The Evil That Men Do

by Robert Gleason

  The blast was frighteningly loud, but it was worth the horrendous ringing in his ears.

  For when he stood up, Tower was … gone.

  Tower would never come back to haunt him.

  The man would never bother Putilov again.

  The realization brought tears of joy to his eyes.

  Putilov was free! Free!

  * * *

  “Comrade,” Tower was shouting into the speakerphone, “are you there? You disappeared.”

  Slowly picking himself up off the floor, he sat back down at his desk.

  “Yes, I’m here. What was it you asked?”

  “I asked if you were doin’ Anna P.? Were you banging that booty? Man, she was scorchin’. You sure as shit should have gotten some of that before you had her hit. It’s a code of honor with me. I never let good pussy to go to waste. Hell, I’d have thrown a fuck into her—just to give her something to remember me by—and then had her aced. She could have thought about that final hip action just as she was staring into her killer’s ice-cold eyes and watching the hammer fall. I would have liked that. I would have wanted her last memory—just before the lights went out—to be of my dick. In fact, Putie, that thought is getting me turned on right now, even as we speak. Maybe I ought to go and, you know, as we say in the States: take care of business. Strike while the old branding iron is … hot. And, boy, Putie, the old Jim Iron is hotter than hellfire and brimstone right now.”

  Tower was truly unendurable, utterly relentless and would never let up. When Putilov had KGB General Oleg Erovinkin murdered, Tower would not stop with the calls. He never missed an opportunity to broadcast that one on his Skype, thundering his thanks and congratulations on a fucking phone line!

  But then come to think of it, Erovinkin had pissed Putilov off as well …

  * * *

  Erovinkin had been in charge of discrediting Tower’s political opponent during Tower’s last presidential election, and the general had succeeded brilliantly. Even though the woman handily won the popular American presidential vote, Erovinkin had stolen the election from the former secretary of state in those swing states like a thief in the night.

  Unfortunately for Putilov, the asshole general had gotten an attack of conscience and had ratted his boss’s entire operation out to the English Secret Service. When the general had sent former MI6 agent Conrad Stillman an explosive dossier on Putilov’s political disinformation campaign against Tower’s female presidential opponent, he’d also thrown in shocking sexual materials—including photographs and DVDs—that Putilov had compiled on Tower during the moron’s business/political trips to Moscow. In bed, Tower was a pervert of near–Hannibal Lecter proportions, and he’d had the deplorable judgment to indulge his insane tastes in Russian hotel suites with Russian prostitutes … who worked for Putilov! Tower had, among other things, ordered leather-clad diesel dykes to ram his derrière with strap-ons, had paid hookers extra to treat him to face-first, open-mouthed “golden showers” and had participated in certain sadonecrophilic debaucheries that left Tower oinking like a pig and bleating like a sheep, bestial perversions so horrifyingly vile, so indescribably deranged, that even Putilov had never heard of them.

  Putilov was still in shock. As a KGB operative, he thought he’d seen and heard of anything—everything that was disgustingly and sexually sick. But no one had ever heard of anyone anywhere who matched Tower for pure concentrated unmitigated degeneracy.

  Well the good news was that Putilov had in his possession digitized audiovisual recordings of every twisted repulsive second of Tower’s perverted sex acts.

  Still Putilov was outraged that the general had gone public with the Russian president’s own personal file on Tower. He had deemed Tower’s sex file to be his own exclusive property and had grown attached to it. Putilov had whiled away many a lonely sleepless night studying those pathologically pornographic photos and watching DVDs of that cretin being humiliated in bed by leather-masked prostitutes of indeterminate gender, ethnicity and even species. Putilov had rollicked with laughter, his spirit soaring with pure transcendent delight, each time Tower abased himself in plain view of Putilov’s hidden cameras. But an indispensable part of Putilov’s thrill was the secret singularity of his experience. Putilov—and no one else—got to watch as Tower revealed himself to be the demented deviant and ludicrous lunatic that he truly was. Only Putilov knew the sheer excitation of seeing Tower so unmistakably unmasked and so grossly and grotesquely exposed.

  He did not and would not ever, ever share it with the world.

  But then the general double-crossed him—giving it to a retired MI6 spy who had leaked a description of the materials to the press.

  That the cowardly London news organization reported only the substance of the story and refused to release the photos or DVD of Tower in full flagrante delicto in no way alleviated Putilov’s rage. Putilov knew that because of Erovinkin, the truth would one day get out, and then everyone would know—not just Putilov.

  When Putilov first learned of the general’s betrayal, he had immediately had him killed and seen to it that he died a particularly painful death in the backseat of the general’s own Lexus. Putilov had him killed with poisons so diabolically lethal, so awesomely agonizing, so impossibly difficult to detect that he doubted anyone would ever accurately determine the man’s cause of death—only that the general had suffered hell’s most hideous and terrifying tortures before he’d finally and gratefully succumbed.

  Had Agent Stillman not immediately gone into hiding, Putilov would have taken care of him too, former MI6 agent or not. In fact, he was still committed to finalizing that piece of unfinished business. Some things you just don’t let slide, Putilov thought to himself bitterly. In Putilov’s line of work it was imperative that people knew no one was beyond his reach.

  That asshole comic, Danny McMahon, was learning the hard way that fucking with Putilov and his good friends Kamal and Waheed was terminally … unwise.

  And terminally was indeed the operative word.

  He could not wait until the day came when he could take care of Tower too.

  * * *

  Putilov poured himself a cup of tea. It didn’t help. His hands still shook, and he still ground his teeth in fury. Would he ever again know peace? No, J. T. Tower had robbed him of any bit of serenity he might have had, was filling him with an implacable anger that he could no longer contain, which was drastically distorting his judgment, finally forcing Putilov into the jaws of the krok. Desomorphine was the only thing that calmed his jangled nerves and soothed his savagely troubled soul.

  At times like this, he actually wanted to kill Tower with his bare hands—strangle him and at the very end snap his neck or maybe just beat him to death with a shovel like he’d done so many times to those rats in that slum apartment.

  But with Tower, he’d make the beating slower, more excruciating, more … unbearable.

  Where did Tower get off with that know-it-all attitude? How could Tower ever comprehend what it was to be Mikhail Ivanovich Putilov?

  Once again Putilov found himself returning to that small slum tenement overrun with its armies of rats. What could Tower ever know about fighting hordes of rodents in four crowded rooms? The endless hours spent stalking them, waiting for them, hitting them with shovels, cracking their necks with his bare hands? What could the spoiled rich kid J. T. Tower ever know about that kind of world, that kind of childhood, that kind of life? Tower would never understand one single thing about Mikhail Ivanovich Putilov.

  Walking over to his desk, he took out a bottle of desomorphine tablets, two tablespoons, a razor blade, his bong and a lighter. He reached into the big bottom drawer and took out the gasoline flask, the ether can and a liter bottle of Everclear—the 190-proof corn liquor distilled by the American firm Luxco, and the strongest commercially made liquor in the world.

  Damn, he’d developed a real fondness for the krok.

  He was starting to dream about getting high off the beast.
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  Was that a bad sign? Putilov wondered.

  He began crushing the pills two at a time between the tablespoons, then chopping up the granules with his razor blade. Filling the bong with the powder, he poured in the Everclear, added some ether, a splatter of gasoline for that extra jolt, and heated the mixture to a rolling boil.

  Man, those fumes smelled good!

  Putting the stem to his mouth, he sucked the steaming drug deep into his lungs.

  Putilov’s eyes rolled back into his head until only the whites showed.

  2

  “What about your savior’s denunciations of M-O-N-E-Y? What do you think He’d say about your beloved ‘democratic capitalism’? His contempt for filthy lucre and money-lending wouldn’t auger well for the free enterprise system. How does the Sermon on the Mount augment the gross global product, bolster the transnational corporate bottom line or put hard currency in my pocket?”

  —Raza Jabarti

  “I still don’t understand why you hate the West so much,” McMahon said to the two women. He was still lying belly-down, glancing up at them from his rack.

  McMahon knew that Rashid was right when he said that the more time his interrogators spent talking, the less time they spent torturing him. And, Jesus, did they love to talk. They were chatty to the point of logorrhea and seemed to enjoy mocking him verbally as much as tormenting him physically.

  “Besides despising your perverse worship of scientific evidence and proven facts?” Raza asked.

  “Yes,” McMahon said.

  “I especially detest your pseudo-concern for the impoverished masses,” Marika said.

  “Indeed,” Raza said.

  “But your religion preaches tithing to the poor, the zakat,” McMahon said. “It’s one of the pillars of your faith.”

  “Yes, we toss the poor nickels and dimes, but we’ve never recommended piling up treasure in heaven instead of here in our earthly world. Our religion has never advocated ‘to each according to his needs, from each according to his means.’ We’ve never advocated a redistribution of wealth as your UN, the EU, Japan, China, Africa, Australia, Latin America, and the U.S. Senate are currently attempting to do.”

  “You would do nothing for those living in dire destitution?” McMahon asked.

  “Oh, they have an important place in Dar-al-Islam,” Marika said. “Our world could not exist without beasts of burden, without hewers of wood and drawers of water.”

  “But what happens when they are too old, sick or too tired to work?” McMahon asked.

  “Why they die, Mr. McMahon.” Marika said. “What do you think they do? Retire to the Costa de Sol and live off the fat of the land?”

  “Why not make them suicide bombers?” McMahon asked, mocking his two tormentors. “You two probably view that occupation as a productive economic profession, no?”

  “I see it as a splendid career opportunity … for numbskulls,” Marika said.

  “After all, even the stupendously stupid should have something productive to do,” Raza said.

  “Tariq,” Marika asked, “we don’t want to ignore you. What would you do about the world’s malnourished masses?”

  Tariq al-Omari looked up. He’d been assiduously honing a shiny, stainless steel scalpel with a whetstone.

  “From my point of view,” Tariq said, looking up from the blade, “the poor get what they deserve. They contribute nothing, so we owe them nothing. In fact, from my point of view, they should all eat shit and die. Were that infeasible, I’d at the very least castrate the morons like steers so they could not breed more morons.” He resumed honing his scalpel, a small, contemplative smile forming on his lips.

  “Fortunately, this is the 21st century, and people won’t stand for it,” McMahon said, his rage overwhelming his better judgement. “People want democracy, and they demand freedom.”

  “The people are told they want freedom and democracy,” Raza said, “but deep down inside they hate it.

  “So few Western leaders understand that simple fact,” Marika said. “Throughout history, every time the people have been given freedom, they quickly and gladly surrender their democratic system of government at the first bump in the road. They turn their freedom over to their clerics, generals, political reactionaries and despots. The freedom, which democracy so unthinkingly forces on the ignorant masses, only serves to anger them. The people don’t want choices. They want to be told what to do. They want us to give them something to believe in. Something, anything—a Cause, a God, a State, a strong leader. If nothing else a brutal, bloody, ugly war. In their hearts, the people seek not the freedom you torture them with, but what we give them. After all, Mr. McMahon, is not the translation of Islam ‘submit’ and ‘surrender’?”

  McMahon looked away, silent.

  “Tariq?” Raza said. “Do you agree?”

  Tariq stopped honing his gelding scalpel. “There is too much at stake for the people of earth to be free. If they choose badly, these Unbelievers will never know the bliss of Paradise; instead they will suffer the fires of hell perpetually. Therefore, we cannot allow people to risk misbelief or moderation, let alone to grant them ‘freedom.’ We must force the right choice on the world. It is better to burn in our cleansing fires here on earth—on the chance that the Unbeliever will convert—instead of burning eternally in Gehenna. Also torturing apostates to death serves as a deterrent to other would-be apostates.”

  “Do you really believe all that shit?” McMahon asked Raza in a half whisper, not wanting to provoke Tariq.

  “God no,” Raza whispered back, “but is it any dumber than subscribing to the Virgin Birth or Christ’s walking on water? What about your savior’s denunciations of M-O-N-E-Y? What do you think He’d say about your beloved ‘democratic capitalism’? His contempt for filthy lucre and money lending wouldn’t auger well for the free enterprise system. How does the Sermon on the Mount augment the gross global product, bolster the transnational corporate bottom line or put hard currency in my pocket?”

  “But the religion you would force on the world is so violent, so terrifying,” McMahon said, “people in my world fear it.”

  “True,” Marika said, “Islam is an infinite fount of violence and terror, which is only one of the many things our people love about it.”

  “That’s not a universally held position,” McMahon pointed out.

  “We’re talking reality, Mr. McMahon,” Raza said, “the natural order of things, the way the world works, not popular opinion. If history teaches us one thing it’s that a leader’s reluctance to employ violence and terror, to crush dissent with overwhelming force will inevitably doom a culture to unrest, rebellion, insurrection, revolution, overthrow and civilizational collapse. A lack of brutal and bloody resolve—of plain, iron-fisted, testicular fortitude—will doom a culture as thoroughly and as quickly as the K-T asteroid strike.”

  “So you feel it’s better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven?” McMahon asked.

  “Absolutely,” Marika said. “We’re in hell already, or haven’t you heard? How is it you once described our movement? You said ‘Islam is defending a bridgehead on the River Styx.’ I rather liked that one, Mr. McMahon.

  “When you talk like that, I sometimes think you do understand us,” Marika said.

  “‘A bridgehead on the River Styx,’” Raza repeated, half to herself. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “Are you sure, Mr. McMahon,” Marika said, “you aren’t part Arab?”

  PART XII

  What was Life anyway? To Tower, it was nothing more than a knock-me-down, drag-me-out, beat-me, kill-me, make-me-write-bad-checks yet somehow sexy-as-hell whore, who seduced you into her bed, then took a straight razor to your balls … From Life’s point of view, murder was infinitely preferable to impotence; natural selection was Her only iron law, and all moral values were empty as prayer and meaningless as a submongoloid’s dreams … Death was a spectacularly stupid joke, worthy of only the darkest derision, an
ignorant farce almost as ludicrous as Life Its Own Self … That being the case, Tower firmly believed nothing could be true, and everything was permitted. God—if there was a God—was an omnipotent idiot, and Tower couldn’t believe God saw a dime’s worth of difference between Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ. Why should He? Tower didn’t—and when Tower died (if he ever died!), he believed the universe would come to an abrupt and ugly end. In fact, the thought of all that infinite, starless, lifeless, everlasting void made Tower … hard.

  —J. T. Tower, contemplating “Life”

  1

  “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.”

  —King Lear: IV, i, 36–37

  J. T. Tower now sat in his penthouse apartment. Its eastern view overlooked the East River, Roosevelt Island, the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and Long Island as well, and if Tower did a slow circular turn, he could see the rest of New York’s five boroughs. The view from one hundred stories up was, by any objective standard, overwhelming, and on entering any of his Tower penthouses, most people were awestruck. One man, on gazing out over the Apple, had told Tower he felt as if he “could touch the face of God.”

  Tower had asked the man to resist the impulse, saying that he “only liked being touched by beautiful women.”

  Many of the women he brought up allegedly found the Olympian view—combined with the financial power it represented—sexually stimulating. Tower bragged that women often became so erotically aroused at looking out over the city he bedded them within minutes of their arrival, including those with whom he’d never previously slept.

  Whatever the case, anyone who walked into one of his Tower of Power penthouses and witnessed the 360-degree panorama of the city below had to be moved.