Disintegration (21 page)

It's a short walk back over to Vlad's, and I should be angrier. Instead, I'm just tired. It's night now, and as I walk the ten, twelve blocks west toward his house, I hear sirens in the distance, back east toward the city, the lake. The apartment building. It didn't take very long. Fifteen minutes? Twenty?

I hold the bat by my side, and it's almost invisible. I don't need eyes on me tonight. Whatever night it is. I keep my eyes peeled for the cops, the ones that chased me down the alleys from the diner. No, I don't need to see them tonight. The streets are quiet, hardly a body out anywhere, the occasional car drifting by, but I stick to the side streets, a shadow in between the trees, the parked cars hiding my slinking frame. I'm a shimmering figure, something in the periphery, a turn of the head and I'm gone, only an apparition, a suggestion.

I pass an alley and stop. It's an old trick, but a good one. Why not? I'm feeling nostalgic tonight, the pills tainting my vision, my senses overloaded in the suicidal white that blankets me, the purity of the death I bring. I grab the pizza box with my left hand, shake the snow off it, wipe it with my gloved hand, and keep moving forward. Pizza. They always go for the pizza.

I stop a block away and take off my long wool coat. I lay it over a trash can, and hope I'll see it again. I love that coat. They might recognize it at the door, can't take the chance. But blue jeans and a black sweatshirt, a black knit hat—that could be anybody, any punk-ass kid driving around delivering pizza. My gun is tucked into the back of my jeans, the knife in my back pocket, the baseball bat an extension of my arm, hidden in the darkness. I have to be quiet. No gunshot. Can't alert the troops.

There are lights on in the house, upstairs and down. A soft glow and it looks so domestic. It isn't. It's a disguise. It's a cave, filled with a dampness that you can't shake, a deep smell of mildew and mold, a drip of water in the distance, falling down a deep well, finally plinking as it meets the bottom, absorbed into the wetness.

I take a deep breath and walk on up the steps. I ring the doorbell, and through the frame of the house I see electricity running up the walls, shallow veins buzzing. I can picture him sitting in bed, reading a newspaper, one of his men in a chair in the corner, fingers moving fast over his BlackBerry, texting his girlfriend, or playing a game—Tetris maybe, or Minesweeper. Maybe he's surfing the Internet, looking for diet pills. I picture a head snapping up, toward the door. Do they know I'm coming? Did they hear the sirens? Have they gotten a phone call about an apartment building going up in flames?

I risk a look and see a big man waddling forward, filling the hallway, eclipsing the light. One of the mountains opens the door, and I keep my head down, pizza box thrust forward.

“Pizza, dude.”

“What?”

“Pizza, man. Double sausage, double pepperoni.”

“Shit,” he mumbles to himself. “If I knew he was going to order, I'd have gotten two, the cheap bastard.”

“Sorry, dude.”

He sighs and opens the screen door to take it.

“$23.45,” I say, handing him the box with my left hand.

When his hands are full, I grip the bat with two hands, bring it up slowly behind my back and over my head, his eyes tracking it upward, face dripping into a snarl, his teeth bared, eyes white and wide. I bring it straight down on the bridge of his nose with everything I've got. It crushes his face in, blood springing forward as he falls backward, a gentle grunt escaping his lips. With a soft thud, his flab hits the hardwood floor.

I'm on him before he hits the floor, rappelling him as if he were Mt. Everest. I reach back for the knife, the bat still in my left hand, and pull it out. I flick out the blade and run it across his neck, taking no chances. The gash slides open with ease, blood spilling out across the floor and warming my hands.

I have to move fast. There's no time for cleanup. I try to close the door behind me, but he's in the way. He's heavy, must be three hundred pounds. I push him and he won't budge. I stifle a hyena laugh and bend his legs up enough to get the door shut and step over him toward the stairs. No sign of the wife or the other bodyguard. I take two steps onto the stairs and a voice booms down to me.

“Who was it?”

It's Thing 2. I summon my best baritone.

“Pizza, dude.”

I hear footsteps coming, lumbering down the stairs. I duck behind the wall, the knife back in my jeans, two hands on the bat, cocked and ready.

“Oh man, I'm starved—” he begins.

When his face comes around the corner I swing, catching him right in the forehead with a hollow thwock.
Down goes Frazier
. He bumps down the steps, his head running over the last three, his hands to his face as he fades to gray, going limp, and I pull the knife out again, quickly across his throat, hot red coursing over my hands, and I roll him out of the way. I can't block every exit with these two behemoths.

I wipe the blade on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and put it in my back pocket. I place the bat by the side of the stairs. I won't need this anymore. I pull the gun out and ease up the stairs. Music fills the air, an orchestra, piano, the roll of timpani. I didn't know Vlad was so refined.

Step by step, inch by inch, I make my way closer. He'll be calling for them soon. He's comfortable here, has no reason to worry. His minions are in check, the bad apples removed from the basket, and nobody knows where he lives. I flash on Isadora for a second, grateful that she brought me here, whoever she was, disgruntled employee, one of his video whores, who knows. I picture her head, her eyes, on the TV screen, and her mouth is moving, telling me to run. The gun erupts and there is a violent spray out the side of her head, she tips over, her eyes wide and empty now.

I'm at the top of the stairs, breathing hard, trying to bury my exhalations in the elbow of my sweatshirt, swallowing, my heart filling my chest with erratic beats, every creak and footstep echoing throughout the hallway. He knows I'm coming—he has to. He'll be sitting there with a gun in his hand, pointed at the doorway. The minute I poke my head through, he'll pull the trigger and this will all be over.

So it goes.

At the end of a long hall, the door is open. The music drifts to me: violins, a cello. I walk slow and steady down the hall, the long runner soft under my boots, a whirling of patterns swimming in the dark carpet, a dance of flowers spinning in the wind, the walls terra-cotta, sconces every ten feet, and I pray that he's stupid, and conceited, unprepared for my arrival.

When I get to the doorframe, I hear him humming, and the rage finally begins to build. I see Isadora again, her pale skin, her body in the very bed I'm about to bloody. Again. I see Holly, her head a watermelon, exploding on the driveway, her son and husband watching, filled with horror at the seemingly random violence, until the father goes down, the boy quickly descending into madness as he's splattered with his father's gore, and then it's his turn—a quick fade to black. I see Guy sitting in a bathroom stall, his pants down around his ankles, surrounded by drugs, his flabby stomach covering his tiny penis, eyes wide open, an explosion of red on the wall behind his head. I see my wife, pulled from a burning car, gasoline threatening to erupt at any second, my children, unconscious.

Or are they all dead?

I'm about to find out.

I step into the room. Vlad is indeed lying back in bed, eyes closed, and I understand why he isn't listening for the door, why he didn't holler down to ask about the pizza. A young girl is sucking his dick, and she can't be more than eighteen. Her hair is pulled back in pigtails, and for a moment I think it's Pippi. But no, this girl is much younger, and blond. Her small breasts barely move as she bobs up and down. Her jeans are still on, a tattoo across her lower back, simply a series of numbers, her branding perhaps, serial number, some sort of tag. She could be Polish or Russian, something foreign about her, but I can't tell from here. I ease over to the bed, and she keeps going. But she isn't going to finish.

I reach out my arm and press the gun against his left temple. His eyes spring open.

“Hello, Vlad,” I say.

Her eyes go wide and his dick pops out of her mouth.

“Get out of here, sweetheart,” I say.

She looks to Vlad, and back to me. At least she's loyal.

“Go,” he says.

She eases off the bed, grabs an expensive-looking pink cashmere sweater off a chair, and runs out of the bedroom.

I raise the gun up and bring it down across his brutal hawk nose, and there's more blood. I do it again and again until I realize he's not moving. Shit.

When he comes to, he's tied spread-eagle to the four-poster bed. The lamps on the nightstands are on, his sex slave gone. I've slipped his boxer shorts on because I'm tired of staring at his limp dick. His face is a mess and he moans, a thin layer of black blood thickening on his top lip, streams of it running down his face, his chin, and over his chest.

“Hello, Vlad.”

“This is a mistake, my friend.”

“Is it? I seem to be one of the last employees left. And even I've been reduced in scope.”

I wiggle my left pinkie at him, bandaged up where he chopped it off. He stares at me, his eyes two tiny black coals.

“Your boys are dead,” I say. “Where's the missus?”

“None of your damn business.”

I walk over toward a long dresser that lines the far wall. For a moment I pause and look to the right, the two tall windows, sheer drapes barely moving, a blackness filled with shards of moonlight, and I remember my night here with Isadora.

I pick up the baseball bat and walk back over to Vlad. Turns out I did need it after all.

“Why me?” I ask.

He shrugs.

I bring the bat down on his left knee and shatter the kneecap. His screams fill the room and I grin for the first time in a long time.

“I have nowhere to go, Vlad. And nothing but time.”

His eyes are squeezed shut, tears pushing out of them. His teeth are clamped shut, his jaw tight.

“Easy mark. Easy to break down,” he gasps. “Full of rage after accident.”

“Was it an accident? Or did you set it up?”

His eyes roll to the bat and back to me.

“What do you want to know?” he asks. “I have information. Put the bat down.”

I breathe in and out, and lower the bat. He's no use to me dead.

“My wife. The kids. Are they dead?”

He looks away from me, toward the windows. He looks back to me again, and then behind me. I spin around but I'm too late.

It's the whore, the fucking little whore.

She's got a golf club in her hand, a three-iron, I think, and it's coming down fast. I didn't know he played. I can't get my arm up in time and she brings it down on the back of my neck, missing my skull by inches. It still drops me to my knees. Her squeal fills my ears and all I can see are her thin legs, the tight denim bunched between her legs and her tiny feet. She smells good—oranges and strawberries and a dark, sweet musk. I really don't want to hurt her. I punch her in the stomach.

She gasps and stumbles backward, a pained expression on her face. I don't have to turn my head to see that Vlad is enjoying this. The bat is in my right hand, but I'm still on one knee. She raises her arms over her head to bring the golf club down again, and I flash on Indiana Jones and
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. What am I doing, this hand-to-hand combat? I'm too old for this shit. I drop the bat, reach back for the gun, pull it out and turn to fire. She's on me, the golf club glancing off my left arm, and I pull the trigger, shooting her in the chest. She falls back, eyes wide, collapsing on the carpet. I can't breathe. My arm stings, but she only got me with the shaft, a glancing blow.

“That's a shame,” Vlad says.

He's got one hell of a sense of humor—for a dead man.

“Where were we, Vlad?” I say, standing up.

He shrugs.

I walk over to the girl, so pretty, so young. It
is
a shame. She was somebody's daughter. I bend down and place my fingers on her neck to check for a pulse. Nothing.

“My family, wife and kids. Alive?”

“Maybe.”

I straighten up and head toward the bed, picking up the bat with a grunt.

“Wait, wait. I don't know. It's…”

“What, it's what?”

“Complicated.”

“So explain it to me, Vlad. The accident. Did you set it up?”

“Yes.”

“Like the other killer you made, my brother from another mother. Like that?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn't kill his family. Just made him think they were dead. Until they weren't, until that held more power, more leverage. Right?”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

He pauses, takes a breath. His knee is swelling and I poke it with the bat.

“Easy, easy,” he says through bared teeth. “Security blanket. Whatever you call it, Plan D.”

“So, my family, are they alive?”

“They were,” he says. “The last time I saw them.”

“When was that?” I ask.

“Years ago.”

I slump into a chair by the bed. What have I done? What have I become? How can I go back to them, this monster, if they'd even take me back, that is. I'm covered in tattoos, missing a finger, an insane drug addict, a drunk and a killer. Will the kids remember me? How long has it been? I don't look like anybody's daddy. What if she's remarried, what if she moved on?

“If you let me live, I'll tell you where they are. You have my word that I'll leave you alone. I promise, my friend. We're done. You can go at any time.”

“I burned down your building. Where I lived.”

“Bah. Was old. Insurance will be fine. No worry.”

“Why should I trust you, Vlad?”

“You have to. Without my help, you'll never find them.”

“Your word is no good, Vlad.”

“It is this time.”

I take a breath. I need the information.

“So I leave and that's it? We're done. Never see you again.”

“Yes. Done. I forgive you tonight, this mess.”

“Okay. You have my word, Vlad. I'll leave. And spare you.”

“Untie me,” he says.

I pull the knife out of my pocket and cut his left hand loose, then his left leg. I walk around to the other side and cut his right hand loose, then his right foot. He rubs his wrists, and gingerly touches his left knee, wincing.

“In the nightstand,” he says. “There, by you, look inside. There is an address book.”

I put the bat down and reach into the drawer. I pull out an old, black address book. Under it is a Bible.

“The address is in there. No names, Number 12. They are not far. Logan Square. I keep all my families close.”

“Your families?”

“Sorry, yes. The families.”

Number 12. How many times has he done this? There are many more numbers after my family, after 12, they just keep on going. I stand up with the address book. Number 12 is at 2206 North Kedzie, Apartment 1R.

I'm not sure how long it has been. Three years? Five? I try to count the tattoos on my body, and lose track somewhere around thirty. Forty. Not every month, or even every other month. There were huge gaps of time between assignments. And in the beginning, there was no killing, I was just a courier, transporting packages, simple errands. It's a lifetime ago.

I reach into the back of my jeans and take out the gun.

“My word is worthless too, Vlad.”

I fire into his chest, once, twice. His back arches, his eyes wide, arms flailing. I shoot him in the face—again and again I fire, until there is nothing of him left to remember, until there is hardly a head left on top of his shoulders. I keep pulling the trigger until the gun is empty, the clicking a sharp echo in the empty room.

I pick up the bat and walk out of the room. Down the stairs and I make a left into the kitchen and his wife stands there with a bag of groceries in her hands, bananas and wheat bread poking out of the top. For a moment I think it's Isadora, back from the grave, but I can see in this light that she is older, with a touch of gray in her hair. An orange rolls across the floor, stopping at my boots. Tears are streaming down her face, and she's shaking. Her lower lip is stuck out, long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her mouth trembles and I freeze.

“We meet again,” I say.

“Is he dead?” she asks.

I nod my head. Her eyes go down to the floor, and then back up to me.

“Good.”

She blinks.

“Are you going to kill me now?”

“No.”

She is so familiar. She looks so much like Isadora who looked like Holly who looked like my wife.

“You never told him I came here,” I say.

“No.”

“Why not?”

She pauses.

“I hoped you'd come back.”

For a moment, we stand still.

“To finish the job,” she says.

My mouth is dry and I need a beer. A lot of beer.

“You look just like somebody I knew, Isadora…”

“My sister.”

“She was your sister?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know…”

“No. I don't want to know. I know she's gone, that's enough.”

I nod my head.

“His men,” I say, “and upstairs, it's a mess. There's a girl…”

“Go. I'll take care of it,” she says, her eyes going dark.

“But, they're so big, they…”

“I said I'd take care of it. Just go,” she says, tears streaming down her face.

I nod again and head toward the back door. When I go to pull it shut she's still standing there, shaking, crying, the groceries trembling in her thin arms. The bag falls to the floor, milk spilling across the tile in violent gulps, canned goods tumbling out. And then she's on her knees, face buried in her long thin fingers, weeping.

“Thank you,” she gasps, and I close the door.

The cold is on me, and I'm out. I'm on my way to Logan Square. My family may still be alive.