A Blood of Killers

by Gerard Houarner

  It remembered Max and the world of men, and how they journeyed through that world together. It remembered blood and pain, and joy in the suffering of others. Other sensations, colors, puzzles in alien logic Max couldn’t follow much less solve, flashed by in a staccato passage of lightning strikes, revealing landscapes beyond his comprehension.

  And then the Beast settled back into its place in Max’s flesh, nestled close to his heart, feeding on the last bit of atrocity Max had committed for its hunger.

  Max was himself, again. And he wondered where he’d been, what he’d done, what had happened to him that he’d been forced to be something he wasn’t.

  He tasted flesh, smelled the blood all over him, but Mr. Jung appeared content. Whatever had occurred in the heat and fog of the Beast’s embrace, it could not have been that bad. At least, not for Max.

  He’d be safe for a while longer under his employers’ protection. Though Max couldn’t understand what his contact was doing holding a baby.

  “This is the soft package you delivered,” Mr. Jung said. “No more, no less. Asking questions is a bad habit for you to pick up.”

  Max didn’t remember asking a question. Nor did he deliver packages for anyone. But he let Mr. Jung have his say.

  “That’s all you need to know.” Mr. Jung watched him a moment longer, then ran back to the helicopter.

  As it took off, one of the men by the two vans parked further off came up to Max, dropped a bundle of clothes, an envelope, a mini-Uzi and a Galil assault rifle, two ammunition bags and the keys to a van at his feet. The man left without a word, and the others with the vans all piled into one and left.

  Max suspected the original arrangement for his extraction had been changed without authorization. Nobody wanted to sit next to him in a closed metal box. He was grateful. He hadn’t been in the mood for company.

  The money, van and documents in the envelope would get him home.

  What he and the Beast did between here and there, in the intimacy of their shared hunger, was better left without witnesses.

  HIDDEN AGENDAS

  Marvin Shuttleman rushed through the State Senator’s office reception area with his head down, clutching the laptop case to his chest. “Is everything all right?” the Senator’s secretary called out after him as he stepped out of the inner office.

  “I just don’t care for your taste in art,” Marvin answered, putting a smile over his nervousness as he paced back and forth in front of the elevator door.

  The secretary laughed and nodded his head towards the sculpture beside the receptionist’s desk. “It’s by a cousin from the Senator’s wife’s side of the family,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders as Marvin hurried into the elevator.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Marvin sagged against the wall and pressed the lobby button. The sculpture, particularly the corner with the snapped strings, crumpled sheet metal and twisted pipes, reminded him of a neater version of his son’s work. His son, the so-called artist. Of course, there was nothing he could do about his son’s pretensions and life style. He just hated to be reminded of things and people out of his control.

  The door opened and Marvin rushed out into the open air. He thought about hailing a cab, but changed his mind in the brisk air of a spring afternoon. The appointment with his boss, the Director of State Budgetary Finances, was not until late afternoon. Meetings with the mayor, the State Senator and an agency director preparing for an audit had more than filled his business day. The session with Eve and lunch with the reporter to exchange information on a pair of federal accountants had taken care of his personal needs. He could afford to spend an hour walking the midtown streets and taking in the city’s sights. He stopped at a restaurant and considered having a beer to settle his nerves, but he saw that no alcohol was served and started moving on.

  Something familiar about the man sitting in the restaurant’s window table made Marvin slow down and take another look. Friend or foe, Marvin asked himself. No answer came. A sudden eruption of fear brought Marvin to a stop. In the adrenaline surge that followed, the world around him and the thoughts running through his mind both came into sharp-edged focus.

  He knew all his friends and enemies, all the people he could use and not use. His personal world fit easily enough into those two categories, leaving room only for strangers marked with potential. The man did not fit into his world. Yet there remained a teasing aura of intimacy around the man, as if he and Marvin had once shared a special relationship.

  Marvin stared until the man in the window looked up to talk to a passing waiter. The waiter nodded, then glanced in Marvin’s direction. Marvin turned quickly and waved to a couple walking away from him. Heart pumping, sweat beading on his forehead and slicking the palms of his hands, he forced himself to casually set his computer case down on the sidewalk. With hands in his pockets, Marvin rocked back and forth on his heels as if waiting for someone. As he glanced up and down the block searching for an imaginary appointment, he sneaked glimpses at the man in the window.

  Late middle-age, black hair graying at the temples and receding from the forehead, loose flesh under the chin and a paunch pushing out his grey trousers and white shirt to the table edge, the man was not young or slick enough to have been one of his ex-wives’ lawyers. The small, dark eyes focused on the plate of lasagna before him did not seem to harbor the furtive alertness of a private detective or government investigator, though Marvin knew better than to totally dismiss that possibility. Multiple divorces and an old State Budget Office supervisor serving jail time had taught him that much.

  There was a paternal air to the man, as if the fat and the grey were trophies earned in a hard-won war with children. Perhaps he had ridden with the man on a plane or train and shared some personal history as part of the conversation? There had to have been liquor involved for Marvin’s memory to be so hazy. A bar? A party? Where? When?

  Marvin brushed the tight, brown curls of his hair with a slightly shaking hand, then smoothed his tailored, blue pinstripe suit and sighed heavily as he continued to study the man in the window.

  The man’s full-lipped mouth opened to receive a fork heavily loaded with pasta. The small hands holding the fork were fat and spotted. A dull, stripped tie was stained with several drops of sauce. Not used to eating out, Marvin concluded, or not used to wearing a suit and tie. Was there an air of deception to him? Was he in disguise?

  The man busily loaded another fork while still chewing and swallowing a mouthful of food. Twice he washed down his meal with long pulls of ginger ale that spilled from the corners of his mouth as he drank. He paused only long enough to wipe the sauce from the plate with bread, which he then crammed into his mouth. Marvin rolled his shoulders and straightened his back, barely able to contain his disgust. The man was a pig.

  Suddenly, the man looked up at Marvin. His mouth gaped open, exposing a lump of mashed food, and he held a fork full of lasagna in a slightly trembling hand suspended inches from his face. Twin black holes pinned Marvin’s eyes. He felt himself being sucked into the man’s swirling confusion.

  Marvin sucked in a deep breath. He straightened, then fixed his gaze on a point just past the man’s head, peering intently. He waved and smiled broadly. The man continued staring, brow creasing and eyelids lowering as suspicion and anger replaced shock. Marvin caught the expression and gasped.

  Ice seemed to shoot through his veins. The wrinkled brow, the turn of the mouth, the tremulous hand all formed an enormous shadow that loomed in Marvin’s memory. But just as quickly as it formed, the haunting shadow evaporated in the moment’s embarrassing crisis.

  Fighting to keep his composure, Marvin continued the pretense of signaling to someone in the restaurant. He pointed up the block, nodded, waved again and began walking briskly in the direction he had pointed in. With a quick backward glance, he saw the man suddenly look over his own shoulder at some diners making their way behind him to the exit.

  Marvin rounded the corner, slowed, then turned ba
ck and crossed the street. Sighing with relief, he leaned against the corner building and watched the restaurant door from across the street.

  The shadow that had risen from his memory haunted the corners of his awareness. The man was almost certainly pretending not to know him, Marvin thought. The look of anger was genuine, but it was not the anger of a stranger whose privacy had been interrupted. The man was upset over being spotted. Marvin’s hands curled into fists as reciprocal anger sparked beneath his fear. Who was that man to frighten and confound him?

  Marvin waited restlessly until the man came out of the restaurant fifteen minutes later. Carrying a folded newspaper and an inexpensive, soft briefcase, he glanced up and down the block before walking briskly away in the opposite direction. A salesman, Marvin wondered as he picked up his case and hurried after the man. Over the last ten years he had met hundreds of vendor representatives at conferences, agency meetings, sales shows, all trying to gain an edge in bidding for state contracts. Marvin tried to place the man’s face in the series of disappointed salespeople he had sent away over the years; certainly, the man’s appearance and demeanor would not have inspired Marvin’s confidence. Any contact between them would have resulted in a cordial and final exchange of interests.

  But the face did not fit. Marvin rubbed his stomach, trying to still the nausea turning his stomach. The fear that had erupted with his first glimpse of the man was steadily growing into a barely containable hysteria.

  Marvin tried, as with everything that puzzled him into anxiety, to ignore the mystery. He thought about his job and all its profitable ancillary opportunities, reminding himself of his mastery over what some considered the most profound mysteries of government: people and the flow of money. Money was raw material, to be processed by his office through budgets, proposals, bids, contracts. Marvin felt firmly in control of those aspects of his job. People—contractors, agents, vendors, and the occasional state and federal investigators performing audits and sting operations—were variables capable of enhancing or diminishing the product. Even they were not mysteries to Marvin. Most people wore their greed, selfishness, and ambition like an overcoat. Generosity, altruism and vision were equally obvious, and given the proper flow of information and cash just as easily manipulated for his best interest.

  It was only outside of the job that people’s emotions and motivations eluded him, as with his ex-wives and his only son. Fortunately, they were not relevant to his well-being. He had no use for them and, for the most part, they had no use for him. Those mysteries he had not been able to control, he had always managed to ignore. The man dwindling down the block was such a mystery. Marvin shut his eyes against the diminishing figure. But the man’s face still face haunted him.

  He jogged slowly after the man.

  Weaving through a crowd, Marvin lost sight of his quarry for a moment. Relief drained nearly all the strength from his legs. Free, Marvin thought with a sudden burst of elation, coming to a stop and letting passersby push past him. Then a throng of people ahead of him dispersed as a street musician finished his set. The man reappeared, legs scissoring rapidly to beat out a hectic rhythm of tiny steps on the pavement.

  Marvin followed, drawn helplessly along by the compulsion to uncover the man’s identity. He shivered, though the afternoon was warm and dry. Pain was a molten river running through his head. The man was more than a mystery. He was, Marvin understood suddenly, a danger.

  The man stopped at a shop window and gazed a display of electronic equipment. Marvin stepped up to a phone and picked up the handset. The man entered the store. Marvin dialed his office as he watched the store’s doorway.

  Did the man know Marvin was following him? Marvin asked himself. Was he leading him into a trap? What did he want? The hand holding the phone began to tremble. The possible answers filled him with dread.

  “Finance, Mr. Shuttleman’s office,” his secretary said. Her gravelly voice startled him.

  “Brenda,” he said, then cleared his voice before continuing. “Any calls for me?”

  “Your son called, asked if you’d drop by to see him as long as you were in the city. And Bert, from Conroy’s. Charlie and Sandy asked—”

  He cut in, shaking off the irritating image of his son. “Any calls from strangers? Salesmen? People who don’t come by regularly?”

  Brenda hesitated, then read a few innocuous messages.

  “How about in the office. Did anybody come by this morning, looking for me?”

  “No, your calendar was clear. I made sure—”

  “Mail. Anything come in the mail? Anything odd?”

  “Nothing unusual. Were you expecting something? Should I be looking—?”

  “Listen, Brenda, do you recall seeing a short, dumpy looking guy around the office recently? Black hair, on the balding side. Soft briefcase. Kind of a slob?”

  “Sounds like everybody and nobody, boss. You okay?”

  “No. Yes. I mean, I just ran into this character, and I can’t place him. Nothing important.”

  “Forget the slob and visit your son. He sounded like he needed to see you.”

  Marvin grunted and hung up. Finding a niche in the wall between a deli and a flower shop, he settled down to wait for the man in the electronics store. He studied the window display, trying to find a clue to the man’s identity in the stereos, televisions, cameras and camcorders crowded on top of one another. Images flickered on the video displays: snatches of soap operas and news broadcasts. Men and women kissed, argued, hit each other. An airplane crashed. A family jumped and laughed and surrounded a tall, beaming man pointing to a car illuminated by flashing lights. Marvin shivered again, tried to focus on putting a name to the man’s face. Instead, he thought about his son.

  Little faggot.

  The phrase cut through him like a razor-edged knife. Rage surged through Marvin, shocking him with its intensity. Every muscle in his body tensed; the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. His fingers curled as if grabbing hold of someone’s throat. He smashed his elbow into the brick wall behind him. Once, twice, then a dull ache creeping up his forearm told him to stop before he struck a third time. He punched the brick wall with his other hand, instead. A young black woman coming out of the flower shop gasped and hurried away quickly. The stems from the bouquet she carried broke in her grip. Two grey haired Spanish men in blue coveralls emerged from the deli drinking beer from cans in paper bags, glanced at him and laughed.

  Marvin looked at his hand. Blood flowed from skin scrapes and dribbled between his closed fingers. For a moment, his mood lightened and he felt giddy, as if his feelings had been set free by the violence.

  He quickly took out a handkerchief and covered his hand. Laughter bubbled in his throat and he fought to control his giddiness. A smile managed to break through. Ruefully, he shook his head as he finished tying off the handkerchief. He had almost broken a hand over his son. What a fool.

  Almost as big a fool as his son. He grit his teeth against the word his son used to describe himself: artist. His knuckles throbbed with a pain, and he shook his hand gently while watching the store and thinking about his son Richard.

  It was not the fact that Richard was a homosexual, or that he believed in living an open life style that made their public meetings an excruciating exercise in humiliation. Nor did his problem with his son have anything to do with his first wife’s insistence that Richard’s sexual inclination was his father’s fault, or with his subsequent wives’ most common parting observation that the son was a better man than the father. What tortured him about his son was his passionate belief in himself as an artist, to the exclusion of practical, everyday needs. Richard never sold anything, yet believed with child-like innocence that his work would succeed. So many conversations between them ended in fights over Richard’s failures, and his son always seemed to reserve all the aggressiveness and viciousness he might have applied to better himself for use against his father during the fiercest of those arguments.


  Marvin winced at the wound, sore and bleeding like his smashed hand, that separated him from his son. As if at twenty-two, Richard knew enough about life to contribute anything to the world through his sculptures. Always calling desperately for money or to bum a meal even after a terrible fight, as if it had never happened or worse, didn’t matter. His son was in love with the idea of creating, of capturing pain and chaos with crude constructs made from industrial debris. Shapes and shadows turned his head even when they were walking together on the street. But he had no talent, as far as Marvin could see. And no sense.

  Richard was a victim waiting to be exploited, wearing his heart on his sleeve, believing everything good his friends ever said about his work, about his choices. And honest, as if mailing back a lost wallet, with money still in it, to its owner was reward enough in itself. No sense for what was practical. No sense of survival. He had even refused job opportunities with contractors, sweet no-show jobs that would have at least paid the rent.

  Marvin wasn’t quite sure what Richard did to pay the rent. They had talked about AIDS and Marvin was satisfied that his son knew all there was to know about the disease and the risks in his community for catching it. But what good was knowledge when the child was so eager to trust?

  Perhaps he knew the man he had been following from Richard. A faint connection sparked to life. Was the man an agent, a collector once introduced to him at a gallery? Someone he had noticed showing interest in his son? A closet gay secretly lusting for Richard?

  Rage burst through his thoughts like a firework shell. He fought for control and heard himself moan. Finally, he spat and pushed his good hand against the wall beside him, feeling powerful enough to knock the building down.