“Yeah, man. They’ll send someone to pick me up. My cousin Sammy will take care of the bar.”
“OK, I’ll see you soon, then.”
“OK, man.”
I left the bar and walked to the Econoline. I opened the rear door and took the Sig Sauer from the hunting bag and put it in the glove box. Then I drove to Wolf City and reluctantly walked into that sinful shithole that I already knew I was going to hate.
I sat down at a lonely table far from the pole at exactly 8:50 p.m. and noticed that there were only a handful of customers in the club. An older stripper was dancing on the stage apathetically, and a couple of filthy men were stuffing wrinkled dollar bills into her panties with sticky fingers. I sighed hard and ordered a bottle of ten-dollar water and told the cocktail waitress to keep the strippers away from me. I gave her two hundred dollars to make sure that she would do exactly what I had asked her to do and didn’t let her out of my sight until she went to talk to the girls who were standing at the bar. I didn’t need a private show or anything else that night. I just wanted to get my money and get the fuck out of Wolf City.
At 9:05 p.m., Ramses arrived with two men in identical black leather jackets. One was bald, and the other one was half-bald. They were burly boys, and it looked like intelligence wasn’t their strongest asset. I knew that I shouldn’t have judged the book by its cover, but when the cover had a picture of a steaming pile of dog shit on it, I was going to fucking judge it. Their stupidity was probably a good thing from my perspective, but it worried me a little that the bozos weren’t, most likely, capable of engaging in a meaningful conversation where both sides had a chance to explain their positions. That was dangerous because it could easily lead to misunderstandings and overreaction. Stupidity seemed to always have that same effect, and I had grown tired of dealing with it.
The leather duo sat down, and I said, “What do you want to know, assholes?”
The goons looked at each other, and then they looked at Ramses. He shrugged, and then they all looked at me, and the half-bald man said, “We need to see the body, right now.”
“Do you have the money?”
“It’s in the car.”
“I want to see the money before I take you anywhere. Is that clear?”
“OK, let’s go,” the half-bald said, and we all got up.
The trio walked swiftly out of the club, and I followed them to a black Jaguar. The bald one opened the trunk and showed me a bag full of money. “It is all there,” he said and spat a faded Juicy Fruit on the ground.
I looked inside the bag and picked up a couple of bundles of clean fifty-dollar bills. It was real money, and it looked like the amount I had been promised. Good.
“OK, boys,” I said. “Now, you jump into your cat, and I’ll follow you to the place you wanted to see.”
“We don’t know where it is, dimwit,” the half-bald man said like he was talking to an idiot.
“I will call Ramses’s phone and give him directions as we drive.”
“Why can’t we just follow you?”
“I want to make sure that the money stays where it is, OK? Unless, of course, you want to give it to me right now.”
The goons looked at each other and the bald one said, “OK, asshole, we do it your way.”
“Good. Ramses, give me your number, and I will call you right now.”
Ramses gave me his number, and I started walking toward the Econoline while entering the number on my phone. He answered after the first beep, and I hopped into the van and started giving instructions to the nasty band of brothers.
After about an hour of driving, the Jaguar arrived at the chain link gate, and I said on the phone, “It’s not locked. Remove the chain, and you are good to go.”
Ramses got out of the car, removed the chain, and glanced at me briefly like a nervous deer. Then we started driving again, and a strange calmness suddenly filled my lonely heart. The forest was my friend again, and all the hostility I had experienced when I murdered the garbageman was gone. I felt like it wanted to protect me and remind me that I was still the chosen one, the one who could enjoy its magic and bury bodies there with its blessing whenever I wanted to. The forest was my kingdom, and the uninvited guests had no idea what lay beneath.
After about twenty minutes of traveling on the dark forest road, the familiar oak emerged from the darkness like Death’s watchman, and the steel cat stopped in front of the tree. I picked up the phone and said to Ramses sternly, “Get out of the car.”
“OK,” he said, and I put the Econoline in park and pulled the Sig out of the glove box. Then I jumped out like a voracious panther and started walking toward the Jaguar determinedly. The trio got out of the car, and Ramses pulled out his Marlboros and gave one cigarette to each of his new friends. The two baldies started patting their pockets like idiots, but they stopped when Ramses pulled out a small disposable lighter and offered to light the cigarettes. The moronic troika huddled around the little flame and tried desperately to get their smokes to catch fire in the wind that already smelled like death. I shrugged and shot the bald man through his skull. Then I aimed at the half-bald man and shot through his left eye. They both fell on the ground like two useless sacks of rotten potatoes, and I put four more bullets in them and said to Ramses, “Remove all your clothes, right now, or you will die.”
Ramses was in a state of absolute horror and disbelief, and he started shaking uncontrollably.
“Remove your clothes, asshole!” I shouted and pointed the Sig Sauer at his forehead. “You can leave your socks and underwear on.”
Ramses started removing his jacket with panic burning in his eyes, and I leaned casually on the Jaguar and said, “I thought you knew that I don’t like playing games. You were supposed to be scared shitless of me, remember?”
The scared man looked at me like a rabbit that had been driven into a corner by a hungry bobcat and said in a trembling voice, “I don’t understand, man, we just wanted to see the body.”
“Ramses, if you lie to me again, I will carve your eyes out. How’s that sound?”
He looked at his bare feet but didn’t say anything.
“You guys really think that I am stupid, huh?” I said and swatted a fat mosquito that was trying to pierce my right eyelid with its stinking proboscis.
Ramses remained quiet and was still shivering like a dead leaf.
“As soon as you opened your imbecile’s mouth today, I knew that I was going to get whacked. It was just so goddamn obvious, and I’m absolutely amazed that you didn’t see this coming.”
Ramses remained quiet.
“Well, I guess that’s your business model, huh? Find some idiots who agree to do your dirty work and then get rid of them and eliminate the risk that they rat you out. Yeah, I get it. The sad thing, however, is that the fun ends today. You chose the wrong idiot this time, and now you have to pay for that decision.”
Ramses was still quiet, and I kicked him hard in his ribs and asked, “Why did you do this, Ramses?”
The dirty man screamed in pain and shrieked, “I don’t know, man. I just do whatever they tell me to do.”
“Yeah, but you started this intentionally, man. You told them about me, remember? You are responsible for this shit.”
He didn’t say anything.
“What, an alley cat took your tongue? You know, people like you always ruin everything for the rest of us. Is it really that hard to be even a half-decent human being? Is it that fucking hard to be honest? Why are you so weak, man? Why do you yield every time your body wants you to do something? That’s why you have a human brain, man. It was given to you so you can fight your body with it, but you don’t allow it to do its job because you have no backbone. You are like those pathetic husbands who screw their nannies, and when they are busted, they cry their worthless, coward’s tears like big, selfish babies. Weakness, man, I hate it more than anything. Why do people have to be so goddamn weak and selfish? Tell me, Ramses. I want to hear it straight from the
horse’s mouth.”
He still didn’t say anything.
“Did you want to become rich and famous, Ramses? Do you love money? Do you crave lobster and caviar? Do you think that rich people’s Christmases are so much more fun because they have those big homes and fancy gifts under a real Christmas tree? Do you think that their holy night is so fabulously amazing even after the drunken father hits the mother with a bottle of Dom Pérignon, and the kids are crying in their brand-new toy Range Rover? Do you think that it is so goddamn wonderful to become common property and have people dreaming of you while jerking off in a handicapped restroom at Walmart? Do you think that it is so cool to wear a ragged T-shirt to a nice party because you are rich and famous? Do you want to become a despicable creature who requests twenty vases of red roses to backstage while millions of little children are starving in muddy huts? I mean, what the fuck do you want, man? Why did you do this? It’s not worth it. Or is it, now? You tell me because you are the one who will die here tonight.”
Ramses looked at me ruefully and said, “I…I guess I wanted to make my bosses happy. I don’t know.”
“Do you think that the bosses are happy now?” I said and pointed at the two corpses.
He let out a deep sigh and said, “They will come after you, man.”
“Yeah, your wonderful bosses, the gentleman criminals. Did you really think that I actually bought any of that shit? You are not very clever, after all, are you? I had higher hopes for you, Ramses. Do you really think that I give a shit if they come after me? Do you really think that you should give a shit in your current situation?”
The naked man didn’t say anything, and I kicked him in his ribs again, pointed the sig at his chest and said, “Well, I would rather have the gentleman criminals chasing me than sit in my dirty underwear in the middle of a dark forest, you goddamn traitor.”
“Please, man, please, you don’t have to do this.”
“Go proudly now, bartender.”
“I can fix this, I promise. I’ll talk to the bosses.”
“No, you can’t. But what you can do, and should do, is to tiptoe to hell because they love cowards and traitors there more than anything, and you really don’t want the big man to hear you coming. If he does, he will tell his little groupies to pull out a sizzling branding iron and mark your sorry carcass with a giant C and T. It ain’t gonna be fun, Ramses. Oh, you king of kings.”
The naked man became frantic and started screaming, “Save me, save me, please,” but I didn’t hear him anymore. I emptied the Sig in his Judas’s heart before he could say another worthless word. I hated traitors even more than I hated liars, and I had no patience or mercy for their kind. They were worse than honest bad guys, even though I wasn’t sure if such a thing even existed.
I fetched the moneybag from the Jaguar and pulled the keys to Johnny D’s from Ramses’s jacket pocket. The bald man’s corpse was staring at me with his departed eyes, and I wanted him to stop doing that because it made me feel uncomfortable. Our great politicians had taught us that none of us should ever feel uncomfortable, no matter what we did, so I decided to put the dead trio in the car and make them disappear forever.
Once the men were inside the car, I aimed the Sig Sauer at the cat, shot a couple of holes in the tank and watched as gasoline started flowing out merrily. I picked up one of the lit cigarettes off the ground and threw in the puddle. The car was soon in flames, and I was pleased to see that the two bald assholes and one traitor were going to at least get a proper forest cremation. Their casket was also pretty damn cool—I had to admit. Not too many people got to get buried in a brand-new Jaguar.
I walked to the Econoline and did no extra cleaning whatsoever at the kill site. I knew that it would take at least a couple of weeks for the cops to connect the murders to me if they got lucky. There was also a good chance that they would never find out what had really happened in that cursed forest. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. I had new plans for my future, and they didn’t include worrying about police or getting caught.
I started driving slowly away from the murder scene and turned the radio on. The announcers on every single station were talking about some nuclear disaster in Europe, and none of them even played any music. That was somewhat unusual, and I turned the volume up and started listening to the story while trying to keep the Econoline on the dark road.
As I learned more about the incident, I realized that the madman at Johnny D’s hadn’t been that mad, after all. Something had indeed happened, something truly terrifying. A monster of biblical proportions had been born from fire—a monster that would put the world on its knees.
I kept listening, and it soon became crystal clear that the situation in Europe was a full-blown nightmare from hell. Cyberterrorists had hacked into nine nuclear plants in Germany and triggered a sudden power surge that had caused them all to melt down and release tens of billions of curies of radioactive material into the atmosphere. The hellish graphite fires had prevented the firefighters and rescue workers from getting anywhere near the disaster area, and the destruction was absolute. Millions of people were expected to die or get seriously ill, and there was total chaos on the continent. The wind was blowing hard from the east and spreading the deadly pixie dust around the Western population centers like Satan’s little worker fairy.
The nuclear scientists said that people in the United States would be safe from the deadly fallout, but I knew that they were all wrong. They had forgotten that there was a monster brewing in the Atlantic—a storm that wasn’t supposed to be even possible, a true leviathan that had been woken up from its ancient sleep at the worst possible moment. They didn’t understand that the beast would soon be heading our way with a deadly passenger in tow, the deadliest of them all, the Angel of Darkness herself.
Since the world seemed to be ending, I decided to stop at a small sports bar on my way home and get a cold beer. I also needed to get a bite to eat because all the emotional drama had made me terribly hungry. As a math teacher, I was well aware that mental activity was as exhausting as its physical counterpart, but I hadn’t quite realized that murder was even more draining than solving a complex math problem. There was just something about seeing a hopeless man beg for mercy in his muddy underwear that kind of sucked the energy out of you.
The cozy bar was full of happy customers, and as soon as I walked in, the friendly folks started telling me enthusiastically about the events in Europe. They seemed to have all the facts straight, but it was weird that they didn’t seem to realize, or care, how serious the disaster really was. They were comparing the attacks in Germany to the Chernobyl disaster, but I knew that it was a flawed comparison. The German tragedy was nine Chernobyl disasters in one deadly package, and that package was going to team up with a freakish hurricane that had even the weathermen shaking their heads in disbelief. I was a math teacher, and I knew exactly what was going to happen in the next few days. Laws of physics were sacrosanct and arguing against them would have been as moronic as believing in gay conversion therapy.
I didn’t quite understand the reaction of the patrons at the sports bar, even if they were drunk and mellow. I thought that they should have been, at least, a little more worried about their future. In fact, they should have been terrified to the core and rushed out of the bar immediately. But, of course, they didn’t. There was still beer in their glasses and a few hard-earned dollars burning in their pockets.
Their coolness in such a dire situation might have looked foolish to a more prudent man, but it made me happy and relaxed. Panic never produced anything good, and it was a reaction whose purpose I had never quite understood.
I ordered a Silver Bullet and taught the bartender how to make a decent godfather. We all laughed and joked about life’s little mishaps, and someone told me about a drunken man in Jabalpur who had passed out in a giant pothole and woken up only to realize that the good workers of his beloved village had built a road over him. There was a peculiar doomsday optimism linger
ing in the hazy air of the bar, and the happy drinkers just shrugged their shoulders and ordered new drinks whenever someone mentioned the disaster. Unfortunately, that optimism was going to kill them all.
The news wasn’t all bad, though. I embraced the fact that an unexpected nuclear disaster offered a convenient exit strategy to a lonely man who was tired of fighting his demons, and I decided in that cheerful sports bar that I would ride the hurricane and go see my daughter. There were, however, two pit stops that I still needed to make before I could drive to the coast of eternal opportunity and endless excitement.
The first stop was an orphanage in a poverty-stricken part of the town. Eden and I had donated some modest money to their holiday fund to help organize a Christmas party for the children some years ago. I had also visited the place a few times with Annalise and met some of the younger kids. The visits had been bittersweet, and every time we waved good-bye to the orphanage, my heart started bleeding. I wanted to do so much more, but I didn’t have the necessary means, and that was a very difficult thing for me to accept. I wanted all the kids to become successful and happy, but the sad fact was that the odds weren’t in their favor. I knew that the harsh realities of the cruel world would gradually start taking merciless bites out of their innocence and optimisms and begin to change them. They would become teenagers, and, soon after, adults. Then, just like that, no one would care about them anymore. That thought made me extremely uneasy, and I wanted to stop time and just let them be kids forever. I didn’t want those vibrant, bright eyes to turn into broken windows that reflected only disappointment and pain. I didn’t want their souls to bleed, and I sure as hell didn’t want to admit that reality never failed to disappoint a young dreamer.
I parked the Econoline in front of the orphanage and got the moneybag from the cargo area. Then I wrote a quick note on a crumbled grocery store receipt I found in my pocket and put it in the bag. The note said: “Please accept this donation from a flawed man who is now traveling in the Valley of Seven Whispers. Do not use any of the money on salaries or other administrative expenses. All of it must go directly to the kids. Buy new beds, start a college fund, whatever the children need, but make sure that they get all the money. You can even buy plane tickets to safety now that the storm is rising in the east, whatever you think you’ll need to do. And remember that hope is often all we’ve got. Best regards, M.C.” Then I walked to the door and rang the doorbell gently.
The Sapphire Express Page 19
