by Andrew Post
“Nobody’s Rhino. That’s just some scary-sounding bullshit they tell us to use because one man, in control of all the shit’s far scarier than thinking, in each town, there’s a group of people who meet in cars behind the mall to decide on strategies – who to trust, who to off, and all that. So maybe we’re Rhino together, I dunno. I never put too much thought into it.”
Frank’s hand tightened around the grip of the pistol. He sat up in the chair. The air conditioner kicked back on, its sudden whining making him flinch. “You knew that would happen at my house. You knew your uncle was going there – you made that call, you knew you were sending him to his death.”
“I didn’t make the call. They’d know my voice. But it was my idea to chum the water like that.”
“They were your family.”
“True, but they were all pieces of shit. Drugs and shitty apartment buildings, that’s all they dealt with. They were a disgrace to the Pescatelli name. I was gonna bring it back and make it something worth fearing again. The Russians wouldn’t have ever fucking set foot in either of the Twin Cities if we still had the hold we used to, like back in the day. But Uncle Robbie was scared. Shit, even my Joey was scared. Scared of change, like all men are. I asked him not to go last night, knowing what would happen if he did – but he said he had to prove himself to Uncle Robbie if he ever wanted to get made. Well, he got made all right – into a fucking corpse, the tiny-pricked peacock. Surprised he even managed to knock me up.”
Frank raised the gun, aiming between her breasts. She didn’t react.
“I came to your house for two reasons,” she said. “One was to get rid of that parasite in me and two, I was giving you a trial run, to feel you out. And with Vasily coming up to your doorstep, I saw no better way to see you in action, see what you’d do. And what do you know, we called your good buddy Ted – who was also on a probationary period, like you and the funeral home girls, though he’s doing better than all of you is by a long fucking long shot.”
“I thought Ted just had contacts with…the people doing this.”
“He did, and that’s all he was for a long time. In the network, but just on the edge of it. They brought him in, wanting him to lead up the Midwest sourcers with my girl Becky. He’s fitting in real good. Anyway, back to my point. With the new girls coming on like they were, well, it all worked out with you taking them Vasily. All of a sudden we had us a burgeoning network in Minnesota finally. For, like, one fucking day.”
“Did something happen?” The gun rattled in Frank’s hand. “Are those girls all right?”
“Don’t pretend you give a shit, Frank. But, the issue was, I don’t know if Vasily already had it or if it was you or Bryce who gave it to him giving him you two’s blood, but when they checked him, turns out he was full of hepatitis. Of the C variety, no less. Unfortunately, when the funeral home girls chopped him, the ick went along with the parts – you can’t just wash that out when you drain a body.” She paused, eyes moving down to his left arm.
Frank, too, was looking down at the small square of tape on the inside of his elbow, the red dot in the middle having gone brown a long time ago.
Simone grinned. “Did you two share a needle, Frankie? You might, once you’re down in Taco Land, get some hombre to test you. Anyhoo, now the girls are in a heap of shit because their stuff ain’t clean. We got an order to fill, real specific blood types and items they need down south. And because we’re short everything we were counting on Vasily having ’cause he was sick, we need to fill those gaps back in.” She started to stand.
“Stay on the bed,” Frank said and took the gun in two hands. “Sit back down.”
Simone lowered herself, slowly, back onto the bed, crossed her legs at the knee. She peeled a stick of gum from its wrapper and folded it into her mouth. “What blood type are you, Frankie? Were you the O-negative they found in Vasily or one of the two A-positives?”
“That’s not happening to me.”
“O-negative is a universal donor. We like your stuff a lot. Think how many more lives you could add to that four hundred and some. Think about all the people who can’t get on any list. People who can’t afford to get a new heart or a new set of lungs or a fresh kidney that works because they ain’t rich – like you used to be. You could help from beyond the grave, Frank. What doctor can say that?”
“Where are they?”
Simone furrowed her brows slightly. “Who?” Gum crack.
“Amber and Jolene.”
“I ain’t telling you shit more about shit, Frank. You seen what’s behind the curtain enough. Listen, I’m gonna stand up and get myself a glass of water – please don’t shoot me in the back. You can see I ain’t got no other gun.” She flashed up her skirt. “Anywhere, heh. Wait, did I leave a pair of panties at your place?”
“Yes.”
“You still got them? Ah, shit, they’re probably in an evidence bag somewhere now, huh? That sucks.”
“I threw them away with all those fucking feathers that were all over my house.” He flicked his hand in the direction of the sink. “Go get your glass of water.”
She stood watching him in the mirror as she filled a plastic cup, drained it, and set it aside. She came back over to the bed, sitting on the side closer to him, their knees nearly touching. Her jaw worked slowly, meditatively. She blew a bubble, sucked it back in, and said, “Your life is over.”
He shoved the gun barrel at her, thumping it hard against her jutting collar bone. “Be quiet. I need to think.”
“Go ahead and shoot. Death don’t mean nothing to me, Frankie. You can kill me and I know it don’t matter. Nothing matters, not in this country anyway. Just money. I wanna walk outta here, sure, go make some money, do whatever, kick back with my girls, go clubbing and shit, but I know it don’t matter. We’re just all running down the clock and with money, well, that time can be a little more easy going. Spend more time at home instead of at the office. And really that time don’t mean much to anybody anymore anyhow, being home around family. Do you know the average person spends more time staring into their computer or phone or tablet or TV or whatever than looking into the eyes of their loved ones by nearly nine hundred percent? We’re fucked, as a species. Distracted. Just going through the motions. Yeah, ask me, the only thing this species has done that’s worthy of comment is we invented the word cruelty then expanded on that definition in every way we could possibly dream up. Everything else? Shit to fill time.
“You’ve seen some of the worst of what people can do to each other,” she said. “You don’t wanna be a part of this any more than I do. So why do you wanna keep running? Do you think you’ll ever have a good life, after all this? Anything remotely close to what you had back when you was a surgeon? The house, the wife, the kid, the Lexus? No. That shit’s over. And you don’t wanna live like this, do you? Running all the time. Sleeping with one eye open.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” He lowered the gun from her chest – her tan skin showing a perfect O that quickly filled back in with color. “I shouldn’t go back to prison for this, for what you did.”
“We ain’t talking about prison.”
“That’s not going to happen to me either.”
“Let’s calm it down a second. Here’s what I think you should do, Frankie, okay?” Gum crack. “I think you should go over there, lay down on the bed, and I’ll put a pillow over your face. You did a lot of good in the world. You never killed nobody. And if you’re clean, then you can help people. Don’t fuck up that record of those four hundred lives you saved.” She edged closer, her hand gently taking his wrist. “Give me the gun, Frank, and let’s see you off, nice and gentle, into the next—”
A flash of white between them. Abrupt silence.
What Simone said, wide eyed, with a hand over her chest, was lost to him – just a low whine to his ears overlaying everything. Blood ran down the front of
her shirt and onto the floor. She slipped off the bed, fell heavily to carpet.
Frank stood, watching Simone pulling herself along the floor on her newly flat stomach, leaving a trail of blood behind her. She got to the door of the bathroom, tried pulling herself inside, tried closing the door behind her, leaving red handprints on everything she touched.
Stepping over to her, Frank pushed the door wide. He pointed the gun down at her and she raised her hands and maybe screamed or just made her face into a scream and tried turning away as the dark bathroom flashed shadowless.
More of Frank’s hearing was permanently ruined with a second, then third, shot down into her.
Simone slumped over, twitched once, and didn’t move again. He stared at what he’d done, the result he’d made of her. Long tan leg hooked over the other, arm draped across her face. Mouth open, lipstick smeared, white teeth, hair a wreck clotted through with pink bits of ruptured brain. The wad of chewing gum dropped, plop, from her open mouth.
It’s just meat.
He felt numb. But guessed, probably, once the shock of it wore off, he’d be suicidal. He’d think about how she, like anybody, wasn’t beyond saving. That she probably wasn’t a complete piece of shit, that everybody has some good in them somewhere. Maybe. Until then, Frank was fine being numb and decided to use it while it lasted, savor the temporary barrier between himself and his conscience.
He glanced up to look at himself in the mirror holding the gun. The spatter of blood on him, fresher than what was already all over his face and clothes, which had dried dark since last night. He could hear voices through the wall, people shouting excitedly, having undoubtedly heard the shots, running for their vehicles. Yet again, the cops would be on their way.
Or, Frank considered, if this place was the kind that it seemed, maybe those who’d heard would just run – also wanted by the law themselves. Why draw the cops here? Just go.
Right now, ears ringing and hands feeling waxy and hollow from the shock of vibration from the gun, Frank didn’t care much either way. He went over to the window unit and cranked the AC as cold as it would go. He tossed the gun onto the bed, sat down next to it, and turned on the TV. He didn’t know why. It felt right. Noise, any other noise than the ringing his ears. He should go. Take her keys and go, just run like Ted had advised, but he felt empty and sick and all he wanted was to sit down in front of the TV. The screen gained clarity. His own old mugshot stared back at him. He raised the volume until his ruined ears could make out what was being said.
They were calling him Doctor Bad. And the police, it seemed, no longer thought he was some vigilante who, on a quest for redemption, tricked the two gangs to face off in his living room – but that he’d orchestrated the whole thing in some kind of twisted body-harvest scheme that went south. The reason they believed this was because the bodies of Big Robbie, Joey Stefano, Bryce Petrosky, and Tasha Petrosky were now all missing from the morgue. The thief, best to the cops’ estimation of things, being Frank Goode, who was still at large.
He hooked a finger into his pocket, taking out the business card with the red fingerprint, his fingerprint, sitting in the corner of the card like a watermark. They had the girls. Wrapped up in this shit, desperate for money, just like Frank, and lo and behold into the grinder they went too.
He crushed the business card and tossed it over his shoulder. He was still waiting for someone to kick in the door, but it’d only been a couple minutes – it may take a while.
He glanced over toward the bathroom and saw Simone’s bare feet sticking out, not moving. Maybe they wouldn’t be picky about who they got, if they were, as she said, rushing to fill an order. Maybe they’d take one of their own. Maybe he could get something out of this, some small win of some kind.
Problem was finding them. Frank opened Simone’s phone. Her wallpaper was blank, just a black rectangle with a handful of apps. He brought up her contacts and scrolled through. A lot of women’s names he didn’t recognize, likely her friends. Uncle Robbie. Aunt Judy. Joey. Becky’s name appeared on screen, the phone trilling and vibrating in his hand.
He answered, but said nothing.
“Jesus Christ, Simone, where are you?” Becky, presumably, said. He let her rant. “We’re at the bowling alley fucking waiting on your ass and you haven’t been answering your fucking phone, girl. Get with it! Ted’s about to shit his pants outta anger and we need you here, now, to help handle this. The Amber chick ain’t cooperating. Simone? Hello?”
Frank hung up. He thought about asking which bowling alley exactly, but didn’t want to tip them off, and doubted she’d just blurt where they were at the strange voice answering her friend’s phone. The phone began ringing again almost immediately. He didn’t answer this time.
They were at a bowling alley. That’s all he could safely glean from Becky’s call without alerting them. He could work with that. How many bowling alleys could the Twin Cities have? He looked it up on Simone’s phone.
A lot, apparently. “Shit.”
He saw she had some emails. Expecting to maybe find an address for this bowling alley, he saw, instead, at the very top, the confirmation email from Greyhound. His one-way ticket would be waiting for him at the bus depot, eleven-thirty. His plan only took him that far. Get out of Minnesota, get out of range of the cops and where they expected him to be. Keep clear of the house, the airport, anywhere crowded since his face was plastered all over the TV. But once down in Laredo, without a passport, there was going to be no border crossing without haggling with somebody who might be willing to hide him in their trunk – or show him, in the middle of the night, some weak part in the wall. Nearly as dangerous as staying in the Twin Cities, maybe more so. But there was that bus. It could take him away from where it was most dangerous for him currently. Out of the frying pan, and maybe into a bucket of ice, if he could get a new social security card, maybe a little job somewhere. Start over. Come back to his home state a few decades later, maybe reconnect with his daughter. Maybe.
He thumbed through Simone’s phone some more. He opened her internet browsing app and saw Facebook was one of her most frequently visited sites. She was still logged in. He read her dreadfully spelled posts about how much she disliked Mexican people and video clips she’d shared of Channing Tatum dancing without a shirt on. Scroll, scroll. Further down her feed, a few weeks ago, she’d ‘checked in’ at a few restaurants. Reducing the posts to just recent check-ins, Frank scrolled through all of the clubs and bars and seafood places Simone had gone to, stopping when he saw she’d visited a place called Lake Calhoun Bowl & Bar.
He loaded Simone into the back seat of her Honda and threw in the motel room’s bedspread to cover her. He got in, fought to get the engine to turn over, and pulled out of the spot. He kept it under the speed limit along the frontage road, the highway to his right. Six lanes, three going north, three going south. He got up to where he could go left or right, north or south. He knew where Lake Calhoun area was. He also knew where the Greyhound station was. North or south.
He used his turn signal.
* * *
“What do you mean you don’t have a hearse?” the old woman screamed into Jolene’s face. “How are we supposed to bury my sister without a hearse? Carry her ourselves?”
“I’m really sorry, ma’am, but my partner got into an accident last night. Now, if you want to come back tomorrow, I’ll keep your sister comfortable while we figure something out. You had the viewing, we’ll just take her to the cemetery tomorrow bright and early if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not all the same to me. I’ll sue you. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll sue the pants off you, young lady!”
“Look here, bitch. I got a lot more to worry about right now than your dead fucking sister. My sister needs me right now so I suggest you leave and come back tomorrow when I have a hearse or you can take her casket with you right now.”
“
I never!”
“Yes, yes, you never, you never, get the fuck out.”
Once the last funeral attendee was out the door, Jolene slammed it shut and locked it. She didn’t have time to wheel Missus Tamblyn in her casket back downstairs. She charged into the workroom and pulled open the drawer of the only person they had left to bury. He was embalmed already. That and his blood type was A-negative. They needed AB-positive. Fuck. Jolene tore off the suit coat she was sweating through the entire funeral, flung it aside, and ran back upstairs. She paused passing through the reception area, thinking she heard footsteps just outside the door. She went to the CCTV monitors. It was only the mailman. The old lady she’d shouted out of the house still hadn’t gotten down the front walk. A dark thought slipped through Jolene’s mind. No. Don’t even think that.
Her mind clicked onto a different candidate, a more worthy one, someone she wouldn’t feel so bad about hurting.
He was supposed to be by today, after all, to discuss keeping one another’s secrets. Jolene was half-surprised Cornelius hadn’t been by already. He typically showed up in the a.m. hours to unfurl the latest draft of his proposition on her. In the office, she looked up on her phone the number for the local Mega Deluxo and dialed it.
“Mega Deluxo. How may I direct your call?”
“Hi, I need to know if Cornelius is on the schedule to work today.”
“We can’t give out employee personal information.”
“In that case, can you connect me with the register he’s working on today?”
“He’s…on his break?”
“Learn to lie. Bye.”
She couldn’t look him up in the White Pages because he’d never given his last name. He only ever introduced himself as Cornelius – and she’d thought that was a fake, all the way up until seeing it on his name badge at the store. She went outside, crossed the lawn, stood on the sidewalk hot under her feet, looked up the street and looked down the other way, and did not see any sign of that butter-yellow suit on approach anywhere. She could hardly believe she was considering this. Nor did she ever imagine a day when she’d want Cornelius to ring her doorbell.
