by Ronan Frost
The knock came again, more insistent this time.
“All right, all right, keep your hair on. I’m coming,” he called. His jeans were across the back of the couch, as was his shirt. He dressed quickly, still buttoning when he opened the door.
It was the black guy from the diner.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” Rye said.
“My employer is going to need an answer.”
“Like I told you, I’m not interested.”
“I think you might be. Can I come in?”
“Knock yourself out,” Rye said.
The man took residence in one of the room’s two armchairs. He looked like he was settling in for a child’s tea party, twice as big as the chair beneath him. He put an envelope on the table. He didn’t say anything until Rye had closed the door and sunk back down into the memory foam seat. “Okay, let’s get this over with shall we? Who’s your employer and why the fuck won’t he leave me alone?”
“My employer has asked that I repeat his offer, now that you’ve had some time to think about it: Do you deserve a second chance?”
“Look, not being funny, but why does he care? I assume it’s a he? Only a man would pull this kind of bullshit.”
“He cares because he himself was the recipient of a second chance and it is safe to say that it changed his life. Now he finds himself in a position of being able to help others. He is aware of your situation and would like to do the same for you, if you are ready to help yourself?”
“Take a look around you, what do you think?”
“What I think doesn’t come into it, Mr. McKenna.”
“So, who is this mysterious benefactor of mine?”
“I am not at liberty to say. Yet. There are certain things we need to discuss first.”
“What about you? Am I allowed to know who you are?”
“Of course. My name is Guuleed.”
“That trips off the tongue,” Rye said.
“It means victor.”
“Okay, so, for the next few minutes I’m going to call you Vic. That work for you?”
“I’ve been called worse,” the big man said.
“Okay, Vic, don’t take this the wrong way, but this whole thing stinks. First a courier shows up with an enigmatic note, then you’re waiting for me outside the diner, and now you’re here. I feel like I’m being stalked. And why? Because your boss wants to change my life?”
“Perhaps it would help if I told you something about myself? I have been in this country for three years now. I am a refugee of the Somali Civil War, the Dagaal Sokeeye Soomal in my own language. I was born into war, I will almost certainly die in war when my time comes. I am resigned to this. But for now, I am here, and life is good. Before America, life was not so good. Both of my parents were murdered by the Barre regime. My three brothers died in the fighting at Mogadishu. I am the last of my line. There is no denying nature, I am a lion, my friend. There is blood on my soul that no amount of praying will cleanse. And yet, thanks to my employer, I have been given a second chance.”
“I’m happy for you,” Rye said.
“That is to say, I think you should listen to his offer.” Vic leaned forward and with two fingers pushed the envelope across the table toward Rye. “Open it.”
He did as he was told. Inside was a photograph taken from a crude low-resolution security camera. It was from the service corridors in the Sheridan Meadows mall. In the middle of the shot was a man, his features blurred with movement. He carried an assault rifle. Rye was intimately familiar with both the weapon and the man who had killed his wife.
“Is this supposed to mean something?”
“His name is Matthew Langley.”
“I know what his name was,” he corrected the tense. Tactical Response had taken the shooter out in the process of securing the scene. He was six feet under. Rotting.
“Is,” the black man repeated. “It was decided that it was in the public interest to report that all three gunmen lost their lives in the assault on the mall. That was a lie for the media.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Rye said. “The cops won’t just hide a mass murderer. That’s not how the law works. This is America not Mogadishu. Secret prisons? American citizens spirited away in the middle of the night? It doesn’t matter what their crimes are, it just doesn’t work like that. There are laws.”
“Yes, there are laws, and yet that is exactly what they did. And it is not the first time, nor will it be the last. This country hides the truth within lies, just as my homeland did. Tomorrow Langley is going to be moved to a black site where he will essentially disappear forever.”
Rye shook his head. “How do you know this?”
“My employer is well connected, Mr. McKenna. It is his business to know.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t swallow this shit, right?”
“I will, but that doesn’t change the fact that in forty-five minutes a prisoner transport is leaving and my employer has gone to great lengths to clear the way for you to ride on that bus. It is up to you whether you are on it or not, of course, but arrangements have been made for you to spend an hour in a cell with your wife’s killer. The guards will be under the impression that you are Martin Blake. You will be provided with a driver’s license and other paperwork in Blake’s name. Blake is serving seven to ten and is registered to be on a transport out before dawn, so the window is finite.”
“This is what your boss means by a second chance?”
“No, he views this as offering you closure. Your second chance would begin the moment you board the transport out of the prison facility.”
“Right, so what is this? Some sort of test of my moral compass? If I get on that bus, do I pass or fail? I mean, what kind of man turns down an offer of alone time with his wife’s murderer?” Despite himself, Rye felt his heart rate quicken at the thought of it. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to dream of, the chance to extract vengeance. Who do you think I am?”
The black man said nothing for a moment, seeming to mull the conundrum over. “A man in considerable pain, I think.” He put the photograph back in the envelope. “I have seen security footage from inside the mall. I know what he did to your wife. I have listened to your call. I have heard your last words together. I know what I would do in your place.”
“And what is that?”
“I would tear him apart with my bare hands and eat his heart while it was still hot in my fist. But then I am not a forgiving man.” Rye barked out a laugh at that. “But that is my truth. It does not have to be yours.”
“Right, you say that while at the same time offering me the chance to kill someone.…”
“Yes. My employer believes that this arrangement will allow you to move on with your life. All you have to do is say the word and you will be sharing a cell with Matthew Langley before sunrise. What you do in those four walls is between you and your conscience. There will be no comebacks. You have my word on that.”
“Have we reached the point where you tell me who this mysterious employer of yours is yet?”
“No. That time, if it comes, is later. After you have made your peace with Matthew Langley.”
“Not being funny, but that’s awfully convenient. How do I know you aren’t setting me up? For all I know you could be wearing a wire.”
Vic unbuttoned his shirt, opening it on a ruin of scar tissue that made a patchwork out of his torso. It was a mess. There was no wire. He saw Rye looking and explained, “As I said, he saved me.”
“What I don’t get is, why me?”
“My employer is assembling a team of people with unique skill sets. He will explain more when you meet.”
“You mean if?”
“No, if you had no intention of taking his offer you would have asked me to leave by now. I suggest you clean your teeth, your breath is rancid. That won’t go down well with the warders. But be quick, it’s a thirty-minute drive to our rendezvous with the transport and we only
have thirty-six minutes before it leaves.”
FOUR
They drove in silence.
Vic wasn’t a man of many words.
The car traveled low, making it feel even faster than it was. Vic worked the stick, roaring the engine toward the red line. There were no streetlights on this stretch of road. It was far enough out of the town limits for the various municipal departments to wash their hands if anything went wrong. He took the cloverleaf, powering around the exit ramp and peeled away. The clock was ticking. It had taken Rye a few minutes to get his stuff together, freshen up, gargle with mouthwash, and lock up. Those few minutes had eaten into their time.
Vic drove like a man possessed, making up time on the road. The canary yellow Lavoisier hybrid sports car handled like a dream, but at over a quarter of a million dollars it ought to. The Lavoisier was Rask Labs first venture into the luxury car market. There were only twenty-six in the world and one of them had turned up in the farthest reaches of Butt-fuck, Wyoming, promising revenge.
They pulled into the rest stop with four minutes to spare.
“Give me your wallet, your keys, anything you have that might be used to identify you. From here on you are Martin Blake. You answer to Martin Blake and only Martin Blake. Understood?”
He nodded.
“You have never heard the name Ryerson McKenna before,” Vic continued. “You talk to no one. You keep your head down. They are very dangerous people, Mr. McKenna—”
“Blake,” he said.
“—and no one on the inside knows of my employer’s arrangement. Once you get on that bus you are on your own.”
“Meaning they’re going to treat me like scum?”
Vic nodded. “It has to be that way. Anything else would raise red flags later. This way Blake takes the fall for whatever you chose to do in his name.”
“I can live with it,” he said.
He took his watch off—a gift from Hannah—and dropped it into the envelope Vic held out for his personal effects. He took the coins and keys out of his pocket, and his cell phone, and dropped them into the envelope with the watch.
“I hope so.”
“So, tell me, what is Martin Blake in there for? The real one.”
“Blake is a member of the Brethren, a white supremacist movement in South Carolina. Last week he drove a flatbed loaded with a fertilizer bomb into a trailer park outside of Charleston. He killed seven people, wiping out three generations of the same family: grandmother, both parents, and four kids aged between two and twelve. Hate is a powerful thing in some people. Earlier that night there had been an altercation between Blake and the father at a restaurant in the city. Tempers flared when he was told he would have to wait because the family had taken the last table. Eyewitness reports claim Blake told the waitress that, ‘It didn’t used to be like this, niggers used to know their place.’ Blake left the restaurant but followed the family home, then returned in the middle of the night with the bomb. He waited until he knew everyone was asleep before, using a brick to weigh down the gas, he steered the flatbed into the trailer.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Has very little to do with what Blake believes.”
“And this is the man I am tonight.”
“It could be worse, you could be him tomorrow as well.” Vic handed him a wallet filled with the usual ID, loyalty cards, and a billfold with half a dozen dead presidents in it. The last thing he handed Rye was a power bar. “Eat up.”
He didn’t need telling twice.
A bright yellow school bus turned into the rest stop as he took the last bite. Its engine idled as it pulled up alongside the piss-yellow lights of the toilet block. The driver disembarked, unzipping before he was through the door. A guard came around the side of the bus, saw them and nodded.
“I’ll be waiting for you whatever you decide to do when you come face-to-face with Langley. I hope, whatever happens between now and sunrise, you slay your demons. A man cannot live beneath the burden you carry, my friend.”
Rye said nothing.
He opened the door and got out of the car.
“Blake?” the guard called.
He nodded.
“Inside. Quick.”
He did as he was told, taking up one of the vacant seats halfway back. The interior was dark save for the splash-back of the piss-yellow light from outside, but it was enough for him to see the silver of handcuffs chained to the floor. He sank back into the leather seat and put his hands out, allowing the guard to cuff him before the driver returned. There were seven other passengers on the bus, each one a candidate for their own Lifetime movie. The closest to him, a Latino with gang tats crawling up the side of his face, hawked and spat in his direction. He looked around him. Seven faces. All of them black or Latino.
Rye did what Martin Blake would have done: lunged forward and lashed out with a booted foot, missing and earning mocking laughter from his fellow prisoners.
“I’m gonna fuck you up real good when we get to where we’re going,” the spitter promised.
Rye met his unflinching stare.
The man continued. “Oh yeah, we know all about you and what you did to that family. Gonna be a reckoning. Let’s see just how superior you really are, eh?”
What the hell had he got himself into?
FIVE
The bus pulled up outside the chain-link fence.
There were four armed guards waiting to usher them inside.
It was night, but you’d never know it. The place was lit up with powerful searchlights cutting across the killing ground between the prison’s windowless walls and the fence.
The guard who’d smuggled him onto the transport walked down the line, to the front, where he pulled a lever that released the security bar and sprung their cuffs. The mechanism was a more advanced version of the roll bar in a roller-coaster carriage. Rye sat up straight, spreading his legs to brace himself. His ankles were chained. He wasn’t sure when trouble would hit, only that it would, somewhere between here and the cell. But given what waited for him in that cell, he could handle a metric fuck-ton of trouble happily.
“On your feet,” the guard said, banging his baton against the side of the bus to hustle them along. “File out.”
Rye did as he was told.
The roof of the bus was low, forcing him to stoop as he shuffled toward the rear doors.
He was fourth in line.
The spitter was three short dragging footsteps behind him. Rye concentrated on the scuff of the spitter’s soft-soled shoes, making sure there was no change in the pattern—any sort of change in his footsteps would be the first indication of a lunge.
He jumped down, misjudging the length of the chain shackling his ankles, and stumbled.
The spitter jumped down behind him, moving quickly enough to send him sprawling in the dirt.
“Watch yourself,” the spitter mocked.
“Shut up,” one of the guards snapped. “We don’t put up with any shit in here. You better learn that fast. Once you’re through those doors you cease to be. You are nothing. You shit when we say. You piss when we want you to. We want you to suck on dick, you suck on dick. Your ass is our ass. Comprende?”
He said nothing.
“I asked if you understood?”
He nodded.
“I’m not hearing you, what did you say?”
“Understood,” Rye said, not meeting the man’s eye.
The nearest guard hauled him back to his feet. The name on his uniform read: LAW, which he seemed to take literally.
“That’s better. Wasn’t so hard, was it? Now hustle that lazy ass inside before I die of fucking pneumonia standing around in the freezing fucking cold waiting for you to get your shit together.”
The chain-links formed a crude tunnel. On the far side, the exercise yard was bathed in floodlights leaving nowhere for a would-be escapee to hide.
An alarm sounded, just once, and the huge steel doors at the end of the tunnel opened with a hydraulic
hiss.
Inside, they were processed and sent through to the shower block to be hosed down and deloused.
“Strip,” Law ordered. “My colleague will come along with a garbage bag. Put your stuff in there. The next time you see your things you’ll be free men,” Law said. He was lying. With the exception of Rye McKenna, none of the people who’d come in on the transport were getting out. Not waiting for Rye to start undressing, the guard drove his baton into the back of his legs. Rye’s knees buckled, but he didn’t fall. He slapped his hand up against the tiles to keep his balance, which earned a second punishing blow, this one to the base of the spine. He straightened up, pulling his shirt up over his head and unbuckling his belt. He peeled his jeans down, then stepped out of his boxers and took off his socks. He stood naked before the guards, eyes fixed squarely on the tiles in front of him. The guard leaned in close, his lips up against his ear as he breathed, “You’ll have an hour when the cameras outside your cell aren’t working.” A third blow, this one a punch driven into his kidneys, left him gasping, one hand flat on the tiles to stop himself from falling forward. Law stepped in behind him, so close he could make an educated guess at his religious persuasion. “I’ll take that,” Law said, taking his belt.
The guard rolled the belt and pocketed it.
Law walked along the line of naked men, running his baton across the small of their backs one after the other, then walked back the other way. His booted feet echoed loudly on the tiled floor. The tiles were good for washing the blood and piss away.
It seemed to take forever for the pressure hose to hit him. When it finally did, the spray was fierce enough to bully him two steps closer to the wall before he found his balance against it.
It was freezing.
He gritted his teeth, feeling his skin shrivel.
He was a full minute under the spray.
When the hose finally shut off he looked up to see another guard waiting with an orange coverall in her hands. It had his borrowed name on it.
“Welcome to your new home, Mr. Blake. I hope you’ll be very uncomfortable with us.”
