Corridor Man

by Mick James

  “Mr. Montcreff is downstairs. He’d like to see you, should probably bring your car keys.”

  “My car keys?”

  “Now, he don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  They rode the elevator down to the garage level. Neither of them spoke on the way down. When the doors opened Bobby saw the black SUV pulled into the parking spot next to his Mercedes. The front passenger door opened and a thick-necked thug stepped out of the vehicle, walked to the rear and opened the rear hatch.

  Hippo gave Bobby a push from behind and they headed toward the vehicles. As they drew closer the window on the back seat lowered and Morris Montcreff looked out at Bobby.

  “Glad you could join us, Mr. Custer. Need some of your help, your expertise as it were. Would you mind opening your trunk?”

  “The trunk, to my car?”

  “Yes, the Mercedes, the white vehicle just next to us. Would you mind terribly? We need your help.”

  “Sure, sure, not a problem Mr. Montcreff, no problem at all.” Bobby said hurrying over to the Mercedes, he clicked the unlock button on his keys, the lights blinked in time to the two quiet honks of the horn and the trunk rose up.”

  “Very well, Dennis,” Montcreff called and the thick-necked thug at the rear of the vehicle hoisted a black trash bag out of the rear of the car and half swung the bag into the trunk of the Mercedes. From the way he carried it and the thump it made as it settled into the vehicle it held some weight.

  “What, what is this?”

  “All in a day’s work, Custer, all in a day’s work.” Montcreff said just as the thug swung a second bag into the trunk.

  Bobby shook his head and looked at Montcreff, afraid to ask anything else.

  The thug placed a third bag in the trunk, this one substantially lighter. He laid it down somewhat gently, then carefully rolled the sides of the black plastic bag down. He kept his arm outstretched as if he were trying to remain as far away as possible from whatever the contents were.

  “Go ahead, Custer, take a peek at your handiwork,” Montcreff chuckled.

  Bobby slowly edged over toward the bag the thug held open, taking half steps and leaning forward in an effort to remain as far away as physically possible.

  Hippo sudden stormed in from behind, grabbed him by the arm and slammed him into the rear of the Mercedes.

  The thug held the bag open and Bobby glanced in at Prez’s head. There was a hole roughly between his eyes, slightly off center and up toward the left by just a bit. The upper back portion of his skull was gone.

  Bobby felt his legs begin to shake and then fail him altogether as he dropped to the floor of the garage, bouncing his head off the rear of the car as he went down. He landed on all fours, took a deep breath in an attempt to calm his stomach and vomited.

  “Jesus Christ,” the thug shouted and jumped out of the way.

  Hippo and Montcreff chuckled.

  Bobby coughed, spit a couple of times, then looked up at Montcreff smiling out the window. The thug was just climbing back into the front seat, grumbling, “Stupid bastard almost got my shoes.”

  “Appreciate you cleaning up this little matter, Custer. I’ll expect a call from you first thing in the morning.”

  “But what am I supposed to do with….”

  “We’ll chat tomorrow,” Montcreff said, then raised his window and the SUV drove off.

  “Thanks for your help,” Hippo said. He reached inside his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and took a quick picture of Bobby kneeling on the floor of the garage next to his Mercedes. The hand on a severed arm hung out of one of the black plastic bags. “Better hurry, with this hot weather he’s gonna start to smell like shit.”

  “Oh yeah, one other thing, you get any upstanding citizen sort of ideas,” Hippo said and pressed the screen on his phone a couple of times and held it up so Bobby could hear. It wasn’t the clearest recording, somewhat scratchy, but unfortunately, there wasn’t any question.

  “I’ve got that address for you,” Bobby’s voice said, then read off the address. “Here’s the license number on his SUV, it’s black with chrome wheel rims, the kind that spin. You want his cellphone number?”

  “Give it to me.”

  Bobby’s voice reeled off the number, Hippo’s voice repeated it.

  “That’s it,” Bobby said. “I should tell you the cops might be looking for him, too. I guess he got some cop’s wife strung out, some ex-junkie who got herself raped, robbed, traded her car for another fix. Ended up in the hospital, I hear she’s back in rehab now. Anyway just make sure the cops aren’t watching him.”

  “Are they, watching him?”

  “Not that I’m aware, they may not even know about him, yet. But they will sooner or later, just make sure it’s not sooner.”

  “‘Preciate the heads up.” Hippo chuckled then clicked off his phone and looked down at Bobby. “Guess we sort of got you by the balls. Better get this shit cleaned up, then call Mr. Montcreff in the morning, and you know he don’t like waiting.”

  With that Hippo walked back to the elevator, stepped inside and disappeared.

  Bobby looked at the black trash bags stuffed with Prez’s head and body parts in the trunk of the Mercedes and wondered what in the hell he was going to do?

  The End

  Sorry to leave you hanging, but you’ll find the first chapters of Corridor Man 2, Opportunity Knocks, following this brief message. Check it out and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Bobby’s up to, that is, if he can get out of this mess.

  Mick James

  Corridor Man 2

  Opportunity Knocks

  Chapter One

  Bobby checked his forehead in the rearview mirror as he pulled onto the interstate and headed east. The goose egg was red, throbbed in time to his racing heartbeat, felt like it was still growing and frankly, was the least of his problems right now.

  He had no idea where he was going. He just knew that he had to get out of town and dispose of the cargo in the trunk of his car. For the umpteenth time he replayed the evening’s events, Hippo suddenly appearing in his apartment and dragging him down to the underground parking level. A smiling Morris Montcreff lowering the window in the SUV, asking Bobby for help and then telling him to open the trunk on his Mercedes. That thug loading the black trash bags into Bobby’s trunk and holding one of the bags open so Bobby could get a good close look at Prez’s severed head. Last but not least, there was Prez’s head with a perfectly round bullet hole in his forehead and the back of his skull blown off.

  Bobby had lost it at that point and bounced his forehead off the rear of the car as he’d momentarily fainted and then threw up. He smacked his lips as he passed the 694 interchange, then ran his tongue over his teeth still tasting a hint of acrid vomit.

  He was suddenly on the bridge over the St. Croix River heading into Wisconsin and he nervously joked to himself that it was a federal crime to transport trash bags filled with body parts across state lines.

  He drove past Hudson, the River Falls exit, an hour later past the three exits leading into Eau Claire. He continued south for another hour, seemingly on auto-pilot before he pulled off the interstate and into a twenty-four hour truck stop to refuel. He went inside to pay cash in advance rather than leave a credit card trail. While he was waiting to pay he spied a children’s display; beach towels, little metal shovels and sand buckets. He grabbed three buckets and shovels and placed them on the counter.

  “Got kids?” The cashier asked, taking Bobby’s cash in her hand.

  “Yeah, three, little girls. Pack of Marlboro’s and some matches, too please.”

  “They’ll love it, the buckets, supposed to be a perfect weekend for the beach,” she said, grabbed the cigarettes, rang up his sale and handed him the change.

  Bobby grabbed the pails and little shovels, the cigarettes, along with a pack of matches and hurried back to his car. He pulled a copy of the Milwaukee Journal from the trash can next to the gas pump then got behind the wheel and
drove away.

  Rather than pull back on the interstate he headed west along the county road then took a right onto a gravel road two miles later. He drove on for a few minutes until he reached a point where he was almost out of sight of any farmhouse lights and turned onto another gravel road that appeared less traveled.

  About a mile later he passed what looked like an abandoned farm house. The fields around it were planted with corn that looked almost ready to harvest, although Bobby didn’t really have a clue.

  The house was two stories tall with a peaked roof and a lot of peeling paint. The middle of the front porch sagged a good four feet where one of the posts was missing. The windows all appeared to be broken and a portion of the chimney had fallen onto the roof. He turned off his headlights and slowly drove up the overgrown drive to the rear of the house. Behind the house and across a weedy patch the walls of a barn had fallen in on one another. What was left of the roof had collapsed on top.

  Bobby stepped out of his car and approached the rubble. Trees and brush grew up in the spaces between the ancient siding boards and timbers that had to be at least a hundred years old. What had been the door to a hayloft sat just a few feet in from the edge of the rubble.

  Bobby grabbed the newspaper, tore the pages apart and crumpled them into the hayloft opening then added small bits of siding. The lumber was light, dry and easy to break across his knee. He built a small pyramid over the crumbled newspaper then hurried back to his car and opened the trunk. He hoisted the heaviest bag out of the trunk and dragged it over to the pyramid, then ran back and pulled out the second bag, leaving only the bag containing Prez’s head in the trunk.

  He used some pages from the paper as a protective pad and pulled first an arm, then a foot, next a hand until he had everything except Prez’s head arraigned around the small pyramid. He stacked larger and larger boards and timbers over the body parts until he had constructed a pyre a good seven to eight feet high. He bent over, struck a match and lit the paper.

  Within a minute the wood began crackling, at eight minutes the fire was beginning to roar, quickly spreading to other areas of the barn rubble as Bobby made his way back to the county road.

  He guessed it would be a volunteer fire department that would respond. They wouldn’t be there for at least a half hour and then, only if someone had called. If they did arrive, hopefully they’d take a look around, make sure the fire didn’t reach the abandoned house and probably just let the thing burn.

  Chapter Two

  He pulled onto the interstate and headed back toward St. Paul. An hour later he took the second Eau Claire exit and pulled into the Best Western parking lot right along the interstate. There was what looked like a garage on the far side of the parking lot, away from the office and next to some sort of tool shed. Bobby parked in the lot, grabbed the metal sand shovels and made his way around the shed walking toward the interstate.

  The area behind the garage held a line of trees with brush and prairie grass which seemed perfect. The last thing he wanted was something tended by the state highway department. It was a cloudless night and he walked out toward the interstate, until he was at the edge of the shadows and began to dig. The handle broke off the first shovel at about ten inches, the second broke a few inches later, then ever so cautiously he dug another six to eight inches.

  He hurried back to his car, but had to wait at the corner of the shed while some drunk staggered up to a side door entrance to the motel then fumbled with the electronic lock for the next five minutes.

  Once he felt it was all clear Bobby grabbed the bag holding Prez’s head and ran back to the hole he’d dug. He rolled the head out of the bag and into the hole where it landed face down and he began to shovel the dirt he’d excavated back in the hole. The first shovelful filled the section the size of his fist where Prez’s skull had been blown off and in just a few minutes the hole was filled. Bobby carefully replanted the prairie grass he’d dug out not twenty minutes before, stomping it down with his foot and envisioning Prez’s face being ground into the soil almost two feet below.

  He made a right turn out of the parking lot and saw the interstate exit up ahead. A moment later he pulled over so the flashing lights coming up in his rearview mirror could pass by, but felt his heart jump as the vehicle pulled in behind him and flashed a large spotlight on the Mercedes.

  Between the spotlight and the flashing lights on top of the car Bobby couldn’t tell what the make or the color was. A large figure eventually stepped out, squared a Smokey the Bear hat on his head and headed toward the Mercedes. Bobby lowered the driver’s side window then placed his hands in plain sight on the steering wheel.

  “Good morning, sir. How are you doing?”

  “Fine thank you, is there a problem, Officer?”

  “Did you happen to see that stop sign?”

  “Stop sign?”

  “Coming out of the Best Western parking lot. It’s been there for sixteen years and you drove right through it.”

  “Sorry, no sir, I guess I didn’t see it.”

  “You staying there, at the Best Western?”

  “Actually, no I’m not. I’m driving back to the twin cities, I was feeling tired so I just came off the interstate and pulled into that parking lot to close my eyes for a bit.”

  The patrolman nodded, focused briefly on the goose egg on Bobby’s forehead then said, “Have you been drinking, sir?”

  “I had a glass of wine about eight o’clock last night.”

  “Just the one?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He seemed to think about that for a moment. “May I see your driver’s license?”

  “It’s in my wallet in my back pocket, I’ll have to get it out.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Bobby pulled his wallet out of his pocket, then pulled the license out of the wallet and handed it to the patrolman.

  “Humpf, Custer, any relation?”

  “No, thankfully. If I was, I probably wouldn’t be here,” Bobby said and smiled.

  The patrolman looked at Bobby, and a smile slowly spread across his face. “Yeah, I guess that would be right. Okay, Mr. Custer, just a verbal warning this morning, let’s watch those stop signs, drive careful and enjoy your time in Wisconsin,” he said then handed the driver’s license to Bobby and walked back to his car.

  Bobby felt like he was going to throw up. From where he sat he could almost see the area off to the right where he’d just buried Prez’s severed head a few minutes ago. Just an hour and a half south of here he’d burnt Prez’s body in a pile of barn rubble.

  The patrol car sat there for a long moment before the spot light was turned off and then the flashing lights went off. A few seconds later the vehicle made a quick U turn and headed up the road. Bobby watched until the tail lights disappeared over a hill before he put the Mercedes in drive and stayed five miles under the speed limit for the rest of his drive home.

  He tossed the trash bags in a dumpster at a construction site close to downtown then made his way home, being careful not to speed. He threw his clothes in the washer and scrubbed his shoes. His heart was still pounding after he showered and shaved. On the way into the office he dropped the shoes and cleaned clothes in a donation box outside a Lutheran church. He was sitting at his desk still trying to calm down just before seven.

  Chapter Three

  At nine he phoned Morris Montcreff.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Montcreff, just wanted to let you know I was able to attend to that small problem you mentioned yesterday evening.”

  “Were you now?”

  “Yes sir, not a worry.”

  “Very well, Thank you, Bobby. I must say initially I had my doubts, but I’m impressed. Of course we’ll have to wait and see if there are any loose ends.”

  “I can assure you, there won’t be.”

  “I should hope not,” he didn’t have to add, “for your sake.” “Anything else?”

  “No sir, you had said you wanted me to ch
eck in this morning, that’s all I’m doing.”

  “Thank you,” Montcreff said and hung up.

  Bobby sat staring at the empty walls in his small office and took a series of deep breaths until he could feel his heart rate gradually begin to slow down. Had it been a test? An attempt to get him out of the way? Or maybe it was just a warning. What he wanted to do was run home and lock the door, but then what would that accomplish? Hippo apparently had a key.

  He phoned Angie’s extension.

  “This is Angie,” she answered sounding very businesslike.

  “Hey Angie, Bobby how’s my favorite person in records?”

  “Fine thanks, what do you need?”

  Out late last night or just a fight with your husband? he wondered. “I’d like to review those Montcreff files, the last two from yesterday and maybe the next three or four.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, that should do it.”

  “I’ll have them to you in the next few minutes,” she said and hung up.

  Not a happy camper he thought then went back to fixating on his scenic drive through the wilds of Wisconsin last night and Morris Montcreff.

  Angie didn’t bother to knock a few minutes later. She simply pushed the door open with her hip and stepped into his office carrying a two foot stack of green accordion files which she carefully set on the edge of his desk.

  “Anything else?” she said and Bobby noticed she stared for just the briefest of moments at the swollen bruise on his forehead.

  “No, this is more than enough. You okay, Angie?”

  “Why, do you think I’m doing a lousy job, too?”

  “Hey, take it easy. You’ve done nothing but help me. What’s wrong?”

  “Why should anything have to be wrong?”