by David Beers
Joe’s eyes were open and he stared out what little of the window he could see. Moonlight shone into the corner and he saw a cloudy sky, but nothing else. The overhead light in the room was turned off and the door still closed. He heard people moving around downstairs, but was unable to shout at them. At some point during his slumber, someone shoved a gag in his mouth and a piece of tape over it. All he could do now was look out the window and breathe through his nose.
After a while he heard footsteps coming down the hall, large creaks moaning as the person moved.
The door opened and the light above flashed on.
Joe closed his eyes immediately, only to try and open them right after, slightly, enough to see who was in the room with him.
The fat man. Charles.
He walked across the room, put one hand on Joe’s forehead and the other at the edge of the tape, and ripped—igniting a flame across Joe’s lips. He reached into Joe’s mouth and pulled out the tiny cloth that had been shoved inside. Charles turned around, folded the cloth and placed it next to the empty chair. Then he pulled the gun out of his waistband and turned back around to look at Joe.
“I want you to understand something from the get. You’re in constant danger of death here. Your life means slightly more to me than a cockroach might mean to you, and that’s only because your first instinct is to kill the cockroach. I don’t want to kill you, necessarily. At least not yet, but the second you give me even the slightest inkling that I want to, a bullet from this gun is going in your head. You got that?”
Joe nodded, completely understanding what the man meant while having no idea what he needed to do to make sure that didn’t happen.
Except stay quiet. It would be hard to make someone want to kill you if you didn’t open your mouth.
“I took the five grand out of your wallet. That’s half of what you owe me. We’ll be getting the other half real soon or you’re going to make me want to kill you, okay?”
Joe nodded.
“Now, I’m going to ask some questions and you’re going to get one chance to answer me. I’m no mind reader, so I’m not going to have proof if you lied to me. All I can say is that I better not think you’re lying to me, or again, it’s going to make me want to kill you. Still with me?”
Joe nodded.
“Good. Now tell me, why did your put your neck out like this to learn about human trafficking? Sex slavery is what I think you called it.”
Joe squeezed his eyes together tight. The answer was sprawling. The answer started with a black kid being shot down in a trashy neighborhood twenty-five years ago and ended with the bag of cocaine that Charles had hid somewhere. An infinite amount of choices during that time, all of them leading Joe to this old house, in this stale smelling room, talking to this morbidly obese man.
“Matthew Brand,” came from Joe’s mouth.
Charles nodded. “Had you said anything else, and I pretty much mean anything, I was going to have a lot of cleaning up to do. Blood begins to smell after a few days and I like a clean house. Next question. Why do you think the sex-trade has anything to do with Matthew Brand?”
Joe sighed. Did he tell him that it was probably a cocaine induced hallucination in which he thought the easiest way for Brand to attain the people he needed was through an underground movement that not even the government really tried to track? Did he say that he wasn’t sure of anything, and that his mind had been slowly going to hell over the past six months, and this was a last ditch effort? A last hoorah to try and find Brand?
There was some logic behind the idea though—however small—and he might as well start with that. “He needs a lot of bodies. I...” Joe trailed off. “I don’t know. Maybe he got them this way. He’s not grabbing them off the street. He’s not hunting down people associated with his son’s death, because there aren’t enough of them left anymore. It just connected that this might be the way and now here I am.”
“I don’t want to kill you yet, and that’s a good thing, Joe. What do you want with Brand? What are you going to do if you find him?”
“I’ll kill him,” Joe said.
“How?”
“However I can.”
“No one else has been able to. Why are you going to be any different?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’ll kill me. I don’t really have a choice anymore though, except to try and find him, to try and kill him. That’s all I have left.”
Charles sat down in the chair, leaning his massive arms forward until his elbows reached his knees. “You don’t have much then and I don’t know anyone that would willingly end up here in your position. Maybe this is all you have left. You’re not a cop. I knew that before I ever agreed to bring you in, but I don’t know if I completely believe you. I believe that you think you don’t have anything left, but that’s very different than actually hitting rock bottom.” He leaned back and stroked his bare chin. “Although watching your wife’s murder might bring a man pretty close.”
A minute passed without anyone saying anything. Joe didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t going to sit here and justify the past four years of his life to this man, to try to convince him that there wasn’t any other path Joe was willing to take. He didn’t know if that’s what the man was waiting on, for Joe to give more reasons, more conviction. Joe didn’t have it in him.
“I’m asking, because, if you haven’t hit rock bottom, there’s no sense in going forward with this. You have to be willing to die, friend, and if you’re not, I don’t have much use for you.”
Joe still said nothing and the fat man looked at him, staring directly into his eyes without blinking. He stood up, gun in his hand, and walked the three feet to Joe with a surprising quickness, placing the gun against Joe’s forehead.
“You’re ten seconds from dying. What are your thoughts? One...two...three...”
Joe closed his eyes, listening to the numbers count higher.
“I miss my wife,” he said.
“Four...”
“I know I won’t see her again, but I miss her.”
“Five...”
“I wish I had known my son.”
“Six...”
“More than the year he was here, known the person he would become.”
“Seven...”
“Eight...”
“I wish I had killed Matthew Brand.”
“Nine...”
“That’s it.”
“Ten...”
Joe felt the gun press down on his head as the fat man pulled the trigger.
Instead of a resounding boom and a single moment of exquisite pain, only a dry click filled the room. The fat man took a step back and put the gun down to his side. Joe opened his eyes, staring at the ground, realizing he was still alive.
“A lot of men piss their pants at that click,” Charles said. “You managed to hold your bladder.”
Joe didn’t look up, his mind nearly blank, besides a numb thought that he had just looked at death.
“I don’t know if you’re there, but you’re close enough. I’ll introduce you to Brand; I think you might change your mind about wanting to meet him when you do. That’s when we’ll see what you know about rock bottom.”
Joe walked down the stairs, his legs not quite sure they could hold him up, grabbing the railing. The house was indeed old, probably built in the sixties or seventies, but last remodeled for sure in the seventies.
“Everyone is out getting dinner right now, but they’ll be back soon. You and I should get acquainted first anyway. Take a seat.”
Joe looked at the living room, one of those nineteen-nineties big screen TV’s sat in the center, turned off. He went to a love seat and sat down. Charles sat in a large chair which seemed to be well built for his oversized body, not creaking in the slightest as he positioned himself on it.
“You and I are worlds apart, and yet, not that far either. Brand killed your dad, your wife, and your son. He killed my brother.”
Joe’s eyes widened.
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“It gets a bit more interesting. My brother’s name was Jared Manning, and Brand slit his throat while Jared sat in his patrol car, looking after one of the people they felt sure Brand would come for. Brand came for her, killed my brother, three other cops, and then took her. A lot more news attention was put on the woman than Jared or any of the other cops, but they died the same as everyone else involved. My brother was a cop and I’m a drug dealer. We went down different paths, I guess you could say.”
“I’m not looking for the drug trade.”
“And you haven’t found it. What you’ve found is a drug dealer who’s connected. This right here is my mother’s house, or was, and is my house now. The people that are coming back are the people I’m connected to. You’re kind of a Godsend, to be honest, Joe. I wasn’t sure how we were going to go about doing this before, but now that you’re here, we may be able to get some work done.”
“What are you talking about and where’s my cocaine?”
Charles reached into his pocket, taking him a few seconds because of how tightly strained his pants were against his large legs, and then tossed him the bag. “That’s the last one you’re getting, so you need to take it slow if you want it to last. When that’s done, you’re done.”
Joe was pulling the table closer to his love seat so that he could break out a line. “What?” He said, pausing.
“You’re not going to find Brand, especially this way, with a cocaine addiction. You’re going in sober or we can go ahead and end this right here. And by end it here, I don’t mean we go our separate ways, I mean I pull the trigger but with one in the chamber this time.”
Joe kept his eyes on Charles for a few seconds, then dropped them and finished pulling the table to him.
“I put some of my stuff in there to give it more of a kick. It’s better than your bag, so at least you’ll go out with a pretty decent high.”
“You’re not making much sense. In fact, the only thing I’m really understanding is that you’ll kill me if I do anything you don’t like. I’m getting that pretty clear.”
“Take your line and listen.”
Joe lay in a hard bed, feeling like he might just want to get onto the floor and disperse with the notion that he had a mattress at all.
His mind was in a very, very different state.
He normally flew through two different mentalities when on cocaine. The first, almost manic thought, euphoria, and the second, like watching sap drip down a tree, moving so slow as to almost not move at all. Right now, he was—somehow—in both mindsets at once. Charles hadn’t lied about the cocaine, it was the best that Joe ever tried and now he could barely move because of it. He wondered if he was going to die, perhaps start with a nosebleed followed by his heart stopping while he lay in this strange bed. Charles talked like he knew what was going on, but that could just be a lot of talk. Maybe the dose Joe ingested was too much, even for an experienced user.
It’s not heroin.
True, but he’d never felt like this in his life. His brain was so amped, so hyped up that it had almost frozen—like an engine revved too hard. He couldn’t move from the bed, couldn’t roll over, couldn’t do anything but lie there and think.
Not like there was a shortage of things to think about, though. This Charles guy, Charles Manning—
Joe didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He still believed Charles would kill him if he thought Joe might do something stupid; and stupid for Charles seemed to mean involving cops or jeopardizing this operation. Joe planned on doing neither of those, so he thought his life was safe in that regard, but could he believe the rest? That this man, this fat, mid-thirties drug dealer was out here looking for Brand? Had somehow stumbled over the same thing as Joe? Ended up in the sex-slave industry because Brand was here?
He didn’t stumble. You stumbled. He saw it from miles off and moved in with the stealth of a snake.
Maybe.
Or maybe the man had simply done a lot of research on Joe before he invited him in and he had ulterior motives. There wasn’t any way Joe could tell.
It’s too late for all that thinking. That thinking should have been done a long time ago, maybe in the hotel room or maybe before that, even. Now you can’t get out of this bed to get a glass of water, so leave the heavy thinking to someone that can.
If Joe listened to himself, and the heavy thinking meant questioning the veracity of Charles’ claim, then that left him without much to do except trust.
And how hard was it to believe Charles’ story? Any harder than to believe Joe’s own?
“How many people know the name Jared Manning? I bet one percent of the people that read Dillan’s second book even remember my brother was a cop, killed while doing his duty,” Charles had said.
It seemed, to Joe, that Charles had really internalized that piece: his brother mattered. Joe hadn’t needed to internalize that for his wife and child—they were his life—but for Charles, he wanted the world to know that his brother was a person with hopes, aspirations, demons. His brother wasn’t a prop.
Charles wasn’t a fan of Jeffrey Dillan. Much of the world wasn’t either, once the truth came out, although they went ahead and gobbled up the man’s book like it was a Thanksgiving turkey. Charles didn’t like him because he was a shitty person, and that said something coming from a drug dealer, but Charles also didn’t like him because Dillan’s book only focused on Brand. Everything, in both books, took the viewpoint that Matthew Brand was the only person in the universe who mattered, and the rest of the people on Earth were props to be moved around. Props. That’s what his brother, Jared, ended up being to the world, just a prop. Someone that Matthew killed in order to get to the next prop, and that bothered Charles a lot. It made him sick to his stomach when he really started to think about it, which he rarely did anymore. He avoided the subject much like Joe, sans the cocaine. But, still, his brother was a not a fucking prop. That was the point: what the world forgot when they condemned Jeffrey Dillan for basically aiding a serial killer. They forgot it when they read his book. They forgot that the people Brand came into contact with had lives, had families, had an importance outside of their brief interactions with that raving lunatic.
Although, vengeance was an important part of this as well, it seemed to run neck and neck with letting people, or maybe just Charles, know that his brother still mattered. That his life mattered on its own merits.
“We didn’t talk much. I don’t guess that’s a surprise, given my occupation and his.”
The whole thing was a surprise. The fact that Charles Manning existed and was walking around in this house swinging a gun and talking about murder was a surprise. The drug dealer/cop brother relationship only added to it.
They didn’t talk much, according to Charles, but not because Jared judged him too harshly.
“He knew what I did and he didn’t like it. He wasn’t one of those law code thumping cops, the kind that would throw you in a gas chamber if the law said it needed to happen. He didn’t like what I did because he saw the end effects of it. Kids without parents. Break-ins. Death. The stuff we’ve been taught drugs lead to since we were old enough to read the DARE signs in school. I don’t blame him for that belief, it went with his line of work, and really, I don’t blame him for not talking to me anymore. You get over a lot of past grievances pretty quick once someone has died, but I’m sure you understand that as well as anyone, huh?”
They grew apart because Charles wanted to sell drugs while Jared wanted to serve and protect. Jared married and Charles didn’t. Jared had a kid and Charles didn’t. The kid was six years old now living with his mother. Charles stopped by when he could, which sounded, to Joe, like a few times each year.
“How long before he died did you talk to him last?”
“I don’t know. A year maybe. Saw him at mom’s on Christmas, but we didn’t say much.”
Charles didn’t talk about that, about the fact that he didn’t exist in his brother’s life, and Joe im
agined it was for similar reasons as to why he didn’t talk about his son’s life. What could he really even say about the first year of his son’s life? He smiled? He slept? He made messes? And the fact that Joe barely knew his own kid because the child never had the chance to develop created a sadness that he would probably never be able to deal with.
“I looked for Brand after I heard about him breaking out of The Wall that second time. I mean, I didn’t look, but I put feelers out. I kept people aware in my circle, kept them looking for a black dude, which brought up a lot of false positives in my line of work.” Charles laughed at that. Joe didn’t. “It wasn’t until this past year that I heard something though. Nothing solid, just birds whistling in trees. I hadn’t focused on Brand in a long time, man. I had my business to run and people under me, people close to me, had caught some cases—so I was trying to separate myself from them. Shit was busy, you could say.”
The whistling in the trees got his attention though, brought him away from his drug business and even away from the court cases.
He had come east to find Brand.
Charles received a picture from one of his feelers. He wasn’t some street dope dealer who people hit up on their phones when they needed a dime bag. He was middle management, connected to the big men and two steps removed from the street hustlers. His feelers could reach a long way, he said, stretching the boundaries of the Midwest. Somehow a picture of a strange looking black dude found its way to Charles’ hands. A black guy with blue eyes. A black dude whose past mug shot said he used to have brown eyes. A black dude that had about a million newspaper articles written on him twenty years ago as the first inmate in The Wall. A black dude whose name was Arthur Morgant.
“He was looking for sex slaves. Weirdest shit I’ve ever seen, man. Here is this guy, wanted by every law enforcement agency in the United States, and he’s going through the channels to find himself sex slaves. I didn’t understand it at all. And, apparently, he had the people selling fooled, as in they thought he was some guy named Jamal Something-or-Other. I read up on the Morgant character, saw he was a serial rapist, and thought maybe it wasn’t Brand at all. Except I kept going back to those blue eyes in that one picture. Then I read about a million times what that doctor in charge of The Wall said. Basically, it was highly probable that Matthew Brand had implanted his own brain over Morgant’s. So, I thought, fuck it.”
