21 Tales (27 page)

It was a hard day at work also the way everyone gossiped about the murders, and it made me feel like crap hearing all of it. I survived the day, though, and over the next week things got better.

It was a week after the incident that I took my car to a body shop to get the bumper fixed. The town cops where the murder happened called me at work to ask if I could come down to the station to answer some questions. I was prepared for it so it didn’t phase me. I brought my insurance paperwork with me, and after they spoke with the guy in Boston who I hit, and probably also had someone check his car, they were satisfied. The lead detective apologized for any inconvenience they caused me, and I told him I understood given the circumstances. I was just glad they didn’t call me at home. I couldn’t help feeling that Carol would’ve suspected something, maybe even guessed that I purposely got into the second accident to cover the first one.

It was over three weeks after the murders when I had my big scare. Saturday morning the doorbell rang and two cops were standing on my doorstep, both looking like they could spit nails. One was a square-looking guy with a big bushy mustache that hid his upper lip, the other was a young guy, his face pinched and angry. I was sure they were there to arrest me, and was silently sizing them up and trying to figure out if I could take them if I had to. It turned out they were there to collect money for a fund set up for Joe Sullivan’s family. I dug deeply, not too deeply so they’d suspect anything, but deep enough to make a difference. The cop with the bushy mustache thanked me.

“It’s hard having to do this,” he told me. “Joe was a good kid. Jesus, what a world we live in.”

I nodded and watched them leave.

Over the next six months things started to get back to normal. I’d still find myself jolted awake at times, thinking the cops were on to me, but for the most part I was able to put those murders behind. I also knew I had to do something about my rage. I thought about seeing a therapist, but the problem was I was afraid I might let something slip—and not just about these last murders, but about some of the others that had happened over the years. Yeah, these weren’t the first. You see, I just have this rage issue. It was still hard to believe I had gotten away with as many as I have, but somehow there were never any witnesses, at least none that ever slipped past me. I don’t think about them much; just sometimes late at night, and that would usually be nothing more than a flash of worry that somehow the cops were going to discover me. Anyway, I had all that buzzing through my mind and was trying to figure out how safe it would be to see a therapist, and I just wasn’t paying enough attention to the road and ended up hitting a BMW as it was backing out of a parking space. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it was the other driver’s, I wasn’t sure. The other driver was a woman, in her seventies, shit, old enough to be my mother. I didn’t say a word to her, but maybe I had an angry look on my face. I don’t know. Whatever, something set her off and her little prune face became rigid with anger.

“Didn’t you see me backing up?” she complained, her voice sour, her body seeming to bristle. “What is wrong with you? Well? Well?”

Whoa…

Adrenaline

A man is tied up with razor wire and is tortured by four desperate criminals. Either he’s getting out alive, or those four criminals are, and its even money which one it is.

The elderly couple who owned the house lay dead upstairs in their bedroom. At least I was assuming they were dead. I heard them crying out earlier, then silence. Victor made an offhand comment to Al about how he held them down while Benny cut their throats. Maybe he was lying. Maybe Benny screwed up and they were still alive, but if they were they weren’t making any noise.

We were all now in the basement. The whole gang. Me, Benny, Victor, Tony and Al. They had me tied to a wooden chair, my ankles secured tightly with razor wire to the chair legs, my wrists tied with rope to the chair arms. Benny had already used pliers to pull off three of my fingernails. He’d spent the last two hours sticking pins into the exposed flesh, now he was lighting matches and burning the tips of my fingers. He was trying to make me tell them where I had hidden the eight hundred grand—I guess he was doing what he thought he had to, but it looked to me like he was enjoying it too much. The last time I passed out I caught glimpses of the rest of them when I came to. Victor’s face a blank slate—he couldn’t care less what was happening to me, just like he didn’t give a shit what happened to the old folks upstairs; Tony smirking, maybe looking a little queasy, and Al staring at me with big soulful eyes as if what was happening to me pained him greatly. As far as I was concerned, not a peep. Let them do whatever the fuck they wanted, they weren’t going to get word one out of me. Fifteen years ago when I was a member of the US Army’s special forces, I spent a year and a half in Iraq and I’d find myself wondering then if I’d be able to stand up to torture if I was caught. Now I knew. They could’ve done anything to me and they wouldn’t have cracked me. The pain might’ve brought tears to my eyes, and at times made me pass out, but I wasn’t talking.

After I left the army I bounced around a lot and worked everything from construction to private security to fisherman. It was hard staying in one job for too long. I had done too much killing and too many missions, and missed the adrenaline rushes from my time in special forces. It got to the point where I was antsy all the time. I couldn’t sleep or do much of anything. Five years ago I started putting my training to use, doing a string of bank jobs up and down the East Coast. I didn’t kill anyone; I don’t think I even hurt anyone badly—I also didn’t make nearly as much money as I’d expected, but it gave me what I needed, especially the rush. At least then I started sleeping better.

Sixteen months ago I met up with Al. He was putting together a gang to knock over high-stake poker games and they needed someone like me—someone who could plan out the operations and was as fearless as the rest of them, maybe even more so. They had enough muscle already with Victor and Tony, and plenty of psycho with Benny, but while Al was a smart guy, he didn’t have the operational skills that I had. Without someone like me, every job would end up a massacre.

We pulled five jobs without incident, at least nothing more serious than Benny slashing people’s faces with the barrel of his 9 mm. The sixth job all hell broke loose. It was bad news from the start. First Al’s info was all wrong—instead of it being a group of medical professionals, it was mafia—high end guys, big shots. Then Victor wasn’t watching carefully enough and let one of them pull out a gun, and before you knew it bullets were flying everywhere. While everyone was being shot up, I grabbed the money and ran. It was a lot more money than we were expecting—at least ten times as much. Maybe Al didn’t screw up with his info, maybe he just didn’t want to tell us who we were really hitting. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. I kept running all the way to Los Angeles.

Earlier today a car pulled up to me on the street for directions. The window rolled down, and when I leaned over to help there was Benny in the driver’s seat leering at me. Before I could react I was jolted from behind with a stun gun. Christ, I’d  thought they were all dead, but it was still damn careless of me. Right before I dropped to the pavement in convulsions I couldn’t help wondering how many of them had survived. It turned out they all did. They might each have taken some bullets, but they were all still living and breathing. I didn’t bother wondering about how they’d found me. It wasn’t as if I was being all that careful the last four months. It made me think that maybe there was a reason for that. That maybe I had gotten bored and was looking for a big-time adrenaline rush. That I was hoping one or more of them had survived and would find me and put me in this situation…

Or maybe I was just overanalyzing the situation, trying to do anything to keep my mind off what was happening to me.

Fuck if I knew.

Except… I had to keep my mind spinning on other thoughts than what was being done to my fingers.

How long ago did they snatch me? Ten hours ago? More? Less? I don’t know. I was losing track of time.

More matches were lit. Benny showed a hard grin as he pressed the burnt ends against the exposed flesh where my fingernails had been, his expression turning somewhat demented—partly from the way his face had caved in when one of the Mafioso’s bullets took out a chunk of his cheekbone, and partly from how bright his eyes had become. Yeah, he was enjoying this way too much. I decided then I was going to see him dead. No matter what was in store for me, he was going to die first.

Spiteful sonofabitch, ain’t I?

At least it gave me something to focus my mind on.

Benny tried to give me a sympathetic smile, but the craziness shining in his eyes made it a joke.

“Joe, why the fuck don’t you just talk?” he said.

“I think it’s ’cause he’s enjoying it,” Victor offered from somewhere behind him.

Benny took hold of my jaw, his fingers digging hard into the bone. He forced my head upwards so our eyes would meet, but I kept my focus somewhere around the middle of his skull as if I were staring straight into his brain.

“Is that it?” Benny asked. “You one of them sick masochistic fucks who gets off on what I’m doing to you?” He increased the pressure with his fingers, squeezing harder into my jawbone. He studied me like that for a good thirty seconds, then to Victor, “I don’t think that’s it. I think he’s just a stubborn fuck.”

“You ask me he’s getting off on it,” Victor said, half-teasing.

“Nah, I don’t think so. He’s just too fucking stubborn for his own good.” Benny shook his head sadly. Then he turned sideways and asked, “What do you think, big guy?”

Al, disgusted, said, “Just get on with it, okay?”

Benny focused his attention back to me.

“You going to make me hurt you real bad first, is that it?”

I kept staring through him, refusing to say a word.

He made a
tsk-tsk
noise.

“Joe, so far I’ve just been fooling around. You really going to make me get serious? Shit, I hate having to do this to you. Before you fucked us on that last job, I liked you, thought you were a good guy.”

Sure, I could tell he hated every second of what he was doing. Sonofabitch. I ignored it when he picked up a nutcracker. Fuck if he was going to see fear or anything else in my eyes. Victor helped him pull my fingers apart, and then my middle finger was clasped between two metal bars. Benny twisted the nutcracker until the bone in my finger cracked like a dry stick. A satisfied smirk showing, he kept twisting.

“You’re crying, Joe,” he said, his voice more of a grunt from his exertion. “Fuck, just like a little girl. Why don’t you just tell us where our money is so we can get this over with?”

He kept twisting. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the skin separating on my finger. I could see the broken bone sticking out of the gaping wound. Damn, it hurt like a mother. I had been concentrating like hell to welcome the pain and become one with it, and for the most part before it had worked. This time, though, fuck. One more hard twist and the world ebbed violently in and out like a wave crashing over me, then everything just disappeared.

I don’t know how long I was out. I had passed out a few times before this, but those times it seemed like I was only gone for a few seconds, this time I knew it had been much longer, maybe as long as a half hour. Gradually I became aware of a tapping noise. My eyes were being forced open and as they focused the grayish blur in front of me transformed into Al’s round sorrowful face. He was slapping me lightly, trying to bring me to consciousness. Once he realized he had succeeded he stopped his slapping.

As he stared at me, his eyes were as sad and soulful as ever and he even let them turn a bit moist.

“Fuck, Joe, it doesn’t have to be this way,” he said. “If you do the right thing, we can all walk out of here happy.”

The two of us were alone. I guess the plan was to play good cop-bad cop. Or good-torturer, bad-torturer. My finger was throbbing as if it were being pulled apart in a vise. I didn’t let on, though. A quick sideways glance of it showed they had wrapped a bandage around it, probably hoping I’d forget that the bone was popping out of the skin.

Al’s thick eyelids lowered a bit as he tried smiling at me. He was maybe fifty and had a heavily-lined face and dark curly brown hair. A big man, bigger than the rest of them, but also softer than any of the others. Kind of a teddy bear-type. At two-sixty, he probably outweighed Benny by a hundred pounds, but then again, Benny was as hard as a blade of steel.

“You’ll still get some money out of this, Joe,” he said. “Not a full share, not after what you put us through, but something. I’ll try to get them to agree to fifty grand. How does that sound?”

I let that sit between us for a while, his sad soulful eyes ever hopeful, then I asked him if he thought I was a fucking idiot. It was the first words I’d spoken since they’d snatched me. He seemed surprised I had bothered to respond to him, then he manufactured some hurt in those soulful eyes of his over the fact that I didn’t believe him.

“I don’t think that at all, Joe. If you can just trust me, you can walk out of here alive and with some money in your pocket. By the end of the day we can all be happy. Now what would be wrong with that?”

“One more time,” I said. “I’m not an idiot. I know I’m a dead man here so quit the fucking act.”

Al was frowning, his large brow heavily creased.

“I don’t know why you’re saying this. There’s no percentage in us killing you. If we leave your body here, you’ll connect us to the couple upstairs. If we take your body with us, then we have to worry about how to dispose of it. It’s just so much easier for everyone if you walk away on your own—”

“Shut the fuck up.” I waited until he closed his mouth, then I went on. “Here’s the deal, and I’m only offering it once. I accept the fact I’m a dead man, and to be honest about it, I don’t give a shit. You can have Benny fucking cut me open and pull my intestines out inch by inch and I’m not talking. I have nothing against you, Al, and not much against Victor and Tony, but I’m not too happy with Benny right now. If you want to know where I hid the eight hundred grand, you have to kill that psycho bastard in front of me. I have to see him die. You do that and I’ll tell you where the money is. I know I’m going to die today, but I want to see that cocksucker go first. One more thing. I lose any part of me—a finger, a tooth, anything, and the deal’s off. The money will disappear with me.”