did. Do not trust them. Only bad things happen.

  And six years later here I am, working with the Indians.

  To be continued…