He went inside, shutting the door quietly behind him. I waited for another couple minutes. The wind picked up, blowing more scraps of trash and leaves across the parking lot. Finally I glanced up at the sky, stared at the stars.
I whispered, “Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?”
I listened as closely as I could, but the stars were silent.
40
In the morning the Kid called. Carver listened carefully for about a minute, nodded once, said thank you, and disconnected. Then he said to me, “Sit down.”
“What is it?”
“Sit down.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
Carver stepped forward, crouched down so we were at eye level, and said, “Simon broadcasted a message across the Internet not too long ago, a message that only someone like the Kid could find. It basically said that there’s still a chance to save your family if you’re willing to go back into the game.”
I stared back at him, shaking my head slowly. “But you ... you said they were already dead.”
“And I still believe they’re dead. My advice is to ignore the message completely. But it’s your life, so the decision is up to you.”
I glanced up at Bronson and David, both who were staring back at me.
I said, “But what if they are still alive?”
Carver shook his head. “Then they’re still alive. But they won’t be for long. Neither will you.”
I looked away, swallowed, took a breath. “If I ... if I wanted to continue, how?”
“The message said to just turn on your phone. And that if you no longer had your phone, to—”
I was already moving, standing up and walking to the bedside table where the cell phone and battery lay. I picked them up, inserted the battery and then turned on the phone, ignoring Carver telling me to stop.
The phone vibrated less than thirty seconds after finding a signal.
Carver said, “They’re going to lock onto that signal as soon as you answer, so make it quick.”
I nodded, took another deep breath, and answered the phone.
“About time,” Simon said. “I’ve been calling every sixty seconds. Was worried my little distress message would be ignored. I was also beginning to get bored and figured we’d have to go blow up that preschool just to teach you a lesson.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Ben? Because I wanted to let you know your wife and daughter certainly aren’t enjoying themselves.”
I sank down onto the bed, my shoulders slouched. I closed my eyes. “Let me ... let me talk to them.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I said, my voice rising. “If you think I’m even going to consider stepping one foot back into the game, I won’t do it until I hear their voices.”
There was a long silence and for an instant I worried that Simon had disconnected. Then he said, “Mr. Ellison has been telling you stories about me now, hasn’t he? He’s probably told you that your family is already dead. That’s how you suddenly grew a pair of balls.”
“I just want to make sure they’re still alive.”
“Oh they’re alive, Ben. Trust me.”
“Then let me speak to them.”
“Not yet. First, let me speak to Mr. Ellison. I want to say hello.”
I glanced up at Carver. Held out the phone. Carver only stared at it, didn’t look like he was going to take it, but then he reached out and took the phone. Placed it to his ear and said, “What?” Listened for thirty seconds or so, then handed it back to me.
“Thank you,” Simon said. I could hear the grin back in his voice. “It’s been a while since Carver and I really talked, you know? It seems everything always gets in the way.”
Carver’s eyes had shifted away from me, were now centered on the floor. Whatever Simon had said to him would not be repeated to me, or to Bronson or David, or even to the Kid. It was something between Carver and Simon, something that kept them connected in a way I hoped to never know.
I said, “Now let me speak to my family.”
“Of course,” Simon said. “Who would you like to speak to first, your wife or daughter?”
I said nothing, knowing what Simon was trying to get at—after all, he had been asking me all this week which one, Jen or Casey, I loved more.
Simon chuckled. “Fine then, be that way. Hold on a moment.”
The moment lasted nearly a minute. Then a new sound entered the silence. A small and soft voice uttering just one word.
“Daddy?”
“Casey,” I said, jumping up from the bed. “Baby, are you okay?”
“Daddy, they—they hurt me.”
“No, Casey, no,” I said, starting to sob, already feeling the tears on my face. I went to say more but Casey was no longer there.
Simon asked, “Satisfied?”
“What about my wife?”
“What about her?”
“I want to speak to her.”
“And I want a blowjob from the Queen of England. But just like the Stones taught us, we can’t always get what we want.”
I gritted my teeth. “Let me talk to my wife, you son of a bitch!”
“Whoa, watch it, Ben. What did I tell you before about name-calling? Now you’ve forced me to do this.”
There was a pause, followed immediately by a high-pitched shriek. I’d heard it many times before, running from my bedroom to Casey’s to wake her out of her nightmares, but never like this.
“Don’t!” I shouted. “Please”—my voice was starting to crack, to tremble—“please don’t.”
“Then don’t be mean. Next time it will be worse. I’ll let you listen to the bone snap.”
I fell back on the bed, closed my eyes.
“Now if you want even the half-hope of seeing your family again, here’s what I want you to do. Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.”
When he was done he disconnected. I set the phone aside, lay there for a very long time, slowly sat up. Opened my eyes to find Carver and Bronson and David watching. Carver seemed to already know what Simon had told me. He was shaking his head.
“Don’t,” he said, almost simply, though by now he must have realized his attempts had become wasted.
I looked up at him. I could feel tears threatening to press their way forward again. I didn’t say anything.
Yet, somehow, my silence said it all.
41
A cab took me all the way to Navy Pier, about a half hour’s drive. Either the driver hadn’t seen the news in the past twelve hours or else he wasn’t very observant, because I’d caught him glancing at me a few times in his rearview mirror but nothing ever came of it. I wanted him to drop me off a few blocks away from the place and he gave me a curious look, said it was no trouble dropping me right off in front of the plaza. “I want to walk,” I told him, and minutes later I was dropped off at the corner of North Peshtigo and East Illinois. I paid him and got out, then started walking, heading beneath the highway overpass, squinting at the large building and the red archway and the boats out on the water. From my angle I could just see the top of the slowly revolving Ferris wheel.
For a Saturday afternoon around twelve o’clock you’d think this area of the city would be a little busier. A number of taxis and buses and cars drove around the loop of North Streeter Drive like normal, their taillights glowing red as they made their stops, but the number of pedestrians walking the sidewalks was limited, as if there was something wrong.
Of course something’s wrong, I thought. Yesterday someone just got murdered here.
I had to squint to make sure I was headed in the right direction. I would have let the driver drop me off right in front of the plaza (presumably where the cop was shot), but I wanted to put off the inevitable as long as possible—whatever that may be. All Simon had said was to come down here, to where James Henley was killed, and to not talk to anybody. Not a word.
So when ten minutes passed and I w
as just standing there on the sidewalk, right near where the incident tape had been strung up, and the first police car arrived, its lights flashing, followed by another car, then another, then another, and the cops all got out, their weapons aimed, shouting at me to get down on the ground, shouting at me to put my hands on the back of my head, I did so silently.
Next they rushed forward, their guns still drawn, approaching me like I was strapped with explosives. They worked quickly and efficiently, keeping their desires to beat the shit out of me temporarily at bay. Hands fell on me, pushing me into the ground, and my arms were jerked up so they could place the cuffs around my wrists.
And still I was silent.
I just lay there, my body pressed against the cold cement, and glanced out at the people heading toward the plaza, even the people who’d gotten stuck in traffic because of the commotion. They had all stopped moving, were now standing still. They were all watching the action intently.
Something told me they couldn’t look away.
42
The interview room was bright, its fluorescents humming in the ceiling, and the walls were bare, not a thing marking any space except for where the door stood and the long mirror stretched to my right, which all the movies and TV shows in the world told me was two-way and which a number of policemen stood behind watching at this moment. The room had no distinguishing smells, except for what may have been the lingering ghosts of sweat and body odor. When I’d first come in the temperature had been moderate, but now it was cold, a biting chill that reminded me of waking up in room six of the Paradise Motel.
The only things in the room were a metal table and two chairs, one of which I’d been sitting in for the past five or ten hours. My sense of time had quickly dissipated the longer I’d been stuck in here. There was no noise except for the humming of the fluorescents, no noise except for the blood which sometimes pounded away in my ears. No noise except for the few times the detective had come into the room, had sat down at the other side of the table and just stared at me.
He hadn’t given me his name, and for all I knew he wasn’t even a detective. Maybe not even a cop. He was a tall menacing man with a buzz cut and eyes that had clearly seen more darkness than they had been promised. He was dressed in slacks and a shirt and tie. The first time he came in he just stared at me with his dark eyes, didn’t say a word for at least ten minutes. I stared back at him (squinted really, because I was still without my glasses), not saying a word, and he left. He came back later and this time spoke, his voice a heavy and meaty bass, asking me if I knew what kind of trouble I was in. Explaining what happened to people who killed cops. Telling me about all the different things that were going to happen to me in prison—how the guards were going to treat me, then the prisoners, and then the guards again. Still I said nothing, not a word, and he stood up from his chair, cracked his knuckles and slowly started walking around the table. I was certain he was going to hit me but instead he just leaned in close, placing one hand on the table, his other hand on the back of my chair.
“You know,” he whispered, “silence always confirms guilt. Don’t think by not saying a goddamned thing it proves you’re innocent.”
I forgot if it was on TV or in some movie, but I remembered seeing a detective once chewing or eating something to make his breath smell rank before coming in and talking to whoever was trapped in one of these rooms. An onion, mustard, jalapeños—any number of things that would cause halitosis. I didn’t know what this detective had done today, but there was definitely something foul coming from inside his mouth. It almost smelled like he had a decayed tooth that he’d never taken care of and which he’d purposely kept for situations like these. I noticed the wedding band on his finger and almost felt sorry for his wife.
But still I said nothing. I didn’t even turn away. I just sat there and stared forward. This detective thought I was playing tough but that wasn’t it at all. My reticence had nothing to do with the fact I’d been caught and didn’t want to say anything that might later bite me in the ass. I didn’t know what he wanted exactly—I hadn’t been read my rights, which meant I wasn’t under arrest, which meant I was here for questioning purposes until they either found the murder weapon or some other thing to nail me with—but I knew what Simon wanted, what Simon had pretty much demanded, and that was to not say a word to anybody, no matter what happened.
“And I’ll know if you do,” he told me, right before disconnecting, “which means that Jennifer and Casey will know too.”
I didn’t doubt him for an instant. I knew he’d know, and that was why I hadn’t said a word, not even one syllable, this entire time.
• • •
ON DETECTIVE ROTTEN Tooth’s third visit he brought a stack of photographs. Many were four-by-sevens of James Henley and his wife, who, the detective made a point of constantly noting, was pregnant with twins. Most of the pictures showed what were no doubt James Henley and his wife in the early years of their relationship, their arms around each other, both smiling widely for the camera. A few others showed them both on their wedding day, in what looked to have taken place in a small and dimly lit chapel. Another at the reception, with James and his wife posing as they together cut the cake. A final picture showed James in uniform, standing tall and proud, and the detective talked just about him for a while, how the man’s ambition had been to become a detective ever since he was a kid, how James actually liked working bike patrol, how ever since he found out he and his wife were having twins it was all he ever talked about.
Detective Rotten Tooth asked, “Why you squinting? You need glasses or something?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Well?” he said, but I kept my attention forward, didn’t nod or shake my head. I’d had no ID on me when they brought me in, so they didn’t know who I was. They had taken my picture and scanned my fingerprints, but I knew nothing would come up. Like Simon had said, I had never once been arrested, so I wouldn’t be on some database, and even if I was I was pretty confident Simon would take care of that on his end. The only thing on me was the cell phone, which Simon had told me to bring (he’d told me to ditch everything else) and which was probably stored away as evidence somewhere. I didn’t even have Jen’s wedding ring anymore, or the black and white photograph of my wife and daughter gagged and crying—I’d left them behind because they were just another part of Simon’s instructions, and another way I felt like less of a man.
“To hell with you,” the detective said finally, and left the room, leaving me sitting there and staring down at the table.
I didn’t touch any of the pictures. The detective had laid them out for me, facing up so I had no choice but to look. And I did look. I couldn’t help myself. James Henley was a young guy, not much younger than myself, and while his wife was blonde and looked nothing like Jen, I began to see the both of us replaced in those pictures. The years we’d dated, then our wedding day; the ritual of cutting the wedding cake and feeding each other a piece.
I wondered what would have happened had I been used just as James Henley had been used, a simple pawn in a game constructed by those who wished to entertain only a select few. Except James hadn’t even been a pawn; no, he’d been so much less. He’d been a throwaway, just a man unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened to anybody, and thinking this, I wondered about all the other people gunned down in the streets, the fatal accidents on the highways, the women raped by men. How many of those had been true accounted incidents of a world gone mad, and how many had been simply designed to fulfill the dark desires of only a few?
• • •
AROUND WHAT MAY have been the fifth or sixth hour—again, I’d lost my sense of time, and when Detective Rotten Tooth came in he wasn’t wearing a watch—the need to move my bowels became very strong. So strong, in fact, I felt that any moment my body might start pissing without the express written consent of my mind. But that was probably what they wanted anyway, the cops and Simon.
To see me wet myself, to force me to soak in the stink of my own piss.
But what if Simon was gone?
It was a question that had been in the back of my mind this entire time, even while I was taking my cab ride to Navy Pier. What if Jen and Casey were really dead and Simon had no use for me anymore, wanted me to just take the fall for the murder one of his own people had committed? This would be the perfect ending in a way, wouldn’t it?
Except I refused to believe that. I thought of what the fox had told the little prince, his secret—“One sees clearly only with the heart”—and I knew Jen and Casey were still alive. I knew it in my heart, in my soul, and I wasn’t going to give up the slightest bit of hope that Carver was wrong. I wanted to believe Jen would do the same in my position. Besides, it had been my job to save her and Casey from their nightmares, from those monsters chasing them. Now that I’d failed them I needed to make up for it, I needed to prove that even though those monsters had turned out to be real, they could still be defeated. Wasn’t that the reason for all the fairy tales told throughout time—to remind children that not only do monsters exist, but they can also be beaten? Wasn’t that the real reason Casey loved the Shrek movies so much, that in the end love conquers all?
• • •
TIME WORKED OVERTIME to stretch itself out. I was hungry, cold, and I needed to take a piss. I’d even begun nodding off but managed to stay awake. I kept referring to the pictures set before me, sometimes leaning close and squinting so I could make out every detail, and I wondered how Detective Rotten Tooth had gone about getting them. He’d no doubt had to contact James Henley’s widow, explain the situation. Had she been hesitant about providing pictures from her beloved albums? Had she really wanted the man who’d killed her husband to witness snapshots of the two of them when they were happy? Wouldn’t that have just sunk the nail in deeper to the fact that all those happy times were what I’d viciously taken away?
Man of Wax (Man of Wax Trilogy) Page 16
