by Adam Gittlin
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The fractures in my soul were slowly, surely, becoming complete breaks. I said nothing. On the ground, to the left of my feet, was my briefcase and gym bag. On the ground to my right was Neo who had arrived in Tribeca late the previous night via Crazy Animal Lady. He was sleeping in his bag, which was turned backward. I didn’t want him traumatized by what was about to happen. I was dressed in a wrinkled Blue Canali suit, freshly un-wadded white herringbone shirt, and thick, gold, creased silk Brioni necktie that I made extra sure that morning had the perfect Windsor knot.
“You had to taunt me. Killing him wasn’t enough.”
“How did you get in here?”
“Did watching his head explode make you feel like a big man?”
Murdoch was old school. Hunting me would have been too simple, would have let me off too easy. That’s why, like some gangster thug stuck in the fifties, he decided to come after me in a way that hurt more than any physical pain. By sending the ultimate message; by coming after my own.
Murdoch took a step toward me. I immediately rose to my feet, my arms hanging at my sides. In my left hand was the burning Monte Cristo #2. In my right hand was my gun. His eyes found it. He stopped no more than fifteen feet away.
I raised the cigar to my mouth and took a nice, long pull. I opened my mouth and let the smoke fester in its entryway before blowing it in a cloud. Then I waived him toward his desk with my gun.
“Why don’t you have a seat.”
“Jonah—”
My eyes focused. My arm straightened, stiffened as I pointed the gun dead between his eyes. He froze, unable to either speak or move. For a few seconds I simply lectured, berated him with my eyes. Then I dropped the gun and emptied a round into his thigh.
Following a delayed, primal scream he dropped in a heap. I walked over to him, stood over him then spit on him as he clasped his hands over his leg. Black liquid soaked through his pants and began to seep around his fingers. I kneeled down on one leg. I took a generous drag of the cigar and blew the smoke out evenly, watching as it thinned and eventually evaporated into the air.
“There’s nothing like a Monte Cristo #2,” I said.
I put it out on his cheek. His seared skin crackled, sizzled. The sound that poured from his lungs this time was still coming from the animal within, although this time it was different, more revealing. Now he wasn’t just screaming from the pain. He was screaming because he feared for his life.
“Did you really think I’d let some washed-up old fool crap all over me and my family?”
I put the gun to his head as I placed the extinguished stogie in my pants’ pocket, as not to leave behind any evidence of my presence. As if it even mattered anymore.
“Stand up,” I said.
“Jonah, Please—”
I cracked his nose with the butt of the gun. His head bucked back. Blood streamed down as if a faucet had been turned on. It was running down, around, and into his mouth. I grabbed the back of his head with my left hand and pulled it back. Towering over him I put my eyes five inches from his. His breaths were creating tiny blood bubbles under his nostrils. I pointed the gun at, and pressed the tip against, his crotch.
“Stand up now and sit behind your desk or you get the most extreme of all makeovers.”
Murdoch, whimpering and approaching hyperventilation, managed to begin standing. Soon, probably even surprising himself more than me, he had made it. I sat in one of the chairs in front of his desk, facing him. I started to play with the gun.
“Business is business, Lloyd,” I started, “by the time I leave here in a few minutes you’re going to be dead.”
“Please, Jonah. It’s not what you think—”
Murdoch was groaning, gasping between words.
“What I think?” I said, laughing. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think the ash embedded in your face is the same as the fresh ash found in the street in front of my father’s house the morning he was killed. That’s what I think.”
“Jonah—fuck! Look—”
“I have always respected the older generation of this business. You know why?”
He screamed as he grappled at his thigh.
“Because I thought you guys were always willing to fight like men, no matter if that meant winning or losing.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he fired back, digging deep and finding some fight left yet. “Those are my buildings, Jonah. My buildings. You arrogant prick! You don’t just—”
“You know what a mortar and pestle is?” I asked.
“What?” he replied in disbelief.
“A mortar and pestle. You familiar?”
“Yes...ahhhhhh...”
“Imagine taking a mortar and pestle and putting big kernels of peppercorn inside. Big, fat kernels. Now imagine grinding that peppercorn and grinding that peppercorn, as it becomes finer and finer. Imagine the gritty, scraping sound as you grind that peppercorn. Can you do that?”
“Jonah, let’s talk about all of this. I know you’re angry. But you have�—”
“I’m those kernels of peppercorn. What you did to me, how you disrespected me, that’s just one knuckle on the hand grinding me. And do you know what’s left? Do you know where that leaves me?”
“Jonah this is fucking crazy!” Murdoch said, freaked and torn between my words and his injuries.
“I’m powder, you fucking has-been,” I growled, my voice strengthening. “I’m powder and I’m at the point of being poured out of that little clay cup because there’s nothing left to grind.”
Murdoch didn’t talk. His frightened eyes were speaking for him.
“You see, once I let the cops know you ordered and witnessed the hit on my father, they put a needle in your arm. So I figured, why not keep that pleasure for myself. Either way you’re six feet under. Justice. Wouldn’t you say?”
Nothing.
I stood up and stormed around the back of his desk.
“I can’t hear you,” I snarled.
The adrenaline running through me was off the charts. I remember squeezing the gun so hard my fingers were going numb. My brain felt like it was literally pulsating, flexing within my skull.
“No Jonah,” he pleaded as his hands went up. “Please—don’t—”
I grabbed the back of his head with my left hand and jammed the barrel of the gun into his mouth with my right. The cold, solid steel blasting through his teeth created a crunch. His eyes lit up like headlights as a forceful, although primarily inaudible, scream reverberated internally through his body so hard he vibrated. Tears filled with both salt and terror began to well up in his eyes.
“For everyone you know, you’re about to become nothing more than a frozen memory,” I explained. “They will all remember the last time they saw you. They’ll remember where you were, what you wore, maybe what you ate or said. They’ll have a snapshot of that very last memory stamped on their brain.”
The bottom half of Murdoch’s face was a dark, oozing mess. He was crushed, submissive. His lips quivered as he begged silently.
“Most likely they’ll think of you and see something pleasant. Me—my frozen memory of my father is him lying on a gurney with his head blown apart.”
In the few minutes I had been there the sun had risen a bit. Colors were still muted but the office was slightly brighter. At that moment I saw a tear fall from his eye and run down a tiny stretch of skin before mixing with the blood.
“You better hope I don’t end up in hell. If I do, I’m going to kill you all over again.”
I took my left hand away from the back of his head.
“And when that happens you’ll be thinking the exact same thing you are right now. Jonah Gray was the last person you should have ever fucked with.”
I began to squeeze the trigger, only just as I did I smelled urine. I looked down toward his groin. A dark stain, like that of the blood after I sh
ot his leg, was growing down the inside of his undisturbed leg. I looked back at his face. My hand began to tremble.
Yes, this man deserved to die, I thought. And yes, I had killed once before myself. But that was different. That was accidental.
Wasn’t it?
Or because Pangaea-Man and I both knew too much, like Murdoch did, would I have killed the bad lieutenant anyway?
Distinction between the real and the absurd was becoming increasingly difficult. I moved my eyes to the gun crammed into his mouth. Then, as I re-gripped the pistol, I focused my vision strictly on my hand, like I was trying to make sure the situation was really happening. Which, I accepted immediately, it was.
The room was silent. Time passed slowly now. I looked back at Murdoch.
He wasn’t there.
My father was.
His silhouette. His presence.
I shivered.
I blinked.
There were Murdoch’s eyes again. They were doing more than just quietly begging. With them he was telling me that it simply couldn’t end like this. Not for me, anyway. To squeeze that trigger, here and now, meant in life’s most basic terms that I had become the same kind of animal that he was.
Or my father was.
And at only half their age.
“Fuck!”
I wanted to shoot. But couldn’t.
“Fuck!” I screamed, dropping my arms to my sides. Murdoch sat, broken.
I tore back around the desk. I tucked the pistol away, grabbed my bags, and bolted into the oncoming morning.
Twenty minutes later, underneath the barely risen sun, I jumped out of a cab down the street from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. I told the driver to keep the meter running. Under my arm I held a FedEx box I had never touched, one with no account number on the air bill. Careful not to leave fingerprints it was sticking out from the middle of the neatly folded suit jacket.
“Want to make a couple bucks?” I asked a kid walking by in a collared, short-sleeved Starbucks shirt.
He looked around confused. I flashed him three fresh hundred-dollar bills.
“See the package under my arm?”
He nodded. I looked down the street.
“See the building down there? The one with the security guards out front?”
“Yeah.”
I looked back at the kid.
“All you have to do is walk this package over to those security guards and tell them you found it on the sidewalk in front of the building. That’s it.”
He thought for a second.
“What’s in the package?”
“Nothing dangerous and something they’ll be very happy to see.”
He looked at the cash in my hand then turned his attention back down the street.
“All I have to do is hand it to one of those guards?”
I watched from behind as he headed down the street. The unexpected sensation from dishing the package was a welcome one. It was exactly what I needed to start my new life. Danish Jubilee Egg embodied everything that had happened since even before she had been stolen. All of the hatred, the lies, the conspiracy, the murder, the hurt, the loss, and the history. But now she also encompassed something else.
Me.
I was, and am, still standing.
If anything could ever be a true, personal tribute to that, it was Danish Jubilee Egg making her way back to her comfortable, rightful nest in the U.S. Mission. I had to ensure her safe return. I owed Andreu Zhamovsky that dagger-through-the-heart moment of seeing on the news that I had bested him in a way he wouldn’t soon forget.
The kid approached the building. He caught the eye of one of the security guards. The two started conversing. I jumped back in the cab and took off.
Chapter 54
I got out of the cab in front of Newark Liberty International Airport, embarking on my new life. I held Neo’s bag in my left hand. My briefcase, stripped of all incriminating documents and objects, was in my right. Because I had purchased my airline ticket the previous day in person at a travel agency, and paid in cash as Roy Gordon, in my mind I was already a ghost. By this point I was already doing as much to forget my real information as I was to remember the new. I even checked the gym bag with one of the skycaps.
My pace was controlled, deliberate as I moved through the terminal. Scattered cops, as usual, were walking about, keeping order with their mere presence. I made sure to avoid eye contact with any of them. Every chance I had, whether I walked by a Hudson News or caught a glimpse of CNN, I looked for anything in the media as it pertained to me. So far so good. The Danish Jubilee Egg situation was under control. Robie/Hart was still the prime suspect and he remained nowhere to be found. Pangaea-Man’s grisly fate was still a mystery.
My nerves tightened as I hit each security checkpoint. I know, most of these employees are unquestionably more suited to be working at McDonald’s than they are to be protecting national security, but this is still post-9/11 America. On that morning, I was by no means any ordinary traveler.
I went through all of the usual motions. I took my ThinkPad out of my briefcase, placed it in its own gray plastic basket then put both on the conveyer belt. Next I did the same with the Audemars from my mother, my cell phone, and my shoes. I placed them together in one basket and sent them through.
As I watched my belongings start to move along the conveyer belt, my vision was suddenly drawn to one of the plasma screens hanging from the ceiling. A young, blond girl was reporting from the Upper East Side. The volume was sort of low and no one was really paying attention to it. All of the security officers were talking among themselves about their previous evenings and such. As for the passengers, they were all complaining about one of two things, either how slow the line was moving or how tired they were.
I was sure that I was familiar with the reporter. Something about her or maybe her backdrop, what was going on around her, was something I had seen before. It felt like I should know, but for some reason it wasn’t coming together. Was it her eyes? Maybe her hair or shirt? Could it possibly be the street corner she was standing on?
Turns out it wasn’t the reporter at all. It was the fact that she was standing in front of my apartment building. Just when the inevitable started to unfold, just as I began to silently pledge my firstborn to God if he spared me what could only be coming next, it happened. A picture of me filled the screen.
My thoughts turned right away to my gun. The one I had perfectly dumped off before walking into an airport with it. Silly me, I thought it had the potential to draw unwanted attention if I had gotten caught with it. The irony. Slowly I began to survey those around me. I didn’t know what to be most ready for. All I knew for sure at this point was one thing. I had been through and risked too much. I was a warrior now, not because I wanted to be, but because it had been forced on me. I didn’t know what scenario to expect. Frankly I didn’t care. I was ready.
“Hey! Sir!”
I looked across the conveyer belt. A serious, older white woman in a security uniform was staring at me and moving closer. I squeezed my fist into a wrecking ball, ready to crack her jaw clear across the room. It felt as if it were the calm before the storm, like we were all just seconds from all hell breaking loose.
She started to move her lips again but when she did something unexplainable happened, something soothing. It was almost cathartic. I could literally feel the caution running downward, out of my body and settling in a puddle beneath me. It was almost as if at that exact moment I had finally accepted that I had to let go of who I had always been, and had to embrace who I now hoped to become.
React.
Demonstrate control.
Leave whatever mess necessary for later.
“Can you please move forward?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” I said, masking my uncertainty with bad hearing.
“I said move forward! People are waiting.”
She motioned to th
e line behind me. I started to look at them as my aggression recoiled, but instead pretended to look at the conveyer belt as I really looked up again at the screen. My image was gone. Next story.
I stepped up, in socked feet, to the metal detector and prepared to walk through. Just as I did, I heard:
“Stop!”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
The armed security officer was a six foot-four African-American male with serious gym arms. He put his hand up, further telling me to stay still, and began to approach.
“What’s the story?” I asked again.
The last thing I wanted to seem was excited, but every millionth of a second mattered and I knew it.
“I’ll tell you what the story is, man,” he said, reaching toward me.
I flinched backward. I could feel my brow lowering, my defense mechanisms uniformly shifting into motion.
“Your bag—” he continued.
He was pointing down at Neo’s carrying case.
“— it needs to go through the X-ray.”
Relieved, my balls dropped down from the back of my throat to their proper resting place.
“It’s not just a bag,” I said, lifting the carrying case higher. “My dog’s in here.”
The muscle head leaned in for a look. The two ends of the bag were made of mesh for ventilation so it was easy to see in. Neo was groggy, courtesy of two drops of Benadryl. He was curled up in a little ball leaning against his travel blanket, a cashmere Burberry scarf.
He leaned in closer.
“I’d go easy, man,” I said. “He doesn’t like being disturbed when he’s sleeping. I mean he’s little, but once he snaps into Alpha mode forget it.”
I was saying this about a Chihuahua who once had to see me eat twenty blueberries before he’d bite into one.
“Proceed at your own risk.”
He looked into my eyes, which were so desperate they must have become earnest. He nodded and stepped back. Then he told me to walk through.
At the first newsstand I saw, I stopped in and bought a New York Yankees hat and a New York Post. Then I took off my tie, stuffed it in my briefcase, opened my shirt’s top button, and threw my suit jacket over my arm carrying Neo’s case. The plan was to make one quick stop then head straight to my gate and sit there behind my paper until it was time to leave.
