Mondo Crimson

by Andrew Post

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I said this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “To you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If you say so. You tortured the shit out of all these guys, correct? You didn’t put a spike in them and give them a sugar cookie and cut them loose, right? Because I don’t want to open one of these in front of my friends and embarrass myself serving watery product.”

  “No, sir. Hours on end, each one. Pulled teeth, gouged out eyes, castrated Johnny Jade, scalped Kerry Kerosene. The whole gamut, just like you said to do. And I was sure to only drain them after I made sure their heart had stopped, like you said.”

  “Did you know while scalping’s usually associated with something the Native Americans did, and they did do their fair share, it was actually something we did to them first?”

  “I didn’t know that, no. Is that true?”

  “I guess they just took up the practice to make us white men look at our own savagery. Then we turn around and say that it was always their thing, that we’d never do something so barbaric, not us, no way. Fucking hypocrites.”

  “I’d never heard that.”

  “I’ve got a couple older editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica in the study.” Felix paused. “You’re probably too young to even know what the fuck the Encyclopedia Britannica is. It was how us old fucks learned shit before the internet. Anyhoo, I got bored the other night and read S front to back. It’s a good one. A ton of great words start with S. Sabotage. Sailing. Sonata. Satan. Suede. Sex. Shoplift. Syphilis. Surfboard.”

  “Salami,” Josh contributed.

  “Yes, very good, salami, right, that starts with an S.”

  Josh looked down at the ice chests, the steaming blood bags. “Steam,” he said.

  “You’re on a roll. The word master,” Felix said. “There’s scalping, but we’ve already talked about that one. But I was trying to get somewhere with this. Right, so, we called them savages – there’s another S-word – and we still do in Westerns, but they weren’t any more savage than us. If anything, us coming here made them worse. We overwrote each other, maybe. Drank too much and pulled a TMI at that first Thanksgiving.”

  “Share. That’s another one, Mr. Eberhardt.”

  “You’re right, excellent work. Westerns were real popular in the 1950s, because do you know what else was real popular in the 1950s?”

  “Milkshakes?”

  “Close. I like where your head’s at, but I was looking for McCarthyism. McCarthyism. And regarding McCarthyism and Westerns: we may’ve been done fighting with the Native Americans for a while, but we had new savages around. Ones, like before, we had to try real hard to convince ourselves we weren’t anything like. A different red man was now in our sights. The big scary commie with his hatred of capitalism and his absence of fear for any god. When I first started school, this being a bazillion years ago now, keep in mind, we didn’t say one nation under God when they’d have us all stand up and swear ourselves to a piece of stripedy cloth hanging on the wall, we just trucked right on through, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice and for all, no stopping off to blow anybody’s imaginary friend. And doesn’t that whole under God business feel shoehorned in there? Probably not to you, they’ve made you say it too many times to know any different, the programming’s well set by now, but it wasn’t always there. They decided to cram it there so we’d all be making sure every day our white cowboy hat was screwed down on our collective melon nice and tight. We are good. We are not like them. We believe in God and slave wages and the kinda-free market and war. We never scalped nobody, it’s them that’s like that, them, not us. But if you ask me, Josh, I thinketh the lady – Lady Liberty in this instance – doth protest too much.”

  “Interesting,” Josh said, clearly scraping the barrel for anything better to say but trying to be nice.

  “In your opinion, in one word, what would you say is the American identity?”

  “I don’t really know, Mr. Eberhardt. I flunked civics, like hard.”

  “Take a second. Really think about it.”

  “Do you know?”

  “I do, but this old head of mine, Josh, you know? Stuff will go in just fine but it’s the crowbarring it back out part that’s not so easy anymore. Humor an old man. What’s something we got here they don’t got anyplace else?”

  Josh thought, even scratching his chin as he did so, and came up with, “Freedom?”

  “Lots of countries have freedom. That’s not unique to us. Give me something else, something that you can only find here, a thing that’s exclusive to America that encapsulates her promise and spirit.”

  “The right to bear arms?”

  “Sure, but the right to bear them against whom?”

  “Anybody we feel like, I guess.”

  “Anybody? Like anybody at all? So, if I was just cruising down Lake Shore Drive one day and saw some old biddy minding her own business and I decided to plunk one in her skull as I went bopping by, according to the Constitution, that’s my prerogative if so I choose?”

  The scrawny young man shrugged. “Sure. I mean, I think that’s what it says is cool to do. Maybe they left that part unclear on purpose. You know, so it could be open to interpretation and shit.”

  “You know what? That might as well be the right answer. Good job. A-plus.”

  “That was right?”

  “Exactamundo, Josh. Dead on the money.”

  “Dude. Neat. I’m smart as fuck.”

  “Yes, Josh, you are smart as fuck. I bet you consider yourself a big people-pleaser too, don’t you?”

  “I just try to do a good job with whatever I’m asked to do.”

  “That’s swell. And yes, before you say anything, I know swell’s an S-word too. So, I asked you to do this to these people?” Felix said, knocking one of the ice chests with his toe again. “That right?”

  “Well, yeah, Mr. Eberhardt. I’ve been all up and down the East Coast doing this because I thought that’s what you wanted me to do. It’s what you said you wanted done. I was halfway across Michigan when you called and said I needed to turn around and go to Erie to shoot up that hospice. Which I was fine doing, but I’m just telling you everything I did was by your order, Mr. Eberhardt.”

  “Unpack something for me here, Josh. I told you to do this to my three employees, Johnny, Kerry, and Ricky?”

  “Yes, sir. Those were the names and addresses that were on the list you gave me.”

  “You saw me write this list for you? Because I’m not big on paper trails. I’m more of a spoken word, mnemonic device, oral contact type of fella.”

  “I still have the list in my truck. I can go get it if you want.”

  “Nah, forget it. Here, let me give you something for your troubles and send you on your way.” Felix reached behind himself and drew the revolver and put it against the scrawny young man’s chest. Click. “Shit. Hold on, that’s the wrong one. We were playing Russian roulette earlier and I must’ve forgotten to…. Where are you going?”

  The scrawny young man only got halfway to his truck when Felix managed to get his other gun, the one that was actually loaded, and put four in his retreating back before he’d hit the ground. And then three more for good measure.

  His nearest neighbor, who was an enormous pervert, lived a quarter mile down the road. And because he was such a pervert, no matter what noises he heard coming from the direction of the Eberhardt estate all hours of the night, it was doubtful he’d want the cops snuffling around up here.

  Felix was about to go back in when a pair of headlights appeared at the bottom of the driveway. Felix dragged the ice chests inside the garage and came back out, closing the door behind him. He kept the gun out of sight, but there wasn’t much to be done about the dead body lying there, whatever his name was. The car came to a stop before the fresh cor
pse, the headlights providing it with a spotlight it seemed, but what’s-his-name apparently wasn’t in the mood to get up and sing ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ right this moment.

  Cupping his skeletal hands to the sides of his mouth, Felix called to the driver, “Don’t worry about it, just go over him. He won’t mind.”

  The car climbed the corpse, popped its head like a cherry, and due to low clearance, dragged the young man’s carcass for a few yards up the driveway before letting him pass under in a tangled bundle of limbs.

  Coming to a stop before Felix was Merritt’s Neon and it looked like hell. Bullet holes all up and down the sides and across the grille, the bumper all mushed in, one headlight wonky. The windshield looked like it was about to fall in.

  Felix threw back his head and roared into the night, “As I live and breathe, it’s Merritt Plains. Get out of that piece of shit, you son of a bitch, and give me a hug.”

  Merritt did so, moving like several parts of him hurt, and the hug was half-hearted. Merritt could give the best hugs, the big teddy bear.

  “You’ll have to tell me how you drove this car all the way here looking like this without getting pulled over. Because that, son, is a miracle and a half.”

  “I did get pulled over,” Merritt said.

  When he said nothing more, Felix took the sly expression he was making to continue the story.

  “Oh, I see. But no one followed you here, it’d seem. So that’s good.”

  “No one followed me.”

  Noticing something different about the big lug, besides the missing ear, Felix stepped back and held Merritt by the shoulders and turned him toward the garage light, to get a better look at him. And there it was, the same thing Felix used to see in the mirror before he broke them all – and for the same reason: Merritt had the bloodshot wiggle-eye of a mondo user.

  Overjoyed, Felix wedged himself between Merritt’s tits and hugged him again. “Welcome to the club, big guy. You’re among friends here.”

  Merritt let himself get hugged. “Did you not get my messages?”

  Felix stepped back out of the embrace, coming away with something sticky on his forehead. “Well, listen, big guy, even you must admit you sent me quite a few so you’ll have to be more specific.”

  Merritt was tough to read. Still waters, this one. He might’ve been upset about something, he might just be haggard from all that driving, it was hard to say.

  “Am I seeing things or are you missing an ear, Merritt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you know you’re supposed to just look at the Van Goghs, yeah?”

  “Did you get my messages?”

  “I got the one about Melanie still being alive and that one was very helpful to me,” Felix said. “Is that the one you’re talking about?”

  Merritt just stared at him in that empty, bovine way of his.

  “So, I take it Brenda took going into retirement without too much fuss?” Felix leaned past Merritt to look inside the Neon. It looked like a person – or a few persons – had exploded in there. There wasn’t a square inch that wasn’t sticky with viscera of some texture or color. There appeared to be clods of someone’s brains splattered across the dashboard, a couple of teeth stuck in the passenger-side vent, what looked like a smooshed eyeball that’d adhered itself to the glove box lid, reminding Felix of a dead, deflated jellyfish. But leaning deeper into the car – only fleetingly noticing Melanie Williams was lying motionless in the back seat lashed ankle to wrist with zip-ties – he got a better look at the eyeball, that ice-blue iris, a white ring around the pupil, intershot with flecks and slashes of dark blue.

  Felix knew that eye.

  He’d first looked into it when it was still in the head of a young woman when they were both still so young, standing in a bar in Boston, early autumn, twenty-some years ago. And goddamn it, wouldn’t you know it, Felix felt a twinge of regret. She was actually dead. One of his kids was no more.

  Felix withdrew from the car, wiped his hands off on his pants, and asked Merritt, “I understand you’re a little weary from your travels, Merritt, but I’m going to need you to start speaking up. Is Brenda Stockton dead?”

  Merritt gave one of his owlish desynchronized blinks and nodded.

  “You bring her body?”

  Merritt nodded. “In the trunk. Do you want to see?”

  “I guess I probably should.”

  Merritt lifted the lid and there she lay. Most of her.

  “Holy shit. Did you use a bazooka on her?”

  Merritt shook his head. From his shirt pocket he brought out what looked like an orange juicer attached to the end of a shotgun shell. Felix tried to take it from him to get a better look, but Merritt, always particular about his toys, put it back in his pocket.

  “They use those to breach doors, don’t they?”

  Merritt nodded, looking down at Brenda, the conclusion he’d given her.

  My heart. It wasn’t breaking so much as sprouting fissures. My kid. My number one. Was Felix getting soft in his old age? Or was it just because he’d known her so long, like a pair of shoes he’d gotten used to not having to think about which ones to wear because those were always around, his favorite simply out of convenience? Or, fuck, maybe he really did, at some point in their career together, start to care about her more than just the money she could help him make. Fuck it. You made your choice, old man. What’s done is done is done.

  “Buckley Dauber is on his way here,” Felix said.

  Merritt said nothing.

  “I wanted to set up a little game for Buckley and Brenda. Thought we could start a new Christmas Eve tradition going a couple rounds of Russian roulette with this beaut.”

  Felix unholstered the revolver from the back of his pants.

  “Colt New Service,” Merritt said without needing more than a glance.

  “Good eye. This gun right here, Merritt, is quite special to me. Do you know why?”

  Merritt shook his thick head.

  “This is what was used to end my mother’s life. I had a buddy of mine pull a Houdini from an evidence locker in Peoria. It was going to be one of my guests of honor for our Christmas Eve party.” Felix looked down at Brenda’s headless corpse again. “Maybe Melanie will want to play with Buckley instead.”

  “I brought her,” Merritt said. “Melanie Williams. She’s in the back seat.”

  “Yeah, I saw. Thank you, Merritt.”

  “Didn’t know what you wanted me to do with her.”

  “To be completely honest with you, I didn’t either. I never would’ve dreamed she would’ve made it this far. For starters, Brenda threw that wrench in the works playing against type by not shooting her. I mean, who the ever-loving fuck saw that one coming?”

  Merritt only looked down at Felix, took slow whistling breaths through his nose, owl-blinking, eyes doing the jittery mondo dance, looking like while he was still as a glacier on the outside he was full of over-caffeinated fleas on the inside. “I would’ve seen it coming.”

  “Is that so? Show your work, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “The car wasn’t hers. It was a rental. So it probably made Brenda a skosh mad seeing Melanie trying to break into it, but not enough to kill her. She had standards.”

  “I feel I owe you an apology, Merritt. Brenda didn’t do what I expected she’d do, I wasn’t a very good communicator, and that wound up putting you in a position I’m sure wasn’t very comfortable. So, I’m sorry, big guy. Will you be able to forgive your Uncle Felix?”

  Merritt owl-blinked, hesitated, but nodded.

  “There’s my guy. Listen, how’s about we go inside where it’s warm, I’ll microwave you a big, hot glass of some of the mondo I just got in, and I’ll go upstairs and listen to every one of the voicemails you sent me?”

  “Don’t.”

  “But y
ou took all the time sending them to me. Least I could do is listen to the damn things.” Felix watched Merritt’s face, to see how he took that. A mote of fear in his eyes surfaced for only a second. “Or did you say something that you now wish you could take back?”

  “I brought what Brenda got out of Chaz Knudsen.”

  “That’s good, I’m glad, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I was mad at you but I’m not anymore.”

  “Why were you mad at me?”

  “Because you weren’t telling me what to do.”

  For crying out loud. Felix was having a hard time with the help tonight. He’d cowed them too much, spared the rod, and now none of them could think for themselves. At least Merritt was among the last of the stragglers. Nobody could get eyes on Amber, but maybe letting one live to tell the story would be okay – it’s not like anybody was going to believe the airheaded little souse anyway. Still, just kid number two and Mel-Mel Williams left. Not that Melanie was ever one to accept the leash. She still had her fire, her spunk. Well, last time he saw her anyway. That might’ve changed. Felix leaned past Merritt again to take another look at her lying with her eyes rolled back, a building froth of drool in the corner of her mouth.

  “What’d you do to her?” Felix asked, though he was afraid to. He wanted at least one more around who still knew how to growl and spit and wouldn’t take it lying down. With Brenda gone, Felix would need a fight from another so this chapter in his life would need to be closed forcibly, go out with a scream not a cross-eyed gurgle. Maybe bringing her into the fold would be just the ticket, knight her as part of the sacred order of mondo appreciators, see what kind of spring that’d put in her step.

  Finally, Merritt said, “I choked her.”

  “But not overenthusiastically like you did your brother, I hope.”

  “No. I let up before she quit breathing.”

  “My gentle giant. Do me a favor and take her inside. Guest room, end of the hall. The one with the lock on the outside. You can’t miss it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  After Now

  “Hi, Dani. It’s Melanie. I hope you’re having a good Christmas. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re probably at your mom’s. I really, really wish I could be there. What I did to you was awful and you didn’t deserve it, any of it. I’m sure near the end you felt like you were with a complete stranger. In a lot of ways, you were. I kept a lot of secrets. Secrets, with you, I knew I didn’t probably have to keep but I think I was just embarrassed. I got myself in trouble with bad people. I’m not excusing what they did, but if I hadn’t done what I did I would’ve never known them. I thought I was doing the right thing, making a wrong choice, hoping it’d end up good in the end. But piling wrong onto wrong just gets you more wrong. I know that now. I don’t have a lot of time so I’ll just say I’m sorry. For everything. I’m sorry for lying to you, I’m sorry for never letting you get to see the real me, I’m sorry for hurting you because I’d hurt myself, I’m sorry for—”