The Raven

by Mike Nappa

  “You going to run away and get drunk somewhere?”

  The clerk behind the counter of the Liquor Mart leered at me like he wanted to be my best friend, like he was somebody special just because he’d figured out I was underage and trying to buy alcohol. My mom was safely at her doctor’s appointment. Natalie had started her new life without me. And I just wanted to sit in my car and drink a few beers to dull the pain in my head.

  “Where’s Sandy today?” I said, trying to change the subject.

  Sandy I could deal with. Sandy was always bored, like she hated her job and would rather be anywhere else but at the store. I appreciated that in a liquor store clerk, especially when I was eighteen years old. Sandy was disinterested in my growing addiction. She never asked my age, or carded me, or even greeted me. She just rang up the six-pack, took my money, and went back to being bored by her dissatisfying life.

  “Sandy a friend of yours?” the clerk said.

  He knew something I didn’t know, I could tell, and he intended to use it against me.

  I shrugged, trying to act uninterested. He shrugged back.

  “Sandy was stupid,” he said, “and she got caught. She won’t be working here no more.”

  “Got caught doing what?” I said, and immediately I knew it was a mistake. Never give attention-starved bullies any idea you might be interested in their lives. Too late for me, though.

  “Oh, I bet you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” he crowed. “How much is it worth to you, you little pervert? What would you pay for that information?”

  I could feel the clock of my life ticking minutes away while I wasted time with this moron. This day had been bad enough already, and my mouth felt unnaturally dry, like I had to have a drink soon or my throat would turn to sandpaper.

  Stupid Scott Whitney, I thought.

  Scott Whitney’s dad had given me my first drink when I was fifteen years old. He took a few of us to a minor league baseball game in Oklahoma City and, without even thinking about it, ordered beers for us all. I think he figured we were already drinkers, so why not? Plus, he didn’t really want to be bothered with a bunch of his son’s teenage friends. He just wanted to watch the game and be able to say later that he’d spent time with his kid.

  After that experience, four or five of us made it our goal every weekend to try and score another six-pack, or a bottle of Jack Daniels, or whatever we could finesse as underage, budding alcoholics. Three years later, I could barely go two days without some kind of alcohol in my system. I knew that probably wasn’t a great thing, but I was young, and I knew how to mask the problem.

  I thought I was the exception to the rule.

  Of course, nobody is the exception, not really.

  “I don’t really care what happened to Sandy,” I said. “You can keep that to yourself. I just need to pay for this six-pack.”

  The pasty-faced clerk wasn’t happy about my response.

  “Well,” he said like he was doing me a favor, “she got caught stealing. Sort of stealing. She just quit taking money from the customers. The owner made her come into work last Saturday, even though it was supposed to be her day off. For two hours, she didn’t do anything but read a magazine. Whenever someone came to buy something, she just said, ‘On the house today,’ and kept reading.”

  He laughed at that thought, and I could tell he admired the girl’s protest. Even more, I could tell he loved telling this story, being the center of attention with this kind of gossip, even though the only person listening to him was me—and I was anxious to get out of his obnoxious presence.

  “Finally, after only about two hours on shift, she stood up, raised her middle finger at the security camera, and walked out. Just walked out! Store was empty at least an hour before anybody noticed she was gone. Owner was lucky nobody stole a bunch of stuff before he could get here.”

  He finished his tale with gusto and a laugh. He looked to me for applause or something, but I just wanted a drink.

  “How much for the six-pack?” I said, holding out a ten-dollar bill. I thought I was smoothly changing the subject. He thought I was insulting his storytelling skills. He frowned, stood behind the counter, and made like he was going to ring up my purchase.

  “Just need to see your ID,” he said casually. But I could see the sneer in his lips. He knew I wasn’t what I was pretending to be.

  “Had my license revoked,” I tried to lie. “Got caught drinking and driving.”

  He didn’t say anything, just jerked his eyes toward my car in the parking lot, then snapped them back on me. Smirking.

  “Here,” I said, shoving the ten-dollar bill toward him on the counter. “Just keep the change. How about that?”

  Now I had insulted him.

  “Get out of my store,” he said, adding a colorful nickname that would’ve gotten my mouth washed out with soap back when I was ten. “Come back when you’re twenty-one and maybe I’ll let you sip the good stuff for your birthday.” He shoved the beer across the counter. “And put this back where it belongs so the grown-ups can find it.”

  I felt my face burn red with anger and frustration. At that moment, I hated that jerk. I wanted to smash a beer bottle across his crooked nose. Instead, I took the six-pack back down the aisle and put it away. Then I saw the clerk’s back was turned and recognized a shoplifting opportunity. I pocketed a pint of Everclear when he wasn’t looking.

  That’ll get me good and drunk, I thought as I headed out the door.

  “See you when your voice changes,” the clerk hollered behind me. “But don’t come back before then.”

  See you never, I thought.

  I still had a little time, so I stopped at a grocery store and bought a bottle of Hawaiian Punch, mixing it with the 151-proof liquor in my car in the parking lot. I was already halfway through the Hawaiian Punch and forty minutes late when I finally remembered I was supposed to pick up my mom at the doctor’s.

  “You going to run?”

  Now I hear the old woman’s words echoing again, somewhere in my head, and they startle me enough to bring me back from memories of my awful past. Forcing me to return to my awful present. To my uncertain future.

  I should run, I think. Fly away and hide again, like the raven in Noah’s ark.

  There’s no way Mama Bliss could catch me. I’d be in the hallway out of her sight before she could pull the trigger on her invisible gun. But I know I’m not going to run. It takes life to run, and I don’t have that kind of energy. Not anymore.

  And where would I go?

  No place to run. No place to land. No place to hide.

  No place to go. I tell her so.

  The old woman is talking to me again, and I hear my voice answering, but my mind is drifting away, reliving the choices I made just a week ago that brought me to this awful place right now.

  I never called Trudi after they cut off my finger, after I missed our first and last date at Eclipse di Luna. That was a choice. I hope she at least had a nice dinner without me.

  I didn’t call her ex-husband either, even though I wonder if it might’ve been a good idea to go to the police. Another choice. But I’ve been a criminal for too long, and we teach ourselves never to go to the cops for anything. Not for anything.

  After I got over the shock of waking up, post-surgery, in my apartment, I did what Scholarship’s note recommended. My mind felt numb, but my hand demanded attention.

  I went into the bathroom and tore off the bandage over the sink. I did throw up then, green, watery bile, more liquid than I thought would be possible to keep in my stomach. When I was done, I washed out the sink and tried to clean the wound on my hand as best I could. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it wasn’t sticky and crusted with blood anymore. I rewrapped the wound in gauze. It wasn’t as tight and secure as old Pavlo had done it, but it was good enough.

  I pulled four Tylenol capsules out of the bathroom cabinet and tried to swallow them without water, like they do in the movies. That was a mistake. They got
stuck in my throat, and I ended up having to push my face under the faucet to gulp from the stream there until the pills finally washed down. That whole experience exhausted me. I went into my bedroom and collapsed on the unmade bed.

  But I couldn’t sleep. I could only feel the agony in my left hand. A few times, instinctively, I tried to flex my pinky finger. It felt like it was still there, until I looked at the bandage and felt the shock all over again.

  They cut off my finger. For one thousand dollars, they cut off my finger.

  The words of Scholarship’s note had imprinted themselves in my mind already, and even with my eyes closed I could see that last, terrifying line:

  We’ll be back in a week to collect your next payment.

  “A job,” I said into the darkness. “They said I could do a job and that would pay off the debt. What job? They didn’t say what the job was, did they?”

  My brain struggled to remember everything that had happened before I passed out, before they, before they—

  The kitchen.

  It came back to me then. Scholarship had said he would leave instructions about the job for me in the kitchen. It was now close to two in the morning, but I had to see if that was true.

  The big man had been as good as his word. Attached to the refrigerator with a magnet was a sheet of paper torn from the yellow pad in my living room. There was another note on it.

  Hey Kid,

  First, eat something. You got to take care of your body if you want it to take care of you.

  Next, figure out how to break into Sister Bliss’s Secret Stash over in Little Five Points. Nighttime will be best. Find the big office in back of the store. Somewhere in that office there will be a safe. Take a cordless drill and drill your way into the safe. Inside should be a logbook. Bring the logbook home, and we’ll pick it up from you next Friday at five o’clock. That’s the job.

  Oh, and don’t run. You’re an investment to us now, which means we’ve got eyes on you at all times. If you try to run, you can guess what will happen when we catch you. Now, eat something!

  —S

  It was after two a.m. My hand was throbbing with pain. My head felt like a college drum corps was playing inside my skull. But Scholarship said I should eat something and, for some reason, it seemed easier to obey him than not. I made a sandwich of plain bread and roast beef slices. I was surprised at how good it tasted, how that simple act of normalcy helped my nerves to return to calm. And then the Tylenol finally started to take effect, easing the throbbing in my hand to a dull ache. I wanted to cry for a bit, to shout at God for a while, but I was just too tired by then.

  I went back to my room and slept until noon. When I woke up, I started to make a plan for breaking into Sister Bliss’s Secret Stash.

  “Well, come inside, then,” the old woman is saying to me now. “And shut the door behind you. And always remember that I have a gun aimed at your testicles. Understand?”

  I think I can remember that.

  24

  Trudi

  Atlanta, GA

  Little Five Points

  Friday, March 31, 12:14 a.m.

  14 days to Nevermore

  “This isn’t stalking,” Trudi said to the passenger seat. “I’m not a stalker.”

  Even as she said it, she tried to ignore the fact that she did occasionally have stalker tendencies, like when she’d hacked her husband’s Find My iPhone app just so she could keep track of where he was. But this was different. This was a stakeout, a business situation for a private detective. The fact that her no-show from last Friday happened to show up during the stakeout was coincidence, not stalking.

  “Feels a little bit like stalking,” Samuel replied.

  He tried to stretch his long legs in the confined space of Trudi’s Ford Focus, couldn’t find the room he needed, gave up, twisted sideways a bit, and finally leaned his head back against the headrest. “But wake me up when something interesting happens anyway.”

  “Look, do you want my help or not?”

  “Yes, of course I do,” Samuel said through closed eyes. “I just didn’t know it would mean stalking your new boyfriend.”

  Trudi knew he was just needling her, knew he thought he was being funny, but it stung anyway. She didn’t know which was worse, that Samuel had learned she’d (almost) gone to dinner, or that he seemed so unconcerned about it. Sometimes I wish you were the jealous type, she thought to herself. More like me.

  “You’re still just a middle-schooler on the inside, aren’t you, Samuel?”

  “Farts, wedgies, boogers.” He smiled in his pseudo-sleep.

  The security guard outside the back warehouse of Sister Bliss’s Secret Stash took a deep drag on his second cigarette, burning an orange penlight into the night as the tobacco lit up near his cheek. He’d been out in the lot for several minutes now, apparently unconcerned about intruders, or about anything except depleting the crumpled pack of cigarettes he kept in his shirt pocket. His partner had left a few minutes before, making a night walk to check the perimeter of the building. One of them was doing his job, at least.

  “How long has The Raven been in there?” she said.

  Samuel peeked out of one eye and checked his watch. “Let’s see,” he said. “I clocked him going in at two minutes after midnight. It’s about twelve-fifteen now, so thirteen minutes?”

  “Hmm.”

  “The better question,” he said, trying again to get comfortable in Trudi’s cramped front seat, “is why he’s in there. Any ideas?”

  Trudi shook her head.

  Why would The Raven break into Sister Bliss’s Secret Stash now, after being practically invisible since he’d skipped out on dinner last Friday night? She retraced the week’s events in her mind.

  “Come to the dinner,” Viktor Kostiuk had said before leaving her at the Eclipse di Luna restaurant. “Maybe Mr. Roman’s speech will make you a believer in him too.”

  Was it just a coincidence? A high-profile political gathering was featuring the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem, “The Raven,” at the same time that underground rumblings spoke of a homegrown terrorist plot with the code name Nevermore—the key repeated phrase from the poem.

  It could be nothing, she’d thought. It probably is nothing. But . . . what if it’s not?

  The idea that she might have spotted a small clue to the Nevermore plot was something she couldn’t ignore. If a new terrorist attack had anything to do with the political fundraiser for Max Roman, and if it turned out she could’ve seen it coming but had done nothing about it, how would she ever live with herself?

  “I need to talk to Samuel,” she’d whispered to no one. “But how do I interrupt his date?”

  In the end, she’d decided not to interrupt Samuel and Eulalie at Eclipse di Luna. She wasn’t going to let on that she’d seen them there at all. She decided instead to do a little research herself before talking to her ex-husband. She wanted to come to him with more than just a “Maybe this is important?” She wanted to make sure she wasn’t just insinuating a connection because it seemed convenient.

  Decision made, she’d left a tip on the table and drove herself home, turning possibilities over in her mind.

  A sleepless night had stretched into a windowless weekend. Trudi had avoided going to her office in West Midtown, but that didn’t mean she’d avoided work. She spent most of Saturday in her attic study, combing the internet for history and records of Poe’s most famous poem. She spent Sunday afternoon lost in the stacks and research materials of the Central Library in the Atlanta-Fulton County Library System.

  “The Raven” had been published by several magazines in 1845, but its first appearance with the name Edgar Allan Poe attached had been in the January 29, 1845, issue of the New York Evening Mirror. The work itself was almost horror in style, chronicling a slow descent into madness and despair for its unnamed narrator, all of which was punctuated by an otherworldly Raven croaking again and again, “Nevermore.” It had been an immediate success, prompting
more magazine printings and even the publication of a book of collected Poe poems that same year.

  Tracking down the collectors’ history of the January 29, 1845, issue of the New York Evening Mirror had taken more time, a number of phone calls to finagle access to auction records, and most of the day on Monday. As far as Trudi could tell, there were still about a dozen copies of the magazine extant in the world, maybe as many as twenty. The one that had caught her eye, though, was the most recently auctioned collectible copy.

  It had been sold in a private, invitation-only auction by Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas, on December 18, 2009. She’d been rebuffed while trying to discover the name of the buyer or even the winning bid amount, but a little snooping and disingenuous information spread out in the right places had secured for her the address to where the item had been sent for the winning bidder.

  464 Moreland Ave, NE, Atlanta, GA 30307.

  Trudi hadn’t even needed to look it up to know what was there. That was when she’d finally called Samuel and arranged to meet. He’d come by the Coffey & Hill Investigations office about an hour later.

  “First,” she’d said, “I need a favor.”

  “Sure, Tru-Bear,” Samuel had said after sitting in a metal chair in her office. “As long as it’s legal. Well, as long as it’s almost legal.” He grinned.

  She reached in her desk drawer and pulled out the plastic bag that held The Raven’s empty Perrier. “I have some fingerprints on this bottle,” she said. “I don’t want you to ask why, but can you run these through your law enforcement database and see if there’s a match?”

  “You on a manhunt or something?”

  “No, just looking for information. And didn’t I just say I didn’t want any questions?”

  He reached across the desk and palmed the bottle. “I’ll turn it in to the appropriate people. Could take a few days, though. I understand they’re running behind, and requests like this, with no specific case attached to them, can get put off pretty easily. Do you need this back?”

  “That’s fine. And no, I don’t need the bottle back.”