by David Berens
He slid the piece of meat from its plastic wrap, smelled it to confirm it was still good – bologna being one of two things that would survive a nuclear war, roaches being the other – and stuck it in his mouth. He pulled out the piece of orange and one of the beers.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” he said to no one, laying the orange on the counter and popping the top off the beer.
He sliced the orange into thin wedges and shoved one down into the Corona – he’d always preferred orange to lime in his beer. It reminded him of Mindy, but like the orange, he shoved that memory back down into the dark recesses of his past.
A chime echoed from the TV, letting him know his DVD had loaded and was awaiting his selection. He walked into the living room, plopped down on the couch, pointed the remote at the screen, and clicked the file date-stamped: August 16th, 2017 – the night Tayler committed suicide… or was murdered.
As the DVD whirred and loaded, Troy wondered if maybe all of this was a farce. Did he really even know that Tayler hadn’t actually committed suicide? Sure, the painting had been stolen, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they’d also been involved in his former roommate’s death.
As the video feed of the fateful evening began to play out on the screen, Troy paused, rewound, forwarded, and paused again, examining the whole night for anything… any detail that he thought might shed some light on the events that would happen after Tayler left the club, leading to his demise.
In short, the group of friends – Becky Patton, Alain Montgomery, RayRay Tishomura, and Tayler Evan – all entered the club around 9:15 p.m. This would’ve put them there shortly after the exhibition of Savannah Smiling was opened at Jepson. They were celebrating, and as such, there was a lot of alcohol flowing… except for Becky. She’d been saving herself for the taping of the ninja show after that. So, there was at least one alibi for the people who he knew had been with Tayler on the night he died. Becky had been checked in with the ninja show and hadn’t left all night.
As he watched the video again and again, he devised a new tactic. He began to view the entire sequence of the night watching only one person. He started with Becky. She was a social butterfly. Dressed in a form-fitting black dress, showing off the muscles she’d gotten from a lot of crossfit training, she flitted around the room talking to several different men at the bar… most of whom did not seem interested.
She did finally get the attention of one older man sitting at the far end of the bar. The camera was farther away from the south end and the picture wasn’t the highest definition, but Troy knew the man. He couldn’t place exactly who he was, but he felt sure he’d seen him before. Maybe he’d seen him there on the night that he’d… performed. Becky had her arm around him obscuring most of his face, but it was clear the guy was older… definitely too old for her. But he proceeded to buy her a shot, which she took straight down the bar and handed to Tayler. He chugged it down with several others – the kid was definitely putting away some alcohol. Shortly after that, Becky excused herself… heading out to her competition.
Troy rewound the video and watched Alain throughout the night. He wasn’t sure if anything could’ve been more boring. The kid parked on a stool next to Tayler and didn’t move. He bought a few beers, bought some shots for Tayler, and that was it. He didn’t talk to anyone else, he didn’t dance, he didn’t tip anyone on stage… nothing, nada, zilch. Troy wondered if he’d been embarrassed to be there. He sympathized with the kid.
In the next viewing he focused on watching Samantha. Her night was much the same as Alain’s. She sat on the other side of Tayler. She didn’t drink much, but she did toast a few times and grimace down a few shots. She did also make one trip to the stage with Tayler to tip one of the dancers. She’d more or less been his crutch, as he was starting to get a bit stumbly. Tayler handed her a bunch of crumpled bills and then threw a few more into the air… making it rain on the stage. When they got back to the bar, three more shots had appeared for her, Alain and Tayler. She shook her head no and slid the shot over to the man-of-the-moment. He grinned and took it and it was gone right after the last.
Troy wasn’t sure what they were shooting, but it was a bunch of dark liquid… maybe Jaeger… and plenty to have made anyone pliable, and more than enough to blot out any memory of that night.
As the evening came to a close in this viewing, he watched as Alain put Tayler’s arm over his shoulders and nearly dragged him out the door, with Samantha and RayRay close behind. Huh… RayRay? That was odd. Troy rewound the feed of the bar and skimmed through the video again. No sign of RayRay. He rewound all the way to watch them come in. RayRay, tapping his cane, made his way in with them, then almost immediately excused himself from the group and remained out of sight for the rest of the night… until they carried Tayler out.
Troy clicked the back button and began to search through the feeds from various other locations in the bar. RayRay wasn’t at the stage. He wasn’t out back on the smoker’s porch. He wasn’t downstairs in the super-secret techno dance cave. And then he found him. In the back. In a champagne room.
“RayRay,” Troy muttered with a grin, “you dirty little fella, you.”
He watched the feed as RayRay was led back to the back by a shorter, not-so-attractive dancer. Troy remembered the Peppermint Hippo’s slogan in Vegas – 46 beautiful girls and 1 ugly one. Perhaps RayRay was the performer’s target market. She led him into the small cubicle and closed the curtain. Unfortunately for Troy – but maybe fortunate for the customers – the camera didn’t record what happened in the private room. What happens in the champagne room stays in the champagne room, Troy thought to himself.
He fast-forwarded through the feed until RayRay emerged on the dancer’s arm. She had a bunch of new dollar bills stuffed into the garter on her left leg. It was practically bursting at the seams. And in fact, it did burst. As they walked out of the room, the garter let go and the bills showered down all over the place. Troy could see the girl mouth the words oh shit as she bent down and began clutching up her money.
Naturally, being the gentleman that he was, RayRay knelt down and began to help her pick up the money too.
Huh… that’s odd, Troy thought. He watched in slow motion as the blind Japanese kid deftly picked up and sorted the bills, turning them so they all faced up, and in the same direction. Sorted perfectly.
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” Troy said, sipping the last of his Corona.
He jogged to the kitchen and got the last beer. Shoving an orange slice into it, he rewound the tape and watched again as RayRay helped the dancer pick up her money and arrange it neatly into an organized stack of bills.
“RayRay ain’t blind,” Troy said to the TV.
The tape played along and RayRay stood up and began to tap his way out of the picture. That was where the other feed with the group of friends would find him joining them to leave. Troy leaned back and inhaled deeply.
“What the hell does that mean?” he wondered aloud.
The video ran on and then came another shock. The bathroom door, that just happened to be on the opposite side of the hall from the private rooms, opened. The older man, who had been sitting at the end of the bar and bought a shot for Becky, stepped out of the men’s room, and suddenly Troy knew who he was… Bobo Gladmore, the older janitor from the Jepson. He was there… and had been near Tayler the night he’d… died…
The feed ended and the DVD’s screensaver began bouncing up and down the TV. Troy sat motionless, only moving occasionally to take a sip of his beer. He sat that way until it was empty.
“Dangit,” he muttered as he sat down the empty bottle.
42
Puzzled
Troy studied the empty Corona bottle and things began to click into place like a puzzle… A puzzle that you didn’t have the box for so you had no idea what image you were piecing together. His first thought was that he had no idea who he should find first; Bobo? Or RayRay? If only he had some kind of G.P.S.
to help him locate… Holy hell, he thought, the G.P.S. in the rental car. He was sure the thugs had turned it back in, and it was only a swift phone call to the rental place to find out that, yes, it was indeed in their garage, ready to be cleaned up and rented again. He also found that they usually wiped the G.P.S. units of recent addresses, but that they hadn’t yet gotten to the Civic.
“Can you do me a favor?” Troy asked the kid on the phone at the desk.
“Uh, sure,” the kid said.
“Can you run and check the G.P.S. and give me the very first address on it in the recently found locations?”
“Um, okay,” he said uncertainly. “Are you a cop or something?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Troy lied, “and I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“You’re not gonna tell anybody about this, right?”
“Nope.”
“Cool,” he said, apparently laying the phone down, “hang on a sec.”
“Roger that,” Troy said.
After a couple of minutes, the kid came back on the line. “Okay, here it is,” he said. “You got a pencil?”
“Better’n that, dude,” Troy answered, “I got a steel trap of a memory.”
“Um, okay.”
“Yeah, just give it to me, kid,” Troy said. “I’ll remember it.”
“Mmkay, it’s 520, Bourne Avenue,” he said.
As Troy heard the address, another piece clicked into place… He knew it well, as he’d been out there many times with a truck to pick up and drop off artwork that had been shipped in or shipped out. It was the Airport Mini Storage.
“Dangit, Bobo,” he said as he hung up the receiver, “whatchu got ya’self into now?”
He got up from the couch and walked into the bedroom. He’d done the same thing so many times, but still, it had been quite a while since he took his gun out of the shoebox on the top shelf of his closet. The Beretta M9 was cold as he checked the slide and tucked it into his waistband. Opening the app on his phone, he ordered a local taxi shuttle out to the airport.
Within five minutes, the car was waiting outside. He debated about telling someone where he was going, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why… but something inside, something about protecting Bobo, made him decide to go it alone.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to find at the storage building, but he had an idea. Probably find Samantha – or Samantha’s body – in a box, long gone and decay—
He forced himself to stop that line of thinking. No, rather, he’d find her tied up and rescue her like he’d done a few times before…
Yes, this would turn out just like the others, all well and good. He wondered if he really believed that. As he rode, he wondered what he would do when he confronted Bobo. Shoot him? No. No, he would make Bobo come with him and turn him in to the police. The guy was old and gray… and not that healthy to boot. Yeah, that was how it was gonna go down. He and Bobo would go to the police together and they’d figure out why – and how – this had all happened.
The cab driver pulled into the lot some twenty minutes later and the tires crunched on the gravel a lot louder than Troy would’ve liked. But that was okay; Bobo didn’t know he was coming.
“Dangit, Bobo,” Troy muttered as he paid the driver and crunched down the rows of storage units to the one he knew was leased by the museum. The door was closed, but the lock wasn’t on the loop. Troy pulled his Beretta from his waistband and took a deep breath.
43
Didn’t See That Coming
The thief had opened the lock as quietly as possible and had been exceptionally careful not to make any noise when entering the storage unit. There would be no surprise attack this time. The bitch would be weak from a lack of food and likely the spunk had been beaten out of her since last time.
Sliding into the unit with a crowbar raised high, the thief was on high alert until he was sure the girl was still firmly tied to the chair. She was apparently unconscious or asleep… her head was lolled to one side. He paused in the door for a second to be sure it wasn’t a ruse, and when she remained motionless, the thief entered fully and closed the door behind him.
Throwing the crowbar to the floor, the thief made sure the clatter was loud enough to wake her. Sure enough, she moaned, and her head rose upright.
“Good morning, Samantha,” the thief said, no longer using the voice modulator.
She had seen through the disguise from last time and knew who her attacker was… there was no sense in hiding it now. The thief walked around in front of her. Samantha’s eyes were open, but her lids were heavy. She was sweating profusely and looked impossibly thin for the few days she’d been refusing to eat or drink anything.
“Water?” The thief held out a small canister.
“Screw you,” she said.
“As you wish,” the thief said, taking a long drink and making a show of enjoying the cool water.
“Why’re you here?” she asked through cracked lips. “Why’re you doin’ this to me?”
“Because the unfortunate events of late have brought me into a situation,” the thief said, “a no-turning-back kind of scenario where I must now do something with you.”
Samantha shrugged. “But, I mean, the whole thing? Why Tayler? Why the painting?”
“It is really simple,” the thief said, “in fact, it’s so simple that I cannot believe no one has figured me out, Samantha.”
The thief took a long gulp, emptying the container, and threw it across the floor. It rattled noisily in the metallic room and finally spiraled to a stop in the corner.
“Our friend Tayler was getting all the attention,” the thief said, “and everyone was so quick to tell us how wonderful Tayler was this, how amazing Tayler was that, how incredible Tayler’s painting was the other… frankly, I was getting sick of hearing all about him.”
“So, you killed him,” Samantha spat out the words in disgust.
“In a manner of speaking,” the thief said with a laugh, “I suppose you could say that’s what happened.”
Samantha’s face wrinkled in confusion. A soft knock rattled the door and she jumped in surprise.
The thief called over his shoulder. “Come in, father.”
The garage door slid up and an older man waddled in. He didn’t look anything like the thief at all… Samantha wasn’t sure how this man could be her captor’s father. He was holding a shotgun with the stock sawn off. He had a second hanging on his shoulder. He tossed the first to RayRay, who caught it with ease… clearly not blind.
“I don’t know what you’ve been smokin’,” she said, “but that dude don’t look like he’s your daddy.”
“Ah, Samantha-san,” the thief said, and smiled at the man, “that is because he is not my biological father. My parents are incarcerated for being lying, cheating thieves.”
“Like you, RayRay?” Samantha said quickly.
With her last comment, she spat at RayRay. There couldn’t have been much liquid left in her body, but she’d apparently been saving that one for him. He stepped to the side quick as a cat, dodging the loogey. He laughed as the sudden realization began to spread across her face.
“You can see?” she asked in something like a mix of disbelief, amazement, shock, and anger.
“Yes, Samantha-san,” he said and nodded, then took off his dark glasses. “I most certainly can.”
“It’s a miracle,” the older man said from the corner. “God has blessed you, son.”
“This is true, father,” RayRay said to him, “much like He brought the painting to us as well.”
The older man walked over and hugged RayRay and the thin sliver of light from under the door hit his face. Again, RayRay laughed as the recognition made her mouth drop open again.
“The janitor,” she said, “from the Jepson. That’s yo father?”
“Yes, Samantha-san,” RayRay said, smiling. “Bobo is indeed my father… my foster father.”
“Thas some effed up shit, ya know.” Samantha looked like she
was going to pass out again.
RayRay leaned closer to her and breathed heavy on her cheek. “Just like the effed up shit I saw when you let me touch you for your sculpture,” he whispered in her ear. “Now you know I could see you the whole time.”
The girl shivered and gasped. “Oh, hell no.”
“Oh, hell yes,” RayRay said and his grin became something altogether more salacious and evil. “Perhaps I’ll see it all again before we are through here today, Samantha-san.”
“So, you could see the whole time?” she whimpered.
“Not exactly.” RayRay rubbed his eyes between his thumb and forefinger. “I cannot explain it, but the fumes from my glazes… they did something to my eyes.”
“It’s a miracle straight from God,” the older man said.
“So, God wanted you to see, so you could kill Tayler?” Samantha asked.
“No,” RayRay retorted. “It is not a gift from God! It is a curse.”
“How could it be a curse, son?” the older man asked in apparent shock at the statement.
“Because it has diluted my sense of touch…” RayRay said, and his voice caught in his throat.
“Huh?” Samantha asked.
“My hands, my fingers, the tools with which I was able to accomplish so much…” he said, “are ruined. I cannot sculpt like I did before.”
“Why donchu just close your eyes, dude?” she asked, her shoulders shrugging.
“Alas, I did try that, Samantha-san,” RayRay said, and wiped a tear from his eye, “but that did not work. It was as if one sense had been turned on, while another – my exquisite sense of touch – had been turned completely off. My art, my lifelong passion, my money-making ability, was gone in a matter of days when my sight returned.”
The storage unit fell quiet. The older man walked over and put his hands on RayRay’s shoulders.
“It’s okay, son,” he said quietly, “God brought us the painting to take care of us.”
