by John Bruni
“But what about the bomb in my neck?” Wayne asked.
“Never mind that. You still have a lot of time. We need to get sneaky.”
“Oh?” Jimmy asked. “This coming from Mr. Guerilla Warfare?”
“Shut up, Jimmy. Time’s important, and we’ve got a ticket into Wingate’s mansion now.” Jack took a deep breath. “We need to sneak into that place with you, and that’s just not going to happen if they send guys to pick you up now. It’s better than storming the mansion and hoping they don’t have any guards with heavy duty weapons.”
“How are we going to handle this, then?” Wayne asked.
“I don’t know yet. That’s why we need more time. Let’s get going, and don’t you dare take that hand off your eye. I don’t care if they hear us or not, but they can’t know where we are yet. Do you still have your credit chip?”
“I haven’t had one in a long time. Traded it for booze a couple of years back.”
“Thank Christ. I would hate to have to dig it out of you.”
Wayne shrugged, happy that the burden of coming up with a plan had been removed from his shoulders. He would never be the smartest guy, or even smarter than average, but now someone smarter than him had happened along. Perfect.
He didn’t even think about the billion dollars that he had coming to him if he just kept standing here. “Let’s go, then.”
~
“That could be a problem,” Edward said. He stared at Wayne’s blackened screen.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Charles said. “What’s the worst they could do?”
“You saw the, uh, colored guy. He’s got his arsenal with him. Not to mention that journalist. They could do us some damage.”
“We’re well protected here,” Charles said, “thanks to Richard’s mob connections.”
“Still . . .”
“Have no worries,” Coppergate said. “Never doubt the temptation a goodly sum possesses.”
Chapter 22
1
The phone rang, and Bob Whiteman cracked his eyes. Not far enough to be blinded by the light flowing through the window, but just wide enough so he could see the clock readout in the corner of his vision. Ugh. Could it really be that late in the day?
Then he remembered how he’d spent his evening. As soon as he dropped McNeil off at Wingate’s mansion, he’d taken his pay and had gone to a cunt club with a group of friends. He paid off his debts with Two-Finger Finney and then got absolutely hammered while watching women make things vanish into their pussies. Then, he’d gotten one of the masturbators to take a couple of Shifts, which made her look like Bob’s favorite actress of all time, Joan Gabriella. He’d brought her back to his place and fucked her till his cock hurt.
He rolled his eyes slightly and saw a naked female form still in bed with him. He smiled, thinking he might want to go another round with her.
The phone rang a fourth time, and Bob accessed his cellular account. “Hello?” He mumbled, not wanting to incur the wrath of his hangover.
“Robert?” It was Richard Coppergate.
“Already?” He sat up and did a quick calculation. The contestants still had about twelve hours to go. No game had ever gone this fast.
“Did I wake you? Dreadfully sorry, Robert. I just need you to finish your obligation for this year. You’re to pick up Wayne Richards.”
Bob yawned. “But my guy is Steve McNeil. Didn’t Victor pick him up? It should be Victor’s job.”
“Victor is apparently offline,” Coppergate said. “We can’t reach him. Since you’re our most reliable employee, I hoped you would be available. For an additional fee, of course. Double your usual.”
“Sure.” Bob took a moment to light a cigarette. “Where?”
“We’re not sure. We tried to locate him via his credit chip, but apparently, someone else uses it now. However, we will send over our intranet connection, so you can track him through his own LiveStream. For the time being, he’s concealed his location by covering his eye, but we expect that he’ll soon slip.”
“You mean, you want me to drive around the city and hope I find him?”
“More or less,” Coppergate said.
“That’s ridiculous. Do you know how big the city is?”
“I pay you well.”
“Yeah, but—“
“Excellent. I expect you to begin immediately. After, of course, you find Timothy.”
Coppergate hung up before Bob could object. He didn’t have a car. The van belonged to Tim, so Bob would need a taxi to get over to Tim’s apartment.
The form next to him stirred. “Something wrong?”
Bob glanced over. The Shifts had worn off, and she now looked like herself. Too bad. She had a crooked nose, a lazy eye and her front teeth were obviously fake.
Still, she kept fit. He’d fuck her like this.
No, he didn’t have the time. “You need to get out of here.”
She blinked, her eyes looking in opposite directions. “Okay. But you didn’t pay me last night.”
Fuck. “How much?”
“A thousand.”
“Shit on that. You weren’t worth five hundred.”
“You made me take Shifts. I know you liked that. It costs extra.”
He wanted to argue the point, but again, he had to get moving. He held up his left hand and transferred the money to her account. When he saw how much he had left from last night’s celebration, he couldn’t believe it. Coppergate had given him half a million, and he only had a little more than five thousand left. Did he black out or something?
The woman gave him one last pleasure—a hell of a view while she bent over to pick up her clothes, showing off her puckered asshole and her fat, juicy pussy, all framed by her wonderful peach of a derriere—before she walked out of his life.
He tried to call Tim, but his partner wouldn’t answer. Motherfucker. He then called a cab and hopped in the shower before it arrived.
2
Bob paid the cabbie and got out, standing in front of Tim’s place, squinting against the sun. His hangover still lingered in his stomach and floated in his head, and the sunglasses he wore didn’t do much to stop light from penetrating his brain.
He walked up to the second floor and hammered on Tim’s door. When he got no answer, he knocked harder. “Come on, Tim. Open up. It’s me, Bob. We gotta’ go, man.”
Still, no answer.
Bob tried the doorknob. He expected it to be locked, since it was not a very good neighborhood—not as bad as Bob’s, but definitely not as good as the east side—but it turned in his hand. He shrugged and pushed the door open.
“Hello? Tim? Where the fuck are you?”
He walked through Tim’s living room, noting its cleanliness and organization. Clean coffee table, not so much as a sweat ring. Dusted pictures hanging on the walls. Even the windows sparkled.
In the kitchen, there were no dirty dishes in the sink. The food in the fridge was all in plastic containers, even the butter. No crumbs on the counter. Bob thought about his own messy apartment and couldn’t help but marvel at Tim’s. Not bad for a dirty hippy. Tim probably didn’t even drink from his milk carton.
He closed the refrigerator door after noting the lack of beer and moved on to the bedroom. As he cast his gaze around at the well-made bed, the carefully folded clothes in the dresser drawers and the orderly desk with its computer on it, he tried to think back to what Tim might have said last night. He knew Tim was a high school teacher in the daytime, but he couldn’t have needed to be in class today. Who taught on Saturdays?
Then, he remembered Tim’s disgust at how they’d kidnapped Steve McNeil. While Tim didn’t know Steve, he knew that Bob had been friends with him back in the day. He’d considered kidnapping Steve an act of betrayal, which struck Bob as strange. He’d been working with Tim for eight years, and he’d never objected to any of their targets before. Not even when Bob accidentally killed a former contestant by hitting her over the head did Tim give him s
hit. Coppergate had, since they then had to find a replacement, but Tim didn’t say a word about it. He’d even laughed a little.
Bob stared at a hamper for a while before he figured out its purpose, and then he checked the bathroom, where he finally found something messy. No, the toilet shone immaculately. The mirror didn’t have any splash marks of toothpaste sputum on it. Even the floor sparkled.
But the bathtub was full of blood, almost to the very brim.
“Jesus Christ.” Bob scratched his balding head. “Schoolteacher by day, serial killer by night.” He chuckled, but he stopped when he saw something pale through the thick, coagulating blood. Bob bent over and squinted.
He saw someone’s dick.
He could also see something else, but he didn’t recognize it. He had a suspicion, though.
“Shit.” He reached his hand into the tub and recoiled when his wrist touched something cold and stiff under there. He gritted his teeth and tried not to think about it. When he found the stopper, he pulled it out. Then, as the tub drained, he turned around and washed the blood off his arm in the sink.
By the time the surface of blood had lowered halfway, his suspicion was confirmed. He saw an entire body in the tub, and it had long hair.
“You stupid fuck.”
He looked into Tim’s blank, bloated face and wondered how long ago his partner had slit his wrists. Probably a while ago, maybe as soon as he got home. The corpse had curved in rigor mortis and now fit the bottom of the tub like an adjoining puzzle piece. Bob couldn’t see through the red lenses of Tim’s glasses, and he wondered if Tim had killed himself over something stupid like the McNeil situation.
Or had this been building up over the years? A schoolteacher had to have brains, more than Bob, at least. Bob knew he’d never impress anyone with his intelligence, but Tim had to have something more between his ears. Maybe his moonlighting job had fucked with him for a while, and McNeil had just been the straw that broke the camel’s hump.
Sure, it had left a bad taste in Bob’s mouth, but come on. It was just business. Tim should have known that.
Bob dialed up Coppergate, who picked up on the third ring. “Yes?”
“Tim’s not coming with me.”
“Why not?”
“He’s . . . uh . . . dead.”
“Is this a joke?”
“Nope. He slit his wrists. I’m looking at his dead body right now.”
“Hm. Pity. Did you notify the authorities?”
Bob almost said, “Fuck no.” Then, he remembered that Coppergate didn’t like curse words, so he just said, “No.”
“Then don’t. Tim is dead. He can wait until we’re finished.”
“All right. But hey. Before you hang up, I don’t have a ride. I had to get a cab over to Tim’s.”
“Oh. Right. I’ll send you a replacement from another team. He’ll be there shortly.”
Coppergate hung up, and Bob looked one last time at Tim’s body. Eight years, down the drain. He’d never really liked Tim and his liberal bullshit, but the guy could be funny. Sometimes.
Oh well.
Chapter 23
1
Wayne, Jack and Jimmy went into Elizabeth Drake’s garage and found a Lexus 2199 in there. Jack used his ‘net connection to access a repair manual for that model, and he used it to hack the dash computer to bypass the need for a thumbprint identification. They then drove to the nearest grocery store. Jack and Jimmy went in while Wayne sat in the backseat and tried not to bleed to death. He’d removed some of the shards of glass from his body and managed to cover up those minor wounds, but there were a couple of big pieces still in him. Blood oozed from around the glass.
Jack and Jimmy came back, and they gave Wayne an eye patch and a set of ear plugs. Wayne, tired of holding a hand over his eye, eagerly put the eye patch on, and he put one of the plugs in his right ear.
“Good,” Jack said. “Now we need to take care of your wounds. Jimmy, give me the bandages and pliers.”
Jimmy did. First, Jack put on a pair of rubber gloves and formally patched up the smaller injuries. Then, he took a pair of needle nose pliers and used them to remove the bigger pieces of broken glass.
Wayne tried not to scream. He really did. But when he felt the sharp edges rubbing against his raw wounds, he couldn’t help it. Jack pulled them as quickly as he could, but it still hadn’t felt quick enough to Wayne.
After Jack rubbed some disinfectant into the easiest injuries, he bandaged them up. However, he stopped when he came to the biggest one of them all. “This one’s going to need stitches.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t afford doctors,” Wayne said, “so I’ll have to do without.”
“I could put them in, if I had sterile thread,” Jack said. “So there’s only one thing to do. Jimmy, go back in there and get us some duct tape.”
“That doesn’t sound very sanitary,” Jimmy said.
“Nope, but it’ll work, at least until this is over.”
When Jimmy came back, he handed the roll over to Wayne. Jack said, “When you put that tape on, push your gash closed first. Then, as tight as you can, press that tape down and wrap it around your arm, as tight as you can. Okay?”
“That’ll stop the bleeding?” Wayne asked.
“Yes. The blood will have no choice but to clot.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before.”
Jack didn’t answer him.
2
They had to find a place to talk things out, and they had to think about it for a moment. They couldn’t go to Jimmy’s place, considering that Coppergate had to know about him by now. Jack’s place was too damaged to qualify for this, not to mention how long it would take them to get there. Jack thought Lenny’s might be a good place to go, but Jimmy said that if Coppergate knew about him, he would certainly know about Lenny’s, since he’d written quite a few columns that took place there.
High profile places were out, and they couldn’t stay out in the open. They had no choice but to find the sleaziest bar they could.
At the end of the Sleaze Strip—across the street from Henry’s Likkker, much to Wayne’s dismay—they found a place called The Gutter. Anyone who walked into this place had to make their peace with the idea that they would be breathing SyntheSmoke instead of air. Peanut shells littered the floor, left there by customers who’d died fifty years ago. There were no decorations here, not even a neon beer sign. The splintery bar was actually a board nailed down to two other boards in front of a row of lopsided stools. The surface had sweat rings that could have been left by Methuselah.
The bartender might have been handsome, if he’d cleaned himself up a bit. His greasy dark hair hung in his eyes, which were hooded by the Wild Turkey he drank from the bottle. His yellowed undershirt looked like he might have rubbed cheese into it, and the dingy tattoos on his arms were almost concealed by grime and his heavy, wiry arm hair. A cigarette dangled absently from the corner of his mouth, and he took drags off it as if he were breathing. Ash fell all over the bar and his soiled shirt, and he never made a move to brush it away with his long-nailed fingers, which probably hadn’t been washed in weeks, perhaps months.
There weren’t a lot of customers. An old whore sat at the bar, nursing a beer and smoking much the same way as the bartender. An old man lay face down on a table, his head surrounded by a halo of puke. A group of burly men played cards in the back corner. No one seemed to care that Wayne, Jimmy and Jack had entered, nor did they give a glimpse to Wayne’s blood-crusted clothes. Business as usual for the patrons of The Gutter.
Despite the filth in which this bar squatted, gentle jazz drifted from the speakers of the wall-mounted juke box. It seemed out of place, and it soothed the minds of everyone in here.
Jack went to the bar and ordered the best whiskey the place had.
The bartender gave him a quick glance and then wordlessly put a fifth of Wild Turkey in front of Jack. It had to be the only name brand in the joint. The other bottles lacked labels,
for the most part.
Jack paid up and took the bottle and three glasses to the table where Wayne and Jimmy sat. He poured the drinks and said, “How much time do we have left?”
Wayne checked his countdown. “About eleven hours.”
“Good. Still plenty of time. We need a plan and badly.”
3
They talked, or more often, argued, for about an hour, trying to come up with a method of attacking the Wingate mansion. Jack believed in a sneak attack full of gusto, and Jimmy wanted to be low profile the whole way. Neither of them could come up with a plan to get into the building without alerting the occupants, though. Wayne didn’t have much to offer, but he made it clear to them that no matter what, he wanted to kick some ass.
No one in The Gutter minded their conversation. In fact, it seemed that no one even noticed them, even when Jack’s voice rose in anger. The bartender continued to stare drunkenly into space, the whore continued nursing her beer, the old man continued to snore in his own puke and the poker players continued playing their low-stakes game, lost in their own conversation about absentee wives, wishful fucking and wishful spending.
As the level of booze in the bottle lowered, Jack sat bolt upright, like someone suddenly inspired by God Himself. “I’ve got an idea. I should have thought of this sooner.”
Wayne and Jimmy looked at him expectantly.
4
Wayne checked the countdown again. Ten hours to go.
Jack and Jimmy looked at him. He returned Jack’s gaze, then Jimmy’s, and then he took a deep breath. A hand went to his right ear and plucked the plug out. He threw it down to join the peanut shells on the floor. Next came the eye patch, which fell like a shroud over the ear plug.
~
The occupants of the room had mostly dispersed about the mansion by then, except for Elizabeth and Coppergate—and Coppergate’s assistant, sitting unnoticed in the shadows—both of whom whispered gently to each other. Elizabeth lowered the blanket, revealing Coppergate’s latest cock. She held it in her hand, stroking its thickness in accordance to her whispering cadence. Coppergate smiled, his mouth and eyes closed in rapture.
