Darwin's Nightmare

by Mike Knowles

  I changed cabs a few times to make sure no one was following me and got back to the office at 2:17 a.m. I put my gun, Julian’s wallet, and the phones I took from Igor and Julian on the desk, then looked for whatever food I had on hand. I found some mixed nuts and a Coke. I ate and drank with relish before I even considered the phones. When I finished the food, I looked at Julian’s phone. It was a slim model — modern and new. I pulled up the call history and clicked through until I found the date of the airport robbery. I checked the call log and saw that Julian had called a cell number minutes after I handed him the bag.

  I took a deep breath and called the number. After six rings I got a sleepy, “Hello?”

  “You done with the disks yet?” I asked in a gruff voice.

  “What the fuck? Who is this?”

  I asked again, and after another foul response I hung up. I went back to the call log and found the next number Julian had called that day. I tried the second number and got a much better response.

  “Julian? I told you it’d take at least a week. Why are you calling me now?” There was a pause, then a hushed whine: “Aw, jeez, ya woke up Ma, now she’s gonna be pissed.”

  I worked hard to make my voice deeper like Julian’s and I tried to talk like him. “Listen, I got another disk with some things the boss said would help. Codes he said you’d need. Important information. But it can’t be dropped off. These shits we took it from are looking hard at us. I need to hand it off to you. You need to meet me this morning. Now.”

  The whiny whisper took on a scared tone. “Look, Julian,” said the Voice, “I don’t mean no disrespect, but I can’t get involved with that. I promised Ma I was clean now. Aw, crap. Hold on.” His words were muffled under a cupped hand as he told his mother that the call was a wrong number and he was just hanging up.

  When the Voice came back I decided to press my luck. “Fine,” I said. “I got an idea that will work out. Something no one will expect. No one will see this coming. I’ll FedEx the disk to you. Give me your address.”

  There was a pause. “Julian? You know where I live.”

  There was a hint of question in the words, so I turned up the volume. “Who the fuck are you? You say no to me and I let it slide. I don’t even press you. I decide to help you out ‘cause I feel bad for your ma, and you start questioning me? You gotta make a choice, A or B, it’s up to you. You can either worry about your mother or yourself, because in a few seconds I’m gonna find someone else to do your job, and then I won’t care so much about you . . . or your mother.”

  “Julian . . . I . . . Julian, I’m sorry I —”

  “Shut the fuck up. Stay quiet. Don’t say anything to me. Just listen. I’m not the fucking post office. I can’t send shit without all of the information that they want on the label. I want the address, the postal code, everything. Now!”

  It all came out as soon as I finished yelling. Once the Voice stopped pleading and gave me what I asked for, I was moving. I picked up Julian’s wallet and Igor’s cell phone off my desk and opened the closet. I pulled a black windbreaker over my untucked shirt and pocketed a black watch cap. I removed the panel in the back of the closet and put in the wallet and cell phones. I took the sawed-off shotgun out for the second time, sliding it under my arm. Then I went back to my desk and used a Swiss Army knife to cut two holes into the material of the watch cap. I pulled it on and checked my vision through the holes. After a little adjusting and finger tearing, I had clear vision through the hat. I rolled the cap and put it in my back pocket. I stowed the Glock behind my back and flattened the back of the jacket over the holster.

  My shoulders were starting to knot from the collision. I was tired and wanted nothing more than to eat then sleep for a month. But I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t slow down. If I lost momentum, I would lose the element of surprise — the only edge I had. I did two minutes’ worth of stretching to loosen my shoulders and back. The final stretch was to get a bottle of Advil. I put four of the sweet tablets into my mouth and chewed them as I walked out of the office.

  In the car, I drove just above the speed limit. I didn’t want to draw any cop’s attention. I was just another poor schlub off a late shift trying to get home a little quicker. The address the Voice gave me was on the other side of town. I pushed my way through the sparse traffic towards the Voice and his mother wishing I could slow down, but knowing I couldn’t. The call put the Voice on edge, and I had to get there before the whimpering fear I yelled into him turned into afterthoughts that would question the whole phone call. I found the building and circled it twice, looking for heads illuminated in cars by my headlights. Those types of heads are like alligator eyes above the water, watching in dark silence for anything to come too close. I saw no one watching, and no one waiting, so I parked around the side of the building and got out. I opened the trunk and hid from the streetlight behind the open lid. From under a blanket, I retrieved the sawed-off shotgun and slid it up the side of my windbreaker so I could hold it tight to my body with the side of my bicep. I closed the trunk and walked around to the front of the high-rise. My walk was odd; the bulges from the watch cap and pistol clashed with the awkward gait caused by holding a shotgun to my body using my elbow.

  I eyed each car I passed, looking for anything strange, but everything seemed clear. I took one last look around as I made a right off the sidewalk up to the Voice’s building. Like most inner-city apartment buildings, this one had two sets of glass doors: one to enter the building from the street, another to the entryway that contained the elevators. The inner doors were sealed from the elements, and the old fan above pumped in the thick, untreated city air. I entered and simultaneous scents of cooked food, exhaust, and sweat filled the glassed-off partition like a gas chamber. There were no night watchmen or innocent bystanders in this building; the building was too poor and unsafe for either. I looked up and around and saw no cameras and no security system. The only sign of technology was the intercom, and that had a fist-sized hole in it. Through the smudges on the glass, I could see a stairwell and an elevator that would lead to the twelfth-floor apartment I was looking for. After one more look around, I made my awkward walk back to the car. I opened the trunk again and pulled a crowbar up from under the blanket. I shut the trunk and then wedged the crowbar under my left arm. I held it up pressed against my left side, forcing my walk to be even more constricted. Witnesses would remember the odd walk more than any other physical details. They would also not be concerned enough at the sight of me to call the police because they saw no evidence of a crime; they just saw another fellow resident afflicted by life in Hamilton’s hard core.

  The walk back was uneventful. Once inside the first set of glass doors, I let the shotgun slip down into my hand so I could place it on the dirt-caked floor mat. I let the crow-bar loose next and forced it into the space between the inside doors. I pushed it in, wiggling it back and forth until I had it jammed far enough in to support some pressure. In one hard motion, I bent the metal door frame and cracked the glass, but with the destruction came a satisfying movement to the door. I picked up all I brought, concealed it once again, and hit the stairs.

  On floor twelve, I opened the stairwell door quietly and checked the hall. No sound came through the crack in the door. The artificial ceiling light created the quality of perpetual midday. I waited a full three minutes in the stairwell, watching for any sign of life. When I was convinced there was none, I entered the hall and moved towards apartment 1207. I stopped in the hallway when I came upon the elevator. I pushed the button and waited, listening to the grinding of gears. Moments later, an artificial chime signalled the elevator’s arrival. I stood off to the side and waited while the metal doors opened. No sounds came from the elevator car. I looked in and saw it was empty of people and cameras. I waited until the doors started to close; there was no sound letting anyone know it was about to happen, just an abrupt shifting of machinery and a scraping of metal on metal. I pushed the doors back open and used the crowbar to wed
ge them ajar. Satisfied that the bar would hold, and that no one would be using the elevator, I moved down the hall to 1207. At the door I listened carefully for any sounds from inside. I heard the faint sounds of a television, but I couldn’t be sure if it came from inside or next door.

  I stood a step away from the doorknob and moved my eyes over the locks. There were two locks: one standard mechanism above the doorknob, and a much heavier deadbolt a few inches above that. There was no way to account for a door chain on the other side. I didn’t think there would be one — usually the chains are only on doors with three or more locks. One extra lock means cautious, but not paranoid. Most cautious people buy deadbolts and self-install them to save money. This lock was more than likely self-installed because no self-respecting locksmith would put a deadbolt in crooked. It looked like a shit job, but the lock itself was a quality heavy-duty item. I couldn’t waste time trying to pick the locks. The hallway was too bright for me to be inconspicuous, and the noise of the picks in the two locks might put the Voice on to me. I looked away from the locks to the door frame; it looked old. I dug into the wood with my thumbnail, and a piece came off with ease. The two steel locks were sitting in old rotted wood. Whoever put the second lock in never thought about how the door frame would handle the stress of being assaulted.

  I stepped back from the door and took one last look down the hallway before rolling the watch cap over my head. I adjusted it with my one free hand until I could see clearly through the holes I made. I lowered the shotgun from under my jacket and rolled my shoulders to get the kinks out from the awkward posture I had been holding. Once I felt loose and my breathing was controlled, I stepped back until my back touched the opposite wall. The hallway gave me only four or five good steps from one side to the other. I moved back and forth over the distance twice, working on getting a rhythm to my steps and my foot placement. On my second practice, I let my foot extend within inches of the door, aiming six inches to the left of the two locks. Then, crossing the floor for the third time, I hit it.

  The impact of my foot drove the door inward. The bolts tore, like blunt claws, through the old wood frame. I planted my foot inside and used my shoulder to take the impact of the door swinging back on itself.

  The room was dark, and the light from the hallway spilled in, illuminating the small tiled entryway I was standing in. In front of me was a closet. To the right the tile continued into a bathroom, lit only by a faint night light. A flicker from my left brought my eyes and the shotgun over to the television, which was casting soft light onto a couch where an old woman sat. The flickering glow of the television made the wrinkles on her frightened old face stand out.

  “You must be mom,” I said. “Sit there and don’t move.”

  I used my free hand to push the front door closed. The exposed bolts caught on the splinters they left when they tore free, and the door stayed closed. The woman on the couch stared at me, unflinching. Ahead of me I saw an alcove kitchen and two doors. One of the doors slammed shut. I sprinted across the room and kicked the door open. Inside, staring at me, a young Italian man was frantically dialling a phone. I gripped the shotgun with both hands and drove the stock into his face. The blow knocked him off of his feet straight onto his back like he had fainted.

  I scanned the room fast. A heavy desk lamp was the only light source. Two laptop computers were on an old brown desk set that looked cheaply painted, and an old stained futon rested against the left wall. There was no other furniture in the room. The only decorations were posters — Pacino as Scarface and a porn star staring out from the wall with seductive eyes. I looked on the desk for the disks but saw only DVD cases, paper, and a few photos in frames. I recognized a face in one of the frames and hesitated for a second. The face was with four others, all of them gazing out from a soccer field. The five young men looked sweaty, tired, and happy. One kid held up his finger, wordlessly telling everyone they were number one. I knew the kid and his face. I thought about the features, the dyed blond hair, the patchy stubble, and the small mouth. I had seen the features at the airport; they belonged to Nicky — the amateur bagman I stole the disks from. Before he and his co-workers had been cleaned by the Russians, Mike had told me no one knew why Nicky volunteered to do the trade at the airport. He said no one had done anything like that before so no one challenged him; they were probably relieved that anyone volunteered. It was clear now that the amateur had set up his own scam with Paolo and his crew through his friend the Voice. The bagman had been out for himself, and he had set up a deal with Paolo that cut his friends and the Russians out of the loop. The Voice was the link back to the beginning.

  I spoke at the rapidly blinking eyes staring up at me from the floor. “Give me the disks now.” The voice I used had a terrible Russian accent attached to it.

  “I don’t know . . .”

  I kicked him hard in the groin, and he curled up tight, screaming. I used the shortened barrel of the gun to straighten him out. “The disks, or I take your foot, then your mother’s.” The accent was better the second time.

  “In . . . in . . . in the desk,” he told me.

  I opened the drawer and saw several unmarked CDs. I had to be sure they were what I needed. I cocked the shotgun and turned to the quivering mass on the floor. I took aim at his foot and took a slow, loud breath.

  “Okay, okay they’re in the floor.”

  “Get,” was all I said, hoping my surprise didn’t leak through.

  The kid slid onto his belly and crawled toward the futon. He yanked free a patch of flooring and pulled a worn and battered lockbox from a space below the floor. I smiled under the mask just before I spun wildly.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My body whirled in a circle and I fell toward the futon. The bullet in my left arm made me a human dreidel. I shot back through the door with both barrels and saw the body of the old woman leave her feet. The revolver she held fell sideways out of her hands onto the floor. In my haste I had written her off, and as a reward she shot me.

  “Ma!” The Voice screamed as he lunged off the floor. I couldn’t stand fast enough so I grabbed his legs as he ran to the door. I pulled him to the floor and began clawing up his legs toward his torso. He was wild, and I was shot. Holding him was impossible, so I used my head. I rammed my head into the back of his skull, hard, taking away some of his spunk. The second and third head butts made his body slacken.

  I got to my feet and grabbed a pillow from the futon. I used the pillowcase to carry the shotgun, lockbox, and the two laptops. I walked out the door without looking at Ma and found the crowbar still in place in the elevator; I got on and kicked it free. As I descended, I put the crowbar into the pillowcase. When I straightened up, I caught sight of myself in the reflective surface of the doors; the left arm of the windbreaker was taking on a wet sheen. My arm was starting to hurt, and I was starting to feel faint.

  I managed to get to the car without passing out. I clumsily held the bag and the back of my left arm with my right hand the whole way. The blood soaked between my fingers and rolled down the nylon fabric of the jacket. I pulled off the watch cap and folded it over, then worked it up under the coat until it was over the wound. The placement made me wince, but I pushed hard on the wound, hoping to slow the blood flow.

  The keys were slippery in my fingers, but I got the car started. After three blinks, which took twelve semi-conscious seconds, I put the car in drive and watched the apartment building roll by the passenger window.

  The driving was hard. I used my injured arm to hold the bottom of the steering wheel while my good arm held the dampening hat to the bullet hole. Every now and again I had to use both arms to painfully turn a corner. I drove, too slow, all the way to Sully’s Tavern.

  I pulled to the curb right in front of the door. It took me three tries to pull the keys from the ignition. On the third try I used my nails to get enough friction to pull the bloody keys from the steering column. I opened the door and took far too long to realize that the rhythmi
c beeping I heard was coming from the car I had just turned off — the lights were still on. I fumbled with the lights and got them off after two attempts with slick fingers. When I got to the tavern door the lights were off. Ten feet to the right was the door to upstairs. I walked to the door; it took sixteen small steps. I leaned on the buzzer for half a minute. When I released the button, it was red with blood. A voice greeted me, sleepy and pissed off.