The Ferryman

by John E. Siers

  “What time is it?” he mumbled, bringing his hand up to stroke her hair.

  “It’s early…we don’t have to get up yet.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Not yet…but I’m getting there. I hurt everywhere, but it’s more ache than pain now. I’ll take a couple of pills before we go to work.”

  “We are not going to work,” he insisted. “I am going to work. You are going to take the day off, stay in bed all day, smoke a joint or two, eat lots of decadent chocolate confections, laze around, and wait for me to come home and cook you a gourmet meal.”

  “But I have a prospect…”

  “No, I have a prospect this morning. Just because I don’t usually do teenage boys doesn’t mean I can’t handle it. There’s nothing else on the schedule, so I’ll probably close up at noon, come back here to pamper your sweet, lovely ass, and ply you with more chocolate.”

  She treated him to a cheerful little giggle—not quite as enthusiastic as he might have hoped, but clear evidence that she was recovering from last night’s trauma. He relaxed a bit as she snuggled up to him again with a contented sigh.

  “Mark…” she said after a moment, “…I was kind of out of it last night, but I’ve got this fuzzy memory of you giving me a shower, shampoo…did you actually douche me, or was I dreaming that?”

  “No…you weren’t dreaming. I kind of figured it was something you would have wanted to do yourself if you could. Never did that to a woman before…hope I did it right.”

  “Yes,” the giggle was back, “you did it right. At least, that’s what my vagina says. I was too drunk and stupid to notice.”

  “Baby, I love you…” he said, putting a gentle hand on her cheek. “You’ve had a really rough time, and I just want to make it better. I’m going to take good care of you.

  “Besides,” he told her with a wicked grin, “If you need another douche, I’ll be happy to do that for you. It was actually kind of erotic, now that I think about it.

  “But I mean it,” the grin vanished. “You’re going to stay home, rest up, and pamper yourself today. I’ll go to work, take care of that morning prospect, and come back early.”

  He climbed out of bed. “Hmmm…have to go back to my place to find some clothes. Everything I was wearing yesterday is in your bathroom, waiting to be sent down to the laundry. Anyway, let me go make you some breakfast, then I’m off to the office.

  “No…I mean it.” He held up a hand to stop her as she started to get up. “You stay in bed. I’ll bring breakfast to you.”

  He found one of his robes in her closet—she kept several there for such occasions, as he did for her in his closet upstairs. True to his word, he returned twenty minutes later with bacon, eggs, and toasted English muffins for two on a tray. He insisted on propping her up with pillows so they could eat right there in the middle of the nest, then went back to the kitchen and returned with coffee for both of them.

  “Is there anything left to clean up?” she asked as they finished breakfast.

  “No, I’ll handle this,” he said, taking up the tray and the now-empty dishes.

  “I meant from…last night,” she said. The hesitation in her voice told him she still hadn’t gotten over it completely.

  “No, you cleaned up the wine, I took care of everything else. They say red wine leaves a worse hangover than white. How’s your head?”

  “Never affects me. I’m hurting in a few places, but my head isn’t one of them.”

  The new prospect wasn’t due until 10:30, but Mark was in his office by 9:00. He hadn’t prepared for what was supposed to be Lisa’s interview, and he decided he should at least review the background material they’d gotten from Northstar. The Ferry is all about providing the best possible service to the client, he thought with a sardonic chuckle. I owe it to this poor bastard to at least read his file before we sign him up and snuff him out.

  He had little doubt as to the outcome. Should take about 20 minutes to get him signed, then I’ll send him on his way with the clock ticking on his waiting period.

  He smiled as he remembered Granny’s comment about clocks. I guess clocks don’t tick anymore, either. He resolved to get an antique clock for his apartment, one of those tall, pendulum models with a rich wooden case that still required periodic winding and would tick as it ran. They call them ‘grandfather clocks,’ but I’ll call this one ‘Granny.’ Chuckling again, he brought up the prospect’s file on his screen.

  If there was such a thing as a typical Ferry client, James Roger Fenton III was it. Despite his pretentious name, he didn’t come from a blue-blood family. His grandfather (JRF the First) was an auto mechanic who’d scraped up enough money to send his only son to college. JRF Junior was a fast-lane investment broker who managed to avoid crashing and burning long enough to get rich, but he wasn’t in the same social stratum as most of the Ferry’s elite clients.

  He wanted to be in that stratum—or at least his wife did. Jimmy the Third’s mother pushed her husband to the limit and spent much of his acquired wealth nibbling at the underbelly of the highest social circles, trying to force her way in. Of course, she pushed her children to do the same.

  Jimmy’s sister was up for the game, but Jimmy wasn’t. He was learning the rules the hard way and finding them stacked against him. His fellow students at the elite private school he attended knew he wasn’t of their social class (if they hadn’t, their parents would have told them). He was, however, useful as a gopher, a sycophant to massage one’s ego or do the occasional chore that was beneath the dignity of a true elite. He was also an easy target for the warped humor of those who thought the rest of the world existed solely for their own amusement.

  NorthStar’s people were good at developing a personality profile, but Jimmy’s hadn’t been much of a challenge for them. It was spread out for all to see over a half-dozen social media platforms. When he participated in conversational venues, he rarely said anything, except in support of one of his social superiors whose favor he sought. Sometimes his comment showed more intelligence than that of the person he was supporting, and he was invariably slapped down for it—piled on by his “peers” (who saw themselves as his superiors) who would never admit that a lowly social parasite such as Jimmy might actually be smarter than they were.

  Jimmy was intelligent. His grades in school—in science, math, and similar subjects—were well above average. He did poorly in social studies, but that was—in Mark’s mind—simply an indication that his intellect rejected the politically-correct and highly illogical bullshit that was the content of most such courses in modern educational institutions. But that rejection had earned him scorn from his peers and poor grades from his teachers.

  At 17, Jimmy’s sex life was all but nonexistent. With the socially superior girls his mother wanted him to meet, he was hesitant, fearful of rejection. He knew—by their standards—he wasn’t worthy of them. They, of course, agreed with him.

  His social profile was littered with rejected friend requests from such girls, and if he was mentioned at all on their pages, it was with disparagement. The more charitable of them used the term ‘limp dick’ to describe him, while others claimed ‘dickless’ was more appropriate. His physical appearance—from the cut of his hair, to the size of his nose, to his total lack of any fashion sense—provided ammunition for any female wishing to shun his attentions.

  Jimmy was crushed between parents who wanted to force him into a social stratum and the barriers that stratum erected to keep him out. In the course of it, the life had been squeezed out of him, and now he wanted the Ferry to put him out of his misery.

  Be happy to do that, Mark thought, for a suitable fee, of course…

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Matrix

  I’ve never met the kid, and I’m getting irritated just watching him walk through the door, Mark thought as he went out to the foyer to meet his prospect.

  Jimmy was about average height, average weight, and average complexion for his ethni
c group (European white—what used to be called “Caucasian”.) A little more than average weight, but not obese. A few more pounds might actually give him some character, Mark decided.

  No teenager from a family with money would have acne or bad teeth. Jimmy had neither, but he had a prominent nose and oversized ears—both of which would have been surgically corrected if he were truly a member of the elite society to which his family aspired.

  Looks a lot like the last Jimmy—the one Lisa snuffed last Tuesday, Mark noted.

  What really irritated him was the way the kid walked—slouched, almost furtive, as if afraid to be noticed. When he came through the door, he looked around uncertainly, then stopped when he saw Mark coming toward him.

  “Mr. Fenton…” Mark nodded to him without smiling. “You’re right on time. Let’s go into my office.”

  He opened the door and motioned the kid inside. “Have a seat.” Jimmy took the indicated chair, and Mark sat down behind the desk. He stared at Jimmy for a moment, but the teenager refused to meet his gaze.

  “Mr. Fenton, you sent us an application, and paid your deposit in advance. What is it you expect us to do for you?”

  “I…want to commit suicide,” he said, with a quaver in his voice. “You’re supposed to help me do it. That’s what your website says…”

  “No.” Mark stopped him. “We don’t help you do anything. We kill you.”

  “R…r…right now?” the kid stammered.

  “No, not right now. You sign a contract and pay for it today. We send you home for a mandatory waiting period. You come back three days from now, walk in the door, sign one more time, and you’re dead.

  “You get a choice about how you want to go out. We can hang you or shoot you—you pay extra for anything else. Either way, you’re dead. You disappear, there’s no body, no funeral. We send a notice to the state that you’re deceased, but that’s the only way anyone knows you’re gone.”

  And that pretty much covers all the details I would explain to a prospect. I don’t usually just dump it on them like that, but this kid needs a reality check.

  “So…is that what you want?”

  “I…guess so…” Jimmy sounded very uncertain.

  “Why?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why do you want us to kill you? You’re 17 years old. You don’t have a clue what life’s about, but you want to bail out, stop living, be dead. Why?”

  “Why not?” Jimmy’s voice was bitter. “Everything sucks, and it’s not gonna get any better.”

  With that, he spilled his tale of woe. He talked for about 15 minutes, with only occasional prompting, and when he was done, he had only confirmed what the investigation had revealed.

  This little jerk is too far gone. Put a contract in front of him, get him to sign it, and send him on his way. But…

  Putting himself in the kid’s place, Mark could think of a dozen ways to bail out, bust out, push through, or otherwise get himself out of the fucked-up life Jimmy was living. Suicide was the last one on the list.

  “You’re going to be 18 in three months,” he told the kid. “Join the Marines. Two weeks into basic training, none of these things that are eating you up now will seem important. You’ll be wondering why they bothered you in the first place. I know from experience…it sure as hell worked for me.”

  The kid was staring at him in open-mouthed horror, as if Mark had pulled out a gun and was about to shoot him on the spot. “I…could never do that. I could never make it in the Marines. I’m not tough enough, not brave enough…”

  “Fine. Join the Air Force. They love geeks and need people to take care of all that fancy technology they’ve got. They’d sign you up in a heartbeat.”

  The investigation file had shown that Jimmy was a hardcore computer nerd. His elite social crowd often made use of his talents for illicit phone hacks, to access porn sites from the school’s censor-blocked computers, and similar misadventures.

  “My mother would never let me do that.”

  “Screw your mother. Once you’re 18, she’s got no say in it. Besides, you think she’d let you do this? Does she even know you sold the Largo?”

  Jimmy’s Largo—a present on his 16th birthday—was a lovely little catamaran kept at a marina near the family’s beach house on the coast. It was probably worth $200k, but Jimmy had sold it to one of his elite classmates for half that to cover his Ferry contract.

  Between the application fee and the deposit, he’d already spent about half the money. If he signed a contract today, there wouldn’t be much left. There would be a problem when the classmate tried to take possession and found that Jimmy’s dad hadn’t paid off the $125k secured loan he’d taken to buy it in the first place, but by then, Jimmy expected to be long gone.

  The look of horror was back on Jimmy’s face. “How do you know about…”

  “I know everything about you. The Largo’s registration is in your name, but the title is in your father’s. Too bad your rich, dumb-ass school buddy doesn’t know the difference.

  “Of course, your old man will probably just suck it up, hand over the title, and figure out some way to pay off the note. Your mother’s got him castrated, too, and she’d never let him run afoul of J. Worthington Bigbucks and his spoiled bastard son.”

  “You…you can’t talk about my mother like that. If she heard you, she’d…”

  “She’d what? She’d shut up, look the other way, and pretend she didn’t hear it. In case you’ve forgotten, I kill people for a living.”

  Jimmy’s mouth snapped shut.

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t bail out long ago—without killing yourself, that is. I know you’re a smart kid. What’s your Matrix score? Don’t try to tell me you don’t have one.”

  The Matrix was an intelligence test disguised as an online gaming app based on a 20th-century Sci-Fi movie. Novice players might score low at first, but by the time they played a half-dozen times, the app would have enough data to score them accurately. The game was never the same twice, and extended play would only refine the score. Its ever-changing nature made it addicting—particularly to those of higher-than-average intelligence. Mark already knew the answer but wanted to hear Jimmy say it.

  “172,” the kid admitted.

  “The median score for players worldwide is 120,” Mark told him. “They tell people it’s 100 so morons like your rich-ass school buddies won’t get upset when they discover that most of the world is smarter than they are. You, on the other hand, are in the 95th percentile—smarter than 95 percent of the people on this planet who play the game.

  “You never tell them your score, because they’d find some way to punish you for it, right?”

  “Yeah…they would. So what…doesn’t matter. They still run the show, they still won’t respect me. Girls still don’t like me…never will.”

  “Really?” Mark had Jimmy’s social-media page on the screen. He selected a link. “Who’s this?”

  He transferred the window to the “client screen” that faced the guest chairs. Jimmy peered at the image of an olive-skinned girl with bright brown eyes and raven-black hair. She was a little overweight, her smile showed a small gap between front teeth, and her bushy eyebrows came just short of meeting above her wide nose. Her wavy black hair was shoulder length but looked to need a good brushing and shampoo.

  On the plus side, her full lips gave her sweet smile a lot of character, and her blouse gave a peek at cleavage that told of a moderately well-developed set of boobs. She looked to be in her middle teens.

  “That’s Rosita…the housekeeper’s daughter,” Jimmy advised. “She comes over on weekends to help her mom clean up after my folks’ parties.”

  “She’s listed on your page as a friend. You ever talk to her?”

  “Once or twice…Mom doesn’t like me talking to the hired help—says she wouldn’t even let Rosita come over except Mrs. Sanchez doesn’t charge extra for it. She won’t let Rosita in any of the bedrooms—says all those w
etbacks are thieves, and she’s afraid Rosita will grab her jewelry or something.”

  Hmmm…Mrs. Fenton is a hypocrite as well. Jimmy’s mom was a volunteer worker for the local chapter of the Hispanic Immigrant Aid Society. Of course, Mrs. Worthington Bigbucks chaired that particular charity’s executive committee.

  “You ever talk to Rosita online?”

  “No…never thought about it. I only took her friend request because I don’t have any other girls, and at least I knew who she was.”

  “Do you really? Do you know she has a Matrix of 178? Do you know what she does in her spare time? She builds robots out of junk appliances and electronics she gets from her uncle’s pawn shop.”

  “178? You’re saying she’s smarter than I am?”

  “It would seem she is, but she’s only had an inner-city public-school education. Then again, she also spends a lot of time at the library. She likes high fantasy novels—you know, sword and sorcery stuff.”

  “I…I never knew…”

  Of course you didn’t, because Mommy Dearest was careful to keep you away from this little jewel, who might actually be the perfect girl for you. You like fantasy novels, too, but you don’t go to the library—just download ‘em to your pad at ten bucks a pop—small change for you, but more money than Rosita sees in a week.

  Mark once again marveled at the broad reach and fast response NorthStar gave him. He’d only pulled up the information on Rosita this morning on a whim, because she was the only teenage female friend listed on Jimmy’s page.

  “Who knows?” Mark told him. “If you’d defied your mom and gotten to know Rosita a little better, you and I might not be having this conversation. By now you might even have gotten laid.”

  “Laid?” Jimmy protested. “She’s ugly!”

  “Typical response for a guy your age,” Mark said. “You may have a Matrix of 172, but when it comes to women, you’re dumber than a box of rocks. Let me give you bit of wisdom, first given to me by an old Marine drill sergeant: There’s no such thing as an ugly woman. There are only varying degrees of beauty.