The Bee Keeper

by Vincent, Tracy D

  “Sit down, Geoff, I’ll make you some coffee because right now you’re not making much sense. Who’s on the phone?”

  I realize that I still have the phone up to my ear with the dial-a-hooker. I hang up on her and set the phone down and sit on the couch. I put my head in my hands. My life isn’t my life. Every single bit of it is planned out by my father. From my career to my shoes, my father dictates my life. I am at the end of it all. I cannot handle another thing. He has my marriage planned to Bianca DeCarlo, so our families are tied together. He has my career planned in politics so I can follow his lead as senator of Hartford.

  Edward comes in with two cups of coffee and he picks up the phone. I vaguely catch on that he’s ordering us some food.

  “Drink up, buttercup. After we get you sobered up some, you’ll tell me what the senator has done this time and we’ll figure something out.”

  Pain erupts from my forearm.

  “Remember what I said about lies, Mr. Wright. We both know that isn’t how it happened.”

  “What the actual fuck, asshole! Who the fuck are you? The fucking lie police? You weren’t there.”

  Another strip, this time so close I can hear it. It sounds a lot like a thin cotton T-shirt tearing. The sound is accompanied by so much pain and burning, the screams are torn from my throat.

  “No, I’m not the lie police,” he says in a tone that makes me feel like I’m a kid again. “I can tell by your story that you’re being dishonest. There are other obvious telltale markers that are physiological, but I’m sure that would bore you. So, how about you tell me this part again, only this time, be truthful.” The asshole’s face is without any real expression except maybe boredom. Who gets bored ripping the skin from someone? Oh I know, this psychopath. This guy is a fucking deranged lunatic. Whoever the fuckwit is that hired him, needs to lay in this goddamned bed and deal with this shit, not me.

  The whole world has gone to hell. That’s the only logical conclusion.

  “Fine, fine! Just stop with this, would you?” The words are hard to get out because my teeth start chattering.

  Mr. Fuckface starts slathering me with more goop, only this time he lays strips of warm wet cloths across my legs and my arm.

  “So, he didn’t say anything about figuring anything out. I was drunk, and he did make coffee and order food…”

  Ed brings me some coffee in his pathetic attempt to sober me up. All I want to do is bury myself in a vat of expensive Scotch and call it a lifetime.

  “Drink this, Geoff. You really aren’t making any sense. Your father won’t cut you off, how will he explain it to your mom?”

  Sometimes I think Ed is a fucking imbecile. He should know well enough by now that Linda Wright cares for her handbags and shoes or her hair appointments more than she cares about what the senator does to me.

  “Fuck you, Geoffrey, if I’m such a fucking imbecile, why am I always bailing you out of trouble with your old man?”

  “Fuck me, I said that out loud,” I groan into the mug.

  “Yeah, asshole, you did,” Ed replies, honestly pissed off with me.

  “I’m sorry, man. This whole day has been shit. I need to get him off my back and let up. My outfit has to be right, my hair, my dinner choices. Shit, I’m surprised my actual shit isn’t inspected to make sure it’s the right consistency for him. The fuck am I going to do?” I put my head in my hands, wishing I could just crush my skull between them.

  “What exactly is going on? You still haven’t really said.”

  “The senator came to me today and told me that if I didn’t join in his campaign office for the remainder of the summer and intern until after the election, he’d put me out with nothing to show for anything. No money, no phone, no car, no clothes—nothing. He said I’d have to get a job like all the other ‘worthless pieces of shit out there.’”

  “Damn. That’s really harsh. But really, Geoff, you’re twenty-five years old, don’t you think you should do more than just sleep around all day and get high and screw all night?”

  “I didn’t expect you to understand. Your parents let you choose what you wanted to do. There has to be a way to get one up on the bastard…” Then it hits me. “Ed, you know Father’s business better than anyone. Does he still talk with Timo and his man P.A.?”

  “Geoff…” he warns.

  “No, Ed. I’m done with him controlling my life! If you can’t understand that, I’m sorry. But I’m sick of it. It would really suck for Maya to find out about that hot-as-hell redhead you still screw. That would really screw up your ten-year plan, wouldn’t it?” I am not above blackmailing my best friend. Shit, I’m not above anything to get what I want, and it’s about time. It’s my turn.

  “Fuck you, Geoff. You don’t have to drag Regina into this. If Maya finds out, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for Regina to die. Hope you understand that.”

  “I doubt Maya would have anything like that done. She wouldn’t go to her dad about it, because then she’d have to admit to screwing you, and you know she’s not going to tarnish her pure standing with Timo.”

  “Fuck, you don’t know her, man. Fine…whatever! Yes, the two of them get together sometimes for lunch meetings and quite a few times, the lackey makes a visit.”

  “We need to get proof. Get me proof.”

  Fuckface has me wrapped in blankets.

  I didn’t realize I was even cold until now. “That’s how the blackmail plan was hatched. Now, let me go.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Wright, we’re not finished yet. You and Edward Champlain concocted this blackmailing business because your father wanted you to earn your way?”

  “No! I blackmailed him because I wanted him to know what it felt like to be under someone’s thumb all the time. I wanted to make some of my own decisions for a little while.”

  “Alright. So how did Mr. Champlain come by the blackmail information?”

  “I don’t have a fucking clue and I don’t care.”

  Fire lights up my arm, and against my better judgment, I glance down and see a bare strip going from elbow to wrist, beads of blood welling up. “The FUCK, man! I don’t know and I REALLY don’t care.”

  “Untrue, Mr. Wright, you do know, maybe not the minutiae but you do know the basics.”

  I look at the man standing over me. There really is nothing remarkable about him, except his sadistic nature. I probably sat next to or passed him by a million times. “Do you rub one out at the end of one of these sessions, Jack?” I can’t help but ask him because surely he gets something other than his precious truth out of this.

  I feel the itching burn of the cuts on my chest before the painful inferno of the air hitting the raw flesh. My throat hurts from all the screaming I’m doing, but damn this hurts so fucking bad.

  “You still have a lot of skin left, Mr. Wright, and you’ll find I’m an exceedingly patient man,” the asshole says softly and without any emotion.

  “Fine. Fuck you. All I know is that it involved P.A.—obviously—and Maya. That’s it.”

  “Okay, so let’s move on to the night that you received the briefcase.”

  What’s taking that idiot so long? We were supposed to meet twenty minutes ago. I pace back and forth in front of my new car. I won’t be able to rest until I have those documents in my hands and copies given to my father.

  Headlights flash just ahead, then the sound of the busted muffler filters to my ears, as the car bounces up and down the gravel path. I’m not out to fuck up my new sports car; instead, I took the highway. It might be the longer way around but it’s paved the whole way.

  He stops just beside my car at the intersection of Bean Crossing Road and Old Hartford Road. We’re six miles outside of city limits toward the farm area. It’s always deserted here this time at night.

  P.A. steps from his rust bucket, leans in to grab the briefcase, and saunters over to me. The only lights this far out are the car lights and the moon overhead. I never really liked Phillip Allen. He
always seemed squirrely to me, and now he’s looking at me with a grin on his face.

  “P.A.,” I say to him in greeting, not so secretly wanting this to be done with as quickly as possible.

  “Junior.”

  “I’m assuming what I want is in the briefcase. Did Maya or you have any trouble?”

  “Oh, no. No trouble at all. As a matter of fact, it was so simple, you could say it was like taking candy from a baby.”

  “Good…good.” I pull out an envelope from my pocket. It isn’t like I have to pay him, but because he scratched my back, I’m willing to tip him to scratch his. I hold the envelope toward him in one hand and the other towards him for the briefcase. The fucker pulls it a little behind him.

  “I was thinking, these papers are real important to both the senator and the boss man. And if I’m caught up in this business with you, I’ll be the first one sent to the bottom of the Sanduski River. So, I need some guarantees from you that that won’t happen.”

  I feel my eyebrow raising and my jaw clenching. The last thing I fucking need is a greedy peon. “What kind of guarantees were you thinking, P.A.?”

  “Oh, I was thinking of a base mil and a clean identity and a free trip to anywhere in the world I want to go.”

  “Are you out of your rabid-ass mind?! You know I can’t get any of that for you without raising the senator’s suspicions.” The fucking gall of this two-bit nobody!

  “Listen, that’s my price. If you can’t meet it, then I’ll hand this over to the boss man and let him in on the secret between you and Eddie-boy and let him handle you. And you know how he handles snitches…” He lets the last just sit there, the threat just hanging around the air.

  I snap. I’m so sick of people trying to manipulate me or run my life by threats of whatever. My father constantly threatens to pull my trust fund or my “allowance.” My mother always with the threat of her disappointment which always leads to binge drinking and rehab centers. Women thinking they can extort gifts or money or a marriage proposal.

  I growl my frustration and I don’t think about my next move; it seems to just run on instinct. I pull out my snubnose .38 and shoot that fuck in his gaping maw. His head throws back and he crumples to the ground before I realize what I’ve done.

  “Oh shit! FUCK!”

  I drop the gun. I’ve shot targets and am a really good shot, but I would never shoot a person. I’m not capable of that. I look at P.A.’s corpse, blood seeping into the dirt beneath his head. Oh shit. Oh fuck.

  I pull out my phone and hit autodial. “Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed! I need you to come out to the intersection of BC Road and OH Road.”

  “Hello to you, too. Are you talking about the place you were to meet with P.A.?” Ed sounds really distracted, but I don’t really give a shit about him and what or who he’s doing right now.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah…the meeting spot. I’m in some shit,” I say to him as I’m pacing around my car.

  “Okay, give me a few minutes or so and I’ll be right there.” He doesn’t even say bye; he simply hangs up on me.

  Within fifteen minutes Ed shows up like the rockstar that he is. My brain is all over the place. In the time it’s taken Ed to show up, I go from pissed, to panicked, back to pissed. I don’t know what the fuck to do, but damn did it feel freeing.

  “The fuck did you do, Geoff?” he yells at me as soon as he stops his car and finds me pacing with a body at my feet. I had already turned off P.A.’s car lights and put the briefcase in my car.

  “That FUCKER”— I kick the dead asshole in the side—“decided to change the deal. HE decided that he needed a million dollars, a new identity, and an all-expense paid trip to where-the-hell-ever he decided to go to.” I kick him again, this time in the ear. “Before I thought about it, I shot him in his goddamned piehole.”

  “Goddammit, Geoff. Can this not get any more fucked than it already is?”

  “Don’t you think I know that, Ed? We need to figure out a way of getting rid of the body. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Why would I be the one with ideas of disposing of a body, Geoff? It isn’t like I do this every fucking day! The asshole that could answer that question has his teeth blown out the back of his skull thanks to you and your hot temper!” Ed’s voice is shrill by the end of his little tirade. I think I might have pushed him a little too far this time.

  “Okay, okay. Sorry, Ed. You’re always better at keeping your head together than I am. We don’t need to worry about his teeth, but we need to get rid of his fingerprints and other identifiable markers.”

  “Let me head back into town and get some supplies and I’ll be back. This is going to be a long fucking night.” Ed turns back toward his car and takes off before I can say anything back to him.

  Now that Ed has it under control, I can let it go. Something else I learned from my father, though I don’t think it is a lesson he intended that I learn. Why bother being upset or anything when others have control of the situation? Just sit back, look good and carefree, and let them handle it all.

  That’s how the senator handles things. Once it’s delegated, he just waits for the results. So, I sit down in my car, pull out my phone, and play a few games and check my social media while waiting on Ed to get back with whatever supplies he deems necessary for removing this body.

  By the time Ed pulls back up to us, I have staged P.A.’s car to look like it ran out of gas and was abandoned. Ed opens his trunk and gets several bags out and brings them to me. In one bag he has a box of garbage bags, a field dressing smock set, and duct tape; in the other bag, he has a filet knife from a sporting goods store.

  “I didn’t know the sporting goods store is open this late at night.”

  “I caught them just before closing time. I got some high-test fishing line as well as a filet knife from there.”

  “So, how are we going to do this?”

  “Well, I was thinking”—Ed poses in the dark, waving down at P.A.—“first we strip him down and see about identifiable moles, tattoos, scars, and whatnot. After we remove those and his face, I think we could cut off his hands and anything else that can easily identify him. Also, because he is such a piece of shit, it would be easier to dump his body in Hartford than out here for the state police to pick him up. At least in Hartford, your dad should be able to smooth anything over if anything gets pointed in your direction.”

  “I doubt he would, but yeah, that sounds like a solid plan.”

  Searing pain pulls me from my recollection of that night. My entire torso is on fire down the left side. This is worse than anything else I can imagine; the shakes start immediately and I can feel my vision turning black. Thank fuck, maybe if I pass out this asshole will leave me alone.

  “You’re lying, Mr. Wright. The removed tattoos and scars weren’t done with a filet knife; they were a hack job at best. I also have a hard time buying that Ed, who does everything you tell him to do, was the mastermind behind how Phillip’s body was to be disposed of.”

  Cold water splashes on my face, and the asshole hits my cheeks to keep me from going under.

  “The truth, Mr. Wright. Remember, I’m not going to judge you. I don’t care if you did it all alone, or if you sat back and let someone else do it. I just want honesty from you and we won’t have to keep doing this.”

  “What the hell are you?” He makes a slice on my right side, but before he can go any further I stop him. “Alright, alright, alright. I did stage the car. I also got bored and started hacking with my blade that I keep in my car, into the dipshit’s body, trying to find the remainder of his teeth, and when Ed still hadn’t come back, I started trying to cut off his tattoos.” I pause to take a deep breath, darkness threatening to overtake me again.

  “Ed really did come back with a filet knife and some fishing line and a meat cleaver. Where the fuck do you get a meat cleaver anymore? I hadn’t seen those since I was a kid pretending to go boar hunting with my dad.”

  “You cut off Phillip’s tattoos, scars, and
face; his teeth were done for with the gun shot. Who decided to cut off his hands?” the voice asks from what felt like a long hallway.

  “That was Ed. I held the bag open and was putting the skin scraps in it and any teeth I had found. After that, Ed and I wrapped the body in garbage bags and plastic and put it in my trunk, so we could drop the body off.”

  “Why did you put the body in your car instead of Ed’s?”

  “Great fucking question. I think it was because if the body was found in my car, my father could pull strings—like he did—but if it were in Ed’s trunk, he’d be completely fucked, and that would have looked badly on the senator.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I’m going to take a nap first, okay? We’ll talk in the morning.”

  I’ve been set on fire and my skin is melting off.

  I can feel rivulets of my fat and flesh dripping off me and onto the hard surface that I lay upon. A wailing scream tears from me, igniting my throat at the same time.

  “You can’t fall asleep just yet, Geoffrey. I need you to tell me what happened after you put the body into your trunk.”

  Sob, that’s all I can do. I try to talk but I don’t know if my words are even coming out. “Please put the fire out. Don’t burn me alive, please!”

  “You’re not on fire, Mr. Wright. That was a saltwater solution. I know it hurts, that was the point; you were fading out on me, and I need you to answer a few more questions before you go.”

  “Sadistic prick, that’s what you are.”

  “Yes, well, we’re all something. What happened after you put the body in the trunk?”

  P.A. weighs a fucking ton. He doesn’t look like it, but that man is extremely heavy. It took all Ed and I had to get him into my trunk. I’m not very happy that we’re putting him in my new car, but Ed is right—if the body is found, it’s better in my car than in his.