The Protocol: A Prescription to Die (18 page)

Chapter 48

Butch’s booming heart kept tempo with his growing anxiety. Sweat rained down his face and dripped off of his chin onto the black tar roof and his boots despite temperatures barely in the forties. He wasn’t sure if it was his thumping heart he heard, or the steady rhythm of sweat droplets landing on his leather boots. He shivered and clenched his arms around his bearish chest to keep warm. It didn’t help, as the cold wasn’t causing the chills, but the thought of the task that lie in front of him.

Butch was perched on the roof of an old warehouse at the intersection of I-94 and Broadway, directly across the street from 314159 Enterprises. From his vantage point, he could see the front entrance and the building’s very large silver roll-up garage door. He looked at his watch. It was 3:45 and he had to leave by 4:30 as his shift at the club started at 5:00. He hoped to be finished long before then as Barbara would surely be pissed if this wasn’t resolved today. He opened his backpack and took out the picture that Barbara had handed him last night, and studied it for yet another time. It was his afternoon’s assignment and the reason he was camped on the roof of an abandoned warehouse on the edge of Minneapolis’ ‘hood. The man in the picture wasn’t bad looking. Kinda plain. Warm smile. Cute-ish. He looked like one of his old college professors and was even dressed in a turtleneck sweater and tweed jacket. He was just missing the black glasses. Butch wondered what he’d done to make Barbara so mad that she’d want him dead.

Butch heard a distinct squeak echo between the buildings; then a slight movement caught his attention.

It was opening.

The garage door across the street was rolling up. From where he sat, Butch could see inside of the garage. A large Jeep Wrangler, with a winch on the front bumper, was slowly making its way out of the garage. Whoever was at the wheel had decided to withstand the weather and go topless. The jeep might have been naked but the driver was fully clothed and in full view to Butch. There was just a windshield and a four-point roll-bar to contend with. This was Butch’s lucky day.

Since leaving the army, Butch hadn’t looked at his gun. As the security guard at the nightclub, he had a baton and a can of pepper spray at his side, nothing with bullets. He’d been forced to palm his baton once and that was enough to quiet the commotion outside of the club. Even drunks became reasonable when face to face with Butch’s towering presence. Today was different though, and he was going to have to do more than just threaten someone with a stream of capsaicin. He pulled his holster out of his backpack, unsnapped the safety strap, and slid the gun out.

The 38-caliber pistol was heavier than he ever remembered it being. He double-checked everything. It was loaded and ready with a bullet chambered.

Butch looked at the driver then glanced at the picture. It was him all right. Barbara said his name was Evan Teague. And she wanted him out of her way.

He sighted his gun on his target. The afternoon sun was bright, but not so bad as to affect his aim. The traffic on the opposite side of the street was another story. The sun glinted off their windshields and focused it into his eyes. It caused him to wince with each passing car.

Butch looked down at the picture of his target again. He wondered if Evan had a wife and kids. He wondered if Evan’s parents loved him, and if Evan loved them in return. Butch wished Barbara had never told him the name of the man in the picture. He was better off knowing him simply as his “assignment.” Now, guilt began to envelop Butch’s entire being.

Finally, both the traffic and view of the man cleared; the Wrangler started to move into the street.

Butch pulled in a deep breath and held it.

He steadied his hands, just as the army taught him.

Butch squeezed the trigger.

Chapter 49

Merging onto Broadway from his garage always proved interesting. Especially when he had to make a left and cross a lane of traffic as he was trying to do now.

Eat’s problem was patience, or more precisely, the lack thereof. Eat hated waiting for anything, and sitting in traffic was almost as bad as waiting in line at an ATM.

Both were excruciatingly painful.

Andy had tried to teach him deep breathing. She claimed it would help calm him when his lack of patience began to rear its ugly head. While he sat waiting for traffic to clear, Eat replayed her lesson in his head.

“Exhale completely. Close your mouth though.”

Four more cars turned onto Broadway.

“Inhale for four seconds. No, not that fast.”

Traffic wasn’t getting any better. Cars were not disappearing the way he wanted them to. The way they were
supposed
to after having breathed so deep he felt his toes invert.

“Now hold for seven.”

Two trucks approached that could turn the Wrangler to scrap metal and Eat into meatloaf with plenty of red sauce if he pulled out now. The seven seconds were beginning to feel like an eternity, and Eat was positive that his eyeballs would pop out of his head and roll into traffic before he did.

“Exhale for eight. Through your nose. Keep your mouth closed, Eat.”

Three more cars approached, all driven by old women who could barely see over the steering wheel going two miles per hour in a thirty mile per hour zone. They were definitely not deep breathing.

Repeat until you feel better or pass out.

Right now, Eat desperately wanted to pass out. Not from deep breathing and holding his breath, but from shear lack of forward motion.

Eat let the clutch out a bit, pressed the gas, inched further into the street, and craned his neck to scan further down both sides of Broadway. He looked again in both directions. Things were definitely improving. The trucks were gone. The old ladies were gone. Finally, there was a break and he was good to go.

At last. The potential of forward momentum presented itself.

He finished exhaling.

When the Wrangler crossed the dashed yellow line and Eat began to turn left into the traffic lane, the world released its bowels, and everything landed smack-dab on Eat’s lap.

The windshield exploded spraying chunks of safety glass into Eat’s face. Panicked, Eat raised his arm in front of his face, further blinding him while at the same time leaving the Wrangler without a sighted driver. Eat’s foot came off of the clutch which fully engaged the transmission and put the behemoth Jeep into unfettered forward motion. To make matters worse, instead of stomping on the brake, Eat’s right foot pressed on the gas. When Eat chose the Wrangler, he had wanted to run something over.

Now he had his wish.

Within seconds after the windshield shattered onto his lap, the Wrangler was traveling at fifteen miles per hour and, since Eat’s foot remained on the gas pedal, it continued its acceleration. Things were quickly moving out of control. When they finally came in contact with the seventeen foot cast aluminum light pole, Eat and the Wrangler were traveling at almost twenty-five miles per hour. When contact was made with the unforgiving aluminum pole, all forward momentum instantly stopped. Eat’s body, however, not understanding physics, but nonetheless bound by its laws, tried to continue its forward movement but was jerked back into the position by the seat belt. At this point Eat was no longer feeling any pain, his body was in shock. The light that was supposed to be hanging seventeen feet above him came careening down onto the hood, spraying glass slivers in every direction. Some embedded themselves in the upholstery; most took residence within Eat. The Wrangler’s air bags deployed with canon-like precision, and prevented Eat from smashing his face against the steering wheel and the torn metal being thrust into the driver’s seat. It also injected the glass shards from the shattered light fixture further into his face, chest, and arms. Eat flopped in the driver’s seat, then slumped onto the passenger’s seat. His right arm was twisted unnaturally behind and above him. Not at the elbow, but at an unnatural halfway point between his shoulder and elbow, as if Eat had grown another joint. The gearshift pressed into his abdomen and roamed around his interior. The engine rumbled and misfired then died; steam and smoke billowed from under the hood.

Eat blinked twice and tried for a third.

Black, inky darkness enveloped him.

Chapter 50

“A box of rocks.”

“What?”

“A box of rocks. You are about as dumb as a fucking box of rocks.”

It hadn’t taken Barbara long to find out. The minute she’d heard that Teague wasn’t in a dirt bed turning to mulch, she had gone ballistic and ordered Butch to her office the following morning. Now Butch sat in the brown chair strategically placed in front of Barbara’s desk, and endured the unrelenting verbal beating spewing from her mouth.

Butch was sure that she’d had the chair custom made to be the most uncomfortable one known to mankind. No chair could have been purposely made this confining and low to the ground. Even though he was more than a foot taller than the bitch currently spewing multiple four-letter adjectives at him, he found himself forced to look upwards and into her unflattering, flaring nostrils, and watch her nose hairs squirm with each exhale of her fetid breath.

She had called Carl to the meeting too. He was standing by the door picking his teeth, and looking at what he captured in his fingernails after each adventure into his gums. He was no doubt guarding the door to make sure no one thought about leaving too early. When he saw Butch look in his direction, he smiled. There was a trickle of blood on his single front tooth. Evidently, he had cleaned the other one right out of his mouth.

Butch detested her, and everything she represented. But at the moment, he didn’t have a choice. He had to endure the beating the best way he could.

Quietly.

Straight-faced.

He could feel his heart begin to race, his face redden, and his jaws constrict and tighten. He clenched hands into fists, and dug his fingernails into palms of his hands in an attempt to quell the anger rising from his stomach.

She moved a few pieces of paper on her desk and returned her attention to him. “No. I actually think the box may even have you fucking beat. What did you use?”

“Use?”

“Yes. What did you use? You know. Bang, bang?” she said while forming her thumb and forefinger into a gun and aiming it at him.

He looked ashamed.

“My 38.”

“A 38. From across the street?” she with a staccato pause after each word. She shook her head and laughed. “Like bringing a slingshot to a gunfight, you moron.”

“It was the sun. It reflected off of a passing car right into my eyes. Plus, I just thought I’d just scare him. There was nothing I could do. And I was shivering. Cold.”

“Scare him? You were cold? You need to grow a pair is what you need to do.”

“I just thought...”

“I don’t pay you to think. Jesus H. Christ. You have shit for brains? I pay you to do what I tell you. As for the sun? They’re called sunglasses. Buy a pair, they’re cheap these days. I wanted him dead, Rheumy. Dead. Not hospitalized.”

Butch swallowed and imagined his hand tightening around her pointed throat.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself? I wanted him gone. Out of our way. Out of my way. What’s your Plan B?”

Butch shrugged and pursed his lips. He didn’t have a Plan B or a Plan C. However, he was beginning to think he’d better have a plan to deal with her.

Barbara pulled out a folder from her desk and a small box of capped syringes.

“Here’s what you are going to do tonight. I have ten protocols that need to be taken care of. You are going to visit each one of them. Tonight. Free of charge. First though,” she said as she picked up a lone syringe, “You will visit him in his room, and finish what you fucked up.” She looked over to Carl. “Take your fucking finger out of your mouth, and go with him. Make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.”

Butch pulled himself out of the chair and stood up. With Barbara still sitting, she now had to look up at him as he approached. Her head kept moving up as he approached. He stared at her.

She blinked.

Butch walked as far as he could towards Barbara, until her desk stopped his progress. Its mahogany edge pressed against his thighs. He bent over, maintained eye contact, and slowly took the folder from her hands. Without moving his eyes, he picked up the box of syringes. He wasn’t sure what all of these were for, but was certain Carl knew everything.

“Don’t fuck it up this time. You know what will happen if you do. Now get out of here.”

She turned back to her monitor.

Despite having to leave the battle, Butch felt vindicated. It was like two lions fighting for control of the pride. Although he was forced to retreat, he’d be back to restart the battle, and win the war.

Chapter 51

Eat struggled to open his eyes but his eyelids felt like they had concrete blocks chained to them and fervently opposed each attempt he made. Finally, after what seemed to be hours, and thousands of failed attempts, his left eye relented, and allowed a sliver of light through to his brain for processing. His right eye remained closed. The lopsided shard of light translated into surroundings that were foggy and unfamiliar. He remembered leaving from the underground garage and pulling out into the cross traffic. He was in the Wrangler on his way to the financial advisor’s office. The sun was bright in his face, and he was unfolding the temple arms of his sunglasses when everything exploded. Things moved too fast after that. Eat tried to remember the sequence of events but nothing was clear. Right now he wasn’t sure if he could even add two plus two.

An image of a light pole proved a prominent prop in his memories.

Now the sky was overcast and grey. Torrents of icy rain slammed against the window like a shotgun blast. The window he was looking at wasn’t anything he recognized. It wasn’t one of the brown metal framed windows from his loft. This one was surrounded by high-gloss, white-painted drywall.

Slowly, Eat turned his head and saw the metal bars that confined him to the bed and kept him from rolling onto the floor and escaping. Then he noticed the IV pole and the set of monitors by his head. The volume on the heart monitor was turned way down, and he could barely hear the repetitive, familiar beep that confirmed a few things for him: he was alive, and he was apparently in a hospital room. His senses slowly returned, and began sending input to his brain. He could smell the room’s bitter, antiseptic odor. He could hear the conversations of the nurses outside, and the soft clamor of carts being pushed down the hall beyond his closed door. Eat further surveyed his surroundings. He was in a private room as there wasn’t another bed on either side of him, just a small couch and recliner.

Both were unoccupied.

To his right there was a mirror and another door which was closed. Eat assumed it was his bathroom. A flat screen television was hung centered on the wall opposite of where Eat was laying. It was dark and silent. He looked for the remote, but being he only had a sliver of sight out of one eye, couldn’t find where the nurses had it hidden.

Eat turned towards the mirror. When he first noticed it, he didn’t pay any attention to the reflection. Now he saw what looked like a villain from a B-grade horror flick looking back at him. It told him why his right eye refused to open at this command: it was swollen shut, and covered with puffy black and purple skin. His right cheek was covered with lines of butterfly bandages. His right arm was pinned to his chest and encased in a white plaster cast. In the reflection, the monster wiggled its fingers at him.