Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy)

by Robert Swartwood

  “Oh yeah? And how do you know that?”

  “You laughed at my stupid elephant manure joke when no one else did.”

  The next day I went to the jewelry store and asked if I could change the inscription. I didn’t even know if it would be possible. If it was possible, I figured it was going to cost a lot, probably more than I could even afford, but luckily they hadn’t done Jen’s yet, which had been a simple and generic: TO JEN WITH LOVE and our wedding date. Instead I had them change it to: TO JEN, MY OTHER HALF.

  It was the first thing I looked for that Tuesday morning, sitting in my room on the seventh floor of the Grand Sierra Resort, as I held my wife’s finger in my hands.

  I gently took off the ring the same way I’d first put it on, not trying to squeeze it over the flesh that had been so savagely cut off. It had gone pale in the hours it took to ship and didn’t feel like a living human finger at all. But still I knew it was hers, and when I finally slid the ring off and set the finger down on the bed, I moved close to the lamp on the bedside table to check.

  And yes, there it was, the inscription I’d had put there the night after Jen told me the story she’d heard in one of her classes at school. That had also been the same night she woke from just one of her many nightmares. It was the first time I became aware of them at least, and she said she hadn’t had them for the longest time, not since we’d been together. She had assumed, or maybe just hoped, being with me kept them away.

  While we’d been together almost four years she finally came out with something she had been holding back, what she said had been a dark period in her life. How in high school she’d been heavily into drugs, so much so that one night she actually tried to kill herself. Her parents had gotten her help, forced her to talk to psychiatrists, but all that eventually happened was that she was put on permanent antidepressants. Just a chemical imbalance in her head, the doctors told her, and that imbalance combined with the medication sometimes caused her to have nightmares. These nightmares would, over the course of the next eight years, become as much a part of my life as they were Jen’s, because it would be my job to wake her up in the middle of the night when she began thrashing around. No bogeymen attempted to kill her in these nightmares, no obscene monsters chased her down endless dark passages. In these nightmares the monsters were those of the real world, serial killers and rapists who chased her, and who I eventually had to save her from. I’d wake her and hold her and tell her everything was okay, just as I soon ended up doing with Casey when she would cry out in the middle of the night. Though my daughter never told me what chased her in her nightmares, I began to suspect they were not the unnatural kind. That really, in all nightmares, the bogeymen and monsters are not unnatural at all, but are merely façades for the real monsters of the world. And to each of them, to Jen and to Casey, holding them and comforting them as best I could, I had told them that the monsters weren’t real, that they couldn’t hurt them, that everything would be okay.

  But now it seemed I’d been lying to them this entire time, because the monsters had come. They had come and now they’d taken my family, they had cut off my wife’s finger and sent it to me in a box. Only God knew what else they’d done, what other packages were just waiting to be shipped my way. And the worst part was these monsters wanted me to do things, do these terrible things to save my family, and the more I thought about it, the more I was beginning to believe I would never see them again.

  23

  Exhaustion must have knocked me out. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the bed and holding Jen’s ring and crying. This was followed by darkness, a darkness which thankfully brought no dreams. Then, in that darkness, the soft and faint ringing of a telephone.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on top of the comforter, still in the clothes from last night. I’d put my tie back on when I left wherever Juliet had taken me, something I didn’t even remember doing. Jen’s ring was on the comforter, just inches away. At the foot of the bed were the cardboard box and Styrofoam peanuts. And a finger, which from this far away didn’t even look real—though I realized a second later why this was: I wasn’t wearing my glasses.

  The lamp beside the bed and the lamp in the corner were still on, but their light was now enhanced by the sun, which was fighting to get past the closed curtains for all it was worth.

  The phone continued ringing, in the same spot as yesterday—to my right, on the bedside table, right next to the alarm clock.

  I sat up but immediately lay back down. My head, which had been pounding since I opened my eyes, began pounding even harder. I rolled over and squinted at the clock. Almost noon.

  The phone continued to ring, almost the same pitch and tone as the one back at the Paradise Motel. When I answered this one, I didn’t expect to hear a desk clerk’s voice giving me my wake-up call. Score one for me, I was right.

  “Well, well,” said Simon, his voice sounding joyous and refreshed, “good afternoon to you, Ben. Did you sleep well?”

  Despite the drums beating in my head, I slowly sat up. “You fucking cut off my wife’s finger.”

  “Again, semantics. Physically yes, I did cut off Jennifer’s finger, while technically no, you did. Remember what I said about following the rules? You just needed a little, let’s say, unfriendly reminder. By the way, we were also going to include her engagement ring but it was just so ... pathetic. Seriously, what did you spend on it, fifty bucks? I really can’t believe she accepted it.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Simon chuckled. “Speaking of which, did you enjoy yourself last night? I’d wanted to call you when you got back but liked watching you cry even more.”

  I was silent, refusing to give him what he wanted. Out in the hallway, I heard the soft shushing of footsteps, the murmur of voices. The pounding in my head had subsided some, bringing on the pounding in my entire body. My back, my legs, even my arms: they were all sore.

  Simon said, “It is a shame what happened to that poor girl. She seemed like such a sweetheart, didn’t she? I mean, underneath all that moaning and grunting.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Turn on the TV. Channel six.”

  I hung up the phone and in one fluid motion got up and made my way to the television. The remote was lying on top, right beside the black and white photograph of Jen and Casey. I paused just momentarily, staring at the picture for a couple seconds, before realizing I couldn’t really see them at all. Not without my glasses, which I had to go back to the bed for. They’d come off sometime during the night, and at first I couldn’t find them. A few moments later I spotted them on the carpet, in the space between the bed and the wall, and I grabbed them and put them on and went back to the picture.

  My wife and daughter, both staring at the camera, their mouths gagged, tears in their eyes and running down their faces. Had they cut off Jen’s finger then, or had they merely promised her it would happen when I failed to comply with whatever crazy demands they gave me? What had they promised would happen to Casey?

  Hands shaking, I replaced the picture on top of the TV, grabbed the remote, and seconds later had tuned into channel six. The news was already in progress. But it wasn’t Juliet’s face that was currently on the screen as a newscaster spoke.

  “Police have already identified the man as Gerald Newcomer, a thirty-three-year-old cab driver. The victim, a young woman who police haven’t yet identified, was brutally assaulted and then strangled to death.”

  Gerald’s face—it was there only briefly, what looked like his driver license’s photo—disappeared as the second newscaster went on to the next story. I had missed most of the segment that Simon wanted me to see, but I had seen enough.

  I lifted the remote—my hand still shaking—and turned off the TV just as the phone on the bedside table began to ring.

  I made it there in five strides, tearing the phone out of its cradle, and growling, “You piece of shit.”

  “Careful now, Ben. F
or all you knew I was room service asking if you wanted your burger medium or rare.”

  “Why did you kill her?”

  “Simply tying up loose ends.”

  “And Gerald?”

  “His unfortunate demise is all thanks to you.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the closed curtains. The little lines of sunlight that fell on the carpet and walls had stretched.

  Simon said, “He was supposed to drop you off right at the Sundown Saloon. Those were his instructions, plain and simple. But greed changed his mind.”

  “He had a wife and two daughters.”

  “You say that like I should give a shit.”

  “He”—I shook my head—“he had nothing to do with this.”

  “And what is ‘this’? Is ‘this’ life? Is ‘this’ the game? Enlighten me, Ben.”

  I just sat there on the bed, watching the lines of sun.

  “You need to understand that we’re not fucking around here. We will do whatever it takes to make sure you play by the rules. Yes, that man had a wife and two daughters, and right now that wife believes her husband raped and murdered a prostitute before killing himself. Trust me, the crime scene is very clean. The detectives working it aren’t going to lose a second of sleep over it. As far as they’re concerned, it’s an open and shut case.”

  “And what if I were to call the police right now and tell them the truth?”

  I said the words before I could even think twice about them—my body shaking even more, adrenaline coursing through my veins—and immediately shut my eyes and cursed myself.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Simon said. “You may be the star of this show, but you’re not a hero.”

  “What are you talking about? What show?”

  Simon ignored me. “Downstairs when you check out there will be two items waiting for you—a package and an envelope. The package will contain a new cell phone and a new wallet, with enough money to get you to your next destination. The envelope will contain a valet ticket for your new car.”

  “I want to speak to my wife again.”

  “I’m afraid at the moment that’s not possible.”

  “Then let me speak to my daughter.”

  “Sorry, can’t help you there either.”

  “Who were those men from last night?”

  “Trouble,” Simon said, sounding more irritated now than ever before. He waited a beat and said, “You still want a chance to win back Jennifer and Casey, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suggest you take a shower and get dressed.”

  “What else are you going to make me do?”

  “You say that like you aren’t enjoying yourself. But I saw you last night, Ben. You were enjoying yourself quite a lot, weren’t you?”

  “Last night ...”

  “Yes?”

  “The police are going to find my DNA.”

  Simon was quiet for a moment, then chuckled and said, “You mean when she sucked you off? I wouldn’t worry about it. She was a prostitute, for Christ’s sake.”

  I closed my eyes, didn’t say anything. My head had begun to pound again, those drums stressing the fact that the natives were getting restless. The soreness in my body had seemed to dissipate, but I knew the moment I stood it would return.

  “I’m not here to reassure you,” Simon said. “I’m here to tell you what you need to do if you ever want to see your family again. But ask yourself this—have you ever been to jail? Have you ever been arrested for anything a day in your life?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head slightly. I was staring down at the carpet, watching those lines of sunlight grow longer and longer.

  “That’s right. Which means your prints are not on some police database. Neither is your DNA. You’ve spoken to the police before—how could you forget your time at college?—but again, they don’t have your prints. God, Ben, you have to stop watching CSI. This is the real world.”

  I was silent again, my eyes now closed. The pounding had subsided even more.

  “Okay, get yourself cleaned up. Make sure to flush your wife’s finger, unless you want the maid to find it. Keep the ring if you want, I don’t care. But the last thing you need right now is for anyone from that bar last night remembering what you look like.”

  I opened my eyes, stared down at the carpet, at those growing lines of sunlight.

  “That would be bad, Ben. That would be very bad. Despite Gerald being the prime suspect in an open and shut case, there’s always the chance the police might want to speak to witnesses.”

  I stared down at those growing lines of sunlight and thought of those two men from last night.

  This is for your own good.

  Simon said, “Are you following me so far?”

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Good. Now before we say goodbye, I need to ask you one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Are we having fun yet?”

  24

  Jason wasn’t at the front desk when I checked out. Instead it was a young woman named Marni who smiled at me as she handed me the package and envelope.

  “Leaving a day early, are we?” she asked pleasantly as she took my keycard. It was an innocuous enough question but still it unsettled me. I had been booked for two nights. Clearly Simon had had other plans for me.

  I nodded but said nothing. The package—a small cardboard box—was not heavy at all but still felt like it weighed a ton.

  “Did you have a pleasant stay here in Reno?”

  The lobby was much busier than I’d seen it last night. I was wearing the same thing I’d worn yesterday on my drive, the same boxers and socks, all the way down to the sneakers—which, before leaving, I’d cleaned and scrubbed off any traces of vomit. The rest of the clothes were in the suitcase, along with Jen’s finger that I hadn’t found the heart to flush. (I think I was still under the impression that, when this was all over, the doctors might be able to reattach it.)

  I nodded again. When she asked if I would like a receipt, I said, “No thank you,” and turned and walked away.

  By a pair of empty chairs, I set the suitcase aside and inspected the items. Both were addressed to Romeo Chase. I opened the cardboard box, thinking it might be another body part even though Simon had already told me what was inside. Just like he said, another cell phone and a wallet. The wallet contained five hundred dollars in crisp twenties.

  I put the wallet in my pocket. Turned on the phone. Waited a minute for it to fully power up and find a signal, then waited another minute for it to vibrate.

  Simon said, “Are you waiting for an invitation?”

  I glanced around the lobby, at the people walking back and forth, at the employees, at the cameras near the ceiling.

  “What’s going to happen to the Dodge?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “And the gun?”

  “I said don’t worry about it.”

  “Not worrying about it isn’t as easy as you make it sound.”

  I stuffed the cardboard box in the closest trashcan and headed toward the main entrance. Two valets were waiting there, and I handed one of them the ticket.

  As I waited, I said into the phone, “Should I expect any surprises in this car’s trunk?”

  “You should always expect surprises, Ben. That’s the true meaning of life. But no, besides a spare tire and jumper cables, there will be nothing waiting for you back there. We’ve already gotten past the establishing part of the game.”

  “The establishing part.”

  “Well of course, Ben. You watch movies, don’t you? You watch TV. You know that if the viewer’s not sucked into the presentation within the first minute or so they’re bound to change the channel. And do you know what that means? Ratings go down, advertisers jump ship, and soon that show’s canceled. Or that movie’s yanked from the theaters. That’s all it comes down to nowadays, you know. Advertising.”

  I glanced around, made sure the ot
her valet and any patrons were out of earshot before I said, “So that message on the bathroom door, that doll and all the fake blood in the truck, it was all just, what, for ratings?”

  “You could say that. But it’s mostly for the audience’s benefit. Keeping you on your toes keeps them on their toes. Now that we’ve established just what kind of game this is, how far you’re willing to go to save your family, we have our set audience. They’re excited to see what will happen next. That’s how producers keep any show going. By the promise of what’s to come. And believe me, with the stakes raised like they are, the next part of the game is a doozy.”

  A black Ford Taurus pulled up, and the valet who’d taken my ticket got out. I had nothing but twenties in the wallet so I tipped him with one of those.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. “We hope to see you again at Grand Sierra Resort real soon.”

  I said nothing and got in the car. The mileage showed less than one hundred miles and the interior still had that new car smell. I put the car in gear and drove out toward the highway.

  “Where am I going now?”

  “Do you really think I’m going to answer that question?” Simon chuckled. “You just don’t get our relationship yet, do you?”

  “We don’t have a relationship.”

  “Perhaps. But as long as you remember that I tell you what to do, you do what I tell you, then everyone will be happy. Because otherwise, how are you going to know what to do next? Do you even have the slightest clue what it is?”

  “I can only guess.”

  “Come on now, Ben, have I gotten that predictable? If so, maybe we have started a relationship after all. I mean, even though your wife and daughter are being held captive, there’s no reason you and I can’t be friends.”

  I came to the intersection and stopped and in a bored tone said, “Left or right?”

  When Simon spoke again, the fun was gone from his voice and he was all seriousness now, all business.