by Jeff Strand
"Think about where you were cowering yesterday, like a total chickenshit."
I really should have been more concerned that he was going to shoot me. But I didn't think he'd do it out of anger, not when the sound of the gunshot would attract unwanted attention.
Marc walked toward my bedroom but stopped at the doorway. "You go in first," he said.
I walked into the bedroom. He followed.
"Do you want me to get it?" I asked, gesturing to the bed. "Do you want to get it? Your call."
I think he was worried that I'd tricked him with a clever scheme where he'd force me to crawl under the bed yet I was one step ahead and had planted a gun there, which I'd use to shoot him through the mattress. He needn't have concerned himself with me having any kind of plan, clever or otherwise.
"Lift up the mattress," he said.
"Sure, why not do a complete replay of last night? What did you think was gonna happen? Did you think they wouldn't see you as long as you kept your eyes closed?"
"Are you trying to get shot?"
"I don't think you're dumb enough to shoot me over a few insults."
"Oh, yeah?"
Marc immediately realized what he'd said. There was a split second where he seemed to be flustered and trying to figure out how to salvage his dignity, but the moment passed.
I decided that I might be taking the smart-ass attitude too far. Shooting me was not in Marc's best self-interest, but I didn't want to become yet another one of his poor decisions. I lifted the mattress.
"All right, all right, that's good," said Marc. "Put the mattress back down, then reach under there and get the bag."
I lowered the mattress. He kept the gun pointed at me as I lay on the floor. I reached under the bed, grabbed the duffel bag, and pulled it out. I stood back up, dusted off my jeans, and then politely handed him the bag.
"Thanks," he said. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
He left the bedroom. I followed him as he walked toward my front door.
"Aren't we splitting the money?" I asked.
Marc turned and pointed the gun at me. "What do you think?"
"We had a deal."
"You didn't cooperate."
I decided not to tell him that he was a piece of shit. I'm sure he already knew.
He backed toward the door, keeping the gun pointed at me as if I were going to rush him. I wasn't, of course. His reflexes or aim would have to be astoundingly bad for him not to successfully shoot me.
He opened the door, then peeked outside. "Sorry about all of this," he said, stepping out into the hallway and shutting the door behind him.
I didn't follow him.
I was so furious that I wanted to start destroying furniture, but I wasn't going to let that son of a bitch make me break my own property. If I had to replace stuff, I'd be even madder later. I sat down on my couch, closed my eyes, and took deep breaths, a tactic that rarely worked in the past and didn't work now. I was tempted to go into the bathroom and take my frustration out on Andy's corpse, but no, beating the crap out of a dead body was something I was sure I'd regret later.
I settled for screaming into a couch cushion.
I'd had a shitty plan, and now I had no plan. I couldn't just wait around and hope that nobody was coming after me, at least not if I wanted to keep Abigail in my life. My only bargaining chip was a half-dead guy in the bathtub.
Well, no, I also had the truth. Marc had stolen the money. If I could find Wulfe's men and tell them what happened, I might be able to convince them to focus their attention on reclaiming the bag of cash. I'd tell them everything I knew in exchange for them leaving me alone, like a federal witness giving testimony for immunity.
The smarter play would be to forget about Abigail and get the hell out of town, but I didn't want to make the smarter play.
I walked into the bathroom. Though Wulfe was unlikely to be any more helpful this time, I didn't want to rush off into a deadly situation without giving it another try.
I tapped him on the forehead. "Wake up," I said.
He opened one eye.
"Marc just stole the money. Do you want it back?"
Wulfe closed his eye. I tapped him on the forehead a few more times until he opened it again. No way was I going to get his phone passcode out of him.
"All I need is a yes or no," I said. "Do your men work out of that restaurant all the time? Will I be able to find them there?"
Once again, Wulfe closed his eye. I kind of wanted to pluck it out of the socket. Actually, it probably did make sense to bring something of Wulfe's to prove that I had him, though I doubted his men could identify a specific eyeball as belonging to him. Instead, I got some scissors and cut off a piece of his jacket.
I put on my own unseasonably warm jacket to give myself a place to hide the guns, and then I drove to the restaurant. There were no cars in the parking lot and the lights were out. Unless Wulfe's men had walked there and were conducting their meeting by candlelight, they weren't in there. It had been a long shot anyway.
I could break in and lie in wait for their return, but there was no guarantee that they would return. Most likely I'd be lying in wait for an innocent seafood chef. And the restaurant probably had a security system. This had been a waste of time, but they could have been in here, so I'd needed to check.
Now what?
I wasn't a criminal mastermind. If you needed somebody to provide halfhearted customer service over the phone, I was your guy, but figuring out how to get back on the good side of drug dealers whose boss I'd paralyzed was not part of my skill set. I just didn't know what to do. And I was scared that if I called Abigail and told her that the money was gone, she'd say, "You're screwed. Leave me out of this."
I wished I were a skilled liar. I could go home, break Wulfe's neck, chop up a couple of bodies, tell Abigail that the duffel bag return had gone delightfully well and that everything was A-okay, and then we'd leave town together. The drug dealers weren't going to pursue us across the country. One lie, told properly, might end this.
But no. I'd have to be a complete monster to lie to Abigail about potential danger.
I drove back to my apartment building, talking to myself out loud in an attempt to work out a solution. I never talked to myself, because the last thing people needed to see was a scary-looking guy who appeared to be hearing voices, but a new technique seemed appropriate. It didn't do much except further convince me that I didn't have a good plan of action.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a couple of men hanging out by the front door to the building. I recognized both of them from the seafood restaurant drug deal.
I didn't like that they felt comfortable enough to just stand right there. Shouldn't they be trying to be more discreet?
Yes, I was on my way back from trying to meet with them, but that had been on my terms. If they were lurking outside of my apartment building, this would be on their terms, and they might just pull guns on me and force me into the trunk of an automobile.
At least they hadn't seen...no, wait, they both looked over at me.
It was dark and presumably they didn't know what kind of car I drove, so I wasn't sure if they recognized me or not. But they didn't look away.
I was armed. I was sure that they were too, but I had a slight advantage in that I had two guns. I could comply with an order to drop my weapon and still have a second one hidden in my jacket. Though this wasn't the kind of advantage that filled me with intense confidence, it was better than nothing.
I parked the car.
It would've been nice to just say "Screw this!" and drive away. But if I wanted a resolution to the problem, I had to talk with these guys, and this might be my only chance. At least there were only two of them.
When I got out of the car, they were still looking at me. They weren't even pretending otherwise. Fortunately, they were unlikely to simply gun me down as I walked over there—at least that's what I told myself as I approached them.
I'm not go
od at calculating people's ages, so when I say they both looked like they were in their mid-thirties, that might not be accurate. One of them was blond and movie star handsome; with a face like that, surely he could've found a better career choice than "lowlife criminal." He could've done white-collar crime at least. The other one was quite a bit less handsome. No hair stuck out from under his ball cap so I didn't know what color it was. His thick mustache looked ridiculous, and you can control having a mustache, so I had no sympathy for any ridicule he might have received because of it.
"That's close enough," said the one with the mustache, when I was about ten feet away.
"Are you here to talk?" I asked. "Because I'd really like to talk to you guys."
The blond shook his head. "You're welcome to talk all you want, but do it while you're getting the money."
"I don't have it."
"Is it up in your apartment?"
"Marc took it."
"Marc told us that you stole it from him."
"No, that's not what happened."
"He says that you have two dead men in your bathtub, and that you have our duffel bag of money under your bed. Would you like to keep denying that?"
"Yes! I had the money, but he took it. And it's only one dead body in the bathtub. Wulfe is still alive."
"For real?" asked the man with the mustache.
I nodded.
The man stroked his mustache. "Interesting."
"Then let's go on up to your place," said the blond. "We'll check on Wulfe and get the money back."
"I don't have the money. I told you."
"Uh-huh."
"Marc took it at gunpoint. The longer it takes you to believe me, the further away he's going to get."
"Or we could just persuade you to tell the truth." The blond glanced over at the man with the mustache. "Do you want to break the news to him or should I?"
"Go for it."
"Our buddies are making a video right now. I was hoping it would be done before you got here, but apparently your girlfriend wasn't as easy to kidnap as we hoped. Once it's done and I play it for you, I'm pretty sure we'll get your full cooperation."
thirteen
"I swear I don't have the money," I told them, feeling like I was going to vomit up the contents of my stomach, and then my stomach itself. "Marc stole it from me. You have to know that he can't be trusted. You have to know that."
"We know that," said the blond. "But we have no reason to believe you can be trusted, either."
"He's getting away. We need to go after him."
"Any idea where he went?"
"I..."
"We're going to focus on you right now," said the mustached man. "Once we get the video, we'll be able to sort out the truth pretty quickly."
"Don't hurt her."
"We don't have her. We're here talking to you. Try not to be a fucking idiot, okay?"
"She had nothing to do with this. Tell your associates to let her go. I'll help you track down the money. I'll convince the landlord to let us into Marc's apartment. I'm sure he left a clue behind. We'll find him." I sounded desperate and pathetic and I didn't care.
Maybe they were faking it. Maybe they hadn't actually kidnapped her yet. After all, how long did it take to make a video? All they needed was to point a cell phone at her, press record, and send it over. This could be a bluff. No need for me to completely panic quite yet.
Too late. I was completely panicked.
The mustached man snickered. "Associates. Makes it sound all fancy. How about you take us up to your place and show us what's under the bed?"
"Maybe he's got a monster under there," said the blond.
"Yes, let's go," I said. If they thought the cash was under the bed, I could show them that it wasn't. It obviously wouldn't prove that I wasn't the one ripping them off, but it would be one point in favor of my story being the truth.
"Hold up," said the blond, reaching into his pocket. He took out his cell phone and looked at the display. "Looks like I just got a special video delivery."
"Let me see it," I told him.
"Nah. I'm not sure you'll be able to keep a poker face, and somebody might walk by. You can watch it upstairs. Let's go."
He didn't care about my lack of a poker face. He was making me wait to be a sadistic asshole. But I didn't protest. I was going to do whatever these guys wanted.
I took them up the stairs to my apartment. I was surprised that I could even walk, but I was actually going too fast because halfway up the first flight the blond told me to slow the hell down.
Once we were inside my apartment, the blond held up his cell phone and touched the screen to press play.
It was Abigail with the barrel of a gun pressed against the side of her head. She wasn't wearing the makeup over her black eye, but I didn't see any new marks.
"Recording now," said a male voice off-screen.
"Talk," said another man off-screen. After a couple of seconds, the gun tapped against her head. "Talk!"
"Go to hell."
"Tell him what we'll do to you if he doesn't return the money."
"I said, go to hell."
"You want us to shoot you right now?"
Abigail looked into the camera. "Frank, these shitheads say they're going to kill me if you don't give them back the money. So give them back the money. That's what you were going to do anyway, which I tried to tell them, but these assholes didn't want to have a conversation like adults."
"You got that?" asked the off-screen man. "Do the right thing, and your girlfriend will be released unharmed. Keep being greedy, and we blow her brains out. Your choice."
The video ended. The blond put the phone back in his pocket. "What do you think?"
"Marc has the money," I said, doing everything I could not to reach out and try to strangle him. "I don't know how many more times I can say it."
"It will sure suck for you if he does," said the mustached man.
"He does! I don't understand why you'd doubt that! We're talking about the same Marc, right? Is there anything about him that makes you think he wouldn't steal the money and blame it on me?"
"Well, why don't we take a peek in your bathroom and see if he was telling the truth about that?"
"Be my guest."
This could work out in my favor. It was a pretty gruesome, shocking sight in there, and if both of the men were distracted for just a couple of seconds, maybe I could whip out one of the guns.
"You first," said the mustached man.
I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. The smell was getting worse, but I didn't want to give it a blast of air freshener quite yet. I pulled the curtain aside.
"Oh my God," said the blond, going right up to the bathtub.
"Is he dead?" asked the mustached man.
"No, he's alive," I said.
"I wasn't asking you."
The blond poked at Wulfe's face. "Seems pretty dead."
"Then it just happened," I said.
"This is some morbid shit," said the blond. "You some kind of necrophile?"
"If I was a necrophile, I wouldn't be stacking them in the bathtub."
"Why not?"
"There's no room to get in there with them."
The blond shrugged. "I don't know about that."
"It was self-defense," I said. "If I didn't kill them, they would've killed me."
"Maybe. Maybe not. I wasn't there."
Wulfe slowly opened one eye.
"Oh, wait, I guess he is still alive," said the blond. "Barely, though. What the hell did you do to him?"
"Broke his spine, I think."
"You broke more than that."
"He tried to kill me."
"Then kill him back. You don't keep a vegetable in your tub. That's mentally ill."
"It's deviant," said the mustached man.
"Where was I supposed to keep him?" I asked.
"You either take him to the hospital, or you put him out of his misery," said the blond. "I'm no
t gonna lie—I'm creeped out being in this bathroom with you right now. You have some dark, dark issues." He gestured to the mustached man. "Got a knife?"
"I'll get you a knife," I said.
"I didn't ask you."
"Just a pocketknife," said the mustached man.
"That's fine."
The mustached man took out a pocketknife. My bathroom was tiny and I was between the two men, so I was almost positive that one of them would've been able to tackle me before I took out a gun. I could probably fight one of them but not both.
After the mustached man tossed him the knife, the blond snapped out the blade. He pressed it against Wulfe's ear. "Goodnight, you fuckhead," he said, jamming the blade in all the way to the hilt.
I winced.
"Did that disturb you?" asked the blond, sliding the bloody blade out of Wulfe's head and wiping it clean on Wulfe's shirt. "I'd think you'd be desensitized."
I almost responded by puking into the sink, but managed to choke down the vomit in time.
"He had good connections, but he was a hard man to like," said the mustached man. "You did us a favor."
"Then let Abigail go," I said.
"Stop saying that," the blond told me. "I'm sick of you asking. She'll be released when we're ready to do it. Not earlier." He took out his phone, took a picture of Wulfe's corpse, then typed a message to somebody and sent it off with a whoosh sound effect.
"Show us under the bed," said the mustached man.
How could they possibly think the bag of money was still under my bed?
My stomach clenched up even more as I realized that they didn't. They knew Marc had stolen the money. They were just toying with me.
I could subdue two men who weren't expecting it, but there wasn't anything I could do to these two guys except follow their orders. I led them into my bedroom and lifted the mattress.
"Nope, nothing there," said the blond.
"I'm not gonna lie, this is pretty bad for you," said the mustached man.
"It confirms my story," I said.
"Yeah, but it's a bad story. In a good story, the cash would be there, and everybody would be happy. I'm not happy. Are you happy?"
I shook my head.
"So I hate to say it, but this is bad, bad, bad. I'm not saying things can't get worse; I'm just saying that they're pretty terrible right now. Damn. I wish that money had been there. I really do."
