Psycho ebook EPUB

by John Griffin

“Have you ever had revenge like this?” Solomon asked.

  “Once,” Gertrude said. “A few years back I ran into a man at a coffee shop who had raped me when I was sixteen. He was twenty-two at the time, a college tutor. My parents wanted me to learn English. He taught me. He raped me the first time in my third lesson. The last time was our last lesson, fifty sessions later. So I saw him when I was visiting home in a coffee shop. He came up and said hi to me. He asked me how I have been. And it was like he owned me. So I made a call, and I followed him out of the café and beat him to death with a cricket bat, and then got picked up and left the country before they found the body. Haven’t been home since.”

  “Worth it?”

  “The revenge? No. The lesson it taught me about forgiveness? Yes.”

  “Forgiveness?” Solomon asked, astonished.

  “I kept expecting to feel healed, to have expunged this dark secret of mine and to feel vengeance. But it never came. I still hated him. I still wanted to kill him — but there he was, dead already, and I got to do it myself, even. I got to see the fear in his eyes and know that he knew that I was doing it, and that he knew why I was doing it. So I learned about forgiveness. It is not about forgiving the other person. Fuck them. It is about not carrying around your hate. It is about giving yourself permission to move on with your life so that one person and all the awful things they did to you don’t define who you are.”

  Her phone rang. She picked it up and in fluent Russian had a brief conversation, mostly agreeing and acknowledging what she was being told. “We have terms,” she said as she hung up. “Justin landed at Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in Newark Bay on August 15th. He was on a ship flagged from Cayman Islands called the Nautilus, in a container marked JFKU3976482.”

  “Any point in me going to check that out?” Solomon asked.

  “The container is still there. We may have cleaned it, maybe not. Maybe you find something? Probably you find nothing. But as soon as we open the container, our contract is finished and we don’t know what he did from there. So what are you going to do?”

  Solomon stood, shaking Gertrude’s hand as she stood. “I’m going to follow the evidence,” he said.

  Solomon stepped into the warehouse. Dim lamps hung fifty feet up. Dirt, grit, grime, and water from the day’s rain trailed in and out of the open doorway. He followed an impish man with a limp and a broad, graying neck beard. “Lucky,” the man said as he continued along midway into the warehouse. “Very lucky. This one is on the ground.”

  Solomon smiled. “Not luck,” he said quietly. “Design.”

  The man took a pair of bolt cutters and cut the lock on the door. Solomon took his flashlight and turned it on, looking inside. He turned back to the man and tried to hand him fifty dollars.

  “No charge for the help,” the man said, waving him off.

  “Not for your help,” Solomon said. “For your discretion.”

  “Discretion’s worth double,” the man said, smiling, before shouldering his bolt cutters and leaving.

  Solomon put the money back into his pocket. He turned and stepped into the container. Standing in the doorway, he trained his flashlight around the interior. On his right was a thin mattress and a blanket. On his left was a bucket. Throughout were empty bottles of water and wrappers from energy bars. He walked toward the mattress first, turning it over, inspecting the blanket. He sat on it. It was moist. He absently picked up one of the wrappers and read the label. It was written in German, but there was an English translation as well as French, Spanish, and Italian and half a dozen other languages he didn’t recognize.

  His phone rang. He took it from his pocket and looked at the screen, and then answered. “So this is how the other half lives?”

  “How did you know?” Justin asked.

  “Unknown caller. I don’t get calls from unknown callers unless they are telemarketers. And honestly, it would have been funny if you were a telemarketer and I answered like that. But mostly, I figured you would be watching this container.”

  “Is it alright for me to say that I expected you to have found this a little earlier? And to have found Paulie?”

  “You can say almost anything. You know it doesn’t matter. And you and I both know why I’m here.”

  “Why’s that?” Justin asked.

  “It’s the game, Justin. I’m here for the clue. I’m here for the next step to finding Hyacinth.”

  “Oh, it’s a great deal worse than that,” Justin said.

  “You know, Justin, you don’t need to threaten my life if you want to talk. Just tell me where you are, and you will never have to worry about being lonely again.”

  “I’m not lonely.”

  Solomon’s phone buzzed. He took it from his ear and looked at the picture that had arrived in his texts. It was Hyacinth. She was unconscious, and Solomon could see the intravenous in her arm. Solomon took a deep breath.

  “Not too many of those in here,” Justin said.

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  “I don’t see the point,” Justin said. “You’re late. You’re not going to have time to find us at this rate. Might as well go home to your island palace in the sea.”

  “I live at the Y,” Solomon said.

  “Sure,” Justin said. “And I didn’t piss on your father’s painting.”

  “You didn’t,” Solomon said.

  “No, that’s a masterpiece. I’m not a monster. That’s not my game.”

  “How much time do I have?” Solomon said.

  “Two days for sure,” Justin replied. “Three, tops. I’d say if you aren’t knocking on my door in seventy-two hours, you should absolutely put a bullet into your brain if you want Hyacinth to have a chance at avoiding brain death, like what’s-her-name.”

  “Juanita.”

  “Juanita. Yes. I should have remembered. I have a picture of her right here. Must have been hard for her mother to pull the plug. Such a difficult decision. And for it to be driven by finances — by the fact that she didn’t have the right insurance. Can you believe the state of our country? And they call me Psycho.”

  Solomon stood and walked over to the door, drawing his weapon and putting the gun at his side in his hand as he exited the container. “We’re done here?”

  “Yes,” Justin said, sounding disappointed. He hung up.

  Solomon went back out of the docks and found a taxi. In the car, he took out his cell and found a picture of Juanita sitting next to her mother, Maria. In his memory, Solomon sat across from Maria at a table for two at Les Halles. He was reviewing the wine list. Maria looked around the room. She sat uncomfortably and shifted uneasily. Solomon put the wine list down. “It’s got to be hard,” he said, “and I don’t expect you to forget about your daughter, but if you’re not enjoying yourself, if it is too much, we can go.” He reached out and held her hand.

  “It’s not that,” Maria replied. “Not entirely. It’s just that this place feels oppressive. That’s the wrong word. Impressive, but beyond me? I’ve never been at a place so nice. I’ve never paid forty dollars for a steak.”

  “I’ve never paid less,” Solomon said, smiling.

  Maria laughed. “The wood, the leather, the seats, and the bar. Look at all those expensive wines and booze. Every bottle up there is probably like fifty bucks. Not to mention the art. It’s intimidating.”

  Solomon looked above Maria. “What do you think of that one?”

  She turned around and look at the picture. It was a cow wearing a top hat. The picture was black and white. “I don’t get it. But it is probably expensive.”

  “Too expensive,” Solomon replied. “They probably paid a thousand dollars for it. But it’s just a print, and a silly one at that. The frame is worth more than the actual picture. And that one?” Solomon said, nodding to his left.

  “An old advertisement for camem
bert cheese?” Maria said.

  “Exactly,” Solomon said. “That’s not art. It’s what people without art put on the walls to seem worldlier than they are. Or if you don’t feel like sounding like a pretentious asshole like I just did, you could say it isn’t art, it’s decoration.”

  “And what do you have on your walls, Sol?” Maria asked.

  Solomon looked at her, down at her breasts spilling out of her red dress and back up at her brown eyes. He smiled. “I will take you back to my apartment later tonight and show you.”

  Maria smiled.

  Later, Solomon opened the door to his apartment and let Maria walk through first. The apartment was mostly empty. There was a couch covered with a brown sheet and a large white tag in the middle of the living room. Two rolled-up, colorful carpets were leaned against the wall on the left. Opposite those was a row of five frames, each covered and tagged themselves. “The art is on your right,” Solomon said.

  “Moving?” Maria asked.

  “Yes,” Solomon said.

  The two removed their shoes and their coats, placing them on the ground near the door. Solomon led Maria to the row of bagged frames. “I can’t open them,” Solomon said, “as they have already been tagged and bagged by the insurance guy. But I can tell you what they are.”

  Solomon pointed at the piece furthest from the wall. “This is called A Battleship Loading Ammunition.”

  “Is that the name or what it is?” Maria asked.

  “For most real art, it’s one in the same. It is by William Lionel Wylie.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Maria said.

  “Most people haven’t. That’s why it is only worth about eight thousand dollars or so.”

  “That’s a lot for a print,” Maria said.

  “It’s … not a print.” Solomon said. “These are all originals. Real art.”

  “Oh.”

  “This next one is by George Condo. It’s untitled. It is technically a collage.”

  “Oh,” Maria said. “Like, cut-up magazines?”

  “No,” Solomon said. “A lot of different images on the same piece, trying to tell a story.”

  “What’s the story?” Maria asked.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Solomon said. “I inherited my interest from my father and grandfather, but I don’t have the passion. I know the value, though.”

  “What is this worth?” Maria asked.

  “About twenty-five grand,” Solomon said. “The next is called Summer by Guido Katol. Two kids hanging out in summer. It was about thirty thousand.”

  “You paid that much for art?” Maria asked.

  “No,” Solomon said. “I paid much, much less. This one, the Katol, sold for 122 percent above the estimate at auction last week. And I bought it for a fraction of that a decade ago. And the next,” Solomon said excitedly, carefully pushing the first three out of the way and exposing the plain brown paper-wrapped exterior of the fourth painting. “This is a still life called Still Life with Pomegranate. Painted relatively recently, 1990. Sold for one hundred thousand.”

  “Wow,” Maria said.

  “But this last, this surprised even me. By a Chinese artist named Zhou Chunya. The name is really simple — 4 Green Dogs. Beautiful and playful. I don’t do it justice. Sold for about four hundred thousand.”

  “You sold all of these?” Maria asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why? You sound proud of them.”

  “I’m proud that I made good investments. My father and grandfather would be proud.”

  “Then why did you sell them? Because you are moving?”

  Solomon put the pieces back where they were, leaning against each other and supported by the wall. “I sold them for Juanita. I sold them to pay her hospital bills.”

  Maria gasped. “The insurance? They said…”

  “It ran out. I kept it going, kept paying. Had to sell a few paintings — so what? It’s a life. It’s worth more than paintings. My father and grandfather taught me that, too. Taught me that they left every painting they had gathered, an entire life of paintings and valuables behind and took only what mattered. And that wasn’t paintings. That wasn’t money. That was family. That was people. Everything else can be replaced, and they came here and built a new life and replaced everything they could.”

  “Why?” Maria asked.

  “Because I couldn’t save her. Because I couldn’t get there in time, and I couldn’t catch her killer. Because she shouldn’t die. Because fuck him, he shouldn’t be allowed to think he took her life.”

  Solomon was shaking. He turned away from Maria and asked if she wanted a drink. She came up behind him and embraced him. He turned around in her arms and they kissed.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save your daughter,” Solomon said.

  “You gave her life. For only a month, but a life. You let her find a better end. And you saved me, Sol. You saved me, and that’s enough.”

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Justin

  Justin’s first few killings years earlier were not easy. Around a dozen or so into the testing phase, the sleeper shuffled and rolled. The paper he was sleeping on crumpled noisily; the sound added to the constant beeping of the heartbeat monitor. He threw his hand up to his bearded face as if to scratch but stopped, his thumb and finger now resting on his mouth. Justin was standing on a stepladder nearby and stopped moving, turning his head at the noise. He watched the sleeper for another minute before continuing his search along the walls of the room.

  The only source of light was a floodlight hooked up to a generator. Justin was running his hand along the plastic sheets covering the wall. At every divot or crack he would stop and cover it with tape. He stepped down off the ladder, moved it precisely one foot to his right, and then repeated the process of checking the wall for leaks. The sleeper shuffled again, and Justin came down off the ladder, perturbed. He kneeled on the ground next to the sleeper, careful not to rip the plastic sheeting. He picked up a clear bottle marked Propofol 10mg/ml and drew four milliliters into a syringe, which he then injected into the peripheral catheter.

  Justin counted to twenty and watched the heartbeat monitor. The sleeper relaxed. The heartbeat slowed, and then crashed.

  Justin stood, frustrated. He kicked the dead man twice. “Lucky fucker,” he said. “You have no idea what I had in store for you.”

  He rolled the body in the paper and taped it shut. He lifted it onto a dolly nearby. He opened the door, and sunlight filled the room. Justin took a moment for his eyes to adjust and then rolled the body out of the shed and into the woods, where an empty grave was waiting. He dumped the body onto six others in the open pit and covered it with a tarpaulin and then returned the dolly to the shed, shutting the dull gray door and locking it behind him. He walked toward the log cabin and climbed the back stairs thirty feet to the back door. Inside were ten people drinking.

  One of them, a young man wearing a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, was cooking in the open concept kitchen. “Justin!” he called out. “How are the chores coming? Still painting?”

  “Sealing,” Justin said. “I need to get that shed waterproofed before winter, or my dad will kill me.”

  “Not likely,” said a pretty girl sitting on the couch.

  “No, not likely,” Justin replied. “But he will absolutely stop letting me have friends over to the cottage if I don’t do the small things he asks me to do.”

  “Don’t you have people for this?” said the guy in the plaid shirt. “My dad has people for this kind of shit.”

  “We’ve got people for everything but the cottage,” Justin said. “It’s the one place my dad goes to get away from people. I’ve gotta head into town. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Justin left his guests to their drinking and got into his Mercedes SL500 and drove back to New York. He parked his car i
n the garage underneath his apartment building. He left and got into the subway, coming up at the 118th station. A block east he went into another garage and found a van painted with the NYCCAH logo. He took a single key out of his pocket, slipped it into the keyhole, and opened the door, using the same key to start the engine.

  He drove out of the parking garage and went six blocks north, finding a homeless man. The man was sleeping under a streetlight shining a dim yellow. The man stood as the van pulled up and then approached the van. Justin got out and went around the back, opening the two swinging doors. Justin handed the man a package that contained a sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and some water. “Got a place to stay tonight?” Justin asked as he handed over the package.

  “No,” the man said.

  “Want one?” Justin asked. “There’s a new church up on Potter that has openings. I can call ahead and hold one for you.”

  “Yeah, sure, man,” the homeless man said.

  Justin smiled. “Get in the back.” There was a bench there, and the man sat, not bothering with the seatbelt. Justin started driving. “Want any pain meds or anything?”

  “Sure,” the man said.

  Justin passed back a bottle of Advil. The homeless man took a few pills and swallowed them with water, passing out a few minutes later. Justin smiled and drove the rest of the way back to his cottage. He backed the van down the hill, aligning it so the door opened into the pit. He got out of the van and went around the back, opening the doors. He slapped the homeless man a few times to wake him.

  “We at Potter yet?” the man said.

  “Did you even know you passed out?” Justin asked, laughing.

  The homeless man laughed. “Not really, no.”

  They shared a laugh and then Justin said, “There is no Potter.”

  “No room? Oh, well. Thanks, man.” The man looked disappointed.

  “No. There’s no church on Potter. There never was.” Justin stepped away from the door, and the man saw the pile of bodies. He jumped back into the van, swearing. Justin shot him with a Taser and hit the trigger, exhaling with satisfaction. “That makes it worth it, you know?” he said, dragging the frozen but conscious man out of the van and toward the shed. “You know, I’ve been having a terrible week. Started well. Suffocated one of your friends — fuck, I assume you all know each other, but I guess it’s possible you don’t. Left him in a coffin on Monday. That was boring. Picked up another one of you on Wednesday and was trying out this shed for the first time. By Friday, tonight, that fucker was still alive. I mean, there should have only been a few hours of air in there. Maybe a day. I went over everything twice.”