The 24th Letter ((Mystery/Thriller)) (25 page)

Time stopped in the bright flash of white light and faded to black.  

SIXTY-EIGHT

He was hit in the face with a pail of cold water.  O’Brien opened his eyes.  Dizzy.  His head aching.  He was sprawled on his back, lying on hard canvas.  He squinted under the bright light directly above the ring.  He leaned to one side, slowly sat up and tried to stand.  His legs felt like they had gone so sleep—the circulation beginning to push blood through the calves and feet.

Where was he?  How long had he been out?

“I hope you like the ring!”

O’Brien turned around.  Carlos Salazar walked into a pocket of light near the ring.   He was dressed in boxer shorts.  No shirt.  His lean body hard and sculpted.  Muscles moving under the skin like waves.  Thick, hairless chest.  In the center of his chest was an image of the Virgin Mary.  Below it, in Spanish was the word
La Virgen.

Salazar climbed in the ring, held his arms high above his head, and slowly turned around.  On his back was a red and blue tattoo of a muscular winged demon-like figure, hooves for feet, serpent’s tail.  In Spanish the word below the tattoo spelled
el Satanas
.  Salazar stepped closer to O’Brien. “You like the art, no?’  The finest artist in Bogota did this.  You know what takes for great art to be better?”

O’Brien said nothing.

“I’ll tell you,” said Salazar.  “Great art becomes more valuable after the artist dies.  When he can no longer produce because of his death, whatever is left is, shall we say, is limited quantity.  After the master finished with me, I turned to the old man and

gave him a mushroom to chew.  He said he enjoyed the feeling, the illusions—the paintings that came alive on my body.  When he looked at the art, I said to him: ‘old man, you have a choice in life.  Like the Virgin, you can choose to be good, or like Lucifer, you can choose to be bad.  You are a good artist.  I, though, am a bad person.  I’ll make you a great artist by ending your life before your talent fades.  It ensures your place in art immortality.  And it confirms my place in hell.’”

O’Brien shook his head.  Must be a dream—a nightmare.  He heard a muffled sound.  Then there were the collective sounds.  The drone of whispers.  People shuffling.  Just beyond the curtain of light—shoes, pants, the soft dark roundness of people sitting.  A crowd watching—watching him in the ring with Salazar.

“Know what I did Mr. Detective O’Brien?  I cut the old man’s throat.”  He took his index finger, moving it swiftly from ear to ear, smiled and continued. “The old man, he looked down at the blood turning his shirt red, touched it with the tip of his finger and placed a drop on my chest—the Virgin’s mouth, he gave red color to the Virgin’s lips.  Then he smiled and whispered ‘masterpiece’ and he went to sleep…forever.”

“What do you want?” O’Brien asked, his voice sounded like he crawled in a drainage pipe to speak.

“What do I want?  Isn’t it what you want?  You want me, no?  Isn’t that what you told Russo, and you come in here and tell that to Michael, yes?  You want me.  Now, ex-cop you got me.  Or maybe I got you…because these are the once-a-month fights that we do here.  We conduct them for invited guests only.  It is not a fight for a few rounds.  It is a fight for life.”  He laughed and said, “But, since you asked, I’ll tell you what I want.  I want to make you my masterpiece.  Maybe the canvas below your feet will be my work

of art.  With only one color, the color of your blood, sweat and finally…your tears.  Because in the end, you will be on your knees in your blood and piss crying.”

Salazar walked to the ropes and said, “Because they – turn up the lights – they like to see art in motion, the physical and psychological process of creativity.”

The ring was surrounded by about thirty people.  All men.  Some Japanese.  Some Hispanic.  Businessmen.  Others looking like they might be attending a function at their country club.  They sat, whispered, and placed bets.

Salazar slipped on a pair of fingered, black leather gloves.  The leather cut off at the center joint in each finger.  He said, “See there, O’Brien?”  He pointed to a camera in the ceiling, one on a tripod at one side of the ring, and another camera on the other side.  “The art will be captured on video, packaged for international sale on DVD and on a password protected Internet site.”  He turned to speak to a man that O’Brien didn’t see when he entered the Sixth Street Gym.  Salazar said, “My face.”

The man tossed a rubber mask into the ring.   Salazar pulled the mask over his head.  It was a Japanese Noh mask—pale white, depicting the face of an elder Japanese man, goatee, white hair, red lips.   Salazar said, “Let the fight begin.”

The house lights dimmed.  A single light illuminated the ring.  O’Brien saw the small, red lights now glowing from the three video cameras.  He hoped there were microphones recording the sound.  Maybe he could get Salazar to incriminate himself.

O’Brien said, “Russo’s laughing at you.  Call’s you his horse.  Says you’re a little smarter than a mule he uses to haul his coke, but you don’t have much horse sense.”

“I got you in the ring, dude.  Who’s the dumb ass, huh?”

“You are Carlos, you are because Russo’s going to put you through a tree shredder and chum for fish off the back of his yacht with your body parts.”

“Fuck, you cop!  That’s bullshit.  You got nothing.’”

“Really?  FBI has sixty-seven hours of digital conversations on one of their secure hard drives.  It’s amazing how the bright boys at NSA work so well with the FBI.  This Patriot Act has given them a license to stick a chip in you while you’re sleeping.  They know where you eat.  They stake it out.  Pay off the right people—people in the finest South Beach restaurants.  They slip a little ‘medicine’ in your Caesar Salad, you can’t taste it.  Delayed effect, until you get home.  Usually kicks in three hours after ingesting.  You drift into a heavy sleep.  Then, about 4:00 a.m., the pros silence your home alarm, pop the locks, and walk into your bedroom.  Takes them less than three minutes to insert the microchip just under the scalp.  It’s equipped with both GPS and an Internet broadcast of up to fifty miles.  You wake up.  Don’t feel a thing.  Maybe an itch now and then, but your think it’s dry scalp.  The feds tell me for the first week, when Russo scratched his scalp, it sounded like a cat in a trash can.”

“There was a collective murmur from the crowd.”

  O’Brien said, “I’ll spare you the details about some of what the feds are getting ready to hang on Russo, but chances are they won’t go to the grand jury until you’re out of the picture.  Russo has a contract out on you, Carlos.  Sorry, pal.” 

“You’re full of shit!”

“Bet the name Vincent Pitts might mean something to you.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Maybe you’re heard his professional name.  Pit bull.  They say Pitts got that name, because just like a pit bull, he goes for the throat.  Likes to use a garrote.  Prefers rope to piano wire because rope takes a little longer to kill. ”

“Shut up! ‘Cause you’re sayin’ this shit, I’m gonna take a little longer with you before I kill you.”

O’Brien could see the tiny red camera lights glowing.  He said, “Is that what you told Father Callahan before you killed him?  Russo says he told you to tell Sam Spelling ‘because he was,’ and I’m quoting here, ‘because he was a greedy fucker and this was his last bedtime story.’  So did you follow Russo’s orders and tell Spelling it was his last bedtime story?”

Salazar grinned, danced in the ring, threw an air punch at O’Brien and said, “Russo doesn’t tell me what to do.  When I take somebody out, I say what I want to say!  This Spelling, dude.  You want to hear what he heard, huh?  It’ll be right before I hit you with the final blow—the death punch.”

SIXTY-NINE

Ron Hamilton sat in stationary traffic.  The wipers did little to clear the rain off the windshield.  He watched a cluster of flashing blue lights at an intersection.  He tried Sean O’Brien’s cell phone.  No answer.  Hamilton was stuck in a three-car pile-up on rain-sliced Dixie Highway.  Hamilton could move the single blue light from his dash, stick it on the car roof and try to maneuver and bump stalled traffic out of the way.  But he was still fifty yards from the intersection.  There was no turning around.

He tried O’Brien’s phone again.  It went to voice mail. 

#

SALAZAR CAME AT O’BRIEN and danced around him.  Jabbing.  Faking. Weaving.  The dark eyes laughing behind the mask. 

O’Brien turned.  He was still groggy from the earlier hit to the head.  He countered Salazar’s every move; the wind from Salazar’s punches fanning O’Brien’s face.  Salazar connected with a blow to O’Brien’s forehead, cutting him above the eye.

Blood splattered on the mat.  Salazar danced to the ropes and said to the crowd, “I give you’re the first stroke of the brush!”  The crowd cheered.  Salazar pranced around the ring like a rock star.  Then he ran straight for O’Brien.  He stopped abruptly, spun around and kick boxed, landing his foot in the center of O’Brien’s chest.  Nausea rose from O’Brien’s stomach into his esophagus.  The blood ran into his left eye.  He shook his head, causing a stream of dark blood to splatter across the mat.

Salazar, shouted, “Art in its purest form!”  Applause and laughs from the crowd.  Salazar dropped into forward stance and then did a flying kick, his heel grazing across the tip of O’Brien’s nose.  O’Brien jerked backwards as Salazar followed with a second spinning kick, connecting with O’Brien’s jaw.  He felt a tooth loosen.  His mouth filled with blood.  He spit it out and wiped the stinging sweat from his good eye.

“The painting grows my friends!” shouted Salazar.  There was applause and a few jeers directed toward O’Brien.  Salazar looked up at the ceiling camera and said, “Capture the canvas.  I will call this painting ‘Dance of the Butterfly!’”  There was a burst of applause and laughter as Salazar did a back flip and crouched low, arms extended, eyes following O’Brien.

Salazar moved in a slow circle around O’Brien. “Don’t run out of paint just yet, there is still much canvas to cover.”

Salazar charged, throwing a full roundhouse kick.  His right foot missing O’Brien by an inch.  O’Brien hit Salazar hard in the ribs.  The crowed yelled for more.

Salazar trotted around the ring twice.  He stopped and moved like a cat, low, sizing his pray.  He sprang toward O’Brien with a triple butterfly kick, his left heel catching O’Brien on the jaw.

O’Brien saw nothing but white for a second.  He closed one eye to stop the double vision.  Blood poured from his mouth.

“This may be my best painting yet!”  Salazar raised a clinched fist.  He turned his back to O’Brien, the crowd now on its feet.  The cheering was deafening.

O’Brien focused on the blue and red tattoo on Salazar’s back.  He concentrated on the image of the muscular winged beast with hoofed feet, the scaly tail of a snake.  He stepped forward.  Closer.  O’Brien drew back, ready to plant his fist right between the horns—right in the center of Salazar’s spine.

Salazar spun around, his left connecting with O’Brien’s lower jaw.  The contact knocked O’Brien to the ropes.  Salazar laughed.  He jabbed.  He danced and heckled O’Brien.  Then, Salazar made the mistake of looking toward one of the cameras.

Focus
.  O’Brien told himself.  He shut out the noise of the crowd.  He heard only his own breathing.  He saw only one spot—Salazar’s chin. When Salazar started to turn, O’Brien plowed a powerful right into the chin.  The impact spun Salazar in a circle.  As he turned, O’Brien waited for the exact second when the mask would face him again.  Then the slammed a hard left into the rubber lips.  Even through the mask, O’Brien knew he’d taken out some of Salazar’s front teeth.  Blood flowed from below the mask.  Salazar stumbled.  The audience screamed for more.

Salazar shook his head, regained his footage and landed a blow in O’Brien’s stomach.  O’Brien slammed his forearm into the center of the mask.  The sound was like stepping on a Styrofoam cup.  O’Brien hit Salazar with all of his strength, driving his fist deep into Salazar’s solar-plexus.  He bent over, vomiting behind the mask.  O’Brien brought his knee up hard, connecting to Salazar’s chin.  The strike caused Salazar to fall back like his legs disintegrated.  He dropped to his knees.

The crowd chanted, “Kill…kill…kill…”

O’Brien took a few steps toward Salazar who was still on his knees, his arms dangling powerless by his side, like a puppet with the strings severed.  Blood rained from beneath the mask, dripping over the image of the Virgin Mary.  O’Brien used his left hand to pull the mask from Salazar’s head.

The crowd chanted louder.  Salazar’s eyes were rolling back.  O’Brien steadied Salazar’s floating head with his left hand.  He tuned out the chants.  Heard only the gurgling, sucking sound of Salazar trying to breathe through the blood.

Focus
.   No sounds.  Nothing but Salazar heaving for air.

O’Brien drew back his right fist.  He said, “What did you tell Sam Spelling before you killed him?  What did you tell Father Callahan before you shot him?  Tell me!”

Through shattered teeth, pulverized lips, and bloody gums, Salazar tried to smile, his face muscles jerking, lips trembling.  He coughed and said in a raspy voice, “I beat up the girl.  But those others, that’s something between you and Russo, ‘cause I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about, cop.”  Then Salazar fell backwards, his back flat against the mat, the demonic image pressed into the bloodied canvas.  He stared up at the overhead camera, breathing heavy, the tiny red light glowing dimly like a distant planet in a universe of black. 

O’Brien staggered across the mat.  He steadied himself on the ropes.  His right eye was swollen.  He tried to climb down through the ropes, faltering on the edge and dropping against the concrete floor.  Nausea rose in the pit of his stomach.  He felt someone pick him up, carrying him on a set of massive shoulders.