Authors: Richard Thomas
Not my night, I think to myself. I'm partially covered in vomit, my wound is leaking, and the ass-hat in the sweatshirt got in another shot and split my lip. The bartender threw me out, and I'm wet from landing faceup in the snow. I head toward Isadora's hoping that I can salvage something from this night. I turn the corner and there are cop cars, two of them, right about where we left the homeless man.
Shit.
The lights flash around and around, four cops standing there, an ambulance behind them, one of them wandering this way. I duck down the same alley the homeless man came out of and hope it goes through. It looks like it runs all the way down to Chicago Avenue. I lurch along glancing over my shoulder, looking guilty as sin. Looking back up the alley, I see the cop stop and turn.
“Hey,” he yells. “You.”
I start running. I know where I want to go, but I can't go directly there. I hang a left and jump a small fence running between two apartment buildings. I fling open a gate and come through the other side. I hear the engine of a revved-up police car, the one from the other night, most likely. Spotlights are banking off the blue vinyl siding, and I take a hard right down the sidewalk. I dash across the alley and the cop is facing the other way, flashlight shining down the alley. I sprint up Damen to the front of Isadora's, the cops farther up the block. I hope too far to see me. Up the steps I go, jumping them two at a time. I can't pound on the doorâit will make too much noise. I find a bell and ring it.
The house is dark, all of it. I don't have a good feeling.
I ring and ring, nothing happening, and a squad car cruises by, heading north on Damen. I flatten myself up against the door as the spotlight shines up and down the street. They slow to a crawl two houses south, making their way toward me. A light clicks on behind me and the door creaks open. I push in, shoving the woman back and closing the door behind me. I turn around and she's wearing a sage-green silk robe, her long black hair tied in a braid.
“Who the hell are you?” she asks, eyes wide.
“Where's Isadora?”
“She's not here, I'm not sure where she is, or when she'll be back.”
It's not the girl I know, this woman is older. A man's voice booms down from upstairs.
“Vot is the noise?”
I know that voice.
“Don't scream,” I say. “I'm a friend of your husband's. But don't tell him I was here. There are cops outside looking for somebody, so just be careful.”
I glance down the hall. No pictures of naked women. I turn my head to peer into the living room, the hardwood floors still familiar. In the center of the room there is a black leather sectional couch and an Eames lounge chair. A huge plasma screen is bolted to the wall, but no handcuffs or whips are lying around. Whatever Isadora did to the house when she was using it, it's back to Wicker Park chicâframed pop art on the wall, leaning toward the dark and obscure; vases on end tables with shimmering gold finishes; and a large shiny lamp with three long stalks hanging over the furniture, the silver globes like distended eyeballs glowing dull yellowâa plush rug in brick red running underneath it all. The only evidence of dark deeds and foul play is an AK-47 leaned against the wall.
I'll take my chances with the cops.
“Dosvedanya.”
Before she can say anything, I'm out the door. The cops have moved on, the lights gone. I duck down the back alley, eyes peeled for flashlights and the long-reaching spotlights of the cop cars. My mind reels and nothing makes sense.
I stop and bend over, and vomit again.
My head hurts.
If Vlad has several hired guns like me, then maybe he won't know who it was.
I think I'm heading to the suburbs.
My apartment has turned into a post office. There's another envelope on the floor when I push the door open, out of breath, Vlad's voice still echoing in my head. Wasn't me, nope, I was here at home, just sitting at home petting my cat like a damn Austin Powers villain, waiting for my next assignment. Wasn't me at your door, startling your wife, or whoever the hell that was, Isadora, who seems to have a twin, or a sister, or a friend with a good makeup artist. It certainly wasn't me bleeding on your floor and screwing in your bed, blood on the sheets, with a pale damsel who likes it rough. Must have been one of the other killers on the payroll.
Sitting on the dining room table, curiously out of place, is a small television set, with a built-in VCR, and an orange extension cord running off into the dark corners of the room. That's new.
The minions have been out tonight, running up and down streets, delivering mail in the snow, dropping off television sets in the middle of the night, breaking legs and scaring drug dealers. But they're a clean bunch, not a drop of snow or slush on the hardwood floors, and this gives me pause. Either they're a considerate group, these massive men who held me down as a branding iron seared my flesh, or they're anal-retentive, cleaning up after themselves, unable to leave a trace behind, paranoid that they'll imprint a boot in the ice or dirt, something for the authorities to find when they finally come here to identify my body.
There's another option. It's an inside job. I turn to my left and stare at the wall that Guy and I share. There's the faint sound of a television set, a low mumble, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. I hear footsteps, heavy legs, and a door closes. Water runs, and a solitary sob, muffled under the sound of a toilet flushing now. Or I could be wrong. I'll deal with him later.
I tear open the envelope and I'm not surprised. It's a picture of my associate. Tall, dark, and uglyâfalling apart one day at a time, one death at a time, whatever is left of his fractured shell, chipping and flaking, falling to the ground, turning to dust under his own heavy boot steps. A golem. And I'm just like him. On the back of the photo is very little information, just an address and one word:
2128 West Schiller #2F
TERMINATION
I make a mental note to never let Vlad take my picture.
I turn to the small TV and the Post-it note in the center of the screen says
PLAY
. Thanks, Vlad. I turn the set on and the tape starts up at once.
A small man in a hood sits at a table, a tall bottle of clear liquid next to him, nearly empty, a glass next to it, full. There's very little sound, the hiss of the screen, the scrape of a chair being pushed across the floor. There are eyeholes cut in the hood, and a gap for his mouth. He raises a small glass to his lips, black leather gloves on, and takes a sip, coughs gently, and sips again. From offscreen a hand reaches in and smacks him upside the head, jostling the liquid onto the table. He makes no noise, but turns his head to the right, staring at his abuser. No appearance from Vlad tonight, it seems, nothing that can lead back to him.
The man holds up a large stack of cards in front of him. A silent film, I guess.
Build a fire, destroy this film.
The card flips down and the head bows, drifts to the right, and then back up.
No sympathy for the employee.
The card drops down.
Sloppy work.
Insubordination.
The head turns to the right, nods and continues.
Too close to home, my home.
The hands, I notice the hands, they're small.
He won't see it coming.
The gloves peel off, and underneath, long slender fingers and pale skin.
Holly can wait. But not long. She won't run.
They're a woman's hands, black nail polish.
Don't fuck it up.
The cards are done, and in one quick movement the hood is pulled off. Isadora stares back at me, her lips trembling, a muted whimper, eyes wet and overflowing with tears running down her face. She mouths one word.
“Run.”
Isadora. My Isadora, the pale goddess.
The gun is at her temple before I can do anything, a sharp, hollow retort, like a firecracker, hardly real at all. Blood spurts out the other side of her head, bone and flesh fanning out in a spray, her eyes wide open, her head barely moving. She tips over slowly and falls out of the picture, onto the floor with barely a sound. A sack of potatoes dropped on the ground, a bag of sand. Inhuman.
I'm standing up, gripping the set and staring at the screenâwaiting for the joke, the punch line. Maybe it's not real, a stage gag, something to frighten me. A hand reaches in and holds up the last card and shakes it at the camera.
Don't fuck it up.
I'm about to fling the set through the wall when the picture goes to static, and then returns. A notepad is held in front of the screen, hastily scratched in permanent marker.
Holly. Don't hesitate.
The video starts up again, and I sit back down, still in shock, my chest a snare drum on an extended roll. The tape moves on. It's worse than Holly's file. Next to the set is a half-empty bottle of bourbon that I notice for the first time. The cat is nowhere to be seen. She knows to stay gone.
How and why they made this tape, I don't know. It shows Holly in a cell, a high angle coming down from the ceiling. It's grainy and black and white, and it shows a very similar video, again and again.
She's talking to a young man, there's no sound, and she sits across from him, getting more and more agitated. The man is in handcuffs and shakes his head, she yells, her face contorted, stands up, and he shakes his head some more. He opens his mouth. She slaps him in the face. She yells some more, face red, neck strained, leaning forward. I hardly recognize her. She stands up and walks over, punches him in the face. She punches him again. She wraps her tiny hands around his neck, the muscles on her arms straining, her back shaking, and she tightens her grip, squeezing for an eternity. She finally releases him, and he slumps in the chair as she walks out of the shot. This happens several times, the same scene replayed, with different guys, but the same result.
I unscrew the top of the bourbon, and swallow three times.
The next shot is of a playground, the video through a wire mesh fence, in vibrant colors. It could be at a school or a parkâit's hard to tell. Kids are swinging, running around, chasing each other, playing in the sand. Two mothers stand talking, their backs to the camera. They're engaged in a heated conversation, muffled squeals in the distance, the words garbled. A third woman sits off to the side, a baby stroller next to her. She pushes it back and forth cooing at the baby, leaning over it. A small girl comes over to look at the baby and the woman on the bench leans over again. It's Holly. She's wearing a scarf on her head and large sunglasses, but it's her. The blond wig under the wrap is cut short, but it works. When the little girl leans over to look at the baby, Holly pulls a rag out from inside the stroller and pushes it over the girl's mouth. The girl struggles for only a second and passes out, going limp. Holly turns the girl around and shoves her into the empty stroller, covering her with a blanket. The tiny legs, Barbie Band-Aid on one knee, extend just beyond the pink blanket. Holly covers the girl's slack face and stands up. She slowly walks past the camera and out of the shot, the lens focused on the swings, the slides, and the two mothers with their backs to the camera, turned to each other, away from the bench. Their arms are animated, and it continues for a minute. A minute longer than either mother will ever think was important, the worst minute of their lives. I can hear them already.
“I only took my eyes off her for a second.”
“She was on the swing. The slide. I know she was close by.”
It's a parent's worst nightmare come true, the horror from the evening news in their own backyard, urban legend come home to rest.
“I was right there.”
They may remember a woman with a stroller and blond hair, or they may not.
I don't need to see any more. I turn the set off and sit in the dark. I have work to do, a man to visit, an employee to terminate, a monster to erase, a horrible woman that held me while I wept, told me it would be okay, and pressed up against me in the dark.
Am I worse?
Am I any better?
Does it matter?
I stand in the postage-stamp-sized backyard over a small fire pit, the quiet of the dark sky around me. I've taken an old chair that was standing back here and broken it into pieces, the anger easily at my fingertips, breaking off the chair legs, a muddy slush beneath my feet as I turn in circles in the snow. I crumple newspaper that I pulled from the garbage cans, tear to pieces cardboard cereal boxes, Lucky Charms and Count Chocula, a twinge in my gut, and the fire is ready to go. I bend over and hold out the lighter, the one from Damon's apartment. I light the paper, and it smokes, and slowly starts to burn.
I stare at the red flickering light, waiting for it to catch, the videotape clattering in my coat pocket. What good has my work done if Holly is out there abducting children, and other dark deeds? It seems pointless now. For some reason I believed that Vlad was doing something good, ridding the world of these predators and abusers. And maybe he was. Maybe that work that Holly did was before his time, before she worked for him. And now she has to go. I don't know. I'm not buying it. I think I need to talk to Vlad. He said he had some news for me, and I remember the man, the employee I'm now destined to let go, his talk of fires, faked deaths, ghost families living separate lives. Is any of it true? Is he as delusional as I am, was he simply wishing for this to be a reality and not some hallucination, exhausted and strung out on whatever those pills are, unstable to say the least?
I think I have to ask him a few more questions. I know where the morgue is, it isn't that far. I'll put that on my to-do list, stop by and talk to the staff, see if they remember me, I have to risk it. I'll be out that way soon enough, when I go to see Holly. I can't give myself that hope yet, that they may still be alive. It complicates things beyond reason, beyond what I can handle.
The fire is a steady blaze now, so I toss the tape in. It lands in the center, the plastic melting quickly. I reach into my other pocket and pull out the envelope. I know his face, and I know where he lives. I can't keep looking at him, that stupid ring in his nose. It's me in three months, farther down the road, more of a shell, about at the end of it all, and I don't need to see that. I toss it in and stare at the flames. I sip the bourbon and try to remember the face of my wife.