by Andrew Post
“I didn’t kill them and I’m not your friend, Brenda,” Merritt said. “That second point you, yourself, made clear in the past and you’ve also made it clear we’re not friends by talking all that shit behind my back to Felix. That’s right. You didn’t expect that’d get back to me? Since it seems it bears clarification: I am not a rapist and I am certainly not a goddamn pedophile.”
“Who said you were a pedophile?”
“You fucking did. Felix told me everything you said.”
“Merritt, I know it may be hard for you to believe this because I know with Felix, when he gets on a tear he can have you so turned around you don’t know which way is up, but I promise I never said any of that about you.”
“Bullshit. You did. It sounded exactly like something you’d say.”
“Ouch. Who’s hurting whose feelings now?” she said. “I’d never say something like that about you. Why would I?”
Winston said, “She’s fucking with you, Merritt.”
“I don’t know, Brenda,” Merritt said. “Maybe because you think I’m…like that.”
“Did Felix play you a recording of me saying them?” Brenda said.
“No.”
“Then how do you know for sure I said those hurtful things?”
“Because I trust Felix a hell of a lot more than I’d ever trust you.”
“You don’t trust me, Merritt?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “I can’t say that I do.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“No.”
“Then if it’s not because I’m a woman, why don’t you trust me?”
“Because. Because you’re you, because you’re like you are. You look down on me. And no, you may’ve never said that to me, to my face, but you never had to. I can just tell that’s how you feel. Actions speak louder than words.”
Brenda didn’t say anything for several seconds. “Would you like to call me the B-word?”
Merritt said nothing.
“Because if it’d make you feel better, you can. I’ll just sit here and listen. Consider it a free swing. Go ahead. Call me the B-word, the C-word, the T-word. Whatever you want.”
“T-word?”
“Twat, Merritt. T for twat.”
“What are you doing? What is this?”
Joseph, from the back, whispered in his son’s ear, “It’s called a trick, dumbshit.”
Brenda was saying, “This is me trying to help you, Merritt. You’re clearly upset. You’re convinced I said mean things about you behind your back. So it’s only fair you say something mean about me. So, call me a bitch.”
“Won’t do no good,” Winston said. “I’m telling you, she’s fucking with you.”
“Come on,” Brenda said, “I want you to. After you call me a bad name, we’ll start squashing this beef together. Go through it piece by piece and figure out where it was we had our little miscommunication. Let’s say it together. Brenda, you’re a buh….”
Had she lost her mind? It didn’t make sense to him what she was doing right now, saying these things. He did want to call her a bitch, absolutely, he wanted to do far worse than that to her, but a part of him suggested holding off. It might be a trick. He also thought about what Felix had said about burying hatchets that were still sharp and how that was bad for a man. How if you couldn’t think of at least one person you’d like to kill you might as well be dead.
“What good would it do?” Merritt said, feeling something warm on his cheek. He had tears of anger in his eyes. He used too much force trying to turn the rearview mirror away and instead ripped it off. “Shit.”
Winston laughed. “Are you crying? Dad, he’s crying.”
“Embarrassing yourself, son.”
Brenda said, “What’s the matter, Merritt? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Merritt said.
“Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“I broke something.”
“What’d you break?”
“The mirror in my car.”
“Is that where you are right now? In your car?”
“Yeah, but don’t ask me where I am in my car because I’m not going to tell you.”
“Well, I’d assume you’re in the front seat. It’d be kind of silly if you were in the trunk.”
“Stop doing that. I’m not a child.”
“And you don’t want to fuck them either. Noted. Understood.”
Winston laughed. “I like her.”
After giving his brother a look, Merritt asked Brenda, “Why are you being like this?”
“I’ve decided to start in on my New Year’s resolutions early,” she said. “I’m trying to be a more understanding person.”
“So you admit you weren’t willing to be very understanding with me.”
“When would that be? Give me an example of a time I wasn’t understanding with you and we’ll talk it out.”
That stopped Merritt. He did not want Houston to come up. Not now. Not ever.
Joseph leaned forward to put his chin on his son’s shoulder. “She’s got you on the ropes. Work your way back out of this corner.”
Merritt tried holding his question in but couldn’t anymore. “Why didn’t you come here like you were supposed to?”
“Come where?” Brenda said.
“To the fucking place, the place, the address. Felix said he’d have somebody tell you where to go.”
“I don’t think I understand. What address?”
“Here,” he roared into the phone, “to the goddamn drop location. What, did you think you were supposed to take Chaz Knudsen’s blood and fucking fly home with it? Stupid fucking bitch.”
“There we go. Don’t you feel better now?”
“You were supposed to come here,” Merritt shouted. “No later than ten o’clock – a.m. not p.m. in case that was where you got confused – and it’s now two in the fucking afternoon. I’ve been fucking sitting here for four goddamn hours wasting gas keeping the engine running so I wouldn’t fucking freeze to death. Four hours. Fucking selfish, self-centered….” With too many pejoratives to choose from, they bottle-necked in his throat. “You were supposed to bring with you what you got out of Chaz Knudsen and give it to me four hours ago.”
“And after that, what was supposed to happen then?”
He nearly slipped and told her everything. “Then, you and me were supposed to go our separate ways. I’d transport the blood to the client and that’d be the end of the job.”
“Sure. I’m sure that’s exactly how things were supposed to go. Felix didn’t say anything to me about you being knocked down to errand boy. I would’ve figured you’d scoff at the idea of doing such lowly work as doing pickups.”
Joseph said, “I told you, son, work yourself out of this corner she’s got you in.”
Merritt asked Brenda, “So you fulfilled the special request, did what Felix told you to do?”
“Yep. Juiced Knudsen like a grapefruit. Good to the last drop.”
Merritt waited for her to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “Okay, so why aren’t you here? And if you had my number this whole time, why didn’t you call me to tell me you’d be running late? I know you were supposed to be delayed because of the—” He cut himself off.
“Delayed because of the what?” she said.
“You dumb fuck,” Winston said.
Brenda said, “Oh, you mean like some random young woman trying to break into my rental car? Don’t worry about that, she and I figured that out. Took us a while, us with our silly woman brains. You know how it always goes. We got to talking about makeup and we must’ve lost track of time.”
“You didn’t kill her?”
“The wannabe carjacker? Why would I?”
“She was trying to steal something of yours.”
“I don’t give a shit about that car, Merritt. It’s a rental.”
“I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work.”
“What I’m doing? What is it that you think I’m doing? Enlighten me.”
“I don’t think you’re doing anything, I know. I know you’re fucking with me, same as I know you said those things to Felix about me. What if he had believed you? He didn’t, by the way. Yeah, he saw right through you. But if he hadn’t and he believed you and he decided to fire me, do you have any idea of how much that would’ve messed things up for me?” Merritt turned on the defroster. He’d let himself get so worked up he couldn’t see out the windshield anymore. “You tried to blow up my life, Brenda. I don’t know what I ever did to you.”
“You think Houston might have something to do with it?”
“So it’s true. You did say all that shit to Felix about me.”
“Yes, Merritt, I did. And I meant every word.”
“I make one little mistake, one little mistake, and you decide to make it your life’s mission to never let me live it down? Unbelievable.”
“Merritt. Buddy. Let’s be real. A ‘little mistake’ is a gross underestimation. What you did in Houston was bad, like bad. And if this conversation is any indication of how you would’ve navigated a couple of homicide detectives grilling you, both of us would’ve been fucked. Felix too probably. Everything could’ve gone tits up. Everything. You talk about me blowing up your life? You almost blew up everybody’s, including your own.”
“But that didn’t happen. Nobody went to jail.”
“What you did is still something that happened. Not getting caught doesn’t erase it.”
“You know, the other morning I turned on the news and saw this really interesting story about this newlywed couple down in Orlando who got killed. Oh, and there was a waitress too. She got killed too, even though the police can’t understand the connection, but she still got shot in the street like a dog. You really want to keep calling this kettle black, Brenda?”
“What about the shit you and Felix are trying to pull now?” she said. “Should we talk about that?”
“Here’s the thing, Brenda,” Merritt said. “Felix made it a point that I wasn’t supposed to share this with you, but I think it’s something you could probably benefit from hearing. Might help put some things in perspective.” Merritt didn’t need to clear his throat, but did. “I’m sure over the years you’ve grown comfortable in the thought you’re Felix’s favorite, but the Minneapolis job was down to you and me. Far as Felix was concerned, heads or tails. So, if you didn’t feel you just had to twist the knife stealing the job out from under me, it could’ve been you where I am now, the designated last man standing. But no, you just had to have it, just had to be all yours and nobody else’s.”
Brenda did not respond immediately. “He’s not going to let you live. If he’s closing the book on everybody, he won’t leave a loose end. You said it yourself, a coin flip. That’s how much he cares about me, same as how much he cares about you.”
Leaning in close, Winston advised his brother, “Nuclear option. You’ve got to. Let her have it, Merritt.”
“Since we’re on the subject of loose ends,” Merritt said, “and you and me are being so open and honest with each other now, I might as well tell you another thing. Buckley Dauber survived.”
She didn’t say anything.
“If you’re struggling to remember, that’s the man whose face you melted down in Orlando a couple weeks ago.”
“Bullshit.”
“Do you know what Buckley Dauber did to get a fix put on him?”
She said nothing.
“I’ll tell you. He knocked over an OTB in Buffalo and made off with eighty-seven thousand dollars in cash. The OTB was owned by Felix and Felix set up the robbery. He’d been wanting to close the place down but didn’t want to end up taking a bath on it, so he asked Buckley to rob it for him and they settled on a twenty/eighty split. Made sense to Buckley, seeing how it was Felix’s place after all. But Buckley, on the day, the moment he had all those greenbacks in his hands, instead of handing it over to Felix as agreed, he decided to treat his fiancée instead. They chartered a plane to take them down to Florida, got married on the beach, had some new IDs printed up, and were happy newlyweds confident they were in the clear and could start their new lives together. Until Buckley, drunk as a skunk, made the mistake of going down to the Safeway and using an old debit card to get some Doritos and a box of condoms, which let Felix know right where he was. Then you went down there – flying first class, of course – to do what you did.”
“So? Sounds to me Buckley got what he had coming to him.”
“It would sure seem that way, wouldn’t it? Felix is a good judge of character. He knows all of us so well he can probably tell you what we’ll do before we even know that’s what we’ll do. He told me that he knew all along Buckley would try to take the money and run. Felix selected him for the robbery based entirely on that hunch he had about Buckley, being a guy who had a track record of sticky fingers. See, a few years before the OTB, Buckley robbed a place for Felix and killed his own crew and almost made it into Canada before Felix’s guys caught up to him. You know Felix, he doesn’t do second chances, but he did give Buckley one. And despite having plenty of guys on file who’d never dream of pulling a stunt like Buckley, Felix still put him in the exact same situation with the OTB, betting on Buckley just doing the same stupid thing again. Which he did.”
She apparently had nothing to say to that, but Merritt could hear her breathing was going a touch faster now. Angry or scared, it didn’t matter. He’d gotten through.
Joseph told his son, “She’s on the ropes. Don’t stop now.”
“The EMTs got to Buckley just in the nick of time,” Merritt said. “Airlifted him to Miami, had to restart his heart four times on the way, but the moron pulled through. No doctor would say Buckley is doing well, but he has a pulse. And he may not have a mouth anymore, but he’s still got two good hands. Penmanship’s a bit rough – turns out it’s tough to write legibly when your eyes get burned out of your head – but he’s been making progress on getting down adjectives. Which, if you put them all together, has the potential to make a word picture that’ll look quite a lot like you.”
“What difference does any of this make?” Brenda said.
“Even if you outrun me, once the feds put a face to Buckley’s description, they’ll be after you too. What do you think Steve will make of all that? And Rebecca, Maureen, and little Judy? What will they think when everything their mother has done over her long, long career comes to light? Maybe I should take a trip over to Boston, ask them myself. Beat the FBI to the chase, sit little Judy on my knee, and let her know all about those bad things her mother’s done – just like you felt the need to tell Felix all those bad things about me. What smart-ass thing would you have to say about that?”
Brenda said nothing.
“All of this has been in the works for a while,” Merritt said. “Felix closing up shop isn’t some new, out-of-left-field thing for him. He’s been working from the bottom up, outside in. With the rank and file done, he’s moved on to mopping up the stragglers, folks like Melanie Williams, and people like you and me, the favorites. Like I said, I wasn’t supposed to tell you any of this but, before sundown, what was in your head and what wasn’t won’t matter. Same as what I tell Steve and your three little shits. What’s known, what’s not known, it all looks the same when it hits the wall.”
She was silent for quite some time. “Merritt?”
He was still grinning, heart going a thousand miles an hour. “Yes, Brenda?”
“You can try warning Felix if you want. Or you can just let this broadside him. It doesn’t matter to me. But both of you are as good as dead.”
When Merritt closed his phone, he was alone in the car
again. But he knew his brother and father were proud of him, how he’d managed to turn that around. Merritt was proud of himself too. He wanted to get going so he turned the key in the ignition and the Neon let out this horrible screech because the engine was already running. Mildly embarrassing, and it kind of took the wind out of his sails after working so hard to puff them up for himself, but in the years to come, when he daydreamed back to this trip to Minnesota and how it went down the day he killed Brenda Stockton, he’d remind himself to only think back on the good parts.
Chapter Four
Mel was on Amber’s couch watching the news when Brenda came out of the bedroom and snapped the burner phone in two and threw the pieces at the wall. Her face was red, her eyes red. Mel managed to pull her feet away before Brenda kicked over the coffee table, sending cigarette butts, beer bottles, and Mel’s coffee cup flying. Amber’s eye appeared in the bullet hole in the wall and called from the bathroom, “Come on, man. I was planning on taking those empties to the gas station and cash them out. They don’t take them if they’re broken.”
“Shut up. Just shut the fuck up, Amber.” Brenda walked to the front windows, then back across the living room again, her hands in white-knuckled fists. Mel remained on the couch looking at the broken glass Brenda kept stomping through and tried to stay as still as possible, hoping the contract killer wouldn’t vent her frustrations on her next.
Brenda paced and shook her head, stopping occasionally to roughly swipe a hand back through her hair. The broken glass got broken further as she walked over it, crushing it deeper into the carpet’s pile.
“Amber?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you in the bathroom?”
A long hesitation before a tentative, “Yes.”
“Are you using the bathroom?”
“No. I’m using it as a fallout shelter while you trash my living room. I take it the call with Merritt didn’t go well?”
“Get out here.”
Amber emerged but remained at a safe distance across the room. “So, does that mean you two are going to leave now? I didn’t mean to eavesdrop when you were talking to him, but I get the impression I should probably start packing.”
