by Alex Moss
Victor and Stelson turn to see Kenny and Tilman’s Dodge Charger pull into the street and skid to a halt. Kenny jumps out and pulls his gun and aims at Stelson.
“Easy, soldier.”
“It’s okay, Kenny. The boy has just got himself all worked up over nothin’ at all,” Victor reassures.
Stelson shifts back, relaxes, waits. He’s looking for Anna, hoping that she’s there. After a moment she gets out of the Dodge and leans against the car, quietly observing the scene.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Stelson seems taken aback. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Good,” she says.
Tilman gets out and they all close up around Victor.
“Was there another grey Taurus?” Stelson inquires.
Anna shakes her head. “No, Stelson, no second car.”
“There musta been.”
They’re all looking at Stelson in pity.
“Did anyone else chase you guys down?”
“No. We were okay. We took a precaution and picked up another ride, Westbound, which took us to the next exit ramp and back to our car, and the Taurus was gone.” Anna explains. “We heard the crash behind us. Sounded bad.”
“So whoever it was that was chasing me across the 101 was only after me. Not the item, not the money. I was the decoy, not the bag.”
“How the hell did you jump to that conclusion?” asks Kenny, “You were carrying this bag, you son of a bitch. It was the decoy, or whatever was meant to be inside.”
Kenny grabs the bag, unzips it, and empties the shredded copier paper over the dry grass. “See?”
Stelson starts laughing his head off. “See. I like that.”
“What’s so funny?” Victor asks with a very serious tone.
Anna carries on looking at Stelson with pity.
He calms down. He too looks deadly serious now. “Because the person that was chasing me was blind. He had no fucking eyes.”
They all look at him. Even the freeway above seems to have gone quiet, free of all traffic and sirens.
“Why do you think there was a crash? As soon as he stepped into the outside lane to chance his run...boom!”
“Why would a blind man do something as stupid and desperate as that?” asks Tilman.
“Because he was desperate. He so badly wanted these.” He virtually pokes his own eyes out with the victory sign. Stelson blinks and then widens his eyes, perhaps wider than anyone could. His head shudders and the veins in his neck bulge out. “They are after me, because they think they can get their sight back by taking mine. I am their kind.”
“Man, I would not like to be you right now. Hunted by his own kind and anyone else with money on their mind,” Kenny quips.
Victor rests his hand on Stelson’s shoulder for a moment. It’s either in comfort or just to affirm that he buys the explanation and is impressed with the kid. He then walks off and gets into the back of the Dodge Charger.
“So why did the driver stay in the Taurus? Why let the blind man do something suicidal?” Anna questions.
Stelson has an answer. “Because the driver was just a driver. He was too good at it to do anything else. Paid to drive.”
Kenny smiles at Stelson, and for the first time, not in jest. He walks off, as do Tilman and Anna, leaving Stelson alone in the shadows.
Kenny finally turns back to him. “Are you coming, you piece of work?”
Stelson follows.
EIGHTEEN
A metro bus pulls up to the stop at Temple and Douglas Street. The doors swing open and Anna, Victor, Kenny, and Stelson climb aboard. Kenny pays the fare and they file to the back of the bus and sit, occupying a couple of rows. Victor looks over his shoulder through the greasy rear window as the bus rolls west.
Tilman tracks them in the Dodge Charger. Beyond that, there’s no other tail. All seems normal.
Victor looks forward, down the length of the bus, eyeing the mainly Latino grafters weary from long shifts–the kitchen hands, short order cooks, cleaners, machinists–the real workers of LA.
“Your career is going well, Anna,” says Victor. “You look incredible. You’re fast. Damn fast. But the risks. Your Achilles heel, specifically.”
“I know what I’m doing. I don’t push myself to the limit and I can manage stress.”
Stelson frowns. He would like them to elaborate on the risks that Anna is taking and what exactly Victor means by her Achilles heel.
Anna looks at him. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. We’re leaving this life behind.”
“From one big risk to another,” Victor points out.
“It’s what I want.”
“It changes everything. We’ll never come back. You okay with that?”
Anna nods.
Victor leans forward, grips Anna’s hand, and strokes her knuckles with his thumb.
“So I guess this means we’re on?” Victor looks at Kenny and Stelson in turn.
“You guess, I guess, but can we really win?” Anna seems uneasy as Victor’s comforting tone calms and softens her mood and brings her closer to the enormity of their task ahead.
“We can win, Anna. We can all win big out of this.”
“Are you going to tell him or shall I?” Kenny is glaring at Anna and glancing at his watch at the same time.
“What is it, Anna?”
She withdraws her hand from Victor’s grasp. “I’ve set things in motion. I tried it on with the buyers, they bought it, and a date and time for exchange is set.”
“You did this without me?” Victor is calm but his expression is strained.
“Yeah. I wanted a commitment from both sides. Yours and theirs. I know it’s been a lot to ask in the past so I’m forcing my fair hands.”
“If we back out you know what happens, right?”
Anna shrugs.
“Unspeakable things. Our life will be a misery until the lights go out on this charade, permanently.”
Anna shrugs again. She smiles at Stelson in a protective way. “Don’t worry, Stelson. He’s just trying to shit us all up. Make us focus.”
“I’m cool.” Stelson seems as much. He’s just happy to be here with her. Life has changed. There are so many unanswered questions. Questions that were hidden or ignored that have now surfaced and can only be resolved, in time. He’s patient and cool-headed about joining this ride toward an uncertain future. He looks out of the bus window at the old life–the streets–the places he would go to get away from home. That old soccer ball is now just a soccer ball and the game has changed.
“So what are we down for?” Victor asks Anna.
“Fifty-five.” She’s looking him hard in the eyes, keen on deciphering a reaction, no matter how telling.
Victor doesn’t blink.
Kenny coughs, nervously, with a toned down degree of embarrassment.
“Fifty-five what?” Stelson asks.
“We need to talk about this somewhere else,” Victor stresses. He’s still looking at Anna, not knowing how to deal with her.
“You’re jumping off in two stops,” Kenny points out to Victor, looking at his watch.
“The house is not safe anymore.” Anna stresses to Victor with urgency.
“I’m working on that. Leave it with me. When and where is the exchange with the buyers?”
Anna looks at her watch. “Four days, six hours, and forty-seven minutes. Olympic and Bixel.”
“Christ.” Victor rubs his brow. “You know we can’t front this, Anna, so I hope to Christ you have something else to divulge next time we meet. Kenny will be in touch about the meeting point.” He gets up without a smile or a goodbye, understandably, and walks down the aisle and waits by the doors until the next stop.
Kenny turns to Anna. “You know you’ve given him every good reason to just disappear. Vanis
h in a puff of smoke.”
Anna considers this. She’s about to go after him, but Stelson grips her left hand at the same moment Victor alights. He’s still holding her hand as Victor disappears around the side and rear of the bus, crossing Beverly Boulevard in front of Tilman’s car, and then disappearing behind a delivery truck double-parked outside a Hawaiian BBQ joint.
“Fifty-five, Anna. Who the hell is going to walk away from fifty-five?” Stelson looks at her with raised sunglasses and his bright green eyes convey what he really means, which is, who is going to walk away from someone like you? How the hell could they? He smiles in comfort. She is not so sure and she seems troubled. She pulls her left hand away from Stelson to join the other and rests her chin on each palm, her fingers pointing and curling out like a flower.
Anna, Kenny, and Stelson alight the bus. The edginess of East Hollywood and Echo Park has now been softened with their close proximity to the Wilshire Country Club and its wealthy members. The sky above it seems to be clearer, bluer, and less polluted, as though the imported conifers that Stelson admires were brought in for the benefit of the demanding elite classes that frequent this tiny oasis.
They cross the busy junction in silence, waiting patiently for the green signals to walk. Anna is in no mood to rush, which is probably a good thing–appear normal and don’t draw attention to yourself.
Tilman picks them up about a hundred and fifty meters down the street and they ponderously make the short drive back to the Fayne mansion, Tilman constantly checking his mirrors. They then do three passes of the house while scoping parked cars.
Outside, Kenny visually checks for signs of breaking and entering and then unlocks the front door, which trips the alarm. He taps the control box and disarms it.
Stelson is well positioned to watch each tap and the number selected. He makes a point of memorizing the five-digit code, as if this was an opportune moment that had been handed to him on a plate–he closes his eyes for a moment and visualizes and stores it for another time.
When he opens his eyes, Kenny is frowning at him.
They all enter the house and take in its silence.
NINETEEN
Stelson lays awake in bed. He’s been like this for a while now, staring at the ceiling, waiting for everyone else to settle. His demeanor has transformed. It’s a serious, vengeful look, one of purpose. His eyes clear and bright and snake-like. Gut instinct tells him it’s time to go. He pulls back the covers, still dressed in black athletic wear, unlocks the bedroom door, and pads down the hall.
He opens a kitchen drawer and pulls out a six-inch knife and stows it in the pouch of his hoodie. He exits the kitchen, crosses the hall, and heads straight for the alarm control box. He taps out the code, disarms it, and leaves the house via the front door on his belly. From a distance, he just appears like the shadow from a lunar eclipse, drifting across the front lawn, and then he runs north up South Muirfield as fast as he can, pumping his limbs.
He seems so damn sure it’s going to be there, waiting, watching, and he’s right–the second grey Ford Taurus.
The occupants–a driver and a passenger on the back seat–don’t have time to react decisively. Stelson is so damn fast, his hoodie pulled up over his head–a swooping ghost. They don’t see him coming until he’s only ten meters away and by that time it’s too late.
He rips open the driver’s door and grabs the target’s head and buries it hard into the steering wheel, stunning the guy long enough for Stelson to grab the keys from the ignition. He pushes the driver aside, climbs in, slams the door and engages the child locks on the car so they’re all caught inside like thrashing gators in a coffin.
From outside, the commotion sounds like a muffled collection of thumps and bumps. The privacy glass hides the gore.
The parasitic, fat-necked little shit on the passenger seat called Kenneth Molloy is snarling and sniffing, doing his damned best to grab hold of Stelson, but his blindness plays against him. His two glass eyes are dead and motionless.
They’re just placeholders.
Stelson pulls out the knife from his hoodie and first plunges it into the driver’s gut and then swiftly withdraws the blade, turns, and jams it into Molloy’s right shoulder, twists it, then pulls it out again.
Molloy screams.
Stelson can’t stand it. “Shut up!”
Molloy lays himself out on the back seat of the Taurus, still screaming.
“Shut up and tell me who you are. Why are you here?”
Molloy stops screaming with a jarring abruptness. He grips his shoulder, smearing the weeping blood all over his shirt, touching his neck and face. He then soaks his hand as the blood runs more freely and uses his two middle fingers to paint a stripe across his eyes lids, the bridge of his nose, and another stripe from forehead to chin.
He appears to be painting the cross of Christ on his face. It’s clear to Stelson now and he’s intrigued.
“What’s your name?” asks Stelson.
“My name is Saint Kenneth.”
“Seriously?”
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to erase your demons.”
“Who sent you?”
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I won’t.”
Stelson prods the shoulder wound with the blade.
Saint Kenneth grimaces.
“Was it someone called Benjamin Koit?” asks Stelson.
Saint Kenneth stays silent.
“Did he tell you that you were a Saint?”
“I had many demons, and now they are supposed to be gone for good, but I still got issues, man.”
“Did he pay to take out your eyes?”
“I get paid when he gets paid.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“So this is about money. You’re a bounty hunter?”
Saint Kenneth says nothing.
“Wait a second. Your demons are meant to be gone but you have some doubts?”
Saint Kenneth nods. “I’m not sure I like being a Saint. I want my old life back.”
“You want to see again. You want my eyes so that you can see again. Why mine? Why not anyone else’s? What’s so goddamn special about me?”
“You would hate me.”
“Just fuckin’ tell me, you stupid shit.”
“Because eyes like yours and mine make it easier.”
“Make what easier?”
“Getting people to do what you want. Anything. Haven’t you discovered that? We’re amazing, you see. Real pieces of work.”
“Pieces of work.” Stelson thinks for a moment. Something clicks. “There is a girl. She is drawn to me.”
“Even though you are some evil bastard? Oh yeah, we got much in common.”
“Really? Tell me what you find easier. What rocks your world, my friend?” Stelson asks with sarcasm and hints of disdain but Saint Kenneth is too amped to really detect it. He just wants to let it all out–the finer points of his old life are rushing back to him.
“Stray dogs and coyotes, man. I used to hunt the streets for them at night. They would just come up to me, no one else. Around me, they are totally tame. See the hypnotic maelstrom in my big pale green eyes. They approach. I would crouch down and just stare into theirs. Even let ‘em lick my face for a second or two, and then, I’d just cut their throats and watch the life drain ever so sweetly from their faces. Poetic as hell. Wait until they collapse in a heap and just leave ‘em there. Pretty messed up, huh?”
Stelson looks at him. “Yeah, that’s fucked up.” And then he rises up and plunges the knife into the back of Saint Kenneth’s gullet until it holds firm. The blind man sounds asphyxiated and arches his back as blood wells up over the corners of his mouth.
&
nbsp; “Like you say, it makes it easier,” Stelson whispers.
It’s not long before he stops writhing, and the wide glass eyes now look completely in keeping with a fresh corpse. Stelson seems relieved. He looks at the driver who is bent double, as white as snow, hanging a thousand yard stare over Stelson’s conscience. The driver doesn’t look like a bad apple–he has a kind face, but perhaps a desperate one. Stelson is looking for something more to justify the killing but on this occasion it’s not there until he remembers.
“Anna.”
The instinct he used here was to protect her, as she now protects him. But it’s this moment that has him rolling over the question in his mind:
Do I really need to be protected?
Look at me.
Look at how vengeful I can be when I decide to strike.
Stelson retrieves the knife from Saint Kenneth, mops it clean, disables the child lock, exits the vehicle, and leaves the driver to bleed in peace and solitude on the front seat of an average-looking car in a part of town where this kind of trouble is an outlier.
The local police will clean up the mess, no drama, and probably no investigation. They wouldn’t know what to make of the scene and there is too much external influence to cover it up. Stelson is likely to get lucky.
Stelson rinses the blade in the kitchen sink in the dark so that the blood just looks black as ink. This time he feels nauseous through guilt. One of them didn’t need to die–the driver, otherwise he would feel okay about it.
He’s a killer with a conscious, that much he does know about himself now.
He places the knife back in the drawer where he found it and goes back upstairs. When he reaches the bedroom he was occupying, he pauses. He doesn’t want to be alone, even though he’s so used to it and can typically bear it for long periods of time. Tonight is different. He seeks real closeness and he goes for it, moving down the hall and without hesitation, entering Anna’s room and her bed.
He keeps his clothes on and curls up against her half-naked body as she lays on her side. She stirs and pulls his hands around her, difficult to know whether she is performing that consciously, but he goes with it and holds her close. It’s a long time before he drifts off to sleep.
