The Hostage

by Saul, Jonas

  Keeley, Anne.

  One last look around before he committed himself to the illegal task of buying drugs. No one was in the lobby. Outside, only the woman and her two kids could be seen walking on the sidewalk he had been on five minutes before. Cars and a TTC bus raced up and down Victoria Park paying no attention to him. No one was watching him. His purpose went undetected.

  What could go wrong? It was all set up. Prearranged.

  He pressed the button. A low buzzing sound emitted from the circular speaker that sat in the middle of the large console.

  He waited. He could almost hear a clock ticking in his head. Maybe no one was home? He looked over his shoulder. This mid-afternoon time seemed perfect as no one would be around. Most people would be at work. Anyone who was home in this building wouldn’t want to brave the rain.

  “Hello?”

  He was still leaning forward when the metallic voice startled him. He jumped and lost his balance just enough to bump into the row of buttons creating a dreadful cacophony of noise that sounded like a dying synthesizer.

  “Um, yeah, hello,” he said, attempting to sound like he had it together.

  “Come on—”

  He was sure the man’s voice had tried to say come on up, but it got drowned out by the five or six other voices competing for a spot from all the buzzers he’d just pushed.

  The door clicked beside him. He grabbed the handle, opened it and headed for the elevators. So now he was a criminal. Like he was going upstairs to visit a prostitute for an hour and the police were waiting for him. The point of no return had come and gone. He had chosen to do this for his mother. If his dad hadn’t supplied the address he would have had no idea where to buy this kind of thing.

  Everything was going to be fine. No one was getting arrested today. Once the jury heard he did it to ease the pain of his sick mother, a woman who didn’t have long to live, he’d be sent home with a warning. And he was a first time offender. Everything was going to be fine.

  Waiting for the elevators to come from the floors above he could still hear a couple of stragglers asking who was there. The door clicked again behind him. Then someone swore over the intercom.

  “I’m coming for you, mutherfucka…”

  Drake figured the guy thought he’d been pranked. It was rare for Drake to actually start begging the elevator to hurry as he watched it lower to the first floor.

  “Come on, come on,” he said out loud.

  A look each way down the hall of the first floor revealed empty carpeted hallways.

  Ding.

  The elevator doors opened slowly. He made to jump on but had to step back as two huge black men were coming off.

  “What the fuck?” the tall one said. “Give us some room white boy.”

  “Sorry,” Drake said and ambled past them and onto the elevator. He pushed fourteen and only had to wait for a few seconds before the doors started to shut. Both black men had turned and were staring holes into his head as the doors shut.

  The tallest one blew out of his lips in a disrespectful manner, telling Drake in one breath that he wasn’t worth it.

  The doors closed. Relative safety. He took a deep breath and leaned on the wall. What was this place? Why’s everyone angry? Is it a black building or something and being white was going to be a problem?

  He felt even colder as his shirt and jacket were glued to his skin like wet paste. A shiver ran through him, shaking his shoulders.

  Okay, get it together. This is almost over. I’m making it a bigger deal than it already is.

  The elevator slowed and stopped at fourteen. The doors opened and he stepped into the hallway. Instantly he was assailed with a food smell. Someone was cooking Indian food very close to the elevators as the air was almost unbreathable. It was like someone had cooked the hell out of a curry dish and decided to feed the fourteenth floor it’s last meal.

  He started walking to the left only to realize within a couple doors that he was going the wrong way. After passing the elevators again the smell intensified. He brought his sleeve up to breathe through it and only succeeded in wetting his mouth and nose as his jacket was still quite soaked.

  “Shit.”

  1408 came up on his right. He got to the door and knocked. Always on guard, he scanned up and down the hallway. After about twenty seconds he knocked again. Why were they taking so long? He buzzed up first. They knew he was coming.

  Then he remembered the code. He stomped his foot.

  “Shit.”

  This time he knocked twice and paused, then knocked three times.

  The door was opened instantly. So fast actually that Drake stepped back and his hands clenched as if he’d have to defend himself.

  A bald man stood there, smiling back at him. So it wasn’t a black building after all.

  “Come in, come in. You look wet. Lotta rain eh?”

  The man stepped back and Drake entered the apartment.

  “Here, let me take your coat. I can hang it on the closet door knob. Maybe while you’re here it’ll dry a little faster than being on you.”

  Drake eased out of the jacket and handed it to the bald guy who looked to be in his early forties. Easy ten years older than Drake. A snake tattoo came up from under his collar shirt and wrapped around his left ear, the forked tongue aimed at the ear canal.

  That’s fucked, Drake thought. How is he supposed to ever get a job wearing that thing? Oh, wait, maybe he doesn’t need a conventional job. Right, he’s a drug dealer.

  “Come on into the dining room. We’ll have a seat and discuss terms.”

  Drake hadn’t said a word yet. The truth was he didn’t know what to say. This was his first time and as first time’s go, he was as nervous as a pilot who has lights flashing on his panel, the cabin pressure’s dropping and a flap’s not working.

  The dining room was through the apartment’s kitchen. The counters had limited space but every bit of area was used up with small appliances. Dishes sat in the sink. Drake took a quick look to see the kind of food these people ate. At least they weren’t the people causing that horrible smell in the hallway. He would’ve smelled it the second he came through the door.

  The dining room was another story. The table was littered with dishes, cutlery and parts of a turkey or large chicken that sat on a cutting board.

  “You guys must’ve just eaten. I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”

  “Oh, no, that’s from last night. Been busy taking care of something else. The clean up will happen after you’re gone. Have a seat here.”

  The guy had a European accent he couldn’t place readily. Central Europe somewhere like Romania or Bulgaria. Maybe Hungarian.

  Drake was directed to the head of the table. He sat in front of a plate with gristle, a couple bones and leftover scraps on it.

  “Move it aside if it bothers you. As I said, clean up is later.” The man stood back and crossed his arms. The collar shirt he wore had the sleeves half rolled up. When he crossed them, the sleeves pulled back enough to reveal a red splotch on the bottom of his forearm.

  “Oh, I think you may have cut yourself,” Drake said while pointing at the arm with the mark.

  The bald guy uncrossed his arms and looked at the bottom. “That’s nothing.” He ran a finger through the mark and placed the finger on his tongue. “Cranberry sauce. I knew it.” He recrossed his arms and looked at Drake. “Tell me what you have come here for?”

  Was this a test? The guy knew why he came. It had been set up with his dad. Drake had no idea where his dad got the information and he hadn’t asked. He was just supposed to get a hundred bucks out of a bank machine, come here, buy some medical weed and leave. Quick and simple.

  “Let me make it easier. Are you here for something specific?”

  “Yes,” Drake said. He sat at the head of a table littered with dishes, in a stranger’s apartment on the fourteenth floor of a strange building, getting asked crazy questions by a bald guy with a snake tattoo about why he was sitt
ing there. He really had no idea how his life had come to this.

  “Look, I can’t offer you anything unless you ask for it. Or…” the bald guy turned his head slightly to the side. “Are you a cop?”

  “No, no,” Drake said as he raised his hands in defense. “I came to buy drugs. I mean, medical weed. It’s for my mother. She has cancer.”

  There, he said it. All blurted out at one time. Without even checking if the bald guy was a cop first. He’d committed himself now. No going back.

  To break a law and be convicted you need to establish two things, intent and the the act of breaking the law. Drake was pretty sure that the intent part was just handled. The act was coming.

  The bald guy smiled. “This your first time?”

  “Yeah,” Drake said and looked away. He fumbled with the dish in front of him and moved the utensils aside so he could place both elbows on the table.

  “It’s okay. I get first timers all the time. I have everything in the other room. Give me a few minutes to get it and I’ll be right back.”

  The bald guy walked away, leaving Drake sitting alone in the dining room with a table full of dirty dishes. Drake watched the guy as he entered the kitchen. What surprised Drake was the smug look on the guy’s face. Like he won. He had Drake right where he wanted him. He was the master in charge and Drake was the puppet.

  If his stomach could be any more sick, dealing with the bald guy added to it.

  Why didn’t snake head ask about quantity? How much was he getting? Or did his father already deal with all that? He’d only brought the hundred bucks his father told him to get for the deal. He’d even left his wallet at home in case he got jumped or something. This wasn’t just the first time buying drugs, it was also the first time coming to this part of Toronto and the first time making a deal with a criminal.

  Maybe he’d been watching too much television.

  Deals like this happen all over the place all day long. You only hear about deals gone bad and shootings when there are territorial disputes or someone’s trying to rip another dealer off. Simple deals like this one not only happened often, it was exactly why a dealer remained in business in the first place. To make money. Good money and fast.

  Drake looked back into the kitchen. He was close enough to the stove to see the time. It was 2:12pm. How long was this going to take? He wanted out of here. Every second seemed to drag on.

  To pass the time he counted the dishes. It appeared that three people ate here last night. They ate well too by the looks of it.

  Shit, where was snake head? I want to get the fuck out of here.

  He fumbled his fingers, tapped a toe and looked out the window through the sheer curtains. He turned back to the stove. 2:14pm.

  Sirens sent up a shrill din from the distance. It didn’t surprise him. In this neighborhood he was sure they’d hear sirens all the time. I’d hate to be the guy they’re looking for. He thought back to the one time he had trouble with the law. It was an old girlfriend issue in high school. They’d planned on eloping. Taking off, getting married and living in her country. Four months before they were to leave his girlfriend had disappeared. Police investigated it. He was questioned relentlessly. There’d been some kind of incident. A fight, a struggle and Drake had been knocked out. When he woke Monika was gone. Back to Hungary, he thought. Months later she was located alive in Budapest and the case was filed. He could still remember the intense hours of grilling by the cops. At times they had said they didn’t believe him. That he was lying and he knew where she was. They asked about the scuffle. Why was he found unconscious? But most of that evening was blocked. To this day he could only remember that they had gone to park by the lake to talk. To discuss their plans to leave. He never saw her or heard from her again. That was twelve years ago when he was eighteen and she was seventeen.

  Police sirens always messed him up since those days. As if they were coming for him. At times he would say to his friends as a police car approached, “There’s my ride.”

  The clock on the stove read 2:18pm. What the hell? Where was he?

  The distant sirens had gotten closer. It sounded like they were pulling up outside. Drake got up and went to the dining room window. Without going onto the balcony he could see four Toronto Police cruisers speeding through the rain and slowing to take the turn into the access for the building he was in. It sounded like more were already here. From where he stood, the four cruisers disappeared from view under the ledge of the balcony. He stepped back from the window wondering who would garner such a response and what they might have done.

  Nagging doubt made him consider if it was for him but he knew it couldn’t be as his dad had set this meeting up. The guy knew what Drake was here for and the deal was about to be completed any second. No way there was a problem.

  He stepped around the table and entered the kitchen. 2:22pm. He’d sat for over ten minutes. That’s it. This was taking too long. If the guy was on the phone or watching the television, Drake was going to be pretty pissed. Maybe the bald fucker was smoking up first.

  Drake felt nervous. No I’m fucking scared.

  He had come here to do a deal and he had stated as such. His part was over. He wanted to leave as fast as he could, walk the six blocks to the other side of the mall and drive back to Mississauga where he would feel more comfortable in his own apartment.

  He passed through the kitchen and stood by the main apartment door. After a moment of pause, he called out.

  “Hello?”

  No one answered. Did the guy have to take a shit or something? This was taking too long. He walked forward and stepped into the living room. A unique set of couches had leopard skin blankets tossed across them. The shag carpet looked like it was from the seventies. A widescreen T.V. sat on the wall like a painting.

  “Hello? You still around?”

  No answer.

  “I need to get going. Can we speed this up?”

  His shirt had dried a little, but the dampness stuck to his skin making him shiver. He wondered if he should put his jacket back on as it wouldn’t have completely dried yet.

  Where was the bald guy? This was agonizing. How could it take so long?

  More sirens were pulling up out front. What the fuck was going on? Now he was feeling more and more distressed. Something was wrong. Drake felt the urge to just leave. Get the hell out of there. Now.

  Maybe the cops were coming to bust the bald guy? Maybe after all the deals he’d done, someone ratted him out? Perfect. On the one day, the one deal Drake needed, the bald guy gets busted. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Great fucking timing.

  Okay, one more try. “Hello. Anybody home?”

  The bedroom door sat ajar. Maybe the guy was in there still getting ready. He walked by the couch and headed for the door.

  He placed his mouth near the crack in the door and tried one more time. “Hello?”

  A nasty smell emitted from the bedroom.

  “You all right in there?”

  After still getting no response, he touched the door and slowly opened it.

  Horror gripped him and held fast. Dizziness swooned through his head and his stomach clenched at the same time. Without being aware of it, Drake spun on his heels and ran for the bathroom door that stood open. He didn’t make it. Vomit spewed forth and hit the wall beside the bathroom. His breakfast gone forever, he turned back and stumbled to the bedroom door again.

  It had to be a joke. There was no way this was possible. He needed to confirm it. For the rest of his life he couldn’t live another moment coupled with the thought of what he just saw. If it was real, therapy was right around the next corner. If it was set up for whatever reason, then he could leave here knowing there’s a lot of sick people in the world.

  At the bedroom door he stole a glance inside. Everything seemed real enough. This was no stage prop. He’d never smelled anything like it before, but if he had to guess, the smell was real too.

  A woman lay naked on the bed. She had been cut ope
n like someone had performed a vivisection. Her innards were pulled out and scattered around the open skin of her stomach. Blood had seeped from her vaginal area indicating to Drake that she was alive when that area was abused. There were bruises about her face and neck. Deep purple and red marks could be discerned surrounding her nipples. In the few seconds Drake stared at the body on the bed, he could tell that she had been beaten, choked, raped and then stabbed and cut open.

  Who could do such a thing? Who would want to? A deep sadness darkened his consciousness. He felt sick again. His legs were weak and his hands were trembling against the door frame. How could a human being do this to another? Humans were nothing but animals.

  He needed to leave. He had to get out of this apartment. There was a murder scene here. He had nothing to do with it.