by Nick James
Bobby was in the living room lounging on his couch in front of the flat-screen, sipping the last of his wine. He was not looking forward to tomorrow and was in the process of watching the news on the flat-screen when he saw the report of a car that had been set on fire in the State Park down along the river. The camera panned to show what was left of a burned out SUV. It could have been Prez’s, maybe those were the same distinctive forty-inch wheel rims beamed on the flat-screen for a second and a half, maybe not. Then again, it could have been any one of a thousand vehicles in the metro area. No further information was available and after sixty seconds the News broke to a yogurt commercial, but it had been just enough to let Bobby feel hopeful, maybe.
He suddenly heard something. He gave a casual glance over his shoulder and there was Hippo standing behind him.
“Jesus Christ, how in the hell did you … God you scared me half to death. What? Where? God, sorry, it’s just that I didn’t expect to, to see you. How did you get in here? Is everything all right?”
“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
Thank you for taking the time to read Corridor Man. If you enjoyed this read please tell 2-300 of your closest friends. If you have a moment, please consider leaving a review, just click on the appropriate link. Thanks, it really helps.
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Nick James
Corridor Man 2:
Opportunity Knocks
Published by Credit River Publishing 2015
Copyright Mike Faricy 2015
ASIN# B015EIO2KG
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior and express permission of the copyright owner.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Corridor Man 2 is written by Mike Faricy under the pseudonym Nick James.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their help & support:
Special thanks to Stephanie, Elizabeth, Robert, Tim, Julie, Mattie, Toui and Roy for their hard work, cheerful patience and positive feedback. I would like to thank family and friends for their encouragement and unqualified support. Special thanks to Maggie, Jed, Schatz, Pat, Av, Emily and Pat, for not rolling their eyes, at least when I was there. Most of all, to my wife Teresa, whose belief, support and inspiration has, from day one, never waned.
“I have all the ch
aracteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust.”
- American Psycho, Patrick Bateman
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 of 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 thrown up. He smacked his lips as he passed the 694 interchange and ran his tongue across 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, then the River Falls exit, and an hour later he passed 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 of 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.
“Yeah, three, little girls. Pack of matches too, please.”
“They’ll love it, the buckets, supposed to be a perfect weekend for the beach,” she said, grabbed the matches, rang up his sale and handed him his change.
Bobby grabbed the pails and shovels, along with a pack of matches and hurried back to his car. He pulled a copy of the Milwaukee Journal out of 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 which appeared less traveled.
About a mile later he passed what looked like an abandoned farm house. The fields around it were planted, 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 lights 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 opening 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 Prez’s head in the trunk.
Using some pages from the paper as a protective pad, he pulled first an arm, then a foot, next a hand, until he had everything except Prez’s head arranged 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 or eight feet high then he bent over, struck a match and lit the paper.
Within a minute the wood began crackling, and less than ten minutes later 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 get 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 toward the interstate on foot.
The area behind the garage was overgrown with a line of trees, brush and prairie grass and seemed perfect for his purpose. 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 down another six to eight inches.
He hurried back to his car, but then had to wait at the corner of the shed while some drunk staggered up to a side entrance door at the motel and fumbled with the electronic lock on the door for the next five minutes.
Once it was all clear Bobby grabbed the bag holding Prez’s head and ran back. He rolled the head out of the bag and into the hole where it landed face first. He started to shovel the soil he’d excavated back in. The first shovelful filled the opening where the back of 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 while 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, then felt his heart jump as the vehicle pulled in behind him and turned a large, bright 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 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 h
ad 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 buried Prez’s severed head just a few minutes ago. No more than an hour and a half south of here he’d burnt the rest of 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 moment later the vehicle made a quick U-turn and headed up the road. Bobby watched until the taillights 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.
