The Inner Circle (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  Still staring up at the ceiling, Mason said, “You really think I’m a racist, don’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  He sat up and swung his feet off the bed and glared back at me. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me. You see these tattoos and just assume that I’m the one that put them there.”

  “If you didn’t, who did?”

  “Who do you think? Simon, that cocksucker. Yeah, I was in prison, and yeah, I killed a black guy in there. And yeah, I was briefly a member of the Brotherhood when I was in the joint. But I did that because I had no choice. If I didn’t join them, I was going to die.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “See, you think you know everything there is to know about me just based on my appearance. But you don’t know shit.”

  “Is that right? Then what about the male prostitute you killed? What about the transvestite you beat up at The Spur?”

  “I have anger issues.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s true. All my life I’ve had a hard time keeping my temper under control. See, you didn’t know that, did you? But Simon, he knew it, and that’s why he put me in those situations. Be honest with me. If some faggot was sucking your cock, would you be happy about it?”

  I said nothing.

  “Exactly. So don’t judge me when you know nothing about me. You want to talk about evil? You want to be so self-righteous to think you’re perfect? You ask me, that’s evil right there.” He tilted his head, keeping his gaze level with mine. “What do you have to say about that?”

  30

  “Boojum,” the Kid said simply. He paused a beat, letting the word sink in, and then said it again. “Boojum.”

  The room was silent.

  “Some of you are hearing this for the very first time. If that’s the case, I apologize. The truth is, so much has happened in the past couple of days that this word—boojum—has become a ... bane, almost. Ben claims it was Carver’s last word—”

  “It was,” I said.

  “Let me finish.” The Kid held up a placating hand to me, then once again addressed the entire room. “Ben claims it was Carver’s last word and maybe it was. But even so, who’s to say it means anything?”

  Nobody spoke.

  The Kid cleared his throat. “I won’t get into the different possible meanings of boojum, but the main meaning comes from Lewis Carroll. And if we all knew Carver like I know we did, we all know Lewis Carroll meant something special to him.”

  Ian leaned forward in his chair. “So what does it mean?”

  “It’s a particularly dangerous kind of snark. The most dangerous kind of snark, in fact.”

  Jesse asked, “What’s a th-th-thnark?”

  “A fictional animal created by Carroll.” The Kid shrugged. “You can read the poem it’s from later, but the main reason I’m mentioning it now is because even if Carver did mean to tell us something using that word—like some kind of code—we have no idea what it is.”

  We were all spread out around the room. Beverly, Maya, Ian, Jesse, and Graham sat at the long oak table, where we’d just been eating a meal less than a half hour ago, the lingering scent of pot roast and mashed potatoes and green beans still in the air. Ronny, Drew, and myself stood leaning against the walls in different parts of the room. We all faced the Kid, who stood at the head of the table, one hand at his side, the other in the pocket of his jeans.

  “So yeah,” the Kid said, “I just wanted everyone to know that. Not that I really expect it to change your minds, but I figure you’re all owed the truth. Again, if you weren’t told, the reason it was kept from you is because we were trying to see if it meant anything first. And, again, as far as we can tell, it doesn’t. At least not yet.”

  Ian asked, “What does that mean, ‘at least not yet’?”

  “Tomorrow I’m taking Carver’s hard drive with me back home. There are some files locked in there that I want to try to get into. Maybe the answer to boojum will be in those files. Maybe not. Honestly, I’m not too hopeful.”

  Again, silence.

  Graham cleared his throat. “Let’s move on, Kid. Yes?”

  The Kid nodded. He looked relieved to be past the first part of tonight’s business. He even took his hand out of his pocket, and while the motion was slight, I saw him wipe the palm against the back of his jeans.

  “Secondly, there is this business of our mystery rider, the one who came to Ben’s and Ian’s rescue. We still have no idea who this person is, or what his connection is to us or to Simon or Caesar or to anything.”

  “Do we know yet how he managed to track Ronny all the way up the interstate?” Graham asked.

  The Kid shook his head. “Once Jesse and Drew met up with Ronny and Ian and the Racist, they ditched the SUV. So if there was a tracking device on it, how it got there and where it was located is still a mystery.”

  Another moment of silence passed.

  “Ben,” the Kid said, “what’s the news on the Racist?”

  I thought about it for a long moment. “I’m not sure yet.”

  The Kid nodded again, but didn’t look ready to say anything else quite yet. It was clear his little speech had worn him out. He wasn’t comfortable being around large groups of people, and even though we were all friends—family, even—there had still been a tremble in his voice.

  “Kid?”

  This was from Beverly Rodriguez. She had her left hand raised in the fashion of a timid sixth grader answering a question she isn’t quite sure about but wants to answer anyway.

  “Yes, Beverly?”

  “I mentioned this to Graham already, but it was only in passing. Tomorrow I would like to have a memorial service for Carver.”

  “Sure, I don’t see why not.” The Kid’s gaze skipped around the room. “Is everyone okay with that?”

  Nobody shouted a nay.

  After a long beat, when he was sure there would be no last second interjections, the Kid turned toward Ronny. He opened his mouth, started to speak, when Beverly spoke again.

  “Also, I wanted to say one more thing.”

  She no longer had her hand held timidly in the air. Both her hands were folded on the tabletop, the light hanging from the ceiling catching the faux-crystal vase holding a spray of daises and tulips.

  “I’m sure you all already know this,” she said, looking around the room at us, “but I wasn’t always a religious person. I grew up Catholic, but everyone in my neighborhood grew up Catholic. It didn’t mean anything. And it wasn’t until my later years, when I turned forty, that I started thinking more and more about God.”

  Beverly Rodriguez was forty-six years old. She’d been the mother of three, two boys and a girl. Born and raised in a heavily populated Latino section of Harlem, she had never left. She got pregnant when she was fourteen, had a miscarriage, got pregnant again when she was fifteen, had another miscarriage. She got tired of having miscarriages, started practicing safe sex, until she got married at the age of thirty-three to a liquor store owner named Juan Rodriguez.

  “And the more and more I started thinking about God,” she continued, “the more and more I wondered if He really even cared about me at all. Like, who was I compared to everyone else? To all those doctors and lawyers and stockbrokers out there. To everyone. I wasn’t a good person. I’m not a good person.”

  The most interesting thing about Beverly was that she had not been Simon’s original choice to play the game. Her husband had. But when he’d woken up, when he had been told his wife and three ninos were gone, Juan Rodriguez crumbled. He barely even lasted two hours. He broke down crying, begging for all this to stop, but Simon calmly explained it wouldn’t stop. Not until Juan complied and played the game like a good boy. It was then that Juan took the loaded .38 Special he’d woken up beside, placed the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  “So I believed in God, but I didn’t believe. Not in my soul. Not where it counts. I didn’t believe he was my savior. I
didn’t really start believing it until—not until they took me and my babies.”

  So Juan was dead, gone, his game finished. To any of the viewers who had paid thousands and thousands of dollars to watch, it looked like that was it.

  But Caesar couldn’t allow that to happen. Not to his loyal fans. And in what Carver believed was an unprecedented move, the original player’s wife—who had been held captive along with her children—was thrust unwillingly into the game, to start up right where her husband had left off.

  By all accounts, it shouldn’t have worked. On the outside Beverly Rodriguez was a plump, dark-haired, brown-eyed woman who stayed at home to tend to her trio of children. Doing housework was her game, not anything Simon’s twisted mind could come up with.

  But she loved her children very much, and a mother’s instinct is a very powerful thing. When backed against a corner, a mother will do nearly anything to save her own. Sometimes, she’ll toe the line past “nearly” and do whatever it takes.

  So Beverly was taken away from her children and put in Simon’s game. The rules were explained to her, and she was told that if she did everything accordingly, she would see her family again. And like anyone else too naïve to know better, she believed Simon was telling the truth.

  That was until two days later, when Carver and David and I came to the rescue. When we stopped her on the street of East St. Louis, the same .38 Special her husband had used to kill himself nestled securely in the bottom of her purse.

  Now, just over a year later, having become a kind of den mother to the rest of us—doing the laundry, the dishes, cooking meals; whatever she could so the rest of us could continue our never-ending fight against Caesar and his many Simons—Beverly Rodriguez wiped away the tears that had begun to form in her eyes.

  “And the entire thing,” she said, sniffing back her tears, “from the moment they first took me and my children, to the moment that man put me in the game, I prayed to God. I asked him to send an angel to save us. And Carver ... he was that angel. I knew once I laid eyes on him he was a good person. A great person. And when he told me that my children were already dead, I saw the sincerity in his eyes, I could almost feel the desperation in his soul, and I believed him. And that’s why I’m here today. I’m here because of Carver. We’re all here because of Carver.”

  When Beverly had first joined us, there had been some excitement. Carver had waited until enough days passed—when Beverly had started to make the adjustment, when her mourning period had ended—to ask his questions. Because if Beverly had been kept someplace with her children, then it was safe to assume she might have been kept at a private location. Maybe one of the bases Simon and his people used. Maybe even the base, the place where we could find Caesar.

  But Beverly could give us no helpful details. All she knew was that she and her children had been locked in a cold, dark room. It had been bare except for a toilet, some sheets and pillows. Cameras had been in the walls, watching them. Every couple hours, a man or woman—their faces had been blank, emotionless—came in to give them food.

  That was it. Even when she was eventually taken out, forced into Simon’s game, she hadn’t seen what was outside that room. They had given her a sedative, knocked her out, and she hadn’t opened her eyes again until Simon called her on a ratty telephone hanging off the wall in an abandoned apartment.

  “So what is the one thing I’ve learned in my life?” Beverly asked us. Her heavy but pleasant voice had become a croak. “I’ve learned that everything in this world—no matter how evil, how perverse—happens for a reason. What happened to my family, to my husband and children, it was God’s will. Was it right? Was it acceptable? I would like to say no, but nobody should ever question God. He acts”—her voice hitched—“he acts in mysterious ways. But all of those ways, they are for a reason.”

  She wiped at her eyes, sniffed back more tears.

  “And Carver’s passing,” she said, her voice suddenly quiet, “that happened for a reason too. We can’t question why it happened. We can only accept it.”

  A long silence followed this. Beverly had dropped her head, had started sobbing even harder. Maya, sitting beside her, placed a hand on her back.

  Nobody else said anything. Nobody else even looked at each other, instead finding different spots around the room on which to focus their attention.

  The spot I found myself focusing on was near the ceiling, right above the doorway leading to the kitchen. Two years ago, I’d painted the entire dining room off-white. I’m a good painter, I know what I’m doing, so that evening when I spotted the crack near the ceiling, it caused the fissure that had opened in my soul to grow even larger.

  The crack was so slight nobody else probably noticed it. But I did. It reminded me about what my father had once said, about why he painted. It reminded me how even though you can paint something clean, make it look new, the bad stuff, the nasty stuff, will always be there underneath.

  Ronny broke the silence. He stepped forward. Nodded at the Kid who stepped aside, went to lean against the doorway into the kitchen.

  Ronny said, “I guess it’s time to get this over with, huh?”

  Everyone stopped staring at different spots of the dining room. Their gazes fell on him.

  “Before we start,” Ronny said, “I want to just add one thing. I loved Carver very much. He wasn’t just a leader to me. He was my friend. He was a friend to us all. Heck, he was a brother to us all. So in voting tonight, it’s very important to make clear that we’re not voting against Carver or his memory. This is for us. We are what is left.”

  Ronny glanced down at the table, slowly stroked his heavy beard.

  “So let’s not fool ourselves any longer. We need to look deep inside our hearts and souls and ask ourselves just what kind of chance we had to begin with. This whole thing with Simon and Caesar—it’s way bigger than any of us. Yes, Carver was our leader, and he gave us the strength and will to keep fighting these people. But the Lord’s honest truth is they can’t be beaten. They’re just too strong. So tonight, we’re not giving up. We’re just ... we’re accepting the reality of our situation. Even if Carver was still alive, and we continued like we’ve been doing, what difference would we make? The games will go on. Innocent people will die. But right now, what’s more important? So far we’ve lost five people in the last two years—Larry and Bronson and David and Vanessa and now Carver. Honestly, we’ve been much more fortunate than we probably should be. We could have lost so much more. I think it’s time we stop worrying about other people. I think it’s time we start worrying about ourselves.”

  Still stroking his beard, he looked up at me.

  “Ben, do you have anything to say?”

  I nodded.

  “Would you like to come up here to speak?”

  “No,” I said. “I can say what I need to say from right here.”

  Everybody turned to look at me. I stared into each of their faces for a moment before speaking.

  “Each and every one of us should be dead right now. The only reason we’re not is because of Carver. Carver refused to give up trying to stop these people, and neither should we. If we owe Carver’s memory anything, it’s to keep fighting.”

  Everyone stared back at me. Then, as if on cue, they all collectively looked away.

  I nodded at Ronny.

  He said, “I guess it’s time to vote.”

  Graham raised his hand. “Nothing against you, Ronny, or Ben, or even Carver, but I’m not going to partake in the voting. In reality, this doesn’t involve me. Depending on the outcome, I will live with whatever. All of you are welcome to stay here. If you decide to leave, I will understand that too.”

  The Kid said, “I’m with Graham. This doesn’t involve me either. I’m cool with whatever.”

  “Okay,” Ronny said. He picked up the pre-cut pieces of paper and pens and began distributing them around the room. “Then let’s vote.”

  The voting didn’t take long. Not even two minutes.<
br />
  Ronny, Drew, Ian, and Beverly voted to disband. Maya, Jesse, and myself voted to stay together. It was as simple as that.

  The scale had been tipped, and there was no going back.

  31

  At some point everyone moved from the dining room into the living room. Graham made a fire. We sat on the couches, on the chairs, on the floor. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked, the wood in the fireplace popped. We were all quiet, digesting our meals, digesting the outcome of the vote. Digesting what this would mean now for our future.

  Eventually Ronny broke that silence. He started talking about Carver. About the day Carver had saved him. About how scared Carver had been, how nervous. Nothing like the smooth, cool professional he had become in later years.

  Others joined in on the storytelling. Everyone had something to say. Even Graham talked about how when Carver first came to the farmhouse, Carver had been convinced Graham would not believe his story. In fact, Carver had admitted to Graham later that there had been a moment when he almost turned around and headed back to the Kid’s, so certain that Graham would turn him away.

  This was how the hours passed. Carver’s official memorial service would be tomorrow, held outside in the backyard, beside the other graves. Beverly would probably make a cross to put next to the one that stood for Leon Ellison, Carver’s son.

  I was the only person who didn’t contribute. I just listened to everyone else’s stories. I watched the flames of the fire as they licked the air and spat sparks.

  After some time, there were no more words left to say. We all sat again in silence.

  The Kid got up from the chair he’d moved in from the dining room and went to stand in front of the fireplace. He placed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, cleared his throat. And then, in a very soft and slow voice, he began to sing.