by Mike Bogin
Right at that second, if he had a roof to jump from, he would have offed himself, too. He had done enough.
When he could harness his drifting mind, he kept repeating every one of a dozen unanswered questions. There were no further clues. He couldn’t stop himself any more than he could stop the tinnitus ringing through his brain.
The same cop was at the river and at the stadium. How? And if law enforcement knew who he was, then why didn’t they issue it on the news? Why didn’t they enlist the public’s help? Had he succeeded? Did the public turn on the billionaires so they wouldn’t help to catch him? Was that what the police were afraid about? If he had the public and the police didn’t, then had his approach succeeded? Was that why they put him where he was and not into an American prison where he would have a lawyer and go to court? Was that it? Was he some kind of a hero? Where the fuck was this place? What comes next?
He had deconstructed every attack one by one. Bullets for Billionaires. Strange that it was Emerson Elliot there at Sands Point and then the same Emerson Elliot talking about him every day on the radio. The shooting element to the mission was easy. The rich protected their things; they seemed to think that everyone had to want to be them, not that anyone would want to kill them. At Sands Point, he could probably have taken down two or three of them without ever beaching the wave runner.
Ahead of the first mission, he never once gave any thought about all the targets being Jews. That was coincidental. It was their money, just the money. That’s why he sent the index cards, to clear that up.
Sag Harbor was a turkey shoot. Beneath him. Moving back into the trees to make his shots more challenging. Manchester United all over again. The soccer kid and his mom with the one shot. Was this place payback? A custom-tailored personal hell?
The hardest aspect to his target selection was knowing in advance where billionaires were going to be. But after he identified charity events, he found that these went on nearly every day and every night.
Central Park West had demanded skills. That hit home. That was in their homes. The auction was satisfying, too, cool and sophisticated. Even after they put up that whole barrier in front to keep all their rich bidders safe, shaded every window, he still attacked at will. They never considered protection for when the art was picked up. No security whatsoever. Pretty smart putting a microphone into the flowers.
Eighty-five people on the planet with more money than three billion other people. Imagine that. Single individuals with more money than every person in whole countries. Just one person. That had never happened before, not in all of human history. Captain Sam was right, if you believed God could mean for that to be right, you could believe anything.
“They’re richer than Genghis Khan,” Captain Sam said. Richer than the Pharaohs. They buy people and laws just like buying things. “Rich people don’t go to prison. When they go too far, the government they purchased just bails them out.” How was it right that billionaires earn more during a night’s sleep than families make in a year?
Why didn’t law enforcement get the public involved? Why no APB after Mamaroneck? He left a bloody mess after laying down the Harley. So why no APB? Why no name and photo on TV or in the papers?
“Jesus! Think of something else! Anything!” He looked up at the camera. Was anyone even watching anymore? Was this it, two meals a day and these four walls? Spencer pushed off the wall to turn onto his stomach and slowly crept his left hand over the edge of the plywood pallet. After almost two months, he had a three-inch triangle two-ply thick ready to snap away. Sharp points at each corner. Sharp enough to cut through skin and artery.
*****
Bishop swiveled his Herman Miller chair to get a look. Below him on the football field at Bishop O’Connell High School, the Knights JV football team was running drills. He watched linemen hitting the blocking sled, but his mind was weighed down by $150,000. $150,000 goes a long way toward paying the bills. Writing a $3,800-a-month check for the executive office just to wait for the phone to ring was its own sort of torture for him, but as the weeks passed the $150K retainer chaffed a thousand times more. Did Jeffers own him? For $150K?
Spencer’s casts had to be coming off soon. Would Jeffers remember? Of course he would. 1000 milligrams thiopental sodium. Less than a shot glass. Clear as water. A mistake during questioning.
“You kids will still have your football season. Birthdays and New Years and Easter will still go on. Just not for Jonathan Spencer,” he said to himself.
He wished he had taken his own advice. He should have headed someplace where the water was blue, the sand was white, and girls in every shade of brown wore their black hair long. But no, he needed to be inside the fold, so he kept his ass in the chair and waited for the goddamned phone!
Do you even want to be their go-to guy?
“Jesus H. Christ,” he drawled. “Man the hell up.”
Spencer’s life wasn’t worth anything. “Ain’t right to wait for your meat to get slaughtered and dressed out and butchered into a Styrofoam container,” he reminded himself. “You gonna eat it, you ought to be ready to kill it, too. Your momma didn’t raise any hypocrite.”
Killing Spencer was probably a test; pass and he could be in their club. He wasn’t some one-trick pony. He would be useful. All he needed was the chance to prove that. And if he didn’t do it, somebody else would. If he could only get established, they’d see the quality and appreciate what he brought to the table.
1000 milligrams thiopental sodium. Clear as water.
Tuition bills were already eating into the war chest he had just built up. Wasn’t he paying the property taxes and a mortgage to keep his ex and their daughters in a beautiful house with a great public school district?
“Why the hell do they need private schools and equestrian training?” he asked the air. She’d be real happy driving him into an early grave, he thought, until college bills started rolling in. Eighteenth birthdays weren’t that far away. The custodial order was enforceable through “age of majority.”
“Maybe, just maybe, this gravy train is going off the tracks. You expect more after that, you better plan on playing a sweeter tune.”
*****
Days and weeks. He knew the meals by heart, know meatloaf was coming and imagining the tart and sweet flavors within the thin ribbon of barbecue sauce. Fish sticks every seventh dinner. A slice of baked ham, grits, and squash the following day. Hours, endless, between.
He no longer gave a fuck about the camera; mashing his face into the meal tray, he licked at every curve and cranny then sucked at his growing beard for every last flavor. A portion that looked even a bite smaller than the week before could make self-discipline impossible. A short serving of mac and cheese left Spencer shaking for hours with homicidal rage.
The sharp-edged plywood triangle dangled beneath him, teasing him and never completely out of mind.
He was sick of repeating images, sick of Mercy’s hairy armpits and Jack’s face through the window in the white box van, sick of Miller’s bundles of cash, sick of every slide in the never-changing continuum inside his tinnitus-ringing skull inside the gray cell walls. He was sick of the casts, sick of his exercises, sick of everything. Manchester United was worst of all, pricking at him until he could have put a thousand more shots through the kid’s brain.
Spencer had to draw deep to gather the discipline that had always carried him. Through the most brutal training, when all he needed was to raise his arm to make it stop, he held on. Soldier on!
He figured his sitting pulse rate at sixty; sixty times sixty counted to one hour, three-thousand-six-hundred beats. Eighty-six thousand-four-hundred beats per day. Six-hundred-four-thousand-eight-hundred equaling fourteen food trays.
Measures and milestones, targets; hour upon hour Spencer trained. He sharpened his attention on modulating his breathing, inhaling and exhalin
g once for every fifteen heartbeats then endlessly repeating the cycle until it became his natural rhythm; once every fifteen seconds, four times per minute. 3600 counts becomes 240. Easy. 5760 in the day.
Muscle tissues were repairing along his wounds, closing into an abstract of asymmetric jagged scars beneath the casts. He could feel the musculature responding to the demands of his exercise routine. Quicker flex responses. Thickening densities. Power replacing pain.
But after counting fingers and toes up to eight hours at a time, he peaked and retrenched. The more he fell backward, sometimes back to five hours; the more he reached beneath the sleeping platform to tease his fingertip against the sharp points of the triangle below.
When he pressed his fingertips against his jugular vein to count out the hours, he imagined the pointed triangle, the easy exit. Right there, right where you’re touching. You can pull it off and stop the clock. Right now.
A twisted whisper crept inside his mind. You’ll never get away...
Food! The clang and the sound of the food tray scratching across the floor wiped away whatever thoughts that preceded.
You’re getting out of here, Ranger! Wherever the fuck this is, you’re getting out!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Give me the bedpan,” Spencer screamed at the unblinking green light. He waved his arms at the lens. Nothing. No movement side to side. No zoom. No bedpan.
Spencer waved again, pointing to his ass this time. Hammering on the wall just hurt his hand.
Lazy assholes paying no attention again. Forgetting the bedpan, hardly getting his meal tray inside the room so he had to slither on his belly like a worm to reach the sustenance.
“Hey! I need the fucking pan! Hey!”
He didn’t have a choice. After an hour, Spencer knew he had to roll onto the floor and drag himself the three feet to the toilet, and then figure out how to haul himself onto the stainless steel throne with both legs sticking straight out in the air. He’d seen the x-rays; he had to lower the legs without letting them slam down. But it was either that or else crap right there on the platform where he was living 24/7.
He reached his right hand over the edge until his palm was on the cool cement floor, steadied his upper body, and used his left hand to shift his upper body over the side. From a pushup position, he inched forward and tried to keep both casts controlled. The plywood was two feet off the floor.
With his torso over the edge and clear, he let his chest settle then twisted from the waist until he was looking up at his legs. His left was crossed over the right; he tried to clear that but it was impossible to get the leverage, so he raised himself onto his elbows and slid backward until his head hit against the far wall. The tight space forced him to drive his neck into his chin in order to move back more, and then he crawled his back up the far wall until he got into a sitting position. Both casts were crossed and pointed up at a forty-five degree angle.
Spencer flipped both middle fingers up at the camera then, crunching his abdomen, he reached both arms forward, straining until his fingers laced under the left cast. He lifted the leg and swung it clear of the platform until he had one leg below and the other still above. He tried to repeat the maneuver on the right leg, crunching seven times before deciding to shift positions again. Both legs needed to point down the length of the cell, which meant he needed to swing around to brace his back against the toilet bowl.
Pain shot from his thigh into his armpit, neck, and throat as he heaved himself up and flipped in one move that twisted his casts, crossing them at the ankles. He fought to get himself centered on the bowl then took another jolt when he reached to his right thigh and lifted, losing grip as his heel hit the floor with a heavy thud. When he tugged away his shorts, he waited.
After all of that, he lost the thread that had just forced him through the ordeal and could not make himself go. Tears welled in his eyes.
He understood. An ordeal just to take a crap. Captain Sam. Fucking Davies.
“You motherfucking bitch!” Spencer screamed at the gray walls. “A bidet. Just for the right to take a shit without help!”
He understood why Captain Sam thought big. He had to. When every little thing that makes up our daily routines without a thought given to them becomes impossible, that was the sensible response. It hurt too much to think of the day-to-day.
Spencer scooted against the toilet, spread his cheeks and tried to bear down. Nothing, until he sneezed and his bowels finally reconnected. Afterward, he sat, looking over at the plywood platform that summed up external world. What had seemed like a victory looked now like exactly what it was, a pathetic few feet.
No hands and no eyes. Wherever he went, he would always be different. Dependent.
“It’s ok, Captain,” Spencer said aloud. “I get it now.”
*****
Every section of gray walls was unique. When he looked closely, there was the lion head and the whirling dervish and the Leaning Tower of Pisa outlined within the poured concrete.
“You start seeing Jesus and the Virgin Mary, get the shiv and end it,” he argued, only half in jest.
He was talking to himself for hours on end, too often yammering aloud without a punctuated thought. Manchester United showed up without warning and he invited friends; a continuous loop of colors and crosshairs played inside his head. Killing was always bright colors. Red. The emerald green dress. A bright orange pantsuit.
“Jack,” he shouted. “You ever going to do something? You just going to play dead until you are dead? Is that it, Dad? You ever going to buy a CD or take your ass to the shore and get your feet wet? Huh Dad? Jesus! Captain Sam didn’t have eyes! His hands were blown off! And he still lived more than you. You made me a fucking orphan, Jack! I was twelve! I needed you, goddamnit, and you checked out. You sorry-assed excuse for a human being. I’m your son. You should have been helping me, not me always carrying you!”
What do you think now, Jack? Are they telling you I went crazy? Telling you I’m dead? Spencer looked up to the green camera light. “Fuck you!” he shouted, not that anyone would hear or care if they did.
No lawyer. No trial. Is this my country? Is this what I was fighting for?
“We have more people in prisons than any other place in the world,” Captain Sam had said. “Two million men, more, behind bars. How many of them were fighting back, fighting in the ways they knew how?”
Revolutions are happening all the time, right Captain? And I fucking hate powdered potatoes either!
“When the price of having too much money gets high enough, we can shut down the oligarchs.
“That’s the only way to stop them, Jonathan. One of these days everyone in uniform is going to have to pick a side. We’re going to get ordered to fire on civilians, on people just like our own families. It may not be five years from now. Maybe not even ten. But it’s coming. And the longer the more powerful they become.
“If we ever do demand liberty and opportunity, they can flip the switch and in comes the police and the army and the intelligence apparatus to crush Americans just as sure as Chinese tanks rolled on Tiananmen Square. They already did it to the Occupy people; took them out across city after city in one night!
“Jonathan, nobody cares if billionaires drop like flies. The people, not the news, not the politicians; I’m talking about this country. You know what people care about? They care about not being scared. It’s not just scared in the moment; it’s about being scared about keeping a job, about keeping your kids safe, about having a place to live when you’re old. It’s really about all the terrors that weapons can’t protect against, no matter how much ammo you stock up on.
“Imagine if the wars were business plans—not one single Wall Street bigshot would have invested in the futures of Iraq or Afghanistan. But we watched those bigshots put through the biggest money transfer in history. W
e let them take public trillions and turn them into their private billions and we don’t even demand to know their names! We’re suckers, Jonathan, fools. All of us!”
Captain Sam said: “We soldiers are the worst of all. Hell, we helped them! You and me. Now we’re just the rounding errors. You see how they treat us! And you want to go back? I don’t have eyes and I see! Will you ever open yours?”
*****
The steel clang shifted his attention. Like a startled squirrel, Spencer twisted his face, looking up from his belly as the door swung open. Stocky was inside and swinging before he could roll the casts over to face him. The guard applied his best WWE move, the elbow drop, centering his entire offensive-lineman mass into a single point at the small of Spencer’s back, right at his one remaining kidney. The blow froze Spencer in paralysis.
Stocky slipped his shoulder beneath the platform, reached out and pulled down the plywood triangle, then pressed up off the toilet and rolled back upright. He put the triangle between his thumb and forefinger and looked it over, pressing and testing the sharp points.
“Not so smart now, huh badass?” Stocky announced enthusiastically. “Who you planning to shank, huh?” He pinched the flat edge and tapped the points against his thigh.
“I’ve been waiting three weeks for you to get done,” Stocky teased. “What the fuck took you so long to break it off?” He glanced up at the camera and grinned. “You sucked your thumb. That was the tell. I saw as soon as I handcuffed you how you were tearing them up. While the doc was working on you, I was inside your cell checking out your handiwork. Plywood makes for a crappy shank, dude.”
