“Resourceful, isn’t she, though they were not of much use in any event. But we are most impressed with your skills. Once again you exceeded our expectations. You have indeed earned your partnership.”
“You ordered Cassandra to kill me slowly.”
“And you survived. Survival is the mark of a true champion. You cannot imagine how lucrative a partnership will prove to be. Where is Cassandra?”
“Dead.”
“That is a shame. You and she were such good friends. And Tom Preston?”
“Dead.”
“Of course. So you bested him again. You should be quite proud of yourself. But right now the blood is draining from your leg and we have broken bones. We should get ourselves to a hospital, don’t you think?”
“What about the girl?”
“Ms. Lieu? Well, Mr. Kubiak, you know as well as we do that business is business. But don’t worry, she will be well taken care of. From now on you can ply your trade as you best see fit and leave the ugly parts to us.”
I lifted the shotgun, turned it around, and gripped the trigger as its muzzle hovered over his heart.
“Oh, let’s not pretend to be something we’re not,” he said. “The explosion, the fire, the runaway SUV. All of that was someone else’s doing. Under your sway, no doubt, but still. Tell us, who killed Tom Preston. You?”
“No.”
“We are what we are, Mr. Kubiak. And you are not a killer. Some are warriors, some are figure skaters. That is the way of things, and you would look quite natural in gold lamé. But you have proven your case, you are worthy of a partnership in any event, and now we will adapt to you. But for the moment, a hospital is in order. Would you mind helping us to rise?”
The muzzle of the shotgun drifted back and forth over Mr. Maambong’s heart, hovering like a bee over a flower. He was right, Mr. Maambong, all the carnage that surrounded us was of my doing, but not of my doing, do you understand? I had brought it to be but had left it to others to execute the violence. I imagined what it would feel like to finally step over the Jesse Duchamp line and become the thing I was born to be. I tried conjuring the emotions that might well up when I terminated the life of another human being, and what I felt was nothing. Nothing. I felt nothing then, like I feel nothing now. Like I will always only feel nothing. For good or for ill that is my fate. And in the space of that nothingness, which remains the one great truth of my existence, I slowly squeezed the trigger.
The gun kicked loudly. My wrist jammed with pain. The future blossomed red like the most gorgeous of roses.
Is that the change you were looking for?
42. Decision Time
I don’t expect this was the story you were hoping for when you contacted Maria Guadalupe Menendez and journeyed out to this hellhole to find a vigilante warrior to fight your battle. We all want the sun to shine in a cloudless sky.
Well, here’s a little unit of sunshine for you: I didn’t shoot Mr. Maambong in the chest. As the shotgun wavered back and forth over his torso, I pulled the trigger only when the barrel was aimed at the gravel. Sparks flew amidst the gunpowder cloud, but Maambong’s raven heart remained unspoiled. You’ll want to believe there was something in those beady eyes that stilled my hand, some glimmer of emotion that wended its way into my core, but we’ve been down that disappointing road before. He simply wasn’t worth becoming a killer for. And he still had uses, one of which was as protector of my stake in the coming kidney lawsuit.
“This is the way it’s going to be,” I said to him. “Once you recover, you and the Principal will come after me again. Do your worst. If I ever let down my guard enough for the likes of you to find me, then I deserve what I get. But you should also know that as long as I’m alive, if anything happens to Cindy Lieu, if she dies through any act of violence, even something as seemingly innocent as a traffic accident, then I will come after both of you and slice you to bits and feed your flesh to the fish in Biscayne Bay. You two need to make it your business to be her guardian angels from here on in.” I walked over to where his glasses were lying on the lot, bent over painfully to grab hold, and carried them back before dropping them by his head. “I expect you see things clearly. Now cover your little warty pig eyes, they give me the creeps.”
And then we got the hell out of there, all of us, Riley included, who wasn’t dead, just blissfully unconscious. The attackers had come in three vehicles, still parked at the mouth of the drive. With Bert’s help we found the keys and took the cars out to the open road and scattered. I didn’t know where the others were headed; I simply wished them well and sent them packing. All I knew was that I was leaving with Cindy in a pickup with an extended cab. But before we raced away, I stopped in the office and made a call.
“There’s been a massacre at a tourist camp outside Morgantown, West Virginia.”
“Who is this? Phil?”
“It’s called the Maple Mountain Cabins. It’s a desultory little spot, but Fallingwater is only an hour away, so there’s that.”
“Phil? What’s going on, Phil? What kind of massacre?”
“The kind where only the henchmen end up dead.”
“Where are you now?”
“Leaving. It was all in self-defense, just so you know. Trace the call to get the exact location. I wanted you to have the chance to be the first to get word to your FBI pals. It might give you a leg up on getting a piece of the investigation.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because there is one man still alive for now. His name is Maambong, and he’s the man who killed Scarlett Gould.”
“You’re talking crazy now.”
“He played the part of a Filipino conservationist at Scarlett Gould’s nonprofit to get close to her. He sold her on saving the endangered Visayan warty pig. Someone in her office will remember him, and his DNA will match anything you found on the victim.”
“Stay on the line while I make the call.”
“I have to go. I’ll miss you, Linda.”
“Stay on the line.”
“Just know none of the bad stuff was personal.”
“How about the good stuff?”
“Was any of it good?”
“You dragged me behind you when that woman came at us with a gun.”
“And now she’s dead with the rest of them.”
“My God, Phil.”
“Yeah.”
“But why did you do that? Why did you put yourself between me and her gun?”
“The good stuff was good,” I said. “It would have been interesting to have been able to play it out to the end. The end would have been bad, it always is, but still.”
Cindy drove the truck while I lay in the backseat, gnashing my teeth and bleeding into a shirt tied tight around my leg. We were above Morgantown, driving north out of the state, by the time the first responders arrived at the tourist camp. In Pennsylvania, Cindy found me an urgent care center right off the highway, where I paid the moonlighting doctor hard cash to pull the splinter of glass from my deflating eye, to fix my leg on the fly, and to prescribe a mess of opiates, all without calling in the police. My wounds properly bandaged, I fell asleep on a pillow of drugs as Cindy barreled us west.
I check in with her now and then, Cindy Lieu. I call at odd moments from odd locations with burner phones. She’s happy, she’s healthy, she’s in love, the fool. And of course she was made rich by the lawsuit against old Mrs. Wister filed by Maria Guadalupe. Both Maria Guadalupe and I made bundles, too, so all ended well. It would warm the cockles of my heart if my heart had any cockles.
I also keep in touch with Linda Pickering. She’s with the FBI now, assigned to the very task force that’s hunting me. They’ve gotten close, but I somehow manage to stay one step ahead of them, and also one step ahead of the henchmen still being sent after me. The price on my head is steep enough to retire on, but apparently the Principal will accept only my head as proof of death. Sometimes I’m tempted to lop it off myself and mail it to her COD.
So what was the answer to Mr. Maambong’s question? Or to Linda Pickering’s, for that matter. Why did I pull Linda behind me instead of in front of me when I believed Cassandra was out to shoot me dead? Why did I make that spectacularly foolish stand to save Cindy Lieu? What the hell had gotten into me?
There has always been something in my gut shoving me toward failure, even shoving me, I suppose, toward the death foretold by Jesse Duchamp, and that could explain my actions; maybe they were merely errors born of my innate flaw. But I believe there was something else going on.
Words contain and words define and when, for Linda Pickering, I used the word “justice” to contain and define the amorphous cloud of resolve that newly burned in my breast, I somehow set the course of what was left of this rotten life. Mark Twain said the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, and I saw the lightning in Linda Pickering’s eyes when they fired with respect, and with admiration, and even with fear, all from one bullshit word. And yes, it is bullshit, rich and resonant, maybe, but manure all the same. For what is justice other than a false construct that billows this way and that in the winds of time? Killing runaway slaves used to be considered the moral thing to do. But the vagaries of the term matter not; it is your reaction to it that matters most.
For this is a truth universally acknowledged: of all the things the world wants, what it wants most is a fighter to stand for justice no matter how shriveled be his heart. Put a cape around your shoulders and a J for justice on your chest, stand tall with your legs spread and your fists balled at your hips, and suddenly the world will kneel before you.
What more could someone like me ever hope for?
Which brings us back to this moment at this bar. And back to you. The time has come for you to decide on the rest of your life.
The outlaw stared at the magazine writer for a moment, raising the eyebrow over his uncovered eye.
The discouragement she had been feeling had only grown stronger during the telling of the outlaw’s brutal stand at the tourist camp. It wasn’t just the horror that reached deep inside her, it was the hopelessness. Did she have it within her to risk everything to avenge her brother’s death? Could she disregard her own safety and make her stand against the oil-soaked barbarians? Could she ever match even a sliver of the psychopath’s resolve?
The answers could only be no and no and no.
The fear in her whispered another plan, a safer, wiser plan. Take the digital recorder with the outlaw’s flashy story on its flash memory, ride it all the way to whatever fame and fortune she could garner, and then with the money and the fame go about avenging her brother’s death in a way more suitable to the life she wanted to lead. That seemed more than the smart way to play it, even if the result was less certain; that seemed the only way she had it in her to play it.
“Before we get to the nit and the grit,” said the outlaw, “what do you say to one more round? Sadly we killed the Samurai, but I wouldn’t want you to give up your decision without a final toast.” He turned to the barkeep and called out, “Ginsberg, you cur, let’s have two more beers.”
The barkeep pursed his chapped lips at the insult, before stirring off his stool and beginning to draw two steins of beer from the tap.
“I expect when push comes to shove, you’re going to commit an intentional act of journalism,” said the outlaw. “And so I’m curious as to the headline you’ll draft for me. ‘Perk Up Your Love Life with a Bloodbath’? ‘Spattered Brain: The Skin Care Secret of the Psychopath’? Do you think I’ll get the cover? If you promise me the cover, I’ll let you take a photograph. You guys have Photoshop, right? Wipe out the scars, give my jaw a nice unshaven appearance, make me what I once was as you tell my awful story. Everything you need is on the recorder that’s been winking at me this entire time. So bring out the camera and let’s get to it.”
The magazine writer worried for a moment at his reaction when she announced her decision. Though it had almost seemed like he was pushing her to give up the path of vengeance, who knew what was going through a psychopath’s brain? Maybe he never had any intention of allowing the interview to be published. Maybe he never had any intention of letting her leave the bar. Maybe all along she had been fated to end up beneath the floorboards. Maybe there were others already buried there; maybe that accounted for the smell. She picked up her bag, opened it, and riffled through.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Take it out.”
And so she did, she took it out, not the camera he might have been expecting, but the gun, and with her hand on the grip, she placed it on the table among the scattered mugs and glasses, aiming it straight at his malignant heart.
When he saw it, his eye widened nicely before he laughed. “Well played,” he said, spreading his arms. “The bounty is as good as in your pocket. Think of all the misfortunate souls you can help with the money. Go ahead, think of them, because I sure as hell won’t.”
She was ready to stand, using the gun only to protect her exit. But there was something in the way he looked at her, in the cast of his scarred and one-eyed face, that gave her pause.
“Ah, Ginsberg, you grizzled old dog,” said the outlaw after the bartender had silently walked two steins of beer from the bar to the table. “Nothing goes better with a gun pointed at your heart than a gulp of your god-awful skunk brew.”
The barkeep stopped and stared for a moment at the gun, and then at the magazine writer, before allowing a smile finally to crack his cracked lips as he dropped the mugs onto the tabletop.
The outlaw hoisted his mug high. “To truth,” he said. “To justice. To the goddamned American way.” He took a long, sloppy series of swallows, slammed down his mug, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. And then he noticed that the magazine writer hadn’t joined him in the drink. “Is something wrong?”
Yes, something was wrong. To her it seemed just then as if the scene in this shack, the byplay with Ginsberg and the other patrons, the whole wild story, had been a test far bigger than her ability to scarf down a pickled egg. It was as if everything had been an act to discourage her, to steer her away from a difficult path. And why would he do that unless she was more than just a knob of wood to him? Maybe despite all that he had done, there was a true nobility in him. Maybe he hadn’t just found his purpose, he had also found his soul.
“You’re not drinking to our toast?” said the outlaw. “Instead you’re staring at me like I’m hanging in a museum.”
Could she see the truth in his face? She looked closely, gazed straight into his eye as if the proof of what he was lay somewhere in there, somewhere so deep it couldn’t be faked. And then she saw it, yes, as clear as the desert sky.
“What do you see?” he said, his eye widening.
She didn’t answer; instead, with the gun still aimed, she picked up the digital recorder and, without switching it off, dropped it plop into her beer. The foam rose up and around it, spilling over the rim and down the sides before spreading across the table. Inside the agitated mug, the digital recorder’s screen died.
“I would tell you that was a waste of a perfectly good beer,” said the outlaw, “except, well . . . yeah. But I must tell you I am disappointed in your decision. I trusted all the deceit and violence, all the dark and bloody truths would have dissuaded you from your mission. I had been playing to gain your trust all day just so you would walk away. And I did so want the cover of one of your magazines. Don’t doubt that you will come to regret this choice in time. But here we are. So what was it that sealed your sad fate, what did you see in my face?”
What had she seen? Nothing. An absence so raw and true it couldn’t be faked. An inhuman deadness in the eye that constituted the perfect flower of his condition. And as she admired its utter monstrousness, she remembered what he had told her right at the start, that whatever she saw in his eye would be only a reflection of what was inside of her. Maybe there was more to her than she’d
ever imagined, or, even truer, less. It is strange the things in this world that can inspire hope.
“No matter,” said the outlaw. “Whatever you think you saw, the die now is cast. So it becomes my turn to listen to you tell the whole sad tale of your brother’s death. Together we’ll see if there’s anything I can do about it. Remember the rules, from here on in absolute secrecy.
“Before we go on, it might be time to more formally introduce these three losers drowning their sorrows at the bar. I figure you might have guessed their identities already, the subterfuge was as subtle as this fake pirate patch on my face, but your mind was undoubtedly on other things. Hey, my fine feathered freaks,” he called out, his voice suddenly strong and full of vim, “come and join the party.”
As the outlaw pulled off his eye patch and rubbed at the healthy eye beneath, the three patrons at the bar climbed off their stools and made their way to the table, standing in a row.
“As you probably guessed by now, the crab-handed mutant is Kief, missing a few fingers from the accident with his jerry-rigged flamethrower, true, but still just as deadly with the women. In his time since our own little Agincourt, Kief has proven that when it comes to building complex machinery or rolling joints, five fingers to a palm is probably two too many.”
Kief waved one of his grotesque hands as if he were a contestant in a beauty pageant for the damned.
“And yes, the bald motorcycle monster is none other than Gordon, who walked over to our table without a limp, you might notice. The things they do with artificial knees these days, though, as a fugitive, he had to outsource his surgery to Mexico. He used the same doctor, actually, who replaced my own knee. Yes, my limp was as much an act as the eye patch. The embarrassing things we do to remain anonymous.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” said Gordon in a booming baritone.
A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Page 33
